As everything around Mandall goes to shit, he quietly focusses his attention on the sliding X-Wing.
(OOC: AMP Factor! /obscure reference)
The giant hunk of metal gains on Mandall with a loud screech, but if anyone was there to watch it, they'd see him rapidly count off numbers under his breath.
Finally, Mandall jumps.
If he did the math right, this'll look pretty fucking awesome - if he's off, he'll slam into the wing and bounce off into space with cracked ribs.
Standing near the Dagger, at least hopefully out of the oncoming fighter, Aurelia scrambles up the side of the ship, attaching the safety line on her belt (after one too many falls from the topside of that damnd ship) to a hard point, tearing into an external access panel.
I put an emergency respirator in here somewhere. Spanner - no, I don't even know what that is... She digs furiously into the compartment.
Aurelia nearly passes out as she's buffeted by a whirlwind of spare hull plating, flying out the hangar like razor-edged butterflies. She manages to yank the emergency lever and gasps for the exterior respirator cache on the Dagger. One of the heavier ships, the frieghter remains motionless in the chaos.
The screaming of landing skids on deckplates has changed into a rumble Mandall can feel through his boots. He gauges, steps twice, and leaps for Cat's runaway X-Wing! The maverick pilot hits the fuselage hard, precious air escaping his lungs before his respirator kicks in. Mandall's got a hold of the X-Wing's upper engine, but the fighter caroms off a gantry and starts a slow spin, pressing Mandall to the wing surface.
Ty slides under the X-Wing and runs against the hurricane-force winds to the emergency shield generator. He hangs on for dear life while he tries to hotwire some sort of cutoff switch to stop the hemmoraging.
Jorm, Calsera, and Ganet have all managed to wedge themselves behind bulkheads or the landing struts of the larger spacecraft. Ganet's got the deck chief, who was knocked unconscious by a power droid on its way out.
MDK-911 latches his heavy metal mitts into the deck and just stands there - until Eritram tumbles into him! The droid and noble look doomed until "Murdoch" plunges his hand into some running lights, finding purchase in the damaged fixture. Eritram hangs onto MDK, praying his respirator doesn't fly off. With blurry, wet eyes, he snaps his blaster up, takes aim, and blasts the door controls for the interior hangar access. With a grinding that's more felt than heard, silver blast doors close, sealing the hangar off from the rest of the Sword. The wind immediately dies down to a light breeze and maybe twelve or thirteen crew start suffocating, their lungs no match for the greedy void. There's frost forming on Ty's gloves as he throws the access panel open and tries to bring back the hangar shields.
Mandall, riding Calsera's X-Wing like a pony, exits stage left. With the atmosphere cut off, he's managed to clamber inside the cockpit and slam the canopy closed. The recycled air, so much stale bread at any other time, tastes like ambrosia. Mandall brings the fighter under control, hovering just outside the Sword. An unlucky technician bounces off the windshield, one hand grasping for purchase as the other hand fumbles in vain for a respirator that's not there.
Eritram's shaken up but pleased with his aim when he notices a faint jet of air spurting out of his sleeve. His left arm feels colder than his right, goosebump chill quickly turning into freezing numbness. He probably cut his suit on the droid during their tumble...
Ty grabs a damaged power droid, his manic need for speed belied by the comical microgravity shuffle of his movements. Without pause or apology, he rams the droid's feeds into the emergency generators and the faint blue glow of salvation flows over the gaping hangar bay.
Mandall flicks the scanners to maximum gain, trying to locate anyone who's been blown out the airlock. Once he finds lifesigns, he'll (very gently) fly towards them, switch his helmet to direct supply from the X-Wing and open the canopy to haul the bodies in. After that, he'll head back for the Sword and radio for them to open up an undamaged launch bay.
With any luck, the poor bastards who flew out managed to remember that they shouldn't hold their breath and can be revived with some CPR; if not - well, atleast they'll be able to give the bodies a proper burial.
Giving the tether plenty of slack - figuring she'll just cut it when its time - Aurelia makes her way to access ramp of the Dagger. It may very well be time to play field hospital.
Mandall recovers two crewmen out of the dozen or so who went spacewalking. His X-Wing touches down and Aurelia immediately takes over, laying them out on bunks inside the Dagger. One of the survivors, a sandy-haired human male, is a mess. His breathing's shallow and painful, his damaged lungs rustling like paper. Freeze-dried blood cakes his face. It's gruesome, but Aurelia sees that he, like her, is a born spacer. There are things you just know how to do when you grow up in and around starships, and handling impromptu decompression is like knowing the Heimlich maneuver. He'll live. The second survivor, a Mon Calamari engineer, was able to strap his respirator on in time, but the aqueous covering his skin has been destroyed by outer space. He's in shock despite his less-than-lethal injuries. Aurelia wets a passel of blankets and drapes them over the shaking Mon Cal.
The Vandals manage to re-wire the inner blast doors around Eritram's blaster work. They creak open, admitting a team of engineers, mechanics, and medics, all wearing piercing-orange spacesuits. With Ty and Jorm's help, the hull is patched before the power droid conks out. Emergency power's routed to the hangar and full-strength atmosphere shields flash into place. The worst is over.
Mandall watches the rescue ops with dread. He could only grab two of the techs, and those were the ones he could find quickly. Even if he launched now, he could only recover corpses.
Dammit. Mandall hopes that they all exhaled, even if they couldn't be rescued in time for CPR - it's a quicker, less painful death.
The sight of the med techs jerks him out of his introspection as he takes in the surrounding.
Vandals check, craft secure, casualties are being tended to...we're good.
He wordlessly bangs his fist against the X-Wing, then climbs down and walks over to Jorm.
"I'm no good here, but if you don't mind, I'll piss off to another hangar and do a recovery op for the bodies. Bad enough that the poor guys died out there, I don't want them floating around as flash-dried corpses if I can help it."
After checking to ensure everything is secured, for the moment, Ty gives the situation a glance. It's suprising how fast even the most peaceful of people can become accoustomed to death surrounding them.
Mandall gets the go-ahead to help with the recovery of the unfortunate souls who lost their lives to the black and takes off in his X-Wing once again. Ten sentients are shuttled in and taken to the medical wing for last-ditch efforts to resuscitate them, but it's too late for all but the first two Mandall was able to rescue, who are still recovering in the Dagger.
The next few hours are spent in contemplation, mindless routine, and investigation. Services are marked for t-minus 12 hours, but it doesn't look like the Vandals will be attending - an emergency briefing comes across the comms and in a matter of minutes 11th Wing is sitting in the Sword's tired grey briefing room, the holotransmitter tuned to astrogational charts of Nar Shaddaa and its parent planet Nal Hutta.
Captain Kolit and a Mon Calamari 1st Lieutenant enter the room. His insignia reads Maso. It's hard to get an idea of a Mon Cal's mood, but it's clear Kolit is unhappy.
"You are to be commended on the recovery of 52 refugees from the Pelagus convoy," Kolit begins. "In hindsight, it is perhaps lucky that their transport was damaged so severely, else the crew might have rigged their human cargo as they rigged the weapons and equipment. 11th Wing's duties this cycle were previously going to entail training missions with 12th Wing's new members. Naval crew will be handling those duties. Your mission is simple."
Kolit keys in a command and the holograph pinpoints a two-hundred story city block on Nar Shaddaa. "As you have confirmed, Naga the Hutt, whose convoy we took and whose reputation with the Empire is hopefully being tarnished as we speak, runs slaves out of Nar Shaddaa. Command's original goals outline a gradual discrediting of the slug's power base, implanting agents within his organization, and turning his infrastructure against him and ultimately against the Empire. Today's events have expedited Alliance action."
"Stop Naga's slave trade and remove the threat his organization presents to the well-being of our New Republic. Questions?"
The incident in the hangar bay resolves into a long day of grim, tiring work. Everyone pitches in clearing rubble, fixing what was damaged, and caring for the injured and dead.
By time the briefing comes around, Cat is well past time for a nap. Her eyes droop tiredly as Kolit and the Lieutenant present the revised plan for the Vandals' retribution on the Hutts.
"Yes sir," Calsera replies. "Two, actually. First, clearly plans have been in place for a while to deal with Naga. Can we get copies of whatever intelligence has been gathered regarding him and his organization?
"Also, how direct are we allowed to be? For example, if that building is his headquarters, how much trouble would we get in for flattening it with torpedos?"
Lt. Maso takes Calsera's questions. His stringy stubble is kept to mere nubs, and his voice lacks the rasp of older Calamari. "What we know of Naga's organization is detailed in these records." He hands out a set of datapads for you to look at. "We place him in a position of 'underboss' in the grand scheme of Hutt crime. Like a planetary governor, just under a Moff, to use Imperial terminology. He is paranoid and careful - his palace is heavily guarded and he personally knows all his retinue. He has holdings on Nar Shaddaa, Nal Hutta, Utapau, and a small vacation home on Tatooine. The good news - our intelligence indicates that you took care of a good quarter of his private craft in your raid on Pelagus. He will no doubt hire more freelance pilots until he can rebuild his smuggling fleet, but know that you have already harmed him financially. Naga's position is highly sought after, hence his paranoia. Simply terminating Naga is not enough. If we wanted to remove him, a pinpoint torpedo strike or sniper team would do the job well enough. We need to either destroy his infrastructure - accounts, holdings, allies, heirs - or ensure that his replacement is more amenable towards the Alliance."
"If I haven't already answered your second question, let me add that we would appreciate it if you kept casualties amongst uninvolved parties to a minimum. If you can confirm that your actions will accomplish your mission, then that is an acceptable level of force."
Ty glances once more at the projection, does some quick mental population calculations, and is staggered by the result. "Depends. What kind of trouble? That segment there probably holds hundreds, maybe even thousands of sentients, a good many of them unarmed civillians, or at least non-combatants. Are their lives an acceptable cost? If I were a Hutt, I'd build my stronghold in such a way that such a bombardment would take out a populated zone. There was a smaller Imperial attack I heard about a while ago to drive out a small group of Rebels, and it caused four seperate levels to collapse..." Ty falters in his rant, thinking of his hometown, then continues, "Anyway, we don't know how autonomous his lower organization is. It's possible if we lop off the head of the Hydra, it'll just grow a new one."
"I don't get the reference," replies Lt. Maso, "but if you're unhappy about it, you just let the slug keep on running slaves and spice and Force-knows-what-else for the Empire."
"Hey, if it's about kicking some Hutt ass, I'm a 100% behind it. The part about what we do with the organisation when we're done with decimating their leadership has me worried..."
"Don't get me wrong, I wasn't necessarily advocating such and approach. I just wanted to get a feel for the boundaries," Calsera says. "Personally, I think something a bit more surgical is called for.
"I think the real question is whether top-down or bottom-up is a better approach? Either way, it's likely to take a long time to work our way through all the branches of his various enterprises."
Cat spends some time going through the info on the datapad. In particular, she's looking to see how many tentacles have been identified and who the key people in each are.
Ty thinks for a second. "Not necesarily. He's going to be hiring freelancers, remember? And he's going to be doing it like any good buisiness person, best quality for the lowest price, but he'll be rushed, going faster than normal. If a pair of freighter crews, and a few escort pilots were to apply at bargain basement prices, I think he'd snap them up a quick as he could. All we'd need would be a pair of bulk haulers. The Dagger and the the Echo aren't bad ships for what they do, but we need more cargo space." He turns to the Mon Cal. "Any chances of getting our hands on a few things? Background stories, papers, a couple bulk freighters, and a few inconspicuos fighters?"
Gatac
