A New Power

The gangster who was known on Ord Mirrit only as "The Boss" had a look in his eyes that, even though she wasn't acccustomed to reading quarren facial expressions, she could tell he was fuming to the point that one just might be able to melt durasteel on his face. Kia Obscura glanced down at her pair of red dice. Twelve. Then to The Boss's blue dice. Eleven. BOOYAH! Kia raked the credit chips into a small pouch on her belt, and was about to take her leave when she heard the unmistakable sound of blasters powering up. Not good. The Boss's face was twitching so violently that it was difficult to determine if he was extremely put off, or having a small seizure. He couldn't know that she had used her rudimentary skill with the Force to nudge one of his dice from a six to a five, could he? Probably not. But that didn't change the fact that one of the guards had just fired a blaster shot past her skull. Time to get moving!

Kia reached a mental arm underneath the dice table and flipped it over onto The Boss, much to the surprise of everyone in the room, considering that she was running towards the landing pad like a bat out of hell.


Aasan Tom the Kel Dor found himself wishing once again that his breather mask allowed for even a small tube for him do drink out of. The selection of beverages at the bar looked so tempting. No time for that, though. He had recieved his payment for bringing in that smuggler, and now it was time to go find another job. Well, he may have been paid for bringing in a smuggler who had betrayed The Boss, but it was one smuggler down nontheless. Score one point for Justice. And a good amount of credits for Asaan.

The Kel Dor headed for the landing pad, looking to find passage to nowhere in particular. Whatever was convenient would be whatever he would take. Aasan had just recognized the flight office when a young small-framed human girl bowled him over. He quickly got to his feet, and was just about to tell her off when a blaster shot went right in front of his eyes. Oh, what now? Another blaster shot went by right past his head. Were whoever was chasing that human after him now? A streak of red light singed his cloak. Yep, they were after him! He didn't know where to run, but the stirring of spacecraft thrusters close by provided him a direction. Aasan found himself running at breakneck speed towards a YT-1300 Corellian Transport, and noticed that girl running up the entrance ramp.

A few seconds later, he got up the ramp just as it closed. Heck, she got him into this mess, whoever she was. She would get him out of it. Aasan strangely found himself smiling. It was a bit unexpected, but he had found his transportation.

Kia, not caring that she was still on the ground, thrust the throttle of the Dawnsprinter straight from stall to full speed. Of course, this would be hell on the engines, but with the credits she had just won, that wouldn't be too hard to undo. Once free from Ord Mirrit's atmosphere, she flew straight for the nearest hyperspace jump point. Home free. A series of tremors rocked the ship, accompanied by a drop in shield power. Or not. Kia set the shields to full aft and checked the radar. A wing of Z-95 Headhunters was right on the Dawnsprinter's tail. The shields kept dropping, no matter what maneuvers she tried. The navicomputer beeped, indicating that the transport was out of the gravity well and could enter hyperspace, reminding her with big, bold, obvious letters to plot a course beforehand. Kia was about to plot a course when she was jolted forward by further hits, this time on the hull from the creaking sounds and the dozens of flashing red lights in the cockpit. 90...80...70 percent hull strength. With a mental note to give herself a beating if she survived this, Kia Obscura pushed the lever that sent the Dawnsprinter into hyperspace.


Jorran Kaarai woke up in the pilot's seat to the beeping of the navicomputer. The transport was so old and beat up that he was surprised that it could still stand up to the rigors of hyperspace travel. Even so, he couldn't even remember its original name so he could wish it good luck. He just called it The Old Battleaxe, a phrase used on some primitive planets to refer to old women who just wouldn't die no matter how old they got.

Jorran didn't know exactly why, but this particular area in the galaxy called to him. The Force? Definitely. He had enough Jedi training to recognize the pull he felt. Why? No clue.

He exited hyperspace to the sight of a blue-green planet ringed by an asteroid field. Actually, the planet filled up most of his view. That is, it did the until the YT-1300 Corellian Transport that exited out of hyperspace right next to his ship crashed into the Battleaxe, sending the ship spinning towards a VERY large asteroid. The big red light that should never ever ever EVER be lit up....was lit up. HULL FAILURE IMMINENT! Well...damn. Being sure to grab his lightsaber, Jorran sprinted into the escape pod and hit the ejection switch, seeing his ship explode into a brief ball of flames seconds after the pod shot away.

Although logic told him that he should be panicing and soiling himself, Jorran was calm. In over thirty years, his senses had rarely been wrong about this sort of thing, though he was technically still a Padawan. Or would be if the Jedi Order still existed. Trusting to the force, Jorran sat back and waited for the inevitable impact with the planet which had been calling to him. Strangely enough, that Corellian ship which had collided with him was headed in the same direction. At a much higher speed.

Jorran woke to find himself hanging in the restraints of his seat. The escape pod was at rest, and seemed to be vertical; the front window showed only rocky soil, visible in the yellow glow from the emergency lights. Pulling the release-tab on the webbing, Jorran fell forwards onto the window with a thud. He stood up and grabbed the release lever on the exit hatch.

The mechanical door struggled to open outwards, letting out only an unpleasent grinding noise. Jorran pushed, and the door opened just a crack. Bits of dirt and gravel poured in.

"Spast!"

He climbed up to the back of the escape pod, clinging to the various protruding survival-gear compartments. Bracing his back against the floor, and his feet against the back of his seat, he pulled the lever on the rear hatch. Not surprisingly, the near-antique mechanical components had long since expired. So, he pulled the short, black-and-silver lightsaber from his belt. It was heavily battered.

"I hope I don't regret this."

He put the emitter of the saber near the 'ceiling' of the pod, and ignited it. The blue-white blade immediately melted through the thin durasteel of the hatch, and he slowly cut through where he expected the latch to be. He turned off the saber and pushed on the hatch. It swung open, and light streamed in. Jorran stood up to his full height, sticking out of the hatch, and surveyed his surroundings.

(OOC: What do I see?)

Kia smirked as she reached for the pile of credits that had been in the pot, sliding them into her pouch, she looked up at the Boss, "I guess today is just not your day," she quiped after beating him for almost the entire game. "I'll just use these to buy some upgrades and I'll be..." the teenager broke off at the sound of blaster pistols being drawn. "Aww, come on, no need to get so serious." she admonishes, looking down at the table for an instant. She connects with it through the force, and darts away from the table, using the force as runs to fling the table at the boss and the guards. She may not know everything about the force, but tables throwing themselves at people would certainly be a distraction.

The CorSec girl ran at full tilt towards the landing pad, nearly knocking over a Kel-Dor. Without even slowing she called back over her shoulder "sorry, you should watch were I'm going." Her hair flapping in the wind as she runs, Kia makes it up the landing ramp of the Dawnsprinter just in time. She slaps the close ramp button behind her and moves on to the cockpitt without slowing. "No time for a full boot up, have to hot load." she muttered as she did exactly that, draining power from her Laser Cannon to feed into her engines.

Slapping the button for the repulsar lifts, she cut them in, bouncing her off the hanger floor and towards the open exit. Goosing the throttle, the DawnSprinter screamed out of the Hanger and up to the relative safety of space, no one would come after her, not up here. She congratulated herself on the escape, but it stuck in her throat as she felt the ship rock from the beating the shields were taking. "A wing pair of head hunters? God, what is it with Quarrens and being disagreeable, its not like he knew I was cheating or anything, he couldn't."

Kia set the shields to double aft, and tried a reverse corkscrew maneuver that should have been enough to put her on their tails...if she had been in a snub fighter, but the YT 1300 was no snubbie, it was a transport, not made for fighting, it could be converted for more speed, and to add more weapons, it was what she had intended for the money, but intentions didn't count for much at the moment. The beep of the Nav computer told her she was clear to hyper space, but as she felt the Triple Lasers of the Z-95s eating into her ship, she knew she didn't have the time. The girl punched the ship up into a blind hyper jump, willing all the hazards out of her path, trusting in the force to keep her safe, in the course she had randomly chosen.

The former would-be cop, sank back into her seat for a moment to catch her breath. It had been a very interesting day. She needed to know everything that was going on with the ship, how badly it was damaged, how much it would be to fix it, so she qued up a diagnostic program in the Ship's coputer and let it run. She would go back over it, but at the moment she was pulling the ship out of hyperspace. every second she spent in it increased the odds of bouncing through a black hole, or getting to close to a star. She murmured a prayer and then cut out the hyper-drive, reverting to realspace. She clipped a derilict as she was making her slow down, and it spun her out of control, ending the attempt to bleed off the extra speed from the jump. "Sithspit" she cursed as she saw the planet approaching much to fast, "this is sooo gonna hurt."

In the minutes she had left to her before the oncomming crash, the pilot tried all the maneuvers that she could think of to slow her and stop the rapidly approaching pain, but it didn't look like it was going to happen. Cursing up a storm, she clips herself into the pilots seat, and lowers the blast shield that would protect the transparisteel cockpit....Bammm....screee.... the strps broke sending the girl into the console, giving her a nasty concusion, and putting her out.

.......................................................

Rubbing her head, and the sore spot on her right temple, Kia groans herself to wakefullness. She had no clue how long it was since the crash, the cockpit lights were out and she was in total darkness. She knew the ship like the back of her hand, so it shouldn't be that hard to get out and start looking around. "First things first, get outside, see what I have to work with...this could be Naboo, or Malistaire for all I know, hopefully its inhabited. She shakily makes her way to the boarding ramp, and manually lowers it as much as she can. The gears were out of alignment, or something, so she had to slide out on her belly, unable to get it full open.

As Jorran pops his head out of the exit hatch, he is immediately greeted by a rush of warmth and humidity. As he looks around, the padawan sees that the escape pod is buried up to half its length in the soft loam floor of a very peculiar looking forest...jungle? It was hard to tell which. There are trees as far as the eye can see, some very tall and coniferous, reminiscent of some of the more temperate planets he had visited, while others are maybe twenty meters tall, but absolutely covered in leaves, vines, and condensation. The flora is typical green and brown, which makes Jorran wonder why the large, predatory-looking creature streaking along the ground towards the escape pod is a bloody red in color.

(The creature is currently 60 meters away from the pod, approaching FAST.)


Kia's first observation upon looking out of the exit ramp is one word. Jungle. Steamy, hot, humid, with plants everywhere. When Kia lowers herself to the ground, she hears a small splash and feels moisture around her ankles. Looking around, she sees that the Dawnsprinter has bisected a good-sized stream. Not too deep, but almost as wide as the transport itself. The stream has diverted to go around her ship, effectively surrounding it with water.

With an air of calm, Jorran ducks back inside the escape pod, holding his lightsaber, ready to ignite it and fight if the creature comes in after him.

Aasan awakes to a headache, a neckache, and a backache. Really, nothing new these days. He was getting was getting to old for this kind of excitement. Of course, he only vageuly knew of where he was and how he'd gotten there. Again, nothing new. As events slowly came back to him, he took in the surroundings of the ship.

It looked as bad as he felt. With a sigh from within his breath mask, he sat up and allowed his head to stop spinning. Through his goggles, the world was slowly beginning to clear up. He saw some movement, and nearly reacted by drawing his blaster and firing. Quickly, though, he realized it was the same girl who's nearly run him over back on wherever that was. He lost track of planet names these days, too.

Or maybe it was someone different. Humans all had a similar look to them. After he'd watched her climb out of the ship, Aasan got to his feet and made sure he still had everything. His two reddish, claw-like hands patted himself down. Everything was still there, including the large blaster carbine slung in an old stormtrooper's holster. He still didn't remember exactly how he pulled that one off...

Another sigh, and Aasan decided that staying inside a ship that had gone down wasn't going to do him any good. Rubbing his forehead and trying to ignore the pain there, he walked over to the access ramp and saw the shape it was in. Yes, that girl could get through that...but him? Definitely getting too old for this. Standing on top of the access ramp and holding on to the wall, he kicked down on it hard a few times until there was finally enough room, he slipped out to see himself in water next to the human.

Calmly, so as not to startle her anymore that she might already be, the Kel Dor said softly through his breath mask, "I am assuming you didn't plan to bring your ship down into a river..."

Jorran hears the creature rushing towards the pod, and then stop. He can hear a snuffling, sniffing sound, as well as its paws crunching dead leaves and this world's equivalent of pinecones as it circles the pod. There is a moment of silence, and the sound of the creature moving away from the pod. Just as Jorran breathes a small sigh of relief, the 2-meter long, quadrapedal creature lands on top of the escape pod, thrusting its long neck into the pod, the head stopping barely ten centimeters in front of Jorran's face, giving him a good look at its five very large, very sharp fangs.

(Kia and Asan go ahead and react to each other for now.)

"Great, just great, I bet this place isn't inhabited at all, just my luck... I hope I can repair her, otherwise its going to be a real long wait for someone to show up." Kia complains, looking out into the jungle, and then down into the river. "At least my boots are keeping me feet dry, it could be worse, not sure how, but it could."

At the sound of thumping on the ramp followed by the splash, Kia turns swiftly away from the jungle, and back towards her ship, her hand flashig to her hip, bringing her lightsaber around and up, calling the Violet blade to life. She dropped into a guard position, or what she hoped looked like a guard position, she didn't really know how to fight with the weapon, but most people thought lightsaber meant Jedi and no one ever wanted to take the chance. "What in the name of the Sith were you doing on my ship? Not that it matters, but no, it wasn't planned to crash at all, let alone here, wherever here is."

Aasan was surprised to see the lightsaber, but both that and his smile were hidden by the goggles and breath mask. He eyed Kia carefully for a moment, allowing the hum of the lightsaber to bring back old memories. So the question then became an important one...was she just carrying a lightsaber as so many others he'd found in the past years did?

Calmly, though, he raised a hand, though the Kel Dor's other was resting calmly on his belt...close enough to his blaster is necessary, "Calm yourself. I simply needed a ride and this ship was closest. I can pay for the ride if you'd like, though crashing isn't usually something worth paying for."

Aasan paused a moment, almost getting lost in watching the lightsaber blade, "Where did you get that weapon?"