Nau'ravi(Arya and Co.)

Her sandwich - that she'd only been able to take one bite from - was tossed in the air, plate and all, after the first rock-about that'd made Feathers send them into a wild flight. Of course it landed somewhere unseen, and she'd probably get in trouble for losing it, but right now such a fate mattered very very little. No; right now Tak was holding onto the armrests of her seat with a white-knuckled grip, yelling in both Basic and Bast'yr for Feathers to fix whatever was happening.

"I don't like this! Nu'aliu'eh a'ja'ano ana tu'eh!!"

The ship shuddered once more, and the little Lupine let out a yelp before snapping her mouth shut and grinding her teeth.

Arya's forehead was damp with sweat as she jerked Wing of the Raven about again. "C'mon you big bitch, forget your size for once!" The ship shuddered about them in reply, hull and bulkheads straining under the pressure of what she was demanding of her.

There was a *ping!* and the climate control went out. And then the navicomp spat out coordinates as the pursuing ship missed with its ion blasts and backed off a little, and Arya straightened the freighter and punched the hyperspace controls.

Stars streaked into lines.

Ecks stared at the spot in space where Harbinger had been a moment ago, Razor's Edge still flying full tilt towards it.

"I backed off," he rumbled, needlessly. He let up on the throttle, accessing the tracking beacon and compared the data with what the sensors could tell him about the freighter's trajectory. He didn't look at Montegue, choosing to concentrate on the map.

Hugo scowled at where the Harbinger had been, his hand still idly resting on the weapons controls. Mentally he cursed himself and his rusty gun skills; fought down the urge to fire back a string of excuses and insults that would deflect responsibility onto shortfallings in the Razor's design, or blame the other burley hunter's flying skills.

I never would have missed in the Coromon, he thought idly, but kept his notions to himself.

Instead, he fired the briefest of sidelong glances towards Ecks. "At least we know how long it takes them to spool up their hyperdrive," he grunted. "Vector in on them as soon as we drop out; give me a long, straight run with them at range so I can compensate for her evasives; and we'll get 'em next time."

In the safety of hyperspace, Tak had taken the first few minutes to gather herself. They weren't being rocked about anymore, but the girl still held on to the armrests as if her life depended on it, eyes as wide as saucer plates as she looked first to the starlines in the viewport, then across the disaster zone of the control dash - blue milk, bits of sandwich, more blue milk...

Her hands let go of her chair, and her wide, blinking eyes went to Feathers.

She thought about her own sandwich, which had been thrown to land... somewhere.

"What happened," she finally whispered, afraid that if she spoke any louder the madness would find them and begin anew.

"Bounty hunters," Arya growled through gritted teeth, also trying to relax as the familiar colors of hyperspace swirled around the freighter. "If I had to guess."

After another long moment the smuggler unbuckled her crash webbing, ignoring the mess all over the cockpit. "We'll be in orbit of Sullust in a few minutes. If they follow us hopefully your Dama can help deter them."

She pointed at the console with a finger as the air temperature began to drop, causing her breath to fog. "I have to fix the climate control and make sure life support is still functional. You clean this up." Arya stomped down the hall, steps quickening as she began to run,and called over her shoulder, "Just do your best!"

Ecks grunted in the affirmative, and the navicomp spat out coordinates for their next jump. "Looks like they're going to Sullust."

His skin itched at the thought of the volcanic planet and its short natives. "We should be able to get there to greet them."

The hyperdrive spooled up and Razor's Edge sliced out of realspace.

Some of the shots they'd taken had battered the systems more than had been readily apparent. Arya squirmed into a tight access junction, hydrospanner between her teeth as she worked on life support. The hyperdrive was running a little slower than normal, but not enough to make too much of a difference.

Finally the Lupine hit the unit with the side of her hand, and the cyclers came back on with a whine. Shivering, she backed out of the bulkhead and reached for the panel with numb fingers. "The air temperature should regulate in a few minutes, Tak," she spoke into the intercom. "Tell me how many minutes until we revert to real space."

"Two," came the reply.

Two?! Arya hurriedly wiped her hands on her coveralls and jogged back up the passage to the cockpit. "All right, here we -" She surveyed the cockpit, and looked at Tak. "I thought I told you to clean this."

"I cleaned up my mess."

Which was the honest truth. She'd succeeded in locating her thrown meal, and after careful examination, the little Lupine decided it was still fit to eat.

She was sitting in her seat once more when Feathers came back up, busy chewing an oversized bite, and between mouthfulls Tak went on.

"You brought the blue milk up here, you clean it up."

Feathers had always forbidden drinks to be brought to the cockpit - or at least forbidden Tak from doing it. It was her own round-about way of saying 'maybe if you hadn't brought a drink in here you wouldn't have this mess'.

"Fr-!" Arya self-censored for once, used her arm to wipe at the console as the chrono ticked down. "Dammit!"

She sat down in the remains of her sandwich that had somehow worked its way onto her seat after she'd left. "You are an incorrigible little -"

The reversion to realspace silenced whatever it was she'd been about to call Tak, and the smuggler ran the standard scans of the area. "Sullust is just ahead. I don't see any other ships in the area, though." She slammed her fist into the console, sending up a spray of blue milk. "Frak this dren!"

She pushed the sublights to full and sent the freighter towards the planet, hoping to find Loklorien s'Ilancy somewhere nearby.

"There she is," Ecks said as the Harbinger flickered into realspace. Only this time the transponder was identifying the Chevette77 freighter as Old Maid. The thorn shaped Razor's Edge was sitting passively in the mass shadow of Sulon, Sullust's second moon. When Old Maid ran its initial scans it missed the bounty hunters completely.

The big Falleen punched up the power and activated the sublights, sending Razor's Edge arrowing towards the bigger freighter as it came deeper into the system. "Should have a clear run at them now."

"Already on it."

Hugo was already several steps ahead; the Razor's weapons were primed, and his hands were deftly dropping the targetting recticle over the distant target. Fingers closed around the trigger, unleashing fury from the full spectrum of the ship's weapons. Ion cannons hammered icy blue against the shields, the crimson bolts of lasers mixed in to bleed away the target's defenses even faster. At this distance, there was little need for him to maintain aim, provided Ecks kept the nose pointed in the right direction; even if the Raven fired her engines up to full, the shift in position would only amount to a few fractional degrees.

Instead, his eyes focussed mainly on the tactical display, watching as shield power output on the target craft tumbled downward... downward...

His fingers snapped off the blaster controls, ion cannons pumping the last few crippling blows into the shield grid. Aqua lightning danced across the Raven as as the weapons finally punched through. A grin flashed across Hugo's face. "Aft shields are down," he announced, fingers already rattling away at the targetting controls to designate a string of key systems. "Switching fire to target engines."

There wasn't even time for expletives as the bounty hunter's ship came flashing onto the sensors and Wing of the Raven was slammed by ion blasts. The shields flickered and died, and Arya shoved Tak's chair around on its swivel to protect her as the console was lit up with a sudden shower of blue sparks.

The engines were still online and sending them straight towards Sullust, which was growing larger and larger in the viewport. "Get strapped in!" Arya screamed at the girl, trying to lock herself into the crash webbing with one hand while getting the backup generators online with the other. Almost everything was fried, and the controls weren't responding. She gave up and hauled on the steering yoke with both hands, muscles straining to give the freighter some direction as their sublights were shot out from under them.

Sullust loomed in front of them, and Wing of the Raven tore into its upper atmosphere, almost totally out of control.

There was a point in space that seemed to shudder. It was a brief flicker, and nothing that was immediately noticeable.

Until, with a seemingly earsplitting crack, the massive hulk of the Dauntless dropped from hyperspace above the two smaller craft. She was a behemoth, dwarfing the Harbinger and the Razor's Edge. Like some great titan she sat above it all, a picture of deceptive calm.

On the bridge, Loklorien s'Ilancy refrained from sitting. She had slowly assumed more of a command position during any absence of the General's, and now, with him resting, the Lupine had taken up his duties for the time being. But, she still refused to place herself in the command chair that belonged to the General. Even when he was gone, it seemed that to do so would be... wrong, somehow. To her, it was simply not her place.

Instead, the Jedi chose to stand.

Her gaze fixed to the holoprojector table, she watched as images played out before her - she knew the shape of the Wing of the Raven well enough, but the other eluded her. Arya's trajectory was sending her into the atmosphere of Sullust, and s'Il gave an immediate scowl.

"Commscan, I want an ID on that second ship."

"Yes Ma'am."

"Scramble our rescue crews. .. " Status updates began to scroll across the lower portion of the projector, and the Lupine swore under her breath. Wing of the Raven was very fast approaching freefall, and in her condition would make for a particularly uncomfortable planetary entry.

"Ma'am! Scanners show the second ship to have their weapons hot... "

She turned to look at the crewman. He only stated the obvious, and the unsaid words that this second ship was responsible.

"Explain to them that they would be better suited to break away."

The crewman nodded, sent the word, and within moments a single burst of fire from one of Dauntless' turbolaser batteries shot through space to brush by Razor's Edge in warning.

This was even worse than before!

She was quick to buckle the crashwebbing straps, though they were still a little bit loose. She'd certainly grown since her time with Feathers, but apparently not quite enough. Small fingers scrambled to tighten the webbing as much as possible as Wing of the Raven shuddered and shook all around them. Her sandwich, which she'd only managed half of, was dropped once more to land on the deck - coming to rest under Feathers' seat. This time the pieces of bread had come apart, and the insides strewn all about. It wouldn't be any good to eat now.

"Do something!!"

Shooting a crazed look to Feathers, Tak held on doggedly to the webbing holding her in her chair.

The sublights on Old Maid/Harbinger were shot out, but not before the light freighter's forward acceleration took it into Sullust's upper atmosphere. Ecks' brow furrowed even more than normal as he opened his sublights to full to close the gap between the two ships.

And then a silent crack shook Razor's Edge as a huge capital ship jumped into the system almost on top of them. Transponder showed it as Dauntless, and it was a huge MC80 if the Falleen was any judge. Mon Calamari design meant it was almost certainly a Rebel Alliance ship.

"Broadcasting our permits," he said, almost calmly, slapping the communications system and transmitting their credentials and filed permits. Of course, that was valid for the Empire, but there was no telling what this big bird was going to to.

A turbolaser across the bow came too soon for him to know if they'd even read their transmission yet. "We have authorization to pursue," Ecks growled on a wideband comm signal, and doggedly did just that, Razor's Edge reaching the planet and dipping into its atmosphere after Ravenwing's craft.

"The Rebel Alliance is kinda fond of this planet, you know," Hugo muttered under his breath.

Though admittedly not an expert on the Alliance military, he'd made a point of at least skimming the major holonet headlines from the time he'd spend enjoying the Empire's hospitality, and Empire Abandons Sullust After Successful Rebel Assault was the kind of headline that tended to linger in one's mind, and he highly doubted the Rebels would go to the effort of wrestling a system from Imperial control only to abandon it to its own devices immediately after.

He shot a sidelong glance at the Falleen. "They might not take too kindly to us going about our business in their back yard."

His arms folded across his chest as Hugo leant back in his seat; their prey was caught in the gravity well of the world beneath, and there was little to be accomplished from continued shots speeding her descent. Especially not with the kid onboard.

The kid.

He felt a twinge of paternal panic stab through him, as concern for the child's wellbeing during her ship's impending impact with the ground raced through his mind. He turned to Ecks again, rifling through his mind for something useful. "You got a tractor beam on this crate?" he asked, frowning. "Only, I cooked their engines pretty good. If we can't do something to help slow their descent, we'll have pancakes to collect a bounty on; not healthy, happy marks."

Arya gritted her teeth to stop them chattering against each other as the freighter shook so hard it felt like they would break apart. The viewport showed her the flames starting up around them on the hull before darkening to protect their eyes. "I am doing something!"

The sublights were toast, but the rest of the ship's systems were coming up again. The altimeter showed their descent was way too fast (tell me something I don't know), and she activated the repulsors even though they were too high up for them to do much. The steering yoke became a little freer in her hands as the power returned, and Arya struggled to even the ship out and stop them from turning into a dead spin.

Tak was pointing at the sensors and shouting something, but she didn't have a spare brain cell to use to listen with, battling with her ship for their lives. After much too long the repulsors began to slow the ship, just as the viewscreen cleared up and showed that they'd successfully entered Sullust's atmosphere. They weren't going to die immediately any more, but landing was imperative, and more than a little iffy.

It was there, on the radar readout, just before they had plowed into the upper cloudcover - another ship. And it was BIG! It had to be Dama!

"Didn't you see it??!"

Of course Feathers hadn't; her caretaker was too busy making sure they weren't torn apart in the atmospheric eddies and aircurrents.

"It was Dad and Dama!! I saw their ship!!"

Hands letting go of her webbing then, Tak leaned forward as far as possible to run her hands over the controls on her side of the dash.

"You have to turn around, we gotta go back!"

A growl, and s'Il whirled about to catch a last glimpse of Razor's Edge through the panoramic viewports as it dove into Sullust's atmosphere.

"Take us into a close orbit."

"Yes Ma'am."

A few more seconds of silent brooding, as she considered her best options. She had enough faith in Arya - the Loveloxx was more than able to keep herself from dying in such a manner. It was the other ship - the bounty hunter - that she was more concerned with.

"Ma'am, data on the second ship coming through now."

The Lupine tore herself away from the viewport, her stride taking her to the commscan station. One hand resting on the back of the young officer's chair and the other on the edge of his console, s'Il leaned in to read the profile packet that he'd keyed up.

She blinked.

Ecks.

Oh, she knew the name well enough, and the sight of each letter on the screen was enough to deepen her already frustrated scowl. Her eyes narrowed.

A pat to the officer's shoulder, and she straightened back up. Many more than one pair of eyes were on her as she clenched her jaw.

Finally.

"Inform the General that he is needed to resume his post on the bridge."

"Ma'am?"

"I'm going down to the planet."