Jackdaw

[Deep Core, 6 ATC 4] Mission: Harvest Moon

Yellow Six – The Deep Core

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Space was mostly empty, except when it wasn’t. It was full and alive now, with screaming engines, flashes of laserfire, and the wreckage of gutted ships drifting across the solar plane.

Camara Effree had graduated first in her class out of the academy. She’d been good at flying all her life, since she was a girl on Mirial at the helm of her father’s airspeeder. As a teenager, she was obsessed with the idea of flying with the Republic Navy, engrossing herself in hours of guncam footage from the frontlines of the Great War. She realized, now, that she’d never really considered the bone chilling fear of live laser fire that could cut her from the safe, sheltered cocoon of her cockpit and spill her out to freeze in the black depths of space.

But now she was here, and her hands were slick with sweat under her gloves as she followed her wingman’s lead through her first dogfight. Captain Tav Codey brought his Aurek into a sharp bank, rolling onto the tail of an interceptor, and she followed suit. A green lance came across the nose of her fighter. She assessed her HUD, fear gripping her by the throat. The cold analytical half of her brain, assisted by years of training sims and live flights, determined she was clear, but she looked again and again.

Red lights flashed ahead, and her eyes were pulled forward just in time to watch Codey tear the fighter apart with a burst of laser fire.

“Yellow Six, you okay back there?” Codey’s voice came through her intercom. Cool and collected, a veteran of how many sorties through the years of war.

“Yes, sir!” Camara answered. She did her best to sound confident, and her best to guide her Aurek smoothly after his. She managed the ship better than the affirmation.

And then the old man’s voice came through her comms. “Yellow Squadron, this is Colonel Tua speaking, do you copy?” Colonel Vos Tua, the aged Nautolan commander of the convoy’s fighter wing, spoke with calming authority. It reminded Camara of the day to day, the preparation, the easy confidence she felt before she strapped in today. She stretched her grip and breathed, banking with Codey as he moved to tail another interceptor, this one on the tail of a friendly Aurek.

“This is Yellow One, we copy, Colonel,” came the crisp response of Camara’s squadron leader over the command-comm.

Codey loosed a hail of red lances, and this time Camara followed suit, pulling the trigger and unleashing a burst of laser fire from her Aurek’s twin cannons. The nimble fighter stayed out of their line of fire, the pilot reading their target locks and adjusting while keeping on target himself.

“Yellow One, the enemy have jammed our communications.” The voice was far off, even in her ear, as she watched with horror as green blades cut through the Aurek’s left wing and turned the fighter into dust. “. . . launching a hyperspace capable shuttle . . .“ the voice continued, but Camara was paying no attention now. She pulled her Aurek up on the z-axis as Codey dove, trapping the interceptor between their guns. As the hostile pulled up to maneuver away from Codey’s sensor lock, he drifted directly across Camara’s line of fire. She squeezed the trigger and reduced the ship to wreckage.

“Great shot, Six!” Codey shouted over the wing-comm, and Camara exhaled a sharp breath. It was all she could do to keep herself from screaming with exhilaration.

“You need to escort that shuttle to the hyperspace egress. Your tac-net is being updated now.” Colonel Tua’s voice brought her back to her base, and she realized their commander had been feeding them an assignment.

“Understood, Colonel,” Yellow One answered.

As he spoke, Camara’s holographic display of the battlefield updated with a dozen flight routes to guide Yellow Squadron to a hangar on the far side of the refueling station, still undamaged and operational in the face of the flying turbolaser fire. Less than a dozen, she realized with a numb chill. Yellow 3 and Yellow 10 were no longer on the map.

“Make sure someone hears about this, pilots,” Tua said, and the command-comm went dead.

Camara brought her Aurek to bear on Codey’s left, watching as the hull of his ship was illuminated red and green in the exchange of cannon fire in the void, and followed him toward the target.

[Borgo Prime, 6 ATC 4] Once Upon a Time in the Outer Rim: Episode II - Lightspeed Express

Limited-Use Character Template

Name: [Your Character's Name]

Occupation and Affiliation: [i.e. Freelance Bounty Hunter, Destrier Crewman, Corsin Resistance Fighter, Czerka Corporation Mercenary, Pilot]

Description: [Include such details as age, species, clothing, weapons on person, details regarding appearance, whatever suits you]

Background: [A very short and sweet, third-person account of who your character is, what he does, and what he's been up to prior to the commencement of his or her participation in this story]

[Borgo Prime, 6 ATC 4] Once Upon a Time in the Outer Rim: Episode II - Lightspeed Express

“The Lightspeed Express always delivers.”

Gaust - Qatr Station

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This job had taken him to a system that didn't have a name, just a long, alphanumeric string of characters that constituted an astrographic signature. It wasn't until he'd landed that someone had told him the star had a name - Qatr.

The system was so remote and unimportant that the Sith Empire, early in the war, had conquered it quite accidentally. Military strategists on both sides of the conflict moved the frontline from time to time to accommodate territorial developments, and at some point or another the parsec containing Qatr ended up on the Imperial side of the map.

Qatr itself was a small blue star orbited by two planets, called Qatr I and Qatr II for lack of a better alternative, respectively. Qatr I was a near worthless hunk of scorched, airless rock orbiting its star inside a distance of sixty million kilometers. Entirely uninhabitable, Qatr I was home to a few inconsequential mining operations. The most attention the Qatr system ever received came when a Borgo Prime-based industrial group considered cracking the dwarf planet open in a strip-mining operation shortly before the war.

Qatr II, a hazy green gas giant orbited by a few moons, was slightly less worthless for the fact that its atmosphere contained gasses that, while heavily diluted, could be converted into sublight engine and hyperdrive fuels given sufficient refining efforts. Despite the difficulty in finding the system on even the most current map, the navigational challenges in traveling to and from the system, and the discouraging profit margins, a small collection of mining and refining stations had taken root on Qatr II, hovering some fifty thousand kilometers above the planet core.

One of these, called Qatr City, was home to just shy of a thousand or so sentients, most employed by Borgo Prime based mining companies, eking out a living in the Empire's microscopic private sector. There were no education centers for children, hardly anything that qualified as a restaurant, and a skeleton government manned by local union representatives wearing different hats. There were very few places in the galaxy less relevant, which made it an ideal location for the Corsin Resistance to set up shop.

Resistance types and rebels were, in Jonnu Gaust’s experience, good for business. Lightspeed Express prided itself on its captains’ abilities to move anything and anyone wherever they needed to go. Rebels frequently needed to move people and things to places quickly and discretely. The Corsin Resistance might as well have been Lightspeed Express’s target consumer if it weren’t for the fact that working for them was not unlikely to get you killed.

Gaust and his crew were the types willing to do the kind of work that might get you killed though, so it was all the same to them. Courier operations across the Republic border, and especially inside Imperial territory, were their specialty.

“Courier operations across the Republic border and inside Imperial territory are our specialty,” he stated as much matter-of-factly. His partner in this conversation presented him with a thin smile.

“That’s what we need.”

Gaust sat across from a waif of a woman, pale skinned and silvery haired, in what passed for a cantina in Qatr City. It had all the homeliness of a droid factory, mixed with the smell of spilled liquor, sweat, piss and vomit. Tough to open the windows on a world without a habitable atmosphere, sure, but he wished the air filtration systems were working. Or that someone would give the place a once-over with a mop at least.

The woman was seemingly unaffected. Though dressed plainly, she was well poised, back straight in her seat at the table, both hands wrapped around what passed for a clean mug at this joint. More poised than Gaust, even, a man who held stature in high regard after serving his 20 with distinction.

“You’ll be carrying a shipment from Borgo Prime to a second location deep in Republic Space.”

“What’s the nature of the cargo?” Gaust asked.

“Compact and highly sensitive,” the woman answered. Gaust didn’t like vague answers, but that was part of the business. “But very discreet. A captain with your skillset should have no problems transporting it.”

“You’d be surprised how little it takes to run into problems in my line of work,” Gaust returned.

“I’ve reviewed your company’s fees. We trust the expense we’re incurring for your services means that we can expect the cargo to arrive regardless of any problems that may arise.”

Gaust leaned back in his chair in what he thought an approximation of easy confidence. “Well, one way or another,” he said with a smile, “the Lightspeed Express always delivers.”

- - -

Welcome to Once Upon a Time in the Outer Rim: Episode II – Lightspeed Express, the second chapter in the Once Upon a Time in the Outer Rim series of small scale, Spaghetti Western and frontier-inspired adventures in the Star Wars universe.

Lightspeed Express is one of the galaxy’s premier courier companies, providing rapid transportation of goods and people anywhere and everywhere. No matter the job to be done, the Lightspeed Express always delivers.

Enter Jonnu Gaust, former Imperial naval officer, Lightspeed Express courier, and captain of the courier transport Destrier. Rather than pursue a post-service career within the comfortable infrastructure of the Imperial administration, Gaust turned his attention to the Empire’s fledgling private sector, that unhappy accident that arrived alongside the hundreds of worlds annexed from the Republic. His skills, talents, and experience proved invaluable, giving him the tools he needed to succeed as a courier in the most heavily regulated and patrolled sectors of Imperial space, and across the border into the Republic itself. Years of success in this arena have attracted a most unlikely client, the Corsin Resistance.

Few worlds fought the Sith harder than Corsin. Battlecruisers dueled in the uppermost atmosphere of the system’s gas giants. Starfighters engaged in fierce dogfights through an asteroid belt cluttered by the wreckage of warships. The lunar crust of her moons fractured under turbolaser bombardment before the local Corsin defense force and Republic Army allowed the Sith to bring the fight to the planet’s surface. But Corsin was conquered, her Queen executed on the throne, and her people subjugated. The new Queen of Corsin is a Sith puppet, but her sister, the Princess of Corsin, leads a fierce resistance against the Empire.

The Princess of Corsin’s war for her planet’s freedom is a losing one, however. Only with the help of an old ally might the tide turn, and so the Corsin Resistance places a message in a proverbial bottle and hands it to Captain Gaust.

- - -

This is larger than Last Skiff to Mos Vaada, for sure, and I expect we’ll see a bit more variance in the types of characters signing up for this one. The crew of the Destrier, Corsin Resistance fighters, Borgo Prime information brokers, Imperial agents and various antagonists, and so on. As always, both permanent and one-shot characters are welcome; check out the character sheet section for a Limited Use Character Template.

Come by the OUTOR channel in the PW Discord to coordinate your role in the story.

[Tatooine, 5 ATC 9] Once Upon a Time in the Outer Rim: Episode I - Last Skiff to Mos Vaada

So, for clarity; what is the 'artillery,' actually? Some kind of cannon? Anti-tank rifle? Really big mortar?

@Necroes

Yeah so I’m picturing it as a mounted gun emplacement with the dimensions of a large recoilless rifle or similar.

[Tatooine, 5 ATC 9] Once Upon a Time in the Outer Rim: Episode I - Last Skiff to Mos Vaada

Beck - The Jundland Wastes

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After the Sith had wrestled control of both moons from the joint Republic-PDF coalition and started landing the invasion forces on Corsin proper, the PDF had found itself stretched thin on resources, heavily depleted by the arduous defense of the homeworld. Billions of credits in military equipment has been lost in a slog across the system. Laser weaponry, something Beck had always taken for granted, was suddenly in short supply. There simply weren’t enough working laser cannons to shoot at the oncoming Imperial armor, and so the PDF found alternative options.

Advanced as technology became, there was always be something to be said about loading a multi-kilogram slug of durasteel into a long rifled barrel and launching it at supersonic speed towards something you didn’t like very much. Corsin Hardball, they called it, and it worked better than most expected. Sure, ray shielding complicated matters where it showed up, but the Imperial Army had heavily discounted the potential of basic low-mass, high-velocity physics while planning the planetary invasion. Beck had been a huge fan of Corsin Hardball.

Point is, when Beck saw that bloom of air that came with the sonic boom discharged by a slugthrowing artillery piece, he knew it and he didn’t like it.

A durasteel slug raked the side of the hover train before ricocheting into the earth of Tatooine, kicking up an eruption of bone dry soil and stone that rained down on the crew of his skiff. The thunder of the cannon arrived only after, the sound catching up with the supersonic projectile a second later.

“Kid!” he roared over his shoulder, throat rough and hoarse as he strained to shout over the din of battle. “Get that cannon online! I don’t know how many more of those shots she can take!”

He returned his attention forward, toward the slowly dissipating sonic bloom. It was rising away from a craggy growth jutting up from the Tatooine surface, almost directly in the path of the hovertrain. He lined up the sights of his rifle with the ridge and felt dread. Too far to fire at with accuracy with small arms, outside of the firing arc of the Kid’s blaster cannon, and firing two shots per minute or so. If it took the hovertrain five minutes to pass the cannon, that meant it was absorbing ten shots, more if the thing was mobile and the sand people understood show to reposition in.

They needed to kill it, immediately, and he wasn’t sure how.

He gritted his teeth leaned against the skiff’s rail, sights trained on the ridge ahead, waiting to take a lucky shot.

[Tatooine, 5 ATC 9] Once Upon a Time in the Outer Rim: Episode I - Last Skiff to Mos Vaada

Beck - The Jundland Wastes

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The Czerka barked once more, and on the next pull of the trigger gave a hollow click.

“Shit,” Beck growled, throwing his back against the skiff’s rail guard and sliding down to cradle the cycler in his lap. He jammed slugs into the magazine, muttering curses the long while, wishing he hadn’t lost his stripper clip back in Anchorhead. Swore it was in his pack, but it wasn’t, turned out.

A slug skipped across the handrail near his ear. “Oy, lads, get this cannon online and give us damned suppressive fire!” he roared, pointing out the inert anti-personnel cannon hanging limply on the rail. It should have been manned, but the would-be gunner was nowhere to be seen. Must have caught a slug in the fray and fallen off. Not a lot of rhyme or rhythm to a firefight, in Beck’s experience. Mostly luck.

He jammed the last bullet through and pulled the bolt handle home. Another slug plinked against the skiff deck, and he attempted to find the offending sand person through the scope. It was rough shooting. Between the heavily camouflaged attackers and the moving skiff under their feet, hitting a target was a tricky proposition. Beck did his best, loosing one shot after another in an effort to get the sand people to put their heads down at least, if not shoot them outright.

He found one, standing on a ridge, outlined nice and clear against the red Tatooine sky. Beck’s first shot skipped on the rock in front of his target, kick up shards of stone. The second struck true, and the sand person went down.

He didn't have much time to celebrate. There was a deafening crack from the hover train to their side, and Beck turned to see it shudder, as if some massive hammer had just been taken to it. The train was heavily armored, and it kept moving despite the blow, but something big had just hit it. Did sand people have anti-armor?

“Keep an eye out for whatever that was!” he shouted, scanning the ridge with his optics.

[Tatooine, 5 ATC 9] Once Upon a Time in the Outer Rim: Episode I - Last Skiff to Mos Vaada

Beck - The Jundland Wastes

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“I heard they’ll rot your lungs out eventually.”

“If I live that long I’ll take it up with myself then,” Beck retorted crisply. “Give myself a good hollering in the fresher mirror.”

Beck chewed at the cigarra as he looked out on the distant sandstorm, looming in the background behind the Jundland Waste’s pillars and trenches of towering rock faces. The hover train weaved between a pair of the things and Jeeda guided the skiff with it, coming all too close to smashing them apart on the rock. Odds were he wouldn’t be living that long.

“Careful, Jeeda!” he shouted. The Rodian shrugged, and Beck shook his head, looking to the motley crew of mercenaries Doga had purchased for the job. He knew some of them, worked with some of them, but there were some new faces. Jeeda, for one. And the woman with no name. He’d heard of her, which was something, given that she didn’t have a name. He’d heard she was good with a gun, which he reckoned must be true, from the way she thumbed the butt of the slugthrower on her belt. Confident.

All the same, he was looking to be the leader of this merry band of backwater soldiers, and he figured he ought to act like it. “Any of us survives a crash is only bound to die in the sandstorm,” he announced. Something plinked hard against the skiff’s lightly armored fore, leaving a fresh dent in the durasteel construction. He paid it no mind. A rock, likely. “So hold on tight, eh?” Plink, again. And then another. And this time Beck heard the report of a distant gunshot.

Not rocks. Slugs.

“On the left!” Jeeda shouted in high pitched Huttese, seemingly realizing what was happening as Beck did. Beck wheeled around, shoulders hunched, bringing the Czerka cycler to bear and looking for a target amount the passing rocks. He heard returning fire, closer by, from the mercenaries aboard the hover train, and shouts.

“Sand people!” a train-bound mercenary shouted over the din of engines, gunshots, and screams, taking a shot at an intricately featured wall pitted with cracks and crevices that seemed entirely vacant of any enemy. Except, of course, for the fact that the wall shot back. Beck could make out the muzzle flash of a slugthrower, wielded by an expertly camouflaged shooter, followed by a sharp crack. Beck aimed and fired, putting a hole in something that may have been a sand person, may have been a rock.

“Keep your heads down and shoot!” Beck shouted to the crew, and fired again.

[Approved] Captain Dev Arx, Human... Courier?

I really like this character. I’ll give its approval.

[Interest Check] Once Upon a Time in the Outer Rim: Episode I

Due to the great positive response here, please find the RP here: roleplayerguild.com/topics/179117-onc….

[Tatooine, 5 ATC 9] Once Upon a Time in the Outer Rim: Episode I - Last Skiff to Mos Vaada

Name: Beck Ducrae

Occupation and Affiliation: Mercenary, Contracted by Mos Vaada Transportation

Description: Beck Ducrae is a tall, lean, hard looking human male hailing from the planet Corsin. He wears a woven poncho over light armorweave, a wide-brimmed hat, and boots he purports to be made of Krayt leather. Beck carries a blaster pistol at his hip, a standard military issue sidearm with the Corsin Planetary Defense Force, and a slugthrower carbine of Czerka design and manufacture. The slugthrower, a firearm of durasteel and wooden construction, carries eight slugs to a cartridge and can put a hole in all but the toughest wildlife on Tatooine. That includes the people, too.

Background: Beck Ducrae was an enlisted infantryman with the Corsin Planetary Defense Force during the closing years of the Galactic War, signing on with the army just as the Sith campaign extended into the Greater Plooriod Cluster. He saw combat for much of his short tenure with the Corsin PDF before the planet fell, and after the surrender of the world he struck out on his own aboard one of the many refugee vessels that fled to Republic space. A deserter, though there weren't much of an organized Corsin PDF to hold him accountable for his actions, he headed out to the Outer Rim, putting his military experience to work as a bounty hunter, enforcer, and general purpose mercenary for the Hutts. One among those Hutts under whom he found employment was Doga Anjiliac Jitetso, better known as Doga the Prospector of Tatooine and as the mayor, if you would, of the mining town of Mos Vaada.