What An Incredible Smell You've Discovered...

Posted on Sat Nov 6th, 2021 @ 1:20pm by Flight Officer Tawshiikkyrr & Lieutenant Kor' de'leia & Lieutenant Melvyn Kosta

Mission: Scoundrels, Cuttthroats and Rogues
Location: Nar Shaddaa Blue Sector
Timeline: Day 2 at 2000

The speeder piloted by Kor was going steadily lower - with this archaic model, going down was not going to be the issue, Melvyn suspected. Gaining altitude, on the other hand...

Their luck, shaky at best, was close to giving out. A whine of engines and blur of movement caught Melvyn's attention at the corner of his eyes ; Several speeders, painted black with the imperial logo, were hot on their trail. They hadn't been spotted yet but that would be -

A laser beam shot by them.

- A matter of time, Melvyn finished his thought grimly. There was no way they could outfly their pursuers with the antiquity they were piloting.

"We need to touch ground," Melvyn shouted to Kor. "They probably have this speeder's registration. We need to shake them off before we can get to the rendez-vous point !"

Kor's eyes quickly scanned the area they were passing through. A mix of light industrial and densely packed residential properties. "You know of any bars in the area?" she called back to the wookie. "I can jack us a new ride pretty quick."

Tawshii's roar of a response was relatively quiet and covert as he leant forward to be sure Kor got the information. A big paw of a hand pointed down and to the east. In amongst the industrial properties, lit faintly in the smog, a flickering sign became mostly obvious as they sped on through. Yes, there was indeed some sort of tavern here, though the clientelle's vehicle choice wasn't much better than the one they were driving.

The speeder leaned as Kor drove it down to where Tawshii indicated. Her eyes stayed peeled to the surroundings of the tavern until they locked on what she was looking for. She pulled the speeder down and brought it in for a soft landing. The pads touched down on the ground and she cut the sound system and power to the vehicle. THe engine sputtered for a moment before erupting in a cloud of steam and smoke. Apparently it was pushed a little too far.

"Let's go!" Kor called back to her passengers as she leapt out of the speeder. Nearby were a small cluster of speeders and swoops. She looked for the one in the best condition. Not much of a choice, all were older and reflected the general lever of poverty that was apparent in the undercity.

She approached the speeder and immediately went for the drive control junction box on the dash. She kicked it once and the enclosed space popped open. Her fingers quickly started adjusting the circuits inside.

"Hey! That's my ride. Stop!" some yelled from the door of the tavern.

Kor kept her eyes and mind on the task at hand. Suddenly a shower of sparks dropped from overhead. She uttered a small curse before glancing at a Devaronian with a blaster running toward them.

Tawshii knew his role when they hit the ground well enough, and picked himself up into a charge with virtually no need to take a run into it. He caught the Devaronian high on the shoulder with the solid agile weight only a wookiee could provide and bounced the gunman sideways and straight down hard into the ground, that blaster scattering somewhere off to the right.

It should not have come as a surprise that Kor knew how to hijack speeders - although the spark fest suggested she may be out of practice. Melvyn hoped she'd manage to find the right wires soon, because if the clients of the bar didn't shoot them the Imperial forces on their tail would.

Since Tawshii had already satisfactorily dealt with the Devaronian, there was little left for Melvyn to do but unsheath his blaster and look threateningly at the rest of the crowd. None of them looked in much of a hurry to get involved, fortunately.

Kor heard the impact of the wookiee hitting the Devaronian. She kept focused on the starting mechanism. She touched the circuit, resulting in a powerful spark cracking as the repulsor lift came to life on the speeder. "I got it y'all. Get on board." she climbed back in to the driver's seat and cranked up the same music station.

Blaster recovered from its wayward path, Tawshii didn't need to be told twice to jump into the newly acquired speeder. He took a running leap and settled in the passenger seat this time, leaving the rear for Melvyn. A happy chattering growl accompanied his comfortable settling into the padded seat while his gaze tracked for any sign of trouble on the console.

Now was probably not the time to complain about the seating arrangements, so Melvyn took his place in the back with only a slightly dirty look at the wookiee's back. Not that he was keen on yet another close encounter with furry fists.

Once everyone was seated in their new ride, Kor pumped up the throttle and launched down the street. The amount of refuse piled up next to the buildings spilled into the street, making piloting a challenge. As much as she wanted to dodge Imperial entanglements, not winding up in a wreck from a shoddy piece of furniture left in the street became a more pressing issue. Then the shadow descended on them. Even deep in the canyon's of urban Nar Shaddaa the dagger shaped silhouette draining what little light came down to that level was unmistakeable. "Looks like your old friends are getting into the game." she said over she shoulder to Melvyn.

"It'll look bad for them if I live," he said soberly. "And worse if they fail to crush the local rebel cell. Expect a lot more storm troopers and TIE fighters before this is over."

Looking to the wookiee besides her, "so where to next. I expect we have about 20 minutes before the imps pick up on this speeder's registration. We need to get where we are going quick!"

Tawshii fastened his seatbelt and yawed a response to the twi'lek's question. Southeast, down and under the Faschel Bridge (a pre-fabricated monstrosity that the locals thanked the fog for obscuring) then straight down the drainage ditch and through the wide, stench-ridden waste pipe. That gave them some serious cover, a faraday cage of metal and shielding, but it would blank out their comms and nav system for a few minutes - leaving Kor flying seat of the pants for a bit.

The elongated wookiee chattering roar indicated Tawshii found that entertaining while simultaneously informing Kor that the big guy had the utmost faith in her ability to squeeze them through the pipe without any need for a satnav or guidance systems.

The wookiee's long string of growls and grunts meant absolutely nothing to Melvyn, though it appeared to make sense to Kor. He didn't bother asking for a translation, fairly certain that he wouldn't get one, not to mention he'd rather she focus on piloting.

Kor made a high pitched growl or understanding back at the wookie, that while phonetically correct sounded ridiculous. She piloted the speeder in the direction Tawshii indicated looking at the grand monstrosity of a bridge emerging from the fog like some kind of spiked behemoth. She turned her head back to Melvyn. "Better strap in good, this is going to get interesting." She gunned the engine as the speeder dove off the main road into the narrow drainage ditch, an excited grin growing on her face.

They may have different definitions of what "interesting" meant. Melvyn pulled the straps of his safety belt tighter and made sure his blaster was securely holstered, and all of his pockets zipped. Just in case they ended up flying upside down.

He actually thought they were going across the bridge, right up until Kor veered sharply to the right and... into a drainage ditch that was clearly way too narrow for them to fly in. Melvyn didn't have time to bite out a warning before they were already inside it, with so little space to spare that he could almost have touched the side of the ditch with his hand. He gritted his teeth, certain they were going to crash any second, bracing himself for the impact that never came.

Being in the back seat was infinitely more stressful than flying himself.

Tawshii on the other hand, seemed remarkably chilled out, comfortably enjoying the tight ride through the awkwardly narrow backward route back to his ship. Behind them, for the moment was nothing and no one, quiet beyond quiet but for the rush of air.

Too quiet...

As the wookiee had mentioned the drainage ditch continued on until ahead lay a large outfall pipe, oozing some horrendous liquid into the ditch. The outside of the pipe had the tell tale signs of electrical pulses surging across its opening as the charge particles of the shield kept undesired electrial signals out. Kor steered for the even smaller pipe opening. The insulated body of the speeder would be fine, but all sensors and transmitting devices would be nullified as they passed inside.

Indeed, the moment the speeder entered the pipe Kor's music she had been blasting shut off, likely much to her passenger's pleasure. She adjusted the forward facing lights to see what was in the pipe interior, as the scanner too had shut down. Flying blind in an industrial pipe deep beneath Nar Shaddaa with nothing but a Wookiee's word that they were not going to meet a hideous death. That worked for Kor as she guided the speeder through he curving pipeline. The stench of the pipe interior was much worse the the drainage ditch outside had been, and became inescapable, minus whatever windage the velocity of the speeder was able to provide. Kor kept her eyes focused up into the darkness ahead of them. Only a fool would follow them in here.

The ambient ruckus of Nar Shaddaa faded away, as did the yellow-tinged gray light of day. The hum of the engine grew exponentially louder as it echoed through the ridiculously narrow drainage pipe. No one appeared to be crazy enough to follow them in there ; to be fair Melvyn wasn't sure he would have risked it either if he'd been the one in pursuit.

He wasn't even sure he'd have risked it if he'd been the one flying now. The speeder flew at an insane speed given the lack of visibility and space. An acrid stench surrounded them, getting worse every instant. After a few minutes of flying nearly blind, Melvyn felt certain that the wookiee must have misled them. He couldn't have possibly meant that this was really their escape route.

Just then they popped out of the pipe, above what looked like a septic tank. There were no TIE fighters in sight.

Tawshii wrinkled his nose and ran hairy fingers through his messed-up mane to tousle in at least in the right directions. It wasn't the scent of excrement that was bothering the wookiee though, being deep in all the wrong kinds of waste was nothing new to him. No, there was something else, and not just the lack of any TIEs. It... felt wrong. Too easy.

He jabbed a dark thumb upwards and twisted his head from side to side as Kor obliged, sending their stolen vehicle into a steep vertical climb, then jinking hard to port at the wookiee's instruction.

Yup. There it was. There they were. A faintly unmistakable sound accompanied by that charged sense of power in the air around him, coupled with the vague scent of refined fuel and exhaust. The gruesomely coloured and equally disgustingly smelling tank below them was just out of sight, but as Tawshii considered leading Kor into the tight street canyon geography of the heavily populated slum levels he yowled a sharp warning.

Roadblock!

The Imps hadn't chased them down here because they hadn't needed to. They'd come in from the opposite direction, tracking the stolen speeder, and set up shop ready in waiting. Barely visible through the smoky clouds of filth unsuitable for inhalation by most forms of life, they could all see them now - the swirling lights of the law, such as Nar Shaddaa claimed it to be.

"Sith Spawn!" Kor cursed seeing the blarring lights from the Imperial road block and put the speeder into a power spin, whipping about so as to get them the hell out of there. Behind them suddenly appeared three gunships that had been lurking behind nearby buildings. "Uh, guys, looks like we might have a problem here." she said, whirling the speeder to point perpendicular to the two columns of Imperials.

No kidding, Melvyn thought. Nar Shaddaa spun around them as Kor launched the speeder in a tight evading manoeuver but he'd recognized the Imperial formation. The sheer amount of manpower required to make it work told him that he and the rebels had collectively irritated the Empire beyond salvation. And there was nothing he could do, strapped in the back seat like a frakking passenger.

Three gunships. Against one speeder. Talk about overkill.

Tawshii readied his bowcaster and palmed his communicator as it squawked into half-life and held it close to his ear so as to hear the message amid all the audio chaos.

At the roadblock the distinct glow of an Imperial armored transport charging up its ion blasters was quite apparent. Kor knew what came next, their speeder would lose power and they would be literally dead, or at least hope they would be. There had to be an escape vector. Her eyes shot around looking for cover and a way out of this hornet's nest. The damned Imperials had planned this well.

Melvyn scanned their surroundings for an escape route and like Kor found none. They could try to run but it would take more than skill to fly out of this. Unless Kor was secretly a Jedi, their chances of survival were not looking good.

His hand fell to the blaster still holstered at his hip. Come what may, he wouldn't be captured alive.

The wookiee looked up, grumbled something into the comm and considered their options. They hadn't fired, the Imps hadn't fired. It was still possible they were beingc captured alive, and that meant there was a chance. Not a lot of time, but a chance.

Finding no way out Kor turned the speeder back towards the roadblock. If she could go fast enough, they might still crash through even if the ion guns took out their engine. There was no time for this. Her eyes narrowed as she focused on a narrow gap between two transports. She revved up the speeder's engine and reached down to engage the throttle. This was going to hurt.

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