Galaxy's Edge Space Bar (archive)

[Terenia]

((Shoot, I meant Myitt was on the Skimmer. Not Mar. Gah. Too many 'M's'!))

[KitsuneMarie]

"Can we all just shut up and cooperate for one second?" Elayne rudely demanded in a far shriller voice than she typically used. "If you'll just let me shoot the damned ship out of the air, all of this will be fine! But he's about to jump to Z-space, so there is no time left!" She had finally broken out of her frozen posture, her shoulders and chest heaving with deep, irritated breaths. Her eyes tracked Sukhon's ship above and she cringed, clenching her fists. Mar... she thought, trying not to despair. Dammit, if I'm even still here in a moment, will I remember him?

[Terenia]

"Reprehensible?" Terenia's smile drops, twisting into a snarl, "you find me reprehensible? Out of all these...morons it's me, the one person who has been thrown at the bottom of the heap, that you cannot stand? I'll have you know that I am likely the least reprehensible person in this bar!"

Terenia blows back a piece of hair that has fallen in front of her eyes while her voice rose in octave. She takes a deep, shuddering breath and can feel that her face had gone red. Slowly, she loosens her suddenly vice-like grip on her glass and raises the glass to her lips. She draws a deep sip and when the glass is lowered her smile is back in place, as though the outburst had never happened.

"But I suppose that you have your reasons for hating me. Perhaps I interfered with some of your affairs in some way?" She picks up on Mar's comment about Ossanlin, but chooses not to pursue it for the moment, though it may prove useful later.

[Shenmue654]

Keshin gets a bit of a twisted smirk on his face when he realizes that Myitt has a Dracon pointed at his heart. "Yes, yes. You might be cluster****ed by whatever those names happen to mean for the resistance on Earth. Although...I couldn't help but notice that they were human names. And that wasn't really what I was thinking about at the time. Either way, a certain individual will pay that idiot Sukohn a lot of money for that information, if he believes it. If he doesn't or if Sukohn is not from our world, then guess what? We've lost nothing. Except maybe our valuable time. It hasn't taken too long for the Bar's various patrons to notice that a turelek will do most anything if you grease their palms."

Keshin shrugs, gesturing with his right hand up at Sukohn's escaping ship. "I can give you one reason: if you don't find a way to stop that guy right now, my evil plot will have succeeded and you will have lost ground. Not worth wasting time in a drawn-out fight with a heartless hunter, is it?"
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Mar cackles out loud with a terrible and unpleasant laugh, for reasons even he doesn't fully understand. "Hardly. My plans are not so weak as to be disrupted by a silly little fool like you, Terenia. I admit a certain respect for your tenacity in this matter. Few people wouldn't have given in to Ossanlin's demands by now. But I find the way you are going about your affairs to be stubborn and stupid. You realize that that monster of a master you have is going to flay you alive when you return? That he will do so even for no reason at all, for the rest of your life, unless you change your strategy somewhat? You have disrupted my friend's life. Other than a certain...vibe I get from you, I have no other reason for hating you."

[Myitt]

Myitt trains the Dracon on Keshin for another second, infuriated.  Then she steps back and waves Elayne on board.  She glances briefly at Ossanlin, not wanting to leave him outside with the bounty hunter.

"Hurry the hell up, then," she snaps, turning away from them all and walking over to the navigational controls, priming the engines for flight.

[Terenia]

A momentary look of terror crosses Terenia's eyes, almost imperceptible. A moment later they are hard again, her smile somewhat more fixed than before, "my methods work well enough for the time being. The Andalite fools believe that they can rush what is too tenuous to be rushed. They do not understand subtlety. They merely attack and attack and attack until they are victorious, or dead. That is not the strategy I have chosen and I will not be forced into it. I have disrupted nothing but what others chose to disrupt themselves. It is Ossanlin who will not let the matter go, not me."

[Shenmue654]

Keshin blinks at Myitt's statement in confusion, staring at the ship. He then gets a slight smile on his face. <Was she so distracted a moment ago that she just asked me to come along and help her fire at my own client?>

<....yeah, I think she was. That's pretty funny, Kess.>

Keshin and Joanne promptly step back. <Not a good idea.>

<But it'd be...>

<No. Just...no.>

Keshin then just stands there, as if Joanne and himself were just staring at one another blankly.  They then bolt onto the ship with the others, hanging onto the door's edge.
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Mar smirks. "Your methods work well? I hate to disagree, but I do. All that you seem to have done is gotten yourself tortured repeatedly and never gotten any closer to your sister. Although...I suppose I can understand the need for subtlety around a creature such as Visser Three. But I also understand why Ossanlin cannot let it go, even if you do not." Mar pauses and looks her over, scratching at his chin. "Either way, I don't find someone who whines as much as you very deserving of my sympathy."

[KitsuneMarie]

Shaking off any thoughts of Mar with a little difficulty, Elayne unclenched her fists and looked back to the Skimmer's open door. Even though Myitt granted her permission to do exactly what she wanted to do, she still growled in irritation as she jumped aboard after Keshin, making her way straight to the weapons console, strapping in and grabbing the controls. She felt more self-assured about what she was doing this time, but knew there was far less time. She might not even have a chance to get a single shot in at this rate. And that thought, for reasons she could not quite pinpoint, was making her hands shake.

[Luke Skywalker (Ossanlin)]

Ossanlin looks up as a bug lifts into the sky.  He looks at Elayne as her dracon erupts...had he been so distracted as to not even notice her?  He looks up again and curses to himself.  His blades and handhelds were no good on a fighter with shields up.  This was a royal mess...everything had seemed to be going so well, and then this! 

He glares at Keshin finally realizing whom had facilitated this entire thing.  Of course Elayne hadn't just handed the information over...the bounty seeker had taken advantage of the situation.  He stands in silence as Elayne AND Keshin run past onto the Skimmer.  <He can't possibly mean to try entering Z-Space in the atmosphere...he'll have to get up to escape velocity and out into space before he can jump.>  He tries to create a cocoon of time around the bug to hold it in place, to slow time as it were in that space...but he hasn't really had enough time to recharge his batteries, and the bug was considerably larger than a person...slowing time in a smaller space could have very messy consequences...he lets go of the timeweave, gasping a bit from the effort, and gallops up the ramp.  We only have two standard minutes maybe before he can get out into space and jump.  I hope this thing can handle a cold-start.>

Ossanlin runs up to the co-pilot station and impatiently waits for Myitt to take her chair.  He presses a few Yeerkish buttons on the panel, and the displays light up.  He can't give the ship any auditory commands, so he navigates through the panel controls and interfaces with the ship's navigation, locking on to the fighter taking off.  <I apologize for jumping into your co-pilot position, but we don't have long Myitt...if he escapes...>  Ossanlin lets the sentence hang in the dead air.  <There's not enough time to call the Tyrennian...they'll  never be able to make it before he jumps.>

((Sukohn is your char. Chad.  If you want him to escape and make it to Earth, he will, but let's play it out, it'll be fun.    Whether we follow or not will be up to how things play out here.))

[Terenia]

"I do not whine" Terenia says icily, "I never would have mentioned my situation if people wouldn't've been badgering me. The only complaining I've done is about people trying to make my deicisions for me. But I don't suppose you would understand what it's like having someone trying to control your life, eh?"

Terenia finishes her glass of wine and sets it on the bar gently. The noise outside seems to have intensified, and she figures another ship is starting up. Part of her is dying to go out and see what is going on, but Mar is right. If she gets involved it will probably only make the situation about ten times worse. Instead, she fixes Mar with a conspiratorial look.

"Alright then," she says, "Mr. Fancy-pants-know-it-all. How would you handle the situation?"

[Chad32]

Claxter watched Terenia talk to Mar. he was disappointed that she still had little intention of working with them. Perhaps Mar would say something that would get through to her. He knew there was a commotion outside, so he decided to remain inside with Terenia. He hoped she would not lash out at Mar, even though Claxter held no feelings for the man.

"Okay, the Z-Space thrusters are charged up." sukohn said to himself. "I'll need to hit orbit before I can actually fire it off, though." He said, and powered the main thrusters. Now the bug began moving steadily forward with an ever gaining pace. He had seen the others bickering, and noticed Keshin. "Thanks for buying me a few seconds of time, though I'll remember that you blew your chance to fire on them. Come on old girl. at this rate they may still have a chance to get off a shot."

(I do want him to escape, but let's drag this out another post or two.)

[Shenmue654]

Keshin chuckles a bit to himself and wanders farther into the ship, laying against part of it with an amused look on his face. <Best not to distract them, but they're never going to pull it off. Sukohn is getting the ship ready for Z-Space far too fast for them to get in a shot at him. If he makes it to our particular Visser Three and the Visser accepts, our reward is assured assuming Sukohn was trustworthy.>

<...Kess, this feels a little wrong. Usually our plans jus' knock off random guys, not a whole group at once. This move we made's gonna shake up the rebel set, isn' it? Is that bad or good for us?>

<It just means that we won't be able to take jobs as easily from them anymore, if by the end of a cycle they still exist. Nothing we haven't had to worry about before.>

The silence in Keshin's head is prounounced, although he can feel Joanne's uncharacteristic worry vividly. Keshin frowns. Even she can put together that what we did is not going to end well for them, though she hasn't connected it to the fate of her home yet. I might as well leave that one in the dark.
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"I would simply have never gotten into the situation you're in to begin with," Mar says with almost a slight purr to his voice. It's clear that he is having far too much fun by this point. "Let's suppose that I was stupid enough to get myself and someone I cared about in the clutches of a very powerful madman. Now...I am absolutely sure that I would do as you did the first time and attempt to rescue that person. But once I found out that this person hated me and had betrayed my entire race...well..." Mar chuckles a bit. "...let's just say that I would be quite unlikely to try and "save" this person in the near future. So I would already be missing several rounds of torture just from this, and I would be missing another few because I'm not prone to giving people excuses to hurt me. I would die much earlier than you, admittedly. But that would prevent me from coming here and becoming a burden.

And you realize that the only reason you're still alive..." Mar smirks, his fangs poking slightly out from under his gums. "...is because a sadist would find it entertaining to mutilate and torment a person who never seems to learn a thing and constantly makes a fool of herself?"

[Myitt]

"We're going to find out," Myitt says tersely, glancing at Ossanlin and Elayne.  "Ossanlin, stay at the co-pilot position, and hold on to something."  The ramp retracts and the hatch closes behind them all, and almost instantly the ship lifts off the ground with a jolt.  

Myitt only subconsciously parks herself down in her rickety metal seat, letting the living metal restraints hook her in. She continues sliding hovering icons across the air.  The familiar whir of the landing gears retracting sets the cabin's floor shuddering, and Myitt turns the ship to fully face Sukohn's retreating fighter.

With a lurch the ship's engines fire up, sending the Skimmer chugging over the trees and exponentially increasing in velocity.

<Aaahhh!> Tara cries.  <You're gonna get us all killed!>

<Damned if we don't,> Myitt replies.

<That's not a definite, you know!>

"We've got a lock on him," Myitt says aloud.  "Elayne, can you manage a shot?"

[KitsuneMarie]

Surprisingly, Elayne's shaking stilled as the Skimmer began its shuddering, wild ascent. She knew she had no choice but to take her best shot right now; there was nothing else she would not already lose by trying, and this thought actually calmed her. "I can try," she replied tersely, manually putting the weapons system in a visual lock on Sukhon's fighter. Her jaw clenched so tightly against the bouncing of the ship she might have thought it would go numb--if she were actually thinking about anything but destroying the Yeerk and the information he carried--she squeezed the trigger, and a bright shot of light blasted across the sky towards the Imperial. Blue eyes fixed on her target, she immediately engaged the system for a second shot, hoping there would be time for one.

[Luke Skywalker (Ossanlin)]

Warnings pop up all over the place and Ossanlin quickly addresses them as best he can.  Some of the symbols he does not understand, but thank goodness for similarity with Andalite technology.  Ossanlin compensates for inertial thrust with the dampeners and continues to correct any unexpected shifts in engine spin.  Cold starts were very dangerous...but under the circumstances it was the only option.

Ossanlin activates the Skimmer's energy shields in case the bug has rear-mounted cannon, and nearly falls over as the inertial dampeners flicker.  He rights himself again.  He commands extra power to weapons and engines, reducing life-support as it is not yet needed.