Erit starts to move towards the Second Chance. It looks like Wayde has a plan, and Erit would like himself and his plants to be out of the way when it blows up in his face.

Hearing Wayde's summons via the commlink, Jileeza starts toward the ship at a casual-looking, deceptively-fast glide. If I can get to the autocannon, this could be a whole different game, she thinks with a grin.

There's a shss as Wayde slips his blaster into his hand, firing from the hip. The first trooper shields his face with his arms as Wayde's shot hits dead center, erupting the Imperial's chest plate into a shower of smoke and sparks and sending the man screaming over the edge of the platform. "Aiiieeeeeeeee!" Wayde's second shot flies left of the next stormtrooper, who's dropped to a crouch while readying his blaster rifle.

Briggs shoots next. Nobody's really sure where that man was aiming, as the shot goes way wide of anything worth hitting as Briggs furiously backpedals amongst his four troopers, slamming the lid of the floating blue crate up for cover. Briggs' men are leaping into action, swinging their blasters up, the front two taking a knee while the rear two troopers bring their weapons to bear over the heads of their fellows.

Jileeza turns her purposeful stride into a slinking assault, sliding her left arm around one trooper's neck while simultaneously drawing and firing her blaster. The stormtrooper who had been lucky enough to avoid Wayde and Briggs' errant bolts drops dead, a scorched crater in his helmet.

Aurelia gets Wayde over the commlink and stands, abandoning the rest of her meal, snatching up the satchel of parts in one arm, grabbing Ta's wrist by the other.

"Time to go."

Ta tries to shirk back, her mouth half-full of food. "Wha- why? Let go of me! I've had it with you people!" Needless to say, this unladylike exchange draws the attention of several other customers, but what really tops off the scuffle is the lightning-quick knife-hand strike to Aurelia's throat.

As Aurelia gasps for air, she realizes that she's seen someone else move like that before: Jileeza... who happens to be a trained assassin...

Ta shuffles back, frankly appalled at what she did, mumbling "I'm sorry...", then turns, stumbles into a table, and runs for it. Plastic bowls and drink splatter to the ground as Aurelia crumples on the ground, gulping what air she can. Several painful breaths later, Aurelia regains most of her composure and manages to get back to her feet, coughing heavily.

The Massacre at Platform 34
---

Nobody in the crew had really seen why Mak, in addition to being a bare-knuckle fighting champion, was also considered one of the more dangerous gunfighters across several sectors. The stormtroopers watching him, Arnae, and Erit might as well have been looking the other way for all the good it does them.

The muscular Bothan drops to a crouch, his custom handcannons appearing in his hands as he does so, his arms snapping out and taking aim. The rightmost and leftmost stormtroopers drop dead, the rightmost one actually squeezing off a few blasts into the air as he falls. Mak continues, crossing his arms over and blasting the remaining left side trooper with his right gun, and vice versa. The guy on the left catches it in the helmet and spawls halfway off the platform, his leg caught on a landing light. The last stormtrooper throws himself prone as Mak's last bolt screams overhead.

Several yards away, Jileeza fends off a pathetic attempt by her human shield to break away, then slams a foot into the back of the trooper's leg, gets a good grip on his upper body, and throws the guy off the platform ("Aiiiiiieeeeee!").

Wayde dashes for the Chance while firing at the last umimpeded stormtrooper, who likewise has finally gotten his finger around his trigger. They exchange a flurry of blaster bolts as Wayde ducks by, then backpedals towards cover. One of Wayde's shots hits the trooper in the arm, recoiling him backwards in time to catch another blast in the chest. At the same time, the trooper's final bolt slams into Wayde's stomach and the sarge smells burning meat.

Briggs decides the brig (heh heh) is better than dead, and crouch-runs to the blast doors, disengaging the lock. His 4 guys, having no real reason to open fire (yet), move back to the doors as well with the floating crate for cover.

Amongst the brief but violent exchange, Erit leads his plants up the ship's gangplank. He's just about to the top when two blaster bolts from inside the ship blow smoking holes in the plating next to his head. A voice obviously from inside a stormtrooper helmet shouts, "You're not going anywhere, pirate!"

Mak's eyes widens and he utters a curse under his breath as his body springs into action, jumping almost horizontally 3 inches above the floor, pulling both triggers at the last stormtrooper.

He lands and shouts "Erit! The Sarge!"

Wayde takes a moment behind his cover to address his wound, cursing the Emperor and all that is Imperial. Grievances aside, he'll then go about dispatching the Stormtroopers aboard the Chance with extreme prejudice.

Hates the Empire...damn right he does.

Jileeza dusts her hands as she watches the trooper fall for a moment. Then, turning, she heads toward the ship.

Hearing the voices from inside the ship, 'Za realizes they still have a bit of killing to do. Fortunately, she's okay with that.

It is then that Mak's words register in her mind. Wayde's hit. Though she doesn't consciously realize it, he means slightly more to her than the majority of worthless sentients. Accordingly, she moves to his side to check his condition.

Once certain of Wayde's continuing life, she circles around and attempts to enter the ship via secondary access. No sense getting herself shot going through the main access...

As Wayde and 'Za meet under one of the landing struts, Mak and the last stormtrooper have it out.

"Erit! The Sarge!" Mak shouts - just then, the trooper manages to scorch a grazing wound across Mak's right side. He pays for it as Mak, leaping into the air, dumps four more blaster bolts into the trooper, crumpling him up and physically rolling him off the docking platform, leaving a smoke trail behind him.

As Erit stops short of having two blaster bolts intersect with his head, Arnae runs screaming up the gangplank, blaster in hand. Erit hears three, no, four blaster shots, followed by an *urgh* muffled by a white helmet.

---
Arnae's feet fall heavily on the deckplates as he charges up the ramp. There's two stormtroopers, one taking cover behind the holochess table, another crouched around the bend leading to the cockpit. Arnae's too quick for them to get off any blasts as the crazed Corellian dives across the holochess table, putting a fatal bolt into the hapless stormtrooper hiding there ( *urgh* ), then landing on the freshly-killed Imperial while sending another blast at the second trooper, who stumbles backward to avoid the shot. The stormtrooper fires off two hastily-but-poorly-aimed shots from around the corner. One of them slams the holochess table, turning it on. The tittering introductory "mood music" begins to play as the holographic chess creatures flicker into visibility.

I didn't know that thing HAD sound effects... Arnae thinks.

"Go get 'em!", Wayde says as he keeps a watchful eye on the station blastdoors.

(OOC: Wayde'll be "overwatching" the door and blasting anything that comes out of it.)

Grabbing the satchel of parts and gear, Aurelia gives Ta up for lost and hotfoots it back to the docking levels. Taking the lift down, she exits into quite a scene. Aurelia ducks into a nearby corner as she sees two stormtrooper squads, complete with a repeating blaster team, formed up around the blast doors to platform 34. Two black-uniformed Imperial Navy types are trying to juryrig the doors open with the help of a black and silver astromech unit. As Aurelia watches, they finally get the doors to cycle, opening onto the backs of Lt. Briggs and four of his troopers, huddled around a floating blue scanning crate for cover.

Briggs spins around, blaster pistol in hand, then his snarl quickly turns to a welcoming grin. "Thank the Maker you guys are here! The pirates have got us pinned down, they're trying to take off-"

*ZAP*

*ZAP ZAP ZAP KAPOW BLAM*

Briggs drops like a sack of rancor droppings as the lead Navy guy hits him with a stun bolt. The rest of Briggs' troopers soon follow suit as they too get stunned into submission.

"We'll take it from here, Lieutenant," the Navy guy sneers.

"I'll take it from here, Commander," a voice from behind Aurelia commands. Urbani strides out of the lift, flanked by his trusty droid G4-8. He nor the droid appear to have noticed Aurelia. "Do NOT let that ship leave this installation."

---

From Wayde and Mak's perspectives, Briggs gets the blast doors open just in time to admit a WHOLE BUNCH of stormtroopers, who then... blast Briggs and his guys? These new arrivals seem content to take as much cover as they can in the doorway or inside the station itself, not coming out onto the open air of the docking platform.

---

Jileeza slips away from Wayde and pads to the rear of the Chance, keying the cargo access hatch. It slides open, admitting her to the rather sparse-at-the-moment cargo bay. Two stormtroopers are huddled around both sides of the hatchway leading further into the ship, their blasters ready and their eyes peeled for anyone coming their way... except Jileeza's already in the cargo hold behind them. The blue crate of scanning equipment lies in disarray a few feet from them, the recorders and chemical sniffers scattered on the ground where presumably they were dropped at the first sound of blaster fire.

Mak grits his teeth. When it rains, it pours.

Not taking the blasters off the doors, he slowly back away towards the Second Chance.

"Guys, we need to get out of here, now."

Jileeza glides silently into the cargo bay. Noting the two troopers carefully looking the other way, she grins and moves into position behind the blue crate. She then lights up the two troopers with her blaster, starting with whichever seems more alert, while humming a cheerful tune to herself.

(Edited by fanchergw at 1:08 pm on Mar. 18, 2004)

Indeed she does.

One of the stormtroopers gets out a "Hey, you're not-" before 'Za's handy blaster-work sends both Imperials slumping to the floor.

Outside, Wayde spots a pair of grenades on one of the dead troopers' utility belts and begins a furious crawl towards what might be some semblance of salvation through high explosives. The troopers in the doorway see Mak moving for the gangplank and Wayde crawling for the corpse and open fire. The air is once again split with blaster bolts, impact explosions and near misses throwing sparks and debris around and about the Bothan and human. Mak returns fire as he reaches the gangplank, scoring a satisfying hit on one of the troopers firing from around the blast doorway. Miraculously, Wayde gets to the dead stormtrooper and unclips the two grenades without being blasted again.

Aurelia sees the heavy repeater team frantically assembling an E-web blaster, snapping the barrel onto the supports and trying to get the power supply hooked up and engaged.

Erit continues up the gangplank with his plants as blaster bolts spang off the ship's armor after him. Reaching out with the Force, he feels four unfamiliar minds- no, no, just two now -

Arnae clambers over the chess table, knocking a faintly transparent Esoomian playing piece over. The holographic representation gargles its anger as the captain of the Second Chance sidesteps down the short corridor to the cockpit. The stormtrooper who avoided hot blaster death a moment ago isn't as lucky this time as he and Arnae trade blasts. The stormtrooper doubles over and falls while the bolt meant for Arnae blows a readout off the corridor wall next to his left side.

Erit's "unfamiliar mind" count suddenly drops to a single presence, who if Erit isn't too mistaken, is lurking about down near the Chance's engineering.

Arnae continues to the cockpit unhindered and begins to power up the ship's systems for a (yet another) hasty takeoff.

Erit works on getting a better lock on the last trooper.

"There's one left, in Engineering."

Now, Mr. Stormtrooper, you must know that your life is forfeit. Why give us any trouble? You're going to die anyway, better shoot yourself - who knows, we may just wing you, and that would be an awful death...

Still humming merrily to herself, Jileeza pauses to take a quick look at the 2 poor saps she just gunned down, the makes her way toward the autocannon turret. Now to liven up this party a bit! These formal affairs get so tedious...

Wayde grabs the grenades, low-crawling back behind cover...ready to give the Stormtroopers what-for if the situation presents itself.

Mak makes it into the Chance amid more poorly-aimed blaster bolts. Meanwhile, Wayde gets to a crouch and flings one of the grenades at the doorway. Two or three bolts streak past him and he flattens himself to avoid them. As for the grenade, it impacts once in front of the doorway and happily bounces just inside.

From Wayde's perspective, there's a BOOM, some smoke, and at least two troopers fall dead into the doorway. A twisted blaster rifle bounces and slides out onto the docking platform walkway.

Aurelia gets a better picture. The six or so stormtroopers closest to the doorway turn and try to dive for cover, end up tangling into their fellows, who haven't had time to react. The grenade explosion's deafening - three stormtroopers get blown to hell, flying back towards the lift and the stairs. From what Aurelia can tell, four more are badly wounded, and one of the Navy guys is down.

The good news is tempered by the hum of the E-web powering up, though its crew is a little too rattled to move it into position at the moment.

"That freighter's lifting off!" the remaining Navy guy shouts at Urbani.

Sure enough, Arnae's managed to coax the ship into repulsoring its way a few feet into the air, and is slowly bringing its forward guns to bear on the docking platform entrance.

Jileeza slides into the autoblaster controls, flicking the switches and bringing the weapon online.

At this point, Urbani grabs the E-web and tries to manhandle it into position by himself.

And aboard the Chance, there's a faint sound of a blaster shot from Engineering.

Erit cracks a small, humorless smile.

"On second thought, Captain, scratch the problem in Engineering."