Emergency in Orbit

Pash Rendarr winced as the ship rocked from the turbolaser blasts. He no longer heard the low shields klaxon blaring, but he could not ignore being thrown from his seat. He glanced up nervously at the pilots in their stations. If they felt any pangs of doubt or fear, they hid it well. Pash smiled to himself as he regained his seat. A pilot should never show fear at the helm...and Pash wished he was at the helm.

As far as flag ships go, The Lion’s Mane served well for the band of mercenaries. True, there were plenty of times when more firepower would have been extremely helpful – Corellian Corvettes aren’t the most fearsome vessels in the galaxy – but the speed and ease at which the model operated always made up for it. Pash hoped that today would not be an exception.

“Pash. Report to the conference room immediately.”   Captain Vorn’s voice cut through Pash’s reverie. Pash sighed audibly. “Keep her together guys, I’ll be back,” he addressed the pilots. They only grunted in response. Pash reluctantly left the cockpit and headed for his destination. In truth, he couldn’t be of any help – the cockpit was one of the few stations on the ship that was fully crewed. Nonetheless, as a pilot, it was the only room on the ship that he felt comfortable in during battle. Lately, the human felt too guilty to allow himself many indulgences, but this is one that he would not compromise on. Kath Hound Company had had too many close calls with Black Sun enforcers in the past few weeks, and Pash knew that he was largely to blame.

Pash used to perform smuggling runs for the criminal organization, and he was damn good at it too. To prove his worth, he’d competed with twenty other reckless pilots to make the Kessel Run in the shortest distance. He’d made just under seven parsecs, a feat that Pash is still proud of to this day, but he could unfortunately never admit to the civilized world due to how many laws his ship had been witnessed breaking to do so. He’d probably still be running for them if a chance encounter with imperial authorities hadn’t wrestled one of the cargo crates loose and spilled the contents onto the hold floor for everyone to see – tak  glands.

Taks are small monkeylike creatures on the Wookie home planet of Kashyyk. Supposedly, their glands had some rare medicinal properties . The market for them was very illegal, and thus only drew the attention of criminal organization like Black Sun. Pash had never considered himself a moral person, but he realized that day that there were lines that he could not consciously cross. After emptying the contents of his stomach in the nearest waste basket, Pash decided that he would skip out on the delivery. He vowed to find some way to atone for years of unwittingly partaking in an atrocity that he couldn’t bear to think about. Black Sun had been hunting him since. Pash shook his head clear – now was not the time for

Upon reaching the conference room, Pash didn’t bother suppressing his grin. Seated around the plasteel table were the familiar faces of his teammates. BX-77, or “Brick” as everyone called him, glanced casually in his direction. Despite being physically incapable of smiling, as most droids are, Pash was sure that the droid was smiling at him now. Years of near-death encounters with the sentient robot had given him a sixth sense for Brick’s disposition, and it was clear to him now that Brick was anxious for some action. Pash’s eyes quickly darted to, and away from, the droid’s sole deformity – a serrated dent in the black metal of his head.

Brick had spent fifty years crushed under the concrete debris of (what used to be) an armory. With nothing to external to stimulate his superior tactical mind, the droid commando had to continually engage his self-adaption and learning protocols to keep himself in top condition….and in doing so had inadvertently programmed himself for philosophical inquiry and existential debate. By the time Kath Hound Company had stumbled into - and salvaged - him, he had grown an attachment to the idea of “authenticity”, and he’d refused to have the cosmetic damage fully repaired. Brick was practically a one droid army. Pash had never seen anyone, or anything, that was so efficient at killing and destruction. Yet despite how much joy Brick took in his job, he never showed any signs of bloodlust. “I live for my purpose, but my purpose is not my life,” he had said. While Pash did not always understand what Brick said, he always glad to have Brick on his side during a fight.

Seated across from BX-77, Kallatherie eyed Pash tensely. To a casual observer, the wookie might have appeared calm, but Pash knew better. Kallatherie was a force that could not be contained and, like a snake, stillness only signaled that she would strike at any moment. Pash was certainly glad that he was not present when they “rescued” her from the slaver’s ship she had been imprisoned on. In her rage, she had managed to kill twenty of their crew before they finally convinced her that they were not her captors. In mission, Kallatherie was the team’s unofficial leader. While no one ever appointed her as such, they recognized quickly that she had a penchant for decisiveness and violence. The team preferred the former over the latter and, as such, rarely ignored her suggestions. A few months ago, Pash learned that the slavers who had captured Kallatherie were one of the tak gland suppliers to Black Sun. Apparently, she had taken it upon herself to shut down their entire operation without any help. Pash hoped that she would help offer him his chance for atonement, but now was not the time to think of such matters.

Across from her, sitting next to Brick, L’Entu Sneebrac fidgeted nervously in his seat. Pash never knew what to think about L’entu. His name seemed like it should belong to a Twi’lek rather than a Bothan. When he’d  first met L’entu, he told him as such. L’entu launched into a long, and seemingly well-rehearsed, story about his father being an ambassador to Ryloth, home planet of theTwi’leks. The name was intended as a gesture of honor to their people. This had satisfied Pash, until he learned that L’entu had told Captain Vorn that he’d been held prisoner by Twi’lek slavers, and brainwashed so that he couldn’t remember his real name. Kallatherie wouldn’t even speak about what L’entu had told her. The bothan seemed to have an endless supply of lies for every occasion, and, more often than not, landed the team into bigger trouble than he was trying to connive his way out of. On top of it all, L’entu was a complete coward. Without fail, whenever the shooting started he would crawl under some table or behind some rock to hide.  Pash couldn’t completely despise the alien, however, as his bluffs did save the asses on more than one occasion... and no one in Kath Hound Company could patch up a blaster wound  better than L’entu.

Peering further around the room, Pash noticed that members were missing. “Now we only need Dasha and we can begin, ” Captain Vorn spoke as if reading Pash’s mind. “I’m here,” Dasha stepped out from the shadows behind L’entu, as if emerging from thin air. The bothan, startled, nearly leapt out of his seat “You KNOW I hate it when you do that.” Dasha Freestar chuckled in response and sat at the end of the table, across from Captain Vorn. Like Pash, and Captain Vorn for that matter, Dasha was human. She was the team’s “security specialist,” and there was almost no lock that could bar her from her prize. Apparently she used to be a Corellian Spy, though she never spoke about her background. Dasha was the kind of person who believed more in action than words- words gave away your position. She believed in being prepared, and Pash never ceased to wonder at how much gear she was able to fit in her pack. Pash was always happy to see her on a mission – it meant that there was good money to be made.

            

    Kallatherie bellowed a question, breaking Pash’s thoughts. Captain Vorn chuckled in response “Oh yes, I sent Dakson ahead with the Incom engineers. If anything happens to the escape pod, I want someone there who can handle repairing it under fire.” Dakson was the last member of the team and their mechanic.  Like Dasha, Dakson preferred action to words, though for a radically different reason. The Duro was not a people person, and could go days without human or alien contact entirely.  Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the few times he did speak were rather profound. He doubled as the team’s historian and yielded surprisingly insightful suggestions from his studies of past errors.

“Why don’t we just jump into hyperspace again?” L’entu whined , “all of this fighting has my fur standing on end.” Pash piped in “Too close to the planet-if we tried to jump, the gravity wells would rip the ship apart. Reinforcements should be here soon, so we just need to hold out for a while longer.” Captain Vorn cleared his throat, “Actually, that’s why I called you all here. I’ve just received word…there isn’t going to be any reinforcements.”