Making an Exit

“Cloakshapes coming up behind us!” Saito informed you as your ship poked through the clouds. He had neatly moved over to what appears to be a sensor station on the bridge after you arrived and took control.

“Understood,” you reply as you try for a more aggressive climb.

“Missile lock!” Saito called out. You curse and rapidly punch commands into your pilots’ console, throwing your ship into an evasive manoeuvre. Immediately, you understand the folly of your ways as your ship goes inverted in its attempt to evade the missiles. All of a sudden gravity begins pulling in two different directions as your grav-plating keeps gravity pointing at the deck while the deck is pointing in the opposite direction of the ground.

You fight through a wave of nausea with a mixture of god power and sheer will as you continue inputting commands into your console. Additional thrusters fire in an attempt to flip the ship on its axis and extra G-forces are added on top of everything else. For a single, ungodly painful moment, down has become ‘yes’.

The missiles sail past the ship and you are now facing the cloakshape fighters.

“Get . . . get me a target lock!” you order as you blink stars from your eyes. Saito takes a moment to get himself back together before complying, you can hear his dry heaves even as his fingers dance on his console. Not a moment later, seven blips appear on your console and you line your ship up. They were flying in a nice, clean, V formation and now slightly above you. You couldn’t ask for a better firing solution if you’d simulated the battle. You punch a few commands into your console and your laser cannons’ gimbal mounts do the rest, sweeping the formation from right to left and annihilating the surprisingly unshielded cloakshapes.

“Remind me to turn gravity off before pulling decoupled manoeuvres in a gravity well,” You mumble into your console as you bend over it, as you try to think of a name for the new form of motion sickness you just discovered.

“Noted,” Saito shakily replied. You look over at him and watch as he shakes his head and swallows a few times, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Once you are sure he’s gotten a handle on things, you resume your course star bound.

“The kark was that!?” Tanna demands as she stumbles onto the bridge like a drunken sailor.

“Going away party,” you reply without looking away as the sky transitions into stars.

“This going away party is yet finished,” Saito tells you and you snap a look in his direction.

“Who the kriff are you?!” Tanna demands, noticing Saito for the first time.

“New crewman, be nice,” you say distractedly. “Saito, report,” you order.

“Dreadnought-class heavy cruiser moving into position to block the hyperspace exit,” Saito reports.

“Uhh, we’re getting hailed,” Tanna reports, having moved over to another terminal.

“Put it through,” you order as you stand up and walk to the holoterminal.

“You have something of mine,” Carston stated as he appeared in all his holographic glory.

“I have several somethings of yours,” you reply with a smug grin before draping an arm around Tanna’s shoulders. “I did decide to do you a favour and not wait for payment on Tanna before staging the rescue, man that was hot though,” you comment, holding Tanna tighter as she squirmed. “Tanna on her knees? Begging to be used? All tied up and nude? Mmmmm.”

Carston sighed before pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I was going to make **** threats,” Carston began. “But whatever you are getting paid, turn around and hand the slaves over and you’ll get double,” Carston offered. “That or you can try and get passed my cruiser, I’m sure they can delay you long enough for more fighters to arrive,” he added.

It strikes you then that you haven’t actually negotiated payment for rescuing a bunch of kidnapped Twi’leks. Aside from Tanna offering favours, you stand to gain absolutely nothing for this bout of compassionate adventuring.

You weigh that thought up. You could easily get Carston to pay up what he already offered for Tanna but that would mean losing both Tanna and Saito as you are positively sure the catboi wouldn’t want to stick around with someone who breaks their word, never mind the slaves. You could, probably, find a new engineer from among Carston’s employees though.

“You’re not actually considering this are you?!” Tanna asks aghast, this time managing to slip out of your distracted grasp.