Star Wars: The Evaritt Expanse Act I Scene v

Epidode I: The Evaritt Expanse
ACT I, Scene v

It'll take a few moments to get the coordinates from the navicomputer

Racing through the blue swirl of Hyperspace, the party took a moment to breath a sigh of relief. They were on course for Taris, the first stop on their trip. At this point they had little choice on their destination, as Taris was the crossroads to get then onto the Hydian Way--the nearest major hyperspace lane. From there, they could easily go anywhere in the Galaxy

. Var took this time to have a chat with the Admiral, where she explained where she needed to go to pursue her quest for her Aunt and Uncle. They had last been seen headed to the Ghambeeze Drift Station almost two years earlier, but it was the best lead Var had. The Admiral had to look up the station, commenting that it was “remote" to put it lightly. It would take them several days to get there, almost a full week if they included a few false feints and jogs to their course. Although, with lack of a better place to go, halfway across the galaxy seemed like a good a plan as any.

The trouble was that they would be passing through the Core systems, no way to avoid that without adding weeks to their trip. The party knew that they could swap out transponder codes to mimic another Sorosuub 3000, but they had no way of entering the false data into the Imperial BOSS records. The Outlaw Techs did what they could on board ship, preparing the transponder and ship engine signature to mimic that of the Dancing Bantha--the Sorosuub 3000 piloted by the rich fop that had abandoned his crew and joined their ship in the flight out of the Ord Mantell starport. He seemed a good a person as any to take the heat for the party’s activities, assuming he even survived the escape to hyperspace.

Kerin Seltiss said that he would happily have his Rodian slicer input the needed data to fool BOSS once they got to a planet with holonet access. He also requested that his crew be dropped off at Duro, which was on the way to Ghambeezi. The party could hack the transponder there as well, but that meant traveling through several Core systems with their current ship registration. He indicated that it might be possible to slice the transponder from Taris, if the party deemed it safe to land there.

The safety of Taris was debatable, since it was an obvious first move for the party to fly to. Their who vessels had Class 2 hyperdrives, half as fast as Imperial military models. It was entirely possible that Ozzel would be waiting for them at Taris when they arrived. Shuddering at the thought, there was little they could do about it at this point. The crew and techs broke off into small groups to spend the 6 hours flight to Taris.

Kerin Seltiss had joined Frida earlier in the posh main escape pod during the flight out of Ord Mantell and went back to continue his discussion with her. They had noticed that whenever she spoke, an ancient device that Kerin wore on his belt as a mere trinket begin to glow and dimply flash. With a little manipulation on the strangely shaped hand-held device, Frida was able to get it to respond more brightly, but could not figure out what it did. Even Seltiss didn’t know, he said that he has once got it as salvage. Diyar took a crack at it and the light deep within the semi-translucent plastic resin glowed slightly when she impersonated Frida’s voice. No one else who played with the strange object could make it respond at all. Seltiss said that he would try to remember what species it had come from, but Frida was welcome to the bauble as thanks for saving himself and his crew

The Admiral’s butler/bartender droid served food and drink to those who needed it, and Delta eventually plugged himself into a wall socket after a complete search of the ship. Unfortunately, this search also included Viridian’s private chambers at the bow of the ship—the locking mechanism easily overcome by the droid’s espionage programming. Viridian was not pleased with the intrusion and firmly requested that the droid ask permission before entering again. Delta did manage to discover several neatly pressed Imperial officer uniforms, a private holotank, and a bookshelf with actual paperbound books; many written by Palpatine and one by the Admiral himself. Delta requested to borrow a book, which Corric allowed.

Further searches of the ship revealed that the first two cabins were formerly occupied by an Imperial Major and Captain. The Major seemed to be a stern, unlikable fellow, but the Captain seemed to be the jovial type. His closet had several off-duty outfits and a collection of clothing collected from various females he had met on shore leave. Curiously, he even had a plastic model of some sort of combat droid on his shelf, a prominent Death’s Head symbol on its chest.

Further searching on the ship revealed a curious bloodstain in the carpet on the main bridge, that they holotank was unable to transmit or receive due to a missing crystal, and that all the droids but the ancient butler were missing from the ship. The butler itself was useless to interrogate, as it had long since gone completely droid-senile. It did, however, have an uncanny knack for observing organic’s behavior and bringing them what they needed almost before they knew they wanted it themselves. It was for this reason alone that the Admiral had not spaced him with the others

Delta also dropped in on the cargo area, where a curious scene was taking place. Rel was busy trying to repair the laser cannon that they had salvaged form the Nubian scoutship, but the other techies were treating her as if she had some sort of horribly contagious disease. Decked out in breathmasks and gloves, the work was going a lot slower that it should have. Diyar soon arrived and helped clear things up, then got Rel to agree to be taught some martial arts moves for her own defense.

Frida, wishing to take a dip in the pool, went into the Imperial Captain’s room on Corric’s recommendation and located a stunning red swimsuit that once belonged to a fit Zeltron woman. For once glad that her personal trainer was such a drill sergeant, she was able to fit into the outfit and go up to enjoy the pool/jacuzzi. Once there, she ran into Kluw, who had been using the calm waters to meditate by. He did not object to her relaxing in the pool, and Frida enjoyed depolarizing every window to watch hyperspace flash past her in a panoramic view.

Not long after, a Kel Dor technician came up to the pool to talk with Kluw. Both being of the same species, the young man asked if Kluw was a Baran Do Sage. Kluw responded that he had been trained in the arts and the man bowed deeply, asking for a formal blessing. Kluw agreed, and spent the next hour having the Gourmet Master 500 automated food processor produce the closest approximations it could to the necessary candles and spices. That being done, Kluw performed the ritual with the man in the privacy of his cabin. During the ritual Kluw received a frightening vision: a huddled mass of sentients cowered in the shadows of a large bombed out room. Behind them a terrifying creature was slowly stalking towards them down a long hallway. The people knew that it was coming but were afraid to step into the lit middle of the room to get away from it. The vision ended just as the creature was about to enter the room. While Kluw was not sure what to make of the vision, the man seemed to be better off for the experience and presented Kluw with a gift of Dorin gas canisters.

Curiously, Diyar (who had been assisting Rel in the cargo bay with some impromptu martial arts training) could somehow sense the ritual being performed. She asked Kluw about it and he reconfirmed that he was a Baran Do Sage and Jedi. This was the first time that Kluw got a hint that Diyar herself might be Force Sensitive.

Six hours after they had left Ord Mantell, they crew decanted from hyperspace above the once-thriving world of Taris. Like a failed Coruscant, the planet once had 6 billion sentients living in the ecumenopolis city that had circled the planet’s equator. That city was little more than rubble now, having been destroyed from orbit during the Jedi Civil War some 4000 years earlier. The planet was still struggling even now, but its location along the Hydian Way kept it limping along through the millennia. Traffic control here was tighter than was seen on Ord Mantell, but was currently being overrun by a swarm of refugees fleeing the invasion. Like the party, they had all jumped to the nearest safe port.

Taking advantage of the confusion, Corric quickly pinged the hyperspace beacon and began plotting a course to their next destination—the Core world of Brentaal, crossroads of the Hydian Way, the Perlimian Trade Route, and the Corellian Run. He stuck Frida on the com and she gave an award winning performance as a terrified rich civilian caught up in a war zone. Which, all things considered, was art imitating life. Taris Security bought it completely, barely scanning the Privilege. Only one Surosuub 3000 was still in their formation. Hanging in space off to port, Corric noticed that her starboard running lights were flashing. The Delta quickly translated, the CorSec officer was telling them that this was a dangerous planet and they might want to keep moving. Thanking him in the same fashion, the party squirted their astrogation plot to Kilarrawarr and within minutes they were off again back into hyperspace.

The decision was made to land at Brentaal to swap out the transponders and slice the BOSS database, but six hours later when the party’s ships slipped out of hyperspace into the maze of the Brentaal traffic control corridors they began to have second thoughts. The planet was the crossroads of the three busiest hyperspace lanes in the galaxy, with thousands of ships in the sky. Unfortunately, several of those ships were Imperial Star Destroyers. Their hesitation about landing quickly changed to the desire to leave as quickly as possible when the ship was scanned by a nearby satellite and several Imperial craft moved to intercept them. Deciding to take their first jog, Viridian plotted a course out into the black and piped it to Kilarrawarr. They quickly left the teeming skies of Brentaal behind them.

An hour later, the Privilege and Longshot dropped out of hyperspace in the middle of nowhere. Using an old smuggler’s trick, Viridian was trying to throw off pursuit by jumping out on a bogus course, stopping to replot a new course, and heading somewhere else. The down side is that it took a full day to scan the skies well enough to figure out exactly where you were located, something usually provided by in-system hyperspace buoys. Only once you knew your exact position in space could you plot a hyperspace course to a new destination. Woe be to the spacer whose ship breaks down during one of these side trips.

By tying in the Longshot’s advanced scouting sensors to those of the more modern Privilege, the calculation time was cut down to about 22 hours. This gave plenty of time for the party to dock the two ships to transfer Frida’s luggage to the Privilege and for Kilarrawarr to herd the Treadwell droid into her own ship to get it working on much needed repairs.

The party rested, relaxed, and chatted. Seltiss even remembered what the name of the species was that the device had come from: a people called the Gree. No one had ever heard of them, but a quick library search revealed that they were an ancient species who had suffered a long and inglorious decline. To quote the Encyclopedia Galactica, "The modern Gree could not even recreate their ancient technologies, they are an apathetic people concerned only with maintaining their cultural purity and keeping what devices they could still understand in operation." The fact that Frida has partly activated one of their devices seemed most curious.

Eventually the astrogation computers had determined their position sufficiently and Viridian used that to plot a course to Corellia—the next leg of their journey and the one place in the Galaxy that Var did not want to go to. Six hours later, the two-ship flotilla decanted from hyperspace in the busy skies of the outer Corell System.

Ships swarmed through the Corellian system. Even this far out from the primary, hundreds of ships were following glowing lines of traffic buoys to entry and exit vectors to both deeper in system and out along the trade spines. Imperial presence here was light, but the ruling Diktat made sure that the Corellian Security forces were in sufficient force to make any raider think twice. It was not long before the Longshot and Privilege were both scanned by a nearby small orbital station.

Like at Brentaal, the Longshot was all but ignored. However, the Privilege was soon hailed. Admiral Viridian has a short but cordial chat with a CorSec officer at the station, who informed the Admiral that the Imperial ISB has a seize and detain order out for his capture. Kluw and Diyar sensed no duplicity about the man, and Corric thanked him for the update. It seemed that the Corellians were perfectly happy to let Imperials chase Imperials and not get involved.

While Corellia would have been an excellent place to stop and work on the transponder, Var was adamant about not wanting to go there. Diyar herself was a little apprehensive about the idea, but did not give her reasons why. Even Var was not really saying why she did not want to go down to Corellia, but the party had not really planned on stopping here in any event. Delta began scanning Imperial frequencies and found little of interest. Civilian bands were oddly encrypted in this system though, but he managed to listen in on a few of them. Mostly smugglers discussing cargo runs, he did overhear a message coming from Corellia itself to a station near the party’s ships

The source, which Delta could not easily track, simply asked for a scan of ships in the area. The station promptly did the scan and sent the results back. Delta got the feeling that this transaction was not in the least bit official, but that never stopped the Corellians. Within minutes, Diyar was getting the impression that someone was watching her, and Kluw had the feeling that someone was probing them with the Force. When he tried to sense who or what it was, it was as if the presence snapped their head to look at him. Suddenly, an Action IV Transport displaying her IFF as the Comet Tail jumped in almost on top of the party. Delta indicated that the vessel was in service to a company called Double World Shipping, Var knew the name of both the ship and the company and groaned. Before the vessel could close range, Corric hit the hyperdrive motivator lever and they were again off into hyperspace.

It was little more than an hour later that they decanted into the Duro system. The Duros were tall, blue skinned humanoids who had developed hyperdrive technology at the same time as their nearby human neighbors in Corellia. Both had grown up as strong exploratory cultures with millennia of mutual respect. That made it much more of an insult to the non-human Duros when the Duro system was annexed into the Corellian Sector during the rise of the Empire. The planet itself is nearly uninhabitable, suffering from years of neglect and recent Imperial over-mining. The Duros themselves didn’t really min that part so much, as a species they has an almost uncontrollable wanderlust. What few of them remained on the home system lived on massive orbiting platforms.

Being non-human, Kilarrawarr in her decrepit scoutship was received in system on much more friendly terms than the human ex-Admiral on his luxury yacht. The Wookiee was fed a sub-stream of data during her discussion with the Duros traffic control which gave her accurate orbital plots of all major Imperial vessels in the system. The Admiral was greeted promptly, and accordance to every spacer’s regulation (of which the Duro had written most of them), but was left feeling the cold shoulder. He was able to get free flight down to the spacedock that Kerin Seltiss indicated and Kilarrawarr fell in behind them.

If there was a “bad side of the orbit" this station was on it. Built into the side of a massive modular station complex, the hangar port was a small, run down affair. They were intercepted by two Uglies, Y-TIE and a Xwing with the front stubby nose of a Z-95 Headhunter. The fighters closed in with the party as Frida and later Seltiss talked with their destination’s dock master. The party was allowed to land, the two uglies escorted them in.

The hangar was large, easily able to hold three of the luxury yachts parked side by side. There were a few small freighters and one Cloakshape fighter. The fighter had painted blue wing tips, but was otherwise unmarked. The majority of the party disembarked their ships as the two uglies hovered outside the docking bay with weapons locked on to the Privilege. With weapons pointed at the luxury yacht, Frida was one of the first ones off the ship. The apprehension on the part of the dock workers was palatable, although Kilarrawarr’s appearance lessened it somewhat. Unfortunately, Delta was received less than kindly.

A general alert sounded as soon as he hovered down the ramp to the deck, resulting in a squad of Rebel Troopers to come pouring into the hangar and take up defensive positions. The Admiral quickly side stepped behind the large Herglic to avoid being seen by the Rebels. Kerin Seltiss quickly explained the situation, and after his ID was confirmed the Rebels stood down. The two uglies returned to their patrol and Viridian wisely decided to stay on his ship to avoid the Rebels. The Imperials wanted him dead, but the Rebellion would interrogate him for hours about Imperial procedures and defenses—something he also wanted to avoid.

The hangar bay led to a small supply base that was being used as a layover point for Rebel activities. The party were very welcomed once the threat of hostilities diminished. Diyar, Frida, and Var were especially well received, as one would expect on an isolated military base. Frida dealt with a few fanboys in the engineering crew asking her overly technical questions about several of her earlier films. She quickly signed a few autographs, answered a few questions, and retreated to the Privilege. Diyar had a good time with some of the off duty marines and made a few credits in Sabaac. Var, however, was the big hit. The rebellious bounty hunter had a notorious weak spot for TIE fighter pilots, which she soon discovered to her delight also applied to Rebel pilots. Two off-duty flyboys were more than happy to entertain Miss Theslin, and all three soon retired out of sight for awhile with a bottle of Corellian Whiskey

Meanwhile, Rel has made her way to the common room and had downloaded the history of the galaxy according to the Alliance to Restore the Republic. Having been raised on the fringe, and indoctrinated with Imperial propaganda in the SAGroups, Rel was nevertheless a very intelligent young woman. She began a detailed comparison of the two histories before someone found her to begin installing the drop down laser cannon on the Privilege.

While Rel and the Rebel tech crew installed the small laser cannon under the Privilege, Kerin Seltiss directed his Rodian slicer Qiila Dooorni to use the Rebel’s access to the holonet to begin hacking the changes to the BOSS databank. The Outlaw Techs themselves did not assist with the laser installation, but instead tweaked the engine output slightly to better match that of the Dancing Bantha. Once completed, the Seltiss reported that the Imperials would have to be looking pretty close to figure out the deception. So far as the Empire was concerned, they were now flying the Dancing Bantha. The slicer provided Corric with the name of the actual owner of the Bantha, one Skyron Torker, in case the issue ever came up.

Installed with a certain sense of programmed paranoia, Delta began searching both the general and Rebel datafiles for information on the Comet Tail and Double World Shipping. The general files were a series of imbedded companies and shipping forms, but the rebel intel files indicated that Double World Shipping ultimately was owned by a person named Dross Gor’vdon. Interestingly, Dross had an outstanding bounty on his head for 75,000 credits. Delta had no access to the Bounty Hunter’s Guild data networks to see any more information on that aspect though.

Worried, Delta began scanning for the Comet Tail and quickly found her. The heavily armed transport had entered the Duro system a few minutes earlier and was slowly working its way through the nicer starports and stations – presumably scanning for them. While it would take almost two hours for the ship to get close enough to find them, Delta quickly alerted the party. Additionally, Delta told the Rodian slicer to begin running info data searches on everyone in the crew against the public datastreams. With no reason to not do the request, the Qiila quickly set about his task.

Our heroes quickly get everyone together, having to enlist Rel’s assistance to locate her sister. A quick check of all supply closets turned up the inebriated and undressed Var, enjoying herself with one of the pilots. The bounty hunter emerged wearing his orange flightsuit with a Blue Squadron patch on the sleeve and babbling happily to everyone in the area. They got her aboard the ship just as the installation of the laser cannon was completed. Kerin Seltiss and his crew helped get the ships ready for flight and wished the party well. They would need it, as events had begun to move very quickly.

Another Cloakshape fighter had emerged from hyperspace and flew into formation with the Comet Tail. Kluw immediately got a very bad feeling about the pilot of that ship. The Action IV stopped the electronic scans of the space station, but Kluw could sense that someone in the fighter was scanning with the Force. Diyar also got the feeling that someone was watching her, and recognized it as the same person that had caused the sensation at Corellia. Both felt as if a presence was moving among them, Diyar shut it out but Kluw kept monitoring. The presence was intrigued by Kluw and Diyar, but quickly focused in on Var. With a ripple of satisfaction the presence vanished. At the same time the Cloakshape fighter and the Comet Tail accelerated to attack speeds.

The two Rebel uglies moved to intercept and got into dogfight with the invading Cloakshape. Despite the odds, and the skill of the Rebel pilots, one of the Uglies was quickly disabled and the other was in trouble. The Rebels launched their own Cloakshape to cover the party as they launched. Kilarrawarr on the Longshot got out the bay first and quickly moved to engage the incoming fighter at long range. The Privilege cleared the bay with Delta manning the new gun. The combat droid quickly dropped the turret into place and began firing at the transport as the Privilege crossed the T on the bow of the Comet Tail at extreme range. Delta scored a solid hit on the larger transport, dropping its front shield on the first salvo.

The Comet Tail was not without her own teeth however. Dorsal and Ventral double heavy laser turrets swiveled to track the Privilege, but did not fire. The second ugly was quickly removed from the fighting as the Rebel Cloakshape engaged the invader. With the fighters too close to one another to fire at safely from this range, Kilarrawarr instead took a shot at the Comet Tail--lasing a maneuvering jet cluster on her port side and shearing it off into space. No longer amused, the transport lit up the Privilege with her fire control sensors, and for the first time on the luxury yacht Admiral Viridian hear the distinctive tone of a missile lock. The Comet Tail launched two concussion missiles from tubes under the forward bow, with a second set of soon joining the first. With the transport closing to effective heavy laser range, the party decided that the best place to be was somewhere else and engaged their hyperdrives to escape.

The two day flight across the galaxy to Gerrenthum in the Greater Javin was initially much less exciting than the escape from Duro. Var was in no condition to answer questions about Dross Gor’vdon besides a few curses that would make a pirate blush. Diyar dumped her into the shower still wearing the orange rebel flight suit and let her soak for a bit to sober up. Viridian had prepared himself a nice little intimidating speech to get Rel to tell him what the situation was when Rel simply gave him all she knew. A bit deflated, Viridian quickly realized that Rel didn’t know much more than he did. Nevertheless, it was quickly determined that Dross Gor’vdon was the last bounty that their parents had been chasing when their vessel had suffered a supposed hyperspace accident.

Still worried that the Imperials were somehow tracking the ship, Delta on the Privilege began a determined sweep of the ship and the holotank to look for any tracking systems. His exceptional security skills panned out when he located an ISB data shunt in the feed lines to the holotank. It was designed to store recordings from the internal security systems and the navicomp and secretly broadcast that information through the ship’s military holotranceiver to the nearest holobuoy for relay to the ISB. However, once Viridian had removed the holocrystal from the tank it was no longer functioning in that regard. Without the bandwidth of the holofeed it was using the standard ship’s comm. system to burst transmit their location to the holobuoys instead. Not nearly as damning evidence against them as before, but a device telling the Empire where you were every time you came out of hyperspace was not good.

The party safely removed the device before they arrived at Gerrenthum, hoping that the Imperials would think that they were still hopping around the Core worlds. The stopover at the industrialized capital of the Anoat Sector was again just long enough to get hyperspace coordinates and launch again. Luckily, both the luxury yacht and the scoutship were designed for long hauls before refueling. Viridian plotted a short hop out from the system to throw off pursuit. The Ivax and Kiax nebulae pressed in very close to the hyperspace routes here, and going too far off them could be very dangerous.

While the ships crunched the numbers for the next hyperspace jump, the two ships again docked to for the day. Viridian and Kilarrawarr donned their spacesuits to check the external hull for tacking devices. Delta and the Treadwell droid also assisted the search, but were not as interested in the amazing view as the organics. Even inside the Privilege’s bay windows the scene of the Twin Nebulae was breathtaking. The EVA crew reported finding no tracking systems, theorizing that Corric had probably gotten most of them when he vacced his droids and “removed" his previous crew.

It was a day’s flight down the hyperspace path between the Twin Nebulae to Isde Naha, capitol of the Outer Rim Territory’s Yarith Sector. Isde Naha was a classic border world, some glittering urbanized areas and some very fringe other areas. There were a few Imperial custom ships around, with only a Carrack cruiser on patrol. The Sector Fleet was not in orbit the day the party slid through, which let many of them breath a little easier. Again, Viridian updated the navicomp and plotted the course. This was the last jump to the destination that Var and Kerin Seltiss had directed them too, the Ghambeezi Drift Station.

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