The Chronicles of Damon Finn
Totte
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Damon Finn is a human man in his best of years, thirty six years old, from the outer rim territories. He was born on a small crop moon with the dull name Trammis-V M2, but everyone living there calls it Bernagh, after the leader of the first colony ship that landed there a very long time ago. The moon is orbiting the mining planet Trammis-V, which orbiting the star Trammis. On Trammis-V, several mining operations are ongoing.
Damon Finn has worked as a crop duster and bug hunter since his early teens as he has always had a good hand with flying. Later on he started to do supply runs to the miner facilities on Trammis-V, and learned the hard way that smuggling can be painful if you are exposed.
During crop season, dusting against small bugs and other pests was his main job, but during bug mating season, in the early spring, huge cave bugs came down from the mountains in the north, trying to find mating places. The cave bugs, sometimes as large as humans, where really dangerous beats. They were fenced off to the north, but sometimes they broke through the perimeter defenses protecting the south from the bugs, and then pilots armed with blaster pistols had to fly at low altitude taking them out. The farmers had tried to lift the ban on armed vehicles, but the government was stubborn, no armed vehicles in the hands of civilians, and the military had no time to deal with a simple bug problem.
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When Damon was in his early 30s, and had gotten somewhat of a reputation, he was contacted by a high ranking manager for one of the mining corporations on Trammis-V, Mr. Joaqmarq Belwolf. The mission was to salvage some cargo from a ship that was dead in the waters in an asteroid belt in the vicinity of the star Dilonexa. He was introduced to CT-8313 Coil, or just Coil, a deserter from the clone army that had been imprisoned for a long period of time in Carbonite. At first, it was quite a cold business only relation. The newly founded team followed to coordinates given by Mr. Belwolf, and located the ship, a Corellian built YT-1300 in the asteroid belt. They found the hatch closed, but the ship was empty, except the cargo on the cargo hold.
They tried to tow the ship out of the asteroid belt, but the old scrappy pile of junk Damon had been flying took some sever pounding while they tried, so they decided to try to repair the YT-1300 enough to get it back home.
The problem was a broken T-coupling on the fuel cell injector, which had emptied the fuel cell blocks. That was not very hard to fix at all. They pumped over the fuel from the Goose, Damon’s old ship, and brought all equipment over. It was quite a gamble, but the Corellian’s knew how to build ships. It started up. they could slowly navigate through the asteroids getting out in clear space and return with the cargo. They left the Goose, the old battered ship that had served Damon for several years.
I love this!
Thank you!
The relationship between Damon and Coil had gone from cold business to brothers in arms. Despite their differences, they found that they both could depend on each other, even with their lives.
They flew the Corellian ship back to Bermagh, where they convinced a hopper pilot they do his run and he could spend some quality time with his girlfriend instead, buying her something nice for the 50 credits he got for taking a couple of days of. Damon and Finn moved the salvaged cargo over to the supply hopper together with the usual cargo of crates with food.
The goods had been delivered, and the unlikely team got their payment of 1000 Credits. Damon said something to Mr. Belwolf about the ship was not in that bad condition, but he damaged his own ship quite a bit, any chance for some money to repair his ship, the 1000 Credits they earned on the job would not even cover for the damage. Mr. Belwolf looked at them both and said, I don’t give a damn about any of the ships, you have been paid for the job, deal closed, now get out of my sight before I call security to arrest you for being in an restricted area.
Yes indeed ;-)
On the way back, Koil and Damon decided to change the identification of the YT-1300 and keep it as their ship, leave this part of the universe and find some business elsewhere. They spent all their money and several weeks fixing up the ship, and they decided to name her The Whispering Swallow.
Koil was usually a very stable and calm man, but he had one obsession, he hated droids, really hated droids. He had a collection of droid heads in his bunk, under one of the floor hatches, hidden in several large canvas bags. His time serving in the clone wars, before he was frozen in carbonite, was horrible, and he still had occasional nightmares about it. Time went on, and the two friend kept flying, but that was about it, the big jobs kept staying away.
After a couple of years, struggling as some kind of space taxi service or delivery service, taking passengers and cargo from one planet to another, they ended up on the moon Nar Shaddaa, or Smuggler’s Moon, in Hutt Space, orbiting the planet Nal Hutta. The moon is just covered in an urban sprawl, with two major cities, Hutta Town and Wormstew Town. The rich and well off live high up where sunlight can be seen seen, while they who are not so fortunate try to make a living down on the ground, where criminals and the other usual suspects frequent seedy bars.
They picked the location as they knew there were good money to earn doing the right job for the right person. They landed at Wormstew Town starport and went down to the low levels, where you need to be careful, very careful.
Well at the bar, they were approached by a businessman, who had a piece of cargo he needed to move to a planet in the corporate sector. The job was worth 12000 Credits, half upon delivery. The problem was, no ships are allowed to land on the planets in the corporate sector without proper authorization. Damon came up with an idea, and it worked. They put up an ad at the starport, saying they were heading for the corporate sector and had a place for one or two passengers, at a good price. It didn’t take long until they got a call on the personal com, they negotiated the price to 1000 Credits, which was less than half the price you would normally pay for that ride. The passenger was a doctor who had business on Kalla VII.
The flight to the Corporate sector and the planet Kalla VII, or just Kalla, to drop off the doctor, were about twenty days in hyperspace. The routes were very good mapped here and the flight planning, or astrogation, quite easy. The tricky part would come later, but Damon had a cunning plan.
When they went out of hyperspace in outside the outer orbit of Kalla VII, it took not long until the CSA, Corporate Sector Authority hauled the Whispering Swallow and asked for authorization to visit corporate space. Damon called the passenger to the bridge, if you can call the small cockpit on an YT-1300 a bridge, but Damon liked to say captain on the bridge every time he entered. He told the CSA, authorization is coming, and told the passenger to give his authorization code. The passenger said “AZT982BT78”, and the answer from CSA was quick and they replied: - “Whispering Swallow, welcome to Kalla VII, you are clear to land, have a nice day.”. Secretly Damon took notes of the code spoken over the radio.
During landing Damon noticed a very strange and quite scary, whining sound from the ships engine. The landed and he went off to check with the star port maintenance, the answer was not very promising. Yes, they could take a look. The port fee would be 2k per day, and then probably 18k to fix the problem. Damon and Coil realized that that was more than they would earn on the whole job, so they decided to see if they would have better luck at the next planet to visit, where the goods where to be delivered, Duroon. They fueled up, the fuel price was tripled here compared with Hutt space, this is a very expensive part of the universe. Damon looked at the problem, but he could not fix it, but they had run fly, they got ruined just staying here in the port.
They took off and set course for Duroon, a half day hyperspace jump on a well mapped route. When they arrived at Duroon, the CSA called the Whispering Swallow asking for authorization code, and Damon said “AZT982BT78”, and the CSA replied: - “Whispering Swallow, welcome to Duroon you are clear to land, have a nice day.”
The engine still sounded really unhealthy while landing, and the port fee here was as expensive as everywhere in the corporate sector. Damon looked around to see where the maintenance facility were, but before he had found it, a customs inspector accompanied by two CSA security guards came to the ship to do a random customs inspection. Damon thought, this was the last thing he wanted, he had heard that the prison moons in the corporate sector was very tough, and few lived to be released. He opened the door, and welcomed the customs inspector with his most charming smile, and said that he had a passenger, a Mr. Wilson, who really want to travel incognito. The customs inspector didn’t get fooled, but Damon and Finn was saved by the bell, or at least by a sudden cell from the speakers in the starport: “All personnel to docking bay 54, all personnel to docking bay 54”.
The customs inspector looked at Damon and said: - “Don’t you go nowhere, I’ll be back.”
Coil and Damon looked at each other, and then Coil quickly dashed out and disappeared into the market building. A few minutes later he came back with a large package. It was a large cage, with some chickens in it. Coil said: - “Let her come aboard, find the chickens, and pay her the 50 credits in customs fee.”
Ten minutes later, that was exactly what happened. Damon got a 50 credit customs fine for trying to bring an undeclared animals ashore, and that was it, and Coil had a hard time not to laugh.
Now, they just had to wait for contact. While waiting, Damon went off to the mechanic working at the maintenance facility. He didn’t look busy at all. Damon asked if he could take a look at his ship, but the mechanic had a booking in an hour, but tomorrow could do, and the price, just the same horrible 18k. Damon tried to convince the mechanic to do the job on the side. You can get 4k in your pocket, what will you make of those 18k? 500 credits? 1k? I will pay for any parts you need.
The mechanic said that his boss would notice, he watches him all time time. After some talking, Damon now knew that the boss used to take an evening drink at a bar named The Inner Line. Another cunning planned formed, while they were stuck here waiting for contact from the recipient of the cargo they had hidden aboard the ship.
In the evening Damon went to The Inner Line pub, and just happened to recognize the manager for the workshop, and bought him some rather spiked drinks, that would keep him from coming to to work the next day due to a majestic hangover.
The next day, the mechanics looked at the problem, but he was could not fix it at it required heavy equipment, which he could use without authorization from his boss. The problem was a whining drive coil, coil whine, the engine’s way to tell you it’s slowly giving up.
undeclared chicken, alright :D
In the evening they were contacted by the recipient, a Hutt living a couple of hours flight from the starport on his own large private property. They flew there with the Swallow, and they delivered the goods, and got paid the remaining 6k Credits. The Hutt offered to let them use his mechanic to see if he could fix the coil whine, and also helped with ordering a replacement coil, which costed almost 6k, there went half the profit, again. Three days later the ship was in one piece again. They got a job from the Hutt, to deliver a package to the planet Zygeria, just outside the corporate sector, and it was an express delivery.
On the way back to the starport, they were suddenly called on the rado by the CSA: - “This is the CSA, Corporate Sector Authority, you have landed on Duroon using an authorization that was already used at Kalla VII. We need you to land at the starport, landing pad 43, for further inspections.”
Damon looked at Coil and said, strap tight, let’s see what this baby can do. The ship shook when he thrusted full speed up from the planet and into space. The Swallow was an light armed ship, only one dual laser on the roof and one under the belly. A dogfight was not really what they wished for, and they new the CSA had close connections with the Empire. Damon plotted the course for Zygeria, but he avoided the Solenbaran Merchant Route and plotted a slightly different route that looked shorter.
Off they went into hyperspace, and when they arrived a few days later, Damon realized he had done The Zygerian Run in less than 4 Parsec, a deed to be proud of, worthy of bragging at seedy bars.
Damon and Coil agreed that they really needed to find a good mechanic to join the crew. They decided to go back to Nar Shaddaa again, to see if they could find one willing to join the crew, for a share of the money or a share of the ship. Both Coil and Damon were confident that someone working for a share did a much better job than someone working for credits. Someone working for credits could more easily be bought than someone who were a part of the crew.
Back on Nar Shaddaa, they rented a cheap hotel room down on level seven, and started to look around for a good mechanic, posting notes in bars and asking around. Suddenly, a quiet evening, when Damon was studying some new astrogation maps, and Coil sat in the chair in the hotel room reading the latest issue of Guns & Ammo, there was knock on the door. Damon went and checked, it was a droid, who politely said: -”Mr Finn and his associate are to follow him for a meeting, it is very important, and no is not an answer, as the master, Bargos the Hutt, will not accept that answer.”
Coil was very negative, follow a bot, it will probably just try to get us killed. Damon asked where, and the bot gave him coordinates on the planet, to a private docking bay, in the posh district of Hutt Town. After some arguing, Coil accepted to follow Damon, it was after all someone rich, as only those really rich could afford to live there.
They took the Swallow to the coordinates they had been given, and it was a real palace, a Hutt palace, in a very nice spot surrounded by very high walls. When they had landed they were met by a Toydarian, a small winged creature, he saluted Damon and Coil in the most proper ways, and told them to hurry as the master was calling. They followed him in to the palace doors and through a hallway and into a large room. There, on a Hutt bed, was a large Hutt. He spoke several words in Hutt, that ended in a roaring laughter, and the Toydarian translated it. My master says: - “Welcome to my humble quarters, I have been looking for you Damon Finn. You had a debt, I cashed in that debt in a business deal, so now your debt is to me.”
The Hutt continued to speak, and the Toydarian translated: - “I own a mine that I got in a business transaction, and that mine have stopped delivering my money. They do not answer my inquiries, they have gone totally silent. You pay off your debt by bringing me the 100k that the mine ows me. Don’t try to fool Bargos the Hutt or trick Bargos the Hutt, and don’t try to hide from Bargos the Hutt, Bargos the Hutt will find you. Now, my assistant will give you the details, so hurry off, I have business to attend to.”
The coordinates seems to be a small moon in the outer rim, it was chartered but no major jump routes led there. When Damon and Finn came back to the hotel room, they went down to the closest bars to see if they could find a mechanic, and they did. They met Oovo Cheje, a Twi’lek, who said she was mechanic, and also quite capable of handling blaster pistols. They talked for a while in a soft corner of the bar, and Damon and Finn told her about the job they had to do, and that there was sadly no bounty or payment this time, it’s debt that has to be payed. Oovo didn’t mind, she seemed eager to leave Nar Shaddaa.
The Swallow took off from Nar Shaddaa and Damon started to astrogate the hyperspace jump to the mining moon, but as soon as they came into orbit, two Tie-Fighters suddenly appeared out of nowhere. acting very aggressively. Damon shouted to Coil and Oovo to man the guns and fight them off, while Damon tried to make some complicated maneuvers to shake the incoming Tie-Fighters. it was a short but intensive battle, resulting in two less Tie-Fighters to worry about in the future.
After about two weeks in hyperspace, time spent training and letting to know each other, the Swallow finally came out of hyperspace. They circled the planet and found the mine and the landing pods, one was occupied by a small transport ship, so the Swallow landed on the other.
The moon itself was quite uninhabitable, but there was a perimeter circle of protection devices of some sort, probably a force field of some kind, that kept the poisonous atmosphere away from the mine so the air was nice and breathable around it.
When they exited the ship and headed for what looked like the mine entrance, Coil said: - “Did you hear that?” and Damon and Oovo both replied: -”No..”, and Coil then said: - “Exactly, it’s too quiet, too calm, stay alert.” Coil was the most experienced soldier in the team, a veteran clone from the clone wars remember. They all checked their guns while getting closer to the mine.
They found the door open, and there were a broken glass and equipment in the receptionist area. The reception droid was sitting still, didn’t move a cog, and Coil kept his gun pointing at it all the time. Oovo saw that that the droid has a restraining bolt attached, and Damon tried to access any surveillance footage on the system, there were some, but someone had deleted most of it. The whole situation was very scary.
They did someone walking together with a bot towards the other ship on a the video, then the bot came back some minutes later. The other landing pad on the other side of the hill where the mine was, so it was quite a journey to get there. Suddenly they heard a voice in the speaker system: - “Warning! Warning! Perimeter protection tower one has been compromised.”
Oovo decided to disconnect the restraining bolt on the reception droid, and Coil had his finger on the trigger, as there were signs of struggle here, looked like human blood, so someone had been killed or at least shot here.
The receptionist bot woke up, and said: - “Hello, how can I help you? Oh god, we have a perimeter failure on tower one, we need to send someone to repair it, but the repair vehicle is already out I see. Oh no, who has, what, what is this, what, have I been shut down, my memory timestamps are invalid.”
They tried to get anything useful from the receptionist bot, but it just did not know what had happened or who had been deleting surveillance footage from the server.
They tried to look on a map to locate the protection towers, but the map was in a bad state, and the towers were not visible due to the orange dense atmosphere surrounding the mine, a circle about 3 clicks in radius, so the towers could be anywhere. After another fifteen minutes while they had been trying to get some more information out from the system without any success, the ghost voice spoke again: - “Warning! Warning! Perimeter protection tower three has been compromised.”
The receptionist droid explained that if more than three towers stops functioning, the air will be lethal in just 60 minutes, for humans and other living organism using oxygen as a primary energy source.
The group moved on, through some locker rooms, where they saw another droid, a medical droid, that looked like it was shut down, and some lockers were opened. Sounds made them follow deeper into the mine, passing loading section, which led to either into the mine itself, or what they guess to the other landing pad. They went to the landing pad to check the other ship, there was a dead Neimoidian in there, the same Neimoidian they had seen on the surveillance video that was partly deleted. Coil muttered: -”Droids, never trust droids”.
They went back and into the mine using the loading elevators, they were still working. group started to explore the mine, trying to locate the sounds they were hearing, and found another bot with a restraining bolt attached, but let it sit there as it would probably not be on any assistance.
The came to a large chamber, where a group of droids, where piling boxes and crates to build some kind of wall. Damon asked them what they were doing and what had happened here, and one droid, a security droid replied: - “They are down there, the marauders. A Human, a Mandalorian and a Rodian, they came here to steal the money, they are down there, if you hurry you can catch them.” They recognized the security droid from the surveillance video, it was the droid that went with the Neimoidian to the ship.
Now, without thinking, Oovo and Damon took Coil with them down the tunnel where they marauders had gone. They moved carefully, and after a couple of hundred yards, they found a group of miners. They said: -”Don’t shoot, the droids have gone mad, it is that security droid and the medical droid, they went crazy. They started to kill us, thank god you came to rescue us.”
Coil said very loud: -”I told you over and over you cannot trust droids! Come on, let’s kick some metal butts.”
The group handed over some spare weapons to the miners and they hurried to back to the droids, that now were trying to seal off the tunnel with crates. The droids noa had a crate full of blasters and were arming themselves. Oovo showed that she was not only a great mechanic, but also deadly with her blaster pistols. Coil and Damon had a hard time keeping up with her droid bashing. Coil had found a box of restraining bolts, and they successfully got the two loader bots restrained. Suddenly they all realised that the security droid and the medical droid was missing from the battle, they were running away to the elevator to the tunnel out to other ship. Suddenly the ghost voice was heard again: “Warning! Warning! Perimeter protection tower four has been compromised.”
They left the last droids to the miners and set after the escaping ones, but they had disabled the lift so they needed to climb up, losing valuable time. When they came out to the landing pad, the dead Neimoidian was laying on the ground and the security droid stood in the door of the cargo ship taking off, shouting: - “Vive la revolution!” and then they were gone.
They ran through the mine complex back to the Swallow and manned the belly guns. On the radar they could see something moving out there, they duck hunt ended when Ovoo shot the little land speeder and the droid running it to pieces.
The aftermath was sad, several of the mine’s utility droids were destroyed and several miners including the security officer, the dead Neimoidian. Damon said that he was sent by the owner of the mine, Bargos the Hutt, who wanted his money, 100k, today. The manager said, that is impossible, we need to repair, and we need to survive, if you take all that money from us, you will destroy us all. Damon, thought, there were two crates of Empire blasters, almost in mint condition, they could be worth something on the black market. Ovoo took care of some of the least damaged droids and got the working again. After a couple of days the perimeter protection system was back on line, not as powerful as before, they needed repairs, and the land speeder was just blasted into scrap, and so was the repair droid that was riding it.
After much discussions, Damon and his friends did not want to leave the mine in a terrible state, they agreed that 86k credits from the mine’s safe would be handed over to Damon for delivery to the Bargos the Hutt, the rest they would try to get from selling the blasters and some other things. It had been an eventful week, and Coil kept saying: - “I told you, never trust a droid”, and he took two head from destroyed droids and added them to his collection.
Those were not the droids you were lookimg for...
The hyperspace jump back to Nar Shaddaa was spent training and of course discussing ways to get the money they needed. Damon said he was afraid to come short on this, or his debt would probably not be paid off after all.
They landed at the starport, with the blasters stoved away in one of the many secret compartments in the Swallow. It was a very good ship for smuggling and hiding things. Spending an evening at seedy bars on the lower levels was all that was needed to get 11k, 5.5k / box of blasters. The black market has a never ending demand for weapons, and state of the art empire blasters did go for a good price, sad the money were not theirs to claim.
After some final scraping of the last credits deep in their pockets, Damon, Coil and Oovo went to Bargos the Hutt, to pay off Damon’s debt of 100k. Bargos the Hutt as not very please that it had taken so long, and he was not the least interested in the story of what had happened. After the deal was done, the crew took the Swallow and took off. The ship cash box was down to just over 2k, they needed a job with a good payout this time, and fast. To keep the ship flying it cost money all the time, fuel and port fees were eating a hole in the economy.
They decided to leave Nar Shaddaa at least for now, before anyone decided to trace the blasters they sold. The sat course for Lexis Nord, a starbase built on an asteroid, and a known place for scum and villainy. The port fee was only 40 credits a day but they needed to find a job quick, and hopefully some more crew members to do bigger jobs. They went down to the market level, and into a seedy bar where they knew they would find both crew members looking for work, and people of different levels of dishonesty trying to find someone to do a job for them.
They didn’t find anything of interest, the jobs were either very low payed or just below their dignity. Damon heard though that there was a casino behind a guarded door, invitation only, where richer clients were looking for jobs to be done. Damon scouted the door, and those entering seemed to show a casino chip as proof of membership. He decided to try to pickpocket someone exiting the casino, to get his hands on a chip, but it failed and his stumbling into the patron only resulted in being spit on, but it could have been worse, he could have been shot at.
Meanwhile, a ship mechanic named Baaros were looking for a job, and he had said to a few crews: - “I will contact you tomorrow to respond to your offer”, had seen Damon, Coil and Oovo and asked the bartender about them. The bartender did not know much, but Baaros asked if the bartender had a chip for the casino door, and after some discussions of calibrating the beer cooler, Baaros got a chip. When he saw Damon and Oovo coming back from the failed attempt, he stretched out his introducing himself as Baaros, mechanic, and at the same time handed the chip over to Damon, saying: - “I heard you were looking for some crew members, I’m a mechanic and a pretty good one. Your mech seems to be more of a slicer, computer tech, than a mechanic.”, showing off the hydrospanner he had on his shoulder.
But it was not only Barros' attention Damon’s fumbling had caught. Another man, well dressed, approached Damon, showing a casino chip, saying : -”My name is Arin Rosh, explorer and archeologist. I plan to leave this asteroid as my work here is completed, and as I understand, you would like to enter the casino looking for a job. Ladies and Gentlemen, shall we?”. Baaros stayed in the bar together with Coil, so it was Arin, Oovo and Damon who entered the casino. The large Gomoran guard looked at the chip, then slowly counted one…. two…. three… ok, welcome.
Well inside, this was quite a luxurious establishment compared to the other establishments down on market level. Leather seats, live entertainment with a Twi’lek dancing, which Oovo thought was both highly immoral and improper. Damon saw a man standing at the bar, looking posh and rich, and went forward and introduced himself as Finn, Damon Finn, Captain and Pilot of one of the fastest ships in the galaxy, but the man just looked at him and replied: -”I wouldn’t fly in a filthy ship like yours even if someone pays me.”, and went away. But, someone else saw Damon and approached him. He introduced himself a Hondo Onaka, and said he needed a fast and small ship for a salvage mission, and he would pay 50% of whatever was salvaged, but speed was of essence, they needed to leave very soon.
Damon was happy and didn’t think twice about this very generous offer and accepted it. Mr Hondo Onaka said. -”We meet in Orbit in 60 minutes, I have my own ship, but it is too large and clumsy for this job, an agile ship like yours will be perfect. I will send to you the coordinates when we are in orbit.”
Damon called upon Oovo and Arin and said: -”We’ve got a job to do, you can familiar yourself on the ship. Thanks Arin for letting us in here, now we go pick up Coil and Baaros at the bar.“
When then came into the bar, a man in a dirty doctors attire, approached Damon and said: - “I heard you were flying off this place, my name is Doctor Mardar Tyhm.”
Damon replied: - “Good day Doctor, you are right, we’re leaving, but we’re leaving now, so get your stuff if you want a ride.”
Doctor Tyhm replied in a quite nervous voice: -”Yes, that’s perfect, I’m ready to leave now.” then he crouched a little behind Damon while they left the market level and headed for the spaceport, bay 14, where the Swallow was docked. Damon thought for himself, this doctor guy is really hiding from something or someone, but a doctor on the ship, what else can you wish for?
So, the crew had now grown to twice the size, and they were all humans except for Oovo. Not that Damon though bad of any of the other species in the universe, he was absolutely not a speciesist, but humans do have more basic needs in common, making the life on a ship easier.
The crew members chatted with each other on the way to the ship, and when they all were on board, Damon addressed them all as he was the captain: - “Welcome to the Whispering Swallow, or just the Swallow. You new members and passengers, you can all choose to join the crew. If you do, you can choose to either get paid as an employee, or become a part of the crew and get an equal share, but also share an equal responsibility for the ship. Your call. As partners, we share equally, both wins and losses, and also the cost for the ship. All money we make are going to the ship cash, for maintenance, fuel, docking fees, and if we make enough, were all paid equally. This do require commitment though, nothing is free in this universe.”
Baaros, Arin and Mardar all agreed to join as crew and partners, and they quickly discussed ship duties, both normal and during emergency situations. Every crew member needs to know what tasks to perform when shit hits the fan, that is the difference between survival och death in the cold space.
Hondo’s ship, a Gosanti Armed Transport came up into orbit for the jump. They got the coordinates, and Arin proved to be quite a skilled Astrogator, so he checked the destination, and added that, but also added both a return route back to where they were now, and a escape route to a safe space in the middle of nowhere, just in case.
They jumped, it was a short jump, just about an hour, and Baaros spent his time listening to the engine checking that the compression coil that they replaced was working as expected, and he was almost satisfied, some adjustments could be done.
When they came out of hyperspace, they saw a huge gas giant, with stormy turbulent clouds, and in a very low and dangerous orbit, was a huge Imperial Container transport, a Class 4 Container Transport. Mr Hondos’s ship had not arrived yet. Scanners said that the ship is blacked out, and no life forms seems to be active. A small encrypted emergency beacon seems to send signals though.
They decided that Baaros keeps the Swallow in position over the huge transport ship, and then Damon wearing a breather opens the front airlock and shot a harpoon with a wire to create a way for the crew members to move over to the ship. Coil is set to just keep the Swallow steady, and he is instructed to shout over she com if he sees he needs the crew to evacuate the transport in case it drops down in orbit into the storms.
They quickly put space suits on and moved over. Doctor Tyhm said: - “Is this really necessary, I can keep Coil company”, but Coil replied: - “We’re all for one and one for all, you go, with or without suit, your choice.”
Well at the ship, Oovo tries to slice the main hatch through the data port, works perfectly, and she learns that the ships sentries are set on highest alert, good to know. Well inside, the group moves towards the bridge to try to figure out where the most valuable cargo is. 400 Containers in an interconnected array will take way too long time to search through. Oovo tries to hack the closed bridge door, but the ship lockdown has locked the hydralics, so Baaros removes a small access panel and disconnects the hydralics, and the doors opens.
The bridge is empty except for a pilot droid sitting in the pilot’s chair, when the door opens, he shouts: -”Oh dear, rescue!”. Mardar persuades the pilot droid that we are a private rescue company. Baaros says: -”Where is the most valuable cargo, we need to secure that first you see.” The pilot droid replies: -”That can TC-137 answer, I can call for him...", but before he can press the com button, Oovo has put a restraining bolt in the neck of the pilot droid. Oovo tries to hack the system to gain access to the transport manifest, but after she set the restraining bolt to comply mode, the pilot droid politely says that the group needs to head down to level -3, there is CT-137 and he knows everything as he is the transport manifest protocol droid on this ship.
The elevators are shut down, but the group climbs down using the ladders without any problems, and well down at level -3, they continue to slowly move forward. Suddenly they hear the sound of electric motors and hydralics. Quickly they hide along the side of the corridor, behind some of the pillar structures, staying as close to the walls as possible, and two security droids comes moving along. Oovo, Arin and Damon quickly readies the weapons and fires. Arin hit one of the droids, then Oovo turns it into a smoking pile of scrap firing both her blasters, and Damon shot the other droid to smoking scrap with his blasters.
Suddenly a door opens, and four Ugnaughts looks out, and they chatter in a incomprehensible language. Damon calls Hondo on the com and says: - “We found your Ugnaughts.” and Hondo replied: - “OK, are you done yet?”, then hangs up.
The group enters the chamber of TC-137, the manifest droid, and Arin says: -”We need the transport manifest.” TC-137 replies, in the voice of someone who is terrible bored: - “Ok, will do, just show me your authorization.” Oovo puts a restraining bolt on CT-137, switch it to comply mode and replies: -”Sure, this is my authorization.”
Suddenly Coils calls on the com, saying: -”Someone is about to board us, a small ship is closing in from behind.”. Damon calls Hondo and tell him to fix the problem and Hondo replies yes, sure, and Damon can hear that Hondo is lying. What a pretty mess they just got themselves into.
Baaros and Arin rushes off to the engine room, trying to start up the transport ship’s emergency system to get power to the lasers. Hondo now calls back again on the com, saying: “Let’s make a deal, you give me the Ugnaughts and the fule, and I let you go.” The Ugnaughts keeps speaking gibberish that no one understands.
Damon asks TC-137 to translate from Ugnaught speak to galactic common language, and TC-137 replies: -”Sigh, ok, I can translate, they say we want go home, sign, then they say they are disappointed on Hondo, sigh, anything else boring you want me to do for you?”
Coil calls and says they are closing in, they will be boarding any minute now.
Oovo tries to negotiate with TC-137, telling him that if he helps us we will rescue him to so he doesn’t have to crash onto a strange planet and die a horrible death, and TC-137 just replied: -”Death, who cares, might be better than this anyway.”
Oovo gets the transport manifest sent over to her datapad and starts to examine it. She finds a few interesting containers. One with photon torpedoes, one with blasters, and two with fuel.
Baaros and Arin tries to activate the emergency power, but it just won’t come online, but Baaros finds a huge switch saying “Emergency Magnetic Lock Release”. Baaros coms the others and tells them his plan, to release all the 400 container at once, but first they need to pick stuff, one minute, then they go. Damon tells Doctor Tyhm that he needs to follow him into the container grid to a certain container to grab a fuel tank, and Doctor Tyhm replied: - “But it feels much safer in here, are you really sure? I think it can be dangero... “, but before he had finished his sentence Damon had already grabbed the Doctor by the neck and pulled him into the container grid. Oovo goes for a torpedo, Damon and Doctor Tyhm salvage a fuel tank on a hover and the Ugnaughts randomly loots, not finding much value, just a crate with parade hats.
After on minute, the last Ugnaughts threw himself through the closing door, then a sharp clunking sound is heard. Coil reports that the small boarding ship was hit by a swarm of containers and disappeared tumbling away towards the planet, but he had to parry the hard pull and snapped the wire, he will keep close, waiting for orders. Hondo almost immediately calls on the com shouting: -”That was stupid, very stupid!”, and opens fire against the Swallow, Coil already had shields up.
Damon persuades Hondo that a rescued fuel tank is on the way to him via an escape pod. Oovo slices the interface of the torpedo she had grabbed, to arm it, and set it to detonate on impact. Damon programmed the escape pod to fly fast towards Hondo’s ship, calling Hondo saying fuel is on the way, launching the escape pod.
But the escape pod hits a container, close to to Hondo’s ship, but not close enough to blow it to pieces, but the explosion was close enough to take out the lasers guns on Hondo’s ship, and Hondo called again on the com: -”Let’s call it even, but the next time we meet you are dead!”, and his ship jumped.
The group, including the Ugnaughts, take the remaining escape pods up and dock with the Swallow. Coil, who is looking terrible from the stress, could finally rest when Damon took over the ship. Oovo scanned the cloud of containers in space to see if anyone of them that contained anything valuable had moved from the gas giant and not towards the gas giant, and she found two. One with medical equipment and one with blasters. As the YT-1300 was built as a container tug, it has magnetic locks on the ventral side of the ship, so Damon just carefully maneuvered the Swallow into position and took the two crates for tugging, then they jumped to a nearby asteroid field to repack the cargo, Coming into a spaceport tugging Empire containers might cause a little too much trouble.
Now, they once again set course for Nar Shaddaa, and the black market. The Ugnaughts got one crate with six blasters and powerpacks and was happy, and left the Swallow at the star port. The crew hid one crate in the ship, just in case. Damon found the dealer he used before, but as this was a huge shipment, 38 crates of six blasters in each crate, and Damon was rather stressed to get the off his back, they sold the lot for only 25k, which was well needed money, but a fair bit below street price. Damon was a little disappointed on himself for being such a bad negotiator when under stress. And they had a full tank of fuel. Each member in the crew got 2500 credits, and the rest went to the ships cash. There are upgrades that might have to be done to the Swallow, and with Baaros and Oovo teaming up, the cost for installing them will be very none, just the actual cost for the actual hardware.
Damon decided that Baaros and Oovo should help Doctor Tyhm to setup a real med-bay in the ship using the medical equipment container. The container contained more or less a small mobile clinic that could be setup anywhere with a short notice. By attaching the different equipment to the Swallow’s power supply, they would have a fully equipped med-bay that could handle most of the complications they might end up with, and Doctor Tyhm would be able to prove his skills.
The Swallow has a small sick bay, but nothing like state of the art Imperial medical equipment. Now, a med bay with the latest technology, except a bacta-tank.
So, it's time to know the leading characters in this story a little better, so here we go.
Thank you for that. It will be easier to keep track of the story when we can tell who is who.
Coil looks like he's related Damon… (Father and son? wink)
Heh, not in that universe no....
After the group sold the contraband Blaster Carbines, they spend some days on Nar Shaddaa, everyone on their own mostly. Damon, Baaros and Arin is out on an errand when they are contacted by Listion No’Ko, the secretary and left hand of Juir, who bought the blasters. He said he had a small job for them, something he had forgotten to handle for his boss, and if it’s not handled very quickly his job will be an open position. He says:
-”There is a smuggler here on Nar Shaddaa that goes by the name of Doc Arys, and he hasn’t paid his due to my boss. He is three weeks late to be precise. He should have paid for products we provided him with. His main trade is Bacta. Your job is simple, bring him to me, alive. I will pay you 4k when you bring he to me, today. I also have three tickets to the exclusive concert tonight, the best band on this side of the universe, those tickets are impossible to get, here, take them, and you get the money when you deliver Doc Aryn, alive remember. We know he hangs out with swoop-gangs, and he looks like this”, Listian Nokko shows a picture of Doc Arys.
Damon happened to know the bar owner of one of the most popular swoop gang bars, the “Air Burnout”, Rans Klar. If anyone knew about swoop gangs on Nar Shaddaa, it would be Rans. The “Air Burnout” is located quite high up, and has a large swoop parking lot outside it.
Damon, Arin and Baaros took a swoop taxi to the “Air Burnout”. Damon noticed that there was a small net outside the fly out window, a force field window where people had the bad habit to get thrown out, and get hurt hitting the concrete two stories down. They entered. Damon shouted to Rans: -”Hello mate!”, and Rans replied: -”Damon, long time no see! How’s the universe treating you?”. Damon asked about the net and Rans replied that it was bad for business losing customers that got thrown out in brawls.
Damon introduced his new friends Arin and Baaros to Rans, and asked him if he knew about a smuggler that goes by the name Doc Arys, and hangs out with swoop gangs. Rans said, ask them, and pointed to a group of people with red jackets, bandanas and strappy pants sitting around a table in the middle of the bar. The gang went by the name Red Rebels. Rans said that they merged from two competing gangs after both leaders had been killed.
Damon said to Rans, serve them enough beer to make them happy, how much do I owe you, and Rans replied, 40 credits mate.
After a few minutes, a women from the group went forward towards Damon and introduced herself as Nea Hamai, Captain in the Red Rebels and the senior officer here, and she asked Damon what his business with them was.
that's an empty bar if there ever was one ... must be still early in the day
It''s 11.30 a.m. on a sun day morning....
Damon explains that they have some Bacta and StimPacks, top quality, that they want to talk to Doc Arys about. Meanwhile, Arin notices that the elevator signs switches from white to red, which means faulty. He lean forward and informs Damon about it. Nea Hamai replies, you can meet, we arrange a meeting at a neutral location, the rooftop of a skyscraper, 2 hours, then the Red Rebels leave the bar and mount their swoops and fly away. Just after they left, something happens on the parking lot outside the bar, looks like an Imperial transport and lots of stormtroopers. Baaros run to the elevator and quickly opens the button panel for one of the elevators and tries to take control over it. He successfully manage that and sends it past this floor, upwards.
Outside a voice is heard shouting, stormtroopers, arrest them. Damon shouts to Rans: - “We have trouble brewing!”. The second elevator arrives and stormtroopers comes out. Damon, standing closest to the elevator point towards the left where room continued along the side and where the escape windows were and said: - “They went that way!” The closest stormtrooper replied: - “Don’t lie! Stay here!” and the four stormtroopers went the other way towards the bar and the staff only door.
Arin walked to the Imperial Officer who came out last from the elevator and asked what the problem is. The officer replied: - “This establishment has protected criminals and enemies of the empire”. He then took up his com and asked:- “Malix, where are you?” and over the com they heard the reply: - “We are experiencing technical difficulties.”, and Baaros smiled a hidden smile.
The stormtroopers all went through the staff only door, and then Damon got one of his more reckless ideas, he bull rushed the officer trying to force him into the elevator, but the officer dodged his rush by getting part of the door frame behind his back, but Damon at least came into the elevator. The officer shots Damon in the arm with his blaster, and Damon grabs him and disarm him and throws him down on the floor and sit on him. The stormtroopers now comes back, two behind the bar and two come back out through the door. Arin rushes into the elevator, and Baaros kills the other elevator completely, then rushes to the elevator, but get shot, twice in the back and falls to the floor, just as the doors closed and the elevator started the ride down.