Space

[TRS-E113]

The quiet pinging of a proximity sensor, combined with a distinctly foreign signal blasting over the hull of the Ire, awoke Su Bae from his scheduled nap. It was one of his few remaining past times out in the dark of space, while waiting for a ship to arrive for retrieval. It allowed him to dream of better times, of what-ifs and could-have-beens, instead of dwelling on the fact that any ship liable to pick him up would likely be of Rakata origin. He wouldn't go down without a fight if it were them, though, it wouldn't be much of one.

 

He glanced down at the patched remains of his body, sustained only by the suit that wrapped around him like a pre-packaged snack. He still couldn't feel anything, but the suit was helping him move.

 

A muted flash on Su Bae's HUD brought up a summary of the frequency being shot at him, and he frowned in thought as he looked over the patterns. It didn't look like anything the Rakata had ever used, and in fact the message didn't sound like any recognizable language either. Not Rakata, Not Seoularian, Kwa, even Sharu Trammic. A slow flicking of a switch on the remains of his dashboard ignited the single remaining viewscreen in his crushed cockpit, and a few short commands put the interloper in question on screen.

 

A cursory examination found the craft to be vaguely Rakatan in shape, though the exact dimensions and technical specs were all wrong. It was too fragile looking, and just small in general. It was even alone, without any apparent room for cargo. It had to be some sort of short ranged scouting vessel then, only without any cloaking technology.

 

Su Bae hesitated as he thought over his options. They probably weren't Rakata, and he did need help, but they were a mystery bag full of unknown variables.

 

Slowly, he keyed his ship's emergency broadcast frequency to that of the unknown ship's. "Unknown spacecraft," he stated, "state your home port and allegiance."

With luck they would understand Seoularian, but he repeated the message in every language he knew just in case, with a burst of Trinary code afterwards to be safe.

[TRS-E113]

After sitting dormant for such a long time, nothing more than the shifting of the debris and empty space to keep him company, the distinct grinding of a failed airlock connection was enough to nearly deafen Su Bae. Nearly. He could still make out a faint rhythmic tapping echoing through his his ship's hull, distorted but vaguely recognizable as a chain of numbers sequenced in groups of five to eight.

 

The trapped captain looked down at the shredded harness covering his chest, only barely holding him in place after his cockpit was blown. His boarding equipment was still there, saber tucked between his rearward viewpanel and the loading ramp controls, and his projector was part of the seat he had rested in for so long. The power was all dried up, the crystal long since having been diverted to keep his suit in operation, but he knew where to get more. In the pre-deployment bay was an equipment locker with spare power crystals and other such equipment, if he could get to it. And he would need them if these interlopers turned out to be hostile, or part of the kin-eaters' meat locker of sentients.

 

Without wasting any more time Su Bae pulled himself out of his safety harness, and grabbed his saber as he hit the latch holding his pack to his seat. There was a quiet flicker and a grinding thunk as the maglocks disengaged, which allowed him to push himself out of the cockpit and into the navigator's cramped position. Space was at a premium in gunships such as these, as most of their bulk was taken up by munitions storage and weaponry, which meant that he had to squeeze by the frozen and cooked remains of his fellow officer on his way through the coridor. The secondary gunner's position wasn't much better, being little more than a hole in the floor with a targeting system built into one side.

 

The bulkhead separating the operating coridor from the living quarters and pre-deployment bay was sealed shut, unfortunately, and Su Bae doubted that he had the power on hand to force the maglocks to ovveride and disengage. Or the leverage to overpower the physical safeties keeping it shut, which would have engaged when the cockpit was blown. With little other option than to try to blast through his own ship with low power, the captain drifted back to his cockpit and took the plunge out into the void. The electromagnets on the bottoms of his boots flickered briefly before engaging and sticking him soundly to his derelict, allowing him to get his first real view of his unidentified ship.

 

The comparative smallness of the craft combined with the inherently fragile look didn't seem too encouraging, and neither did the general style and construction. The sunken ball of a main compartment with forward swept wings was far too reminiscent of the Rakata warships he was intimately familiar with engaging, even if it was far too small and delicate to serve amongst their naval forces. He also recognized the projectors mounted upon its wings, which meant that if they truly wanted they could probably tear he and his ship apart. Eventually at least, surely those dinky little cannons couldn't hold much firepower in them.

 

Without any further distractions, the trip to the nearest hull breach was quick and informative. He now knew the exact scale of the damage done to his craft, and that he likely had at least one raider on board his ship. A quick glance at the cable stretching into his hull from the other craft, and an accompanying appraisal of his saber, was enough to decide that he had about zero chance of effectively severing the connection. He could, however, go in and force melee combat upon them. No one would be stupid enough to try to use a projector on a gunship, after all, and all Seoularian naval captains were professionals when it came to dealing with boarders.

 

So, without fully knowing what to expect, Su Bae threw himself into the breach feet first, saber ready to slice, or at least beat at, whatever was insolent enough to try to come take his ship from him.

[TRS-E113]

The moment he had swung himself into the hull, Su Bae knew that he had a problem. For one, he had misjudged his weight and was moving much faster than he had intended to. And the moment he had crossed enough of an arch to shift his center of mass outwards, he could feel his own body shift down inside of his suit towards his legs, sending him careening into the floor and then tumbling listlessly towards the opposite end of the hull hole.

 

As he impacted against the wall and slowed to a halt the captain looked around and tried to ignore the sickening feeling of his own insides crawling back up to their proper places within his suit, filling in the chest cavity and reconnecting to his head and arms. There was... smoke, and some sort of armored humanoid. It wasn't moving, and it was missing an arm, but it didn't match any sort of entity that he knew of. Perhaps some other group of humans had been enslaved and influenced, or another race was captured and forced into servitude. Regardless of who or what they were though, they were trespassing, and given the lack of visible weaponry he assumed that he could still feasibly force them out of his ship.

 

He might even be able to force them to lead him back to their origin, so he could orient himself and do something about his ship. And also his apparently liquefied organs, which... he was still trying not to think about too hard.

 

A single line of commands opened up his external speakers and short range transmitters on all channels, broadcasting as clearly in Rakatan as he could, "You are trespassing aboard a ship of the Seoularian Navy, surrender your ship, your possessions, and your freedom. Whatever your Empire has promised to punish you with, I will guarantee protection from should you comply."

[TRS-E113]

Su Bae tilted his head while he further examined his stationary raider, and listened to the rather strange emissions coming from his internal speakers. A screen sitting on the top of his visor displayed the frequency shortly thereafter as his suit began to analyze the message, which was highly repetitive and seemed to just have two states. That was... strange. A binary message from Imperial slave-people? He supposed that they could have been so technologically inferior, given their situation with the Rakata, but it was still rather odd considering that the Seoularians had been using trinary for nearly their entire history. Surely others would have found and adapted to it as well, given its superiority.

 

While he sat and attempted recoding the message into an understandable language, or semblance thereof, the captain kept a close eye on his intruder. It hadn't yet moved from its position, seemingly content to just drift in place and play dead. Unfortunately the strange binary code didn't match up to any of his known language profiles, nor did it seem to match up with archived records of any. Without some sort of bridge to communicate over things were going to be a little rough, but not all hope was lost yet.

 

Hesitantly, he began to form a new broadcast. This time he decided against using any sort of real language, focusing instead on listing out a series of coordinates relevant to the Empire. Belsavis, the prison world, was first, followed shortly by Byss, Corellia, Dantooine, Dathomir, Notron, Duro, Hoth, Kashyyk, Tatooine, and finally, Lehon and Seoul 5 themselves. In some effort to indicate his place of origin Su Bae repeated the last set of coordinates, hoping to get the message across that Seoul 5 was his point of origin, but keeping his expectations low.

[TRS-E113]

Su Bai drew his saber up in alarm as the raider aboard his ship made his move, only to once againn be embraced by an overwhelming feeling of wrong as his insides split in half and conformed to the surface of the metal man's shoulders. The ineffective backup weapon did little to nothing as it flailed about wildly in his hand, held in place through the impact only because of the magnetic contacts hidden within his gloves. A note was made to replace the blade with a more functional model as available, in the back of his mind. Given the size of the list it ranked right behind 'report to the nearest medical station for immediate care' and just in front of 'repair the Ire and wreak havoc on the Rakata.'

 

One unconventional and particularly ungraceful exit later, and a metaphorical chill raced through the captain's theoretically-still-intact spine. The other ship was now facing his own, and more specifically, it was facing him and the raider. His focus stuck on the figure visible behind the cockpit window, another metallic pirate who was busy fiddling about with what appeared to be the controls. They seemed awkward about it however, in both the fluidity of their movements as well as their competence in actual piloting. It was almost like they were flailing about at the controls without any real idea of what did what, though surely that couldn't be the case. Perhaps something was wrong with them then, or maybe the one armed creature that he was still folded around was the actual pilot.

[TRS-E113]

Once lasers started flying, all of Su Bae's attention was drawn to the source of danger. They were a pretty poor shot, all things considered, but their fire was damaging his vessel and one of his only hopes at linking up with his kin. He barely registered the movement of the armored, one-armed man as they kicked themselves off of his still suspiciously liquidy suited self, his thought processing occupied with reaching for the projector hanging under his power pack. It took him a few moments to grab at it and to then wait for it to flicker to life, revealing that he had at best one or two shots before he was out of power, and at worst would blow himself up or shatter the power crystal sustaining himself.

 

It was a risky move, but he decided to take it anyways. If he did blow up, he would at least take his ship and one raider with him. The pilot primed his projector and prepared for firing. The projector hummed and the focusing crystal ignited with a bright light, before it unleashed a blue lance of power that pushed himself back towards the opening in his ship, and simultaneously managed to only barely rake across just one of the interceptor's wings, not doing much to actually damage it given the anemic state of the beam, but still exerting some amount of concussive force all the same.