A New Threat

Now that we were back at our farmstead we needed to figure out what to do next. I had some armoured hide from the beast that we hunted and I decided to make some armour out of it, which took a bit but I was successful. Then I had to go back to the Rangers, so I was busy during the rest of the month. In the meantime the others tried to find the pirate’s moon base with the jumpmaster. It was successful, only having to make two trips before finding it.

The only notable thing that happened was near the end of the month. During my sweep near the ocean, there was a disturbance out on the water, I took a closer look and saw a pirate ship! There was a giant sea monster trying to pull it under the water and the ship was fighting back. The pirate ship was about to break free, but luckily we had brought the rocket launcher so I set up with my rangers who helped me with the trajectory. I fired the missile taking out their engine and the ship collapsed on top of the sea monster that pulled the ship underwater removing it from view.

Varad had made a profitable business venture with Captain Vu, which got him enough money to buy a proper cybernetic arm which was nice, especially if we were going to pretend to be pirates.

This brings us to the plan that Varad devised. Arron, my ranger group and I were sent to dive looking for the pirate shipwreck that I had caused earlier while Jern finished working on all of our custom grips. Varad wanted to go to the council to get a couple of favours from them including some form of explosives and a seat on the council so that we would be informed of any events much faster.

The shipwreck wasn’t hard to find after organising into a search pattern, efficiently searching the ocean floor. I sent Al, who had some mechanic training, to find and extract the transponder while I searched for bodies with the others. I found one body with an important looking badge that probably belonged to a higher ranking commander and decided to take it for Varad. We also found a couple of hats.

We got disguise kits from a travelling band of actors so that we could blend in with the pirates much easier. Luckily one of the drowned pirates was a mon calamari so I didn’t have to disguise myself much. Jern on the other hand, had to make sure that no one saw that he was a kel dor as there weren’t any pirates like him.

Now it was time to head out to the pirates' lair. The four of us and my rangers would fly to the base on the pirate ship that we captured at the ECC’s homestead, and pretend that we were pirates. Then Ares was going to fly out with the Jumpmaster and hide in the forest as a backup getaway plan, and help out with any hacking needed.

The first part of the plan went perfectly, when the pirates asked the code phrase Varad immediately made the proper reply and we landed smoothly. The pirates asked us what our cargo was and Varad straight up said that we had explosives. It worked when he said that we stole it from Avaron and they let us in without even searching us.

We went to the crew quarters and Jern saw that there was a private computer terminal that wasn’t being used at the moment, so we began the plan. Jern attempted to access the terminal to find a simple schematic of the base so we could find where the power core and where the prisoners were.

Then, one of the higher ranked pirates came up to Varad and asked him to make a speech about our adventures. Soon more and more of them were demanding a speech and Varad was forced to think of something.

Varad made up a story about how we raided an Avaron mine and the pirates were loving it. Everyone was sucked into the tale and Varad subtly signalled for us to get the explosives. I quickly grabbed the explosives with Arron and we went back into the mess hall to get past the pirates while they were distracted.

When we got back to sneak through the hall they were all shouting about cheese, I have no idea why, but they were distracted for long enough so we easily snuck past into the next room. For some reason they put the power core right next to the mess hall so we had to hide the explosives to make sure no one would stumble into them.

Jern hadn’t gotten us any schematics yet so I relied on my cunning and natural streetwise to lead us through the base. We placed charges throughout the base at strategic locations sneaking past any pirates, we weren’t spotted. Then we snuck outside and rigged their fighters to blow so that they can’t follow us and finally, we rigged the massive ion cannon so they couldn’t harm us with that either.

Just after we finished we were called by Varad to make an exit out the back as Jern still hadn’t found any schematics so he didn’t know where any secondary exits were. We headed to the back, placed the charges, took cover and set them off.

The explosion rocked the base and there was now a hole at the back ready for Varad to escape with the ECC. He scrambled through the opening with the five chiss close behind. Then I saw the starship. It was an extremely tall and thin ship attempting to land next to the base but suddenly, one of its engines stopped working and it began to tilt to the side and the pilot seemed to be having a hard time trying to land it.

Then, it started lilting toward our stolen ship! Jern dashed out with my rangers close behind. When the two ships collided a couple pieces of scrap flew out and hit the rangers wounding them. They jumped on some speeders and took off towards us before the massive ship could properly land.

When Jern made it to us he asked Varad, “I think that ship is from the Crimson dawn, have you heard of them?”

Varad confirmed that it was the Crimson Dawns capitol ship, First Light. Then we realised that Adi wasn’t with us. After Jern rigged up a tracker we found that Adi was trying to get on board the flag ship. Varad was panicking and said that we had to leave because the Crimson Dawn were some nasty people. Then he said something about Adi being force sensitive which was strange, he was probably just panicking, but maybe he had some reasons to back it up. I couldn’t think about it for long as Arron was going to try to get Adi back before she could get into trouble and I thought I should go along with him.

The capitol ship had landed and there was an ominous woman who was probably the leader of the Crimson Dawn walking down the ramp. Arron commed Adi and told her to get away from the ship but the noise alerted the leader who started to investigate where the noise had come from.

I had to get their attention away from Adi so I quickly aimed my rifle at the leader and fired straight at her head. It was a perfect shot but at the last moment one of her droid bodyguards somehow stepped in front of my shot at the last moment. It’s head flew off with the power of my blow. This startled the leader who immediately got back on the ship and closed the ramp starting to take off with Adi inside.

Now we can only hope that Adi can stay hidden until we find a way to help her.