Corban Wartide

Aryian's ship floats through space, guided by the force and whatever gods there may be...

Corban tried to sleep. Tried. He found he had a strange case of insomnia. He sat up on his wallbunk. His eye caught a glint from a sligtly ajar drawer on the other side of the room. Curious, Corban checked it out. What he found was a shock to him. It was a golden picture frame. It was the last flimsy picture Corban had of his brother, and he had always hated holographs he had? since when had he hated holographs...he used to watch holo movies with his mother every nght before he went to bed. This was weird. And then it hit him like a brick wall: Corban Wartide's mother had died shortly after he was born. If his mother couldn't have been there, then whose was it? He rushed to the refresher room, and looked into the mirror. This was the first time he had seen himself since he had left the bacta tank. He desperately needed a shave, but he wasn't looking at his chin. His eyes.......His eyes were blue. He slowly held the picture up. Corban's were a light shale grey. In fact, his facial features were radically different. The cheekbones were too high, and the jaw was more pronounced. The ears were also lower...Who was he? He looked like Corban Wartide, but he wasn't, he couldn't be. Impossible. And then he remembered his rescue by the spirit of the force. He had all but forgotten it by now, at least Corban's memory had. It said something like: "I will give you my gift, and I expect to use it well." Come to think of it, the spirit looked a lot like Corban except he had...blue eyes. This couldn't be happening. "Computer, deoxyribonucleic acid scan. Look for biotically engineering. Identify this body." The bone-chilling response came back in the singsong female computer voice. "Scan complete. Person identified as Aryian Darkfire. No traces of Biotical engineering found." Corban's heart sunk. When he was cloned, he was supposed to have biotic enhancements. These would include stronger muscles, faster brain patterns.....Aryian Darkfire...Wasn't that the new name he had chosen for himself? Unless- Corban hit the floor. A splitting headache bent the meaning of pain for Corban. It seemed like it lasted for eternity, pain, no, torture, until a loud alarm sounded twice. It stopped suddenly. Corban scrambled towards the cockpit, as those were the hyperdrive alarms.

Corban prepped the ship once he was inside. He would need to go back to coruscant and steal a ship, or some credits to buy a ship.......Hmmm. More memories flood his once thoughtless head. He almost absentmindedly hit three buttons on the main control board. One word came up: password. He thought, but couldn't seem to remember his password, it was just on the tip of his memory........Ronin. He keyed the word, no, not the word, his brother's name, and files came up. Corban scrolled through them, remembering what they were one by one. One in particular caught his eye though, and the file was titled Treasures of a Foolhardy World. Corban opened it quickly, and a backdoor link to the main banking network on Coruscant popped onto the computer screen. He had been good, very good. He wondered if it still worked. He transferred 25 million credits from random accounts into a master account. ....and then he thought better of it. This was not the style that was Corban Wartide. It was hard to remember who he was, what he did. He retransferred all the money back into the accounts, and then only took 200,00 credits, which he deposited into eighteen different accounts, all over coruscant. Finally, the file auto-erased his virtual footprints across Coruscant's electronic network. Alarms went off. Corban's hands flew, bringing up a manual hacking program. The alarms, his foggy memory reminded him, were to indicate that sensor sweeps had found something. The bank system would be alerted within one minute. Corban typed like he never typed before. Searching...searching...searching..FOUND! Corban found a backdoor trapweb designed to instantly trap info on random people and detach from the system. This was new stuff. He had never seen this stuff before. Before...when he was Corban, was he Corban?, There was nothing like this around. GOT TO THINK!!! Corban continued typing. The timer on the side counted down. 30 seconds. Corban typed. 23 seconds. every time he glanced, he typed faster. 11 seconds. 5. 4. 3. 2..........it stopped. the words RECORDS DELETED, TOP SCORE! appeared at the top of the screen. For a few minutes, Corban loathed himself. He had accidentally brought up a game. The alarms sounded only because of a slight problem with an engine subtemperature, he later found out, and that was normal, coming out of Hoth. Corban angled the ship for Coruscant, and stars strecthed into long, shiny lines. He got up, and went to his former personal quarters. He would try to sleep for the four hours it took to travel to Coruscant.

OOC: this is the almost uninhabitable south pole of hoth, void of any action, so do not reply to these posts. IC: From the shadows, a figure rises. Corban stepped out of the bacta container. He had crash landed his ship (or made it look like it, anyway), and re-wired his bacta tank to make him hibernate. His naked form stepped onto the cold deckplates, a red, sticky liquid dripping off his lithe body. He looked around for a moment, and then he breathed. Cold air stung his lungs. It had been too long for him, too long for any person. He was a traitor, and he had deserved to die, yet somehow he escaped onto this cursed planet. He had thrown off all allegiances, to the space pirates, to Black sun, and even to the Hutts. He was in a Hutt ship now, and he needed to return it, lest the Hutts would discover that he was still alive and come after him. Corban exhaled. The frosty mist slowly blew from the cold orifice he called his mouth. Thoughts started to come back to him, of before the hibernation. Of his friends, family, and even..... His brother. Corban wondered what happened to him. Was he dead? Truly dead, no clones, no genetic material to make clones? Of course there was. There was always the possibility....Clothes. He was getting rather cold, as the outside environment had rapidly altered the inside temperature, despite the insulation and occasional heating periods. Thoughts came back to him, and he reached for a drawer to his left. His normal clothes were in there, as well as a pair of his boots. Another drawer under it held his usual armament of grenades and custom blasters. Fully dressed in the dim emergency lights, he had a thought. his gruff voice came out, and he was suprised, as he had not used it in so long that he had become unaccustomed to it. "Computer, lights, and give me a temporal readout on the medbay main screen." Bright lights flared up, and corban remembered a critical part of why he was here. "Computer, is the electronic masking net still operational?" The feminine voice loaded, and then replied, "Affirmative." Good. The screen booted, and displayed current time. It had been a year or so since the hibernation, and Corban's betrayal. Corban was counting on people forgetting he even existed. The first stop on his next flight was an altering shop on coruscant. He was to get his face slightly altered, so people would not recognize him. He would get his retna's altered at the same place, and assume a different identity altogether. He already had a name in mind: Aryian Darkfire. It would be a sad day in hell before someone tracked him down again. He was a electronics expert, and trained as a mercenary. It was time. Corban walked towards the bridge.

Corban's alarms go off, and he was found out. Using a quick-slice technique, he got into the main computer core, the only undefended part of the whole ship. A small program was hidden there, with a stealth tag that would withstand even the heartiest of purges or scans. It automatically covered all its tracks. In fact, the only signal there was was a small light in the engine room blinked for a few seconds, and then turned back off to normal. Corban gunned the engines as he hit the switch that triggered the data transfer as per described above. He had prepared for such a moment, and was glad he had done so. He was just sad he had to hide a tracker on his own brother. The frequency was set to his own memory core, so only he would know where it was. He made a quick micro-jump, adusted, and made more microjumps in a large net around the ship, Well ouside even the most advanced sensor range, so that the ship would not be able to track Corban's. He made one more jump, leaving a buoy with a message, and then, traveling along one of his other projection lines, Shot off at highest speed towards hoth.

OOC: I was gonna leave shortly anyway.

A small ship, loaded to the brim with sensors, stops short of an Ion trail it was tracking, about 2000 km, well out of normal sensor range, but not out of enhanced sensors. Corban looked at the comm Piccolo had gave him. He was instructed to use this to contact him, so he could kill his brother. Corban was tempted, but only a second or two. He looked back at the sensor console readout, at the ship his brother was on. It was a good ship. Modified with weapons and maneuverability only the most powerful could dream of. It was a fairly large ship, too, heavily armored and it looked like it could hold a crew. This is a battleship......I wonder what Ronin is up to. Aahhh! If I'm ever gonna get my brother back, I'm gonna have to do something........The fleet! I could build him another base, and assemble a fleet with ships.........Hmmmmm...... The ship hangs dead in space, and then it slowly backs off. Back in his ship, Ronin gets a brief thought of his brother, at first it was of love then it turned to hatred. He wondered why he was thinking of his brother

Not finding anything but a trail at Coruscant, Corban's ship pulls out of hyperspace almost in exact orbit around the isolated planet of Correlia. Scanning for traces of Ronin, Corban finds a ship that Ronin used to get here, Public Transportation. This is where itt got tricky. Corban did a backscan through all the central computers in all the transportation facilities located near the Last Call on Coruscant, and found a match for Ronin. Following the ship he presumed was the one he got on, the closest one Ronin was near, he got the Ion trail that led to Correlia. Sure enough, when the hack was set up, Ronin had been here too. In fact, there was a very clear trail to an alleyway, and then it cut off, like he was never there. Corban landed the ship at the nearest docking bay, paid the fee, and then went to the alleyway where it had cut off. He found nothing and was about to go back to his ship when he noticed a section missing from a city sewer grate. Crawling inside, he stifled a gasp, and then wept, for there was the body of his brother. After what seemed like eternity, he remembered his equipment, and began scanning the body. What he found was amazing. Not a few hours ago, another Ronin was standing here, and not a few weeks ago, this Ronin had been slain. So he had been cloned.....I knew it! He followed the genetic trail to a small, tubelike opening that revealed a boxlike room, which looked like it was meant to be a hangar. Corban's equipment immediately picked up sublight engine residue on the walls, and it was recent. Corban had found his brother. -----------------Later-------------------- Corban boards his ship with the new infrmation, and finds the Ion trail once in space. He shoots off to wherever it leads.

A seemingly sad ship shoots to coruscant again.

Stopping at a secret pirate rendezvous, corban reminices for a few moments, and then remembers his other mission: to find Rane Scando. Corban almost hits himself. He was probably back by now. The lone ship blasted to Tattoine.

Corban's ship burst out of hyperspace just before skimming the surface of the atmosphere. He had found out the hard way that the tracking systemas had to be shut down in order for the hyperdrive to have enough power to generate an exit window out of hyperspace. After a few minutes of sweating, he finally turned back on the tracking systems, and they immediately showed three ships or so(the system was a slightly older model) Blasted off in the vicinity of coruscant or dagobah. Due to the high concentration of ions that the hyperdrives left( the only way to prevent these is with a special type of filter) they left not too long ago, say a few days. The other ions were too old to be of any significance. Well, Coruscant would be a b**** to search, but Dagobah is hardly habitable, so I guess I go to coruscant next. The ship took off again, opening a hyperspace window and leaving the system.

A lone ship goes flying through space, sensors on full trakcking mode. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not an hour later, the same ship flies towards Coruscant.

Better than having my char locked up in the spice mines for something I diddn't even do!!! Besides, right now, I had nothing to do with the hutts, so I have a justifiable reason for trying to get out. *Unlike Ronin* *cough, cough* I'm taking this to PM...........

Anything you don't understand? We can call in a mod if you wish.......

Corban wakes up in his cell, a strange buzzing feeling running around his head. He looks around, and the walls are made of plasteel and the door cannot be found, its hinges buried against the walls.........He falls asleep again, to nightmares and the sort. ___________________________________________________ Later....... Corban gets up and rams his head into the walls, guards come but they are too late, young Corban has commited suicide........ The last thing that Corban sees is a blue image of himself that says,"It is not your time. Come." Corban follows towards the light............ ((See ya in three days, suckas!!!! ))

OOC: hey, guys, this may be my last post. I am fighting a losing battle of the bans, so if this is, to all who have been affected by my life, I am truly sorry . Coconuts forever, and may Dalla Suul (and aliases) post again. Kudos to the wingman, peace out. IC: Corban comms the others, "Fuzzy's ship is a little slow. I forgot about the space armor, it should be adequate. I have a direct link with the security systems, and the creatures are located on the south side of the station. Get in, shut the oxygen off, and relax. we'll have to wait for Ronin."

Corban waits until they are all here, and then uploads an image to them. "This is the main control room, the heart of the beast. Fortunately for us, this is an older design model, so it will be closer to the surface. All you have to do is get here, " The image changes, "And turn off these three switches. Leave the last one off, though, because it controls the air inside the control room. It is fairly large, so you should be sustained for quite some time. I have detected some life form onboard, a small, furry species. They may look cute, but they are carniverous, so shoot one on site. Land here," The image changes again," and walk three hundred meters to this point. Fuzzy has some explosives, use them on the door panel, small ones only, mind you, dont destroy the door. you should make two lefts, and then a right. As I said before, I will hack in and maintain constant observation on you in case something goes wrong, and then maybe I could help out. I doubt that will happen, though, so ease up. That is the end of this briefing, so MOVE OUT!" Corban gets a direct hack to the station, in charge of all but the main systems, including control of the internal/external defense systems.

CXorban appears out of hyperspace about 500,000 mi. from the asteroid, the perfect distance to pull a quick bio-scan. He did so. OOC: all rest of pirates post here concerning this, There will be no thread for this, so just post here..........

OOC: Tristin read my last post in space pirates, it is extremely important.

OOC: wrong alias, but who cares? I have little time. IC:Dalla's ship locks on, slaves to Tristin's ship, and exits in a tight formation, just as he had specified, wioth dalla's ship below and to the right, yet slightly forward so he would be in a good defensive position should they get attacked.

Corban picks up and sends moon: "Are you asking me? If so I'll just meet you there, above coruscanti space. I Don't want anybody tracking us yet........ Hey! Race you there ....." Corbans Ship ripps off from where it was and goes to hyperspace a few seconds later, Moon Knight's ship closely following.

"Naw, I just like to know who I'm working with. You mentioned Luthis? He was there when I accepted the job from Ronin...... Did they get him? I thought we were waiting for him. Clones freak me out. But I can learn to live with it....... If Ronin doesn't do something soon, I'm gonna do something myself, maybe scout out tattooine, see if they've figured you've betrayed them, Idiots....."

Corban suddenly noticed this maddening fact, not that they had gotten to him, Ronin's ship was just fifteen meteres off his stern, but that he had done nothing in the past three hours, that was just not him. Corban raced to the terminal, not bothering to swat the comm back off, and Moon Knight heard his feet clatter against the metal grating. C'mon........Boot you damn thing!!!! There we go......Scans....Bio-scan....23.3 by 87...-Corban looks up at his readouts for a second-...87.6 . C'mon, you daft instrument(I will not repeat what he actually said)!!! Ok, results............... Corban finally relaxed. A nap. Ronin was taking a nap. In his personal quarters. Corban felt very stupid right now, and yet he was supposed to be the top hacker on all of coruscant.......He actually wondered how he lived up to it......... He walked back over to the comm, and told moon knight,"He's just taking a nap, we better leave him alone....... So, is there anything you Can talk about your past? I could........I could hook up a game of pong between us........" Corban sounded maddeningly calm for the panic attack that happened just seconds ago.

OOC I diddn't actually tell you about the flagship, but why not? I'll talk... IC: Corban listened to the silence that was moon knight. After a few good seconds, he spoke again,"Naw, I was thinking upwards of larger and more terrifying. A decommissioned star destroyer would do perfectly, but their prices are absurd........There is the assault frigate, that would do well, but pricey to modify..."*Thinks to himself*"....I could do it myself, but that would take days((Real time))...... And now that I think about it, a dreadnaught wouldnt be too bad either, only they move waaaay too slow, and their weapons systems lack, I think I'm leaning towards the assault frigate, perfect size, with an overly large docking bay, and fully loaded, can take on two star destroyers..........." Thinks to himself, happily..........

OOC: you mean you commed me(on private channel), we undocked, remember? IC: Corban batted the comm switch, thought for a half second, and replied: "Oh, I dunno. Ronin's plan I guess. I am a pretty good strategist myself, got it from my mother. She once fended off three hostile ships in deep-space, vaped two of them, but that's just an old smuggler story. You know somethin? My dad smuggled in a secret compartment that my mom knew nothing about, he told us, we squealed one day, but mom kept shipping, she knew and never told dad............" Corban fiddles with the piloting joystick, or rather, one of them. "Yeah......good old dad. I guess I'm just waiting for Ronin to do something((like get us a flagship so I can pilot it )) , I've never waited so long doing nothing............ So what are you doing? Where did you come from?"