Corsair

[urukhai]

Sarin double-timed it to the bay as he heard the order ring out on the intercom. As he strapped himself into the Grasshopper he rechecked his mask and that he could deploy his blade with minimal damage to his clothing. Satisfied he settled into his seat he ran over a few of the archaic cures he had studied from the archives, hoping the doctor would be able to fill in some of the gaps in his limited knowledge if need be

[GreenGoat]

She really couldn't worry about the insect outside the door in the passenger room for the next few minutes. One moment she was in the dark room and then she was out in space, thrown out by the malfunction. To make things worse, there was those ships they had dodged and now they were firing on the pod!

Sxle sat in the pilot's seat, and started pushing random buttons. The pod started to spin as it headed to the planet, chased by Zikaren fire.

***

They crash landed somewhere in a forest, the native birds squawking loudly in surprise as the flaming pod crashed spectacularly. With the inside burning, Sxle quickly disabled everything in the ship that can be tracked. She checked herself as well, though she wasn't carrying anything that can be traced. Quickly she scampered out of the ship, as the flames started to get hotter. She was sure the pod could have been destroyed in one shot, but the zikaren seemed to be making a show of it, though they managed to damage the pod. To ensure they can't escape probably.

On the way down she had only manage to make the pod do spiral left or curve up. With only those moves available( the rest of the terminal was scorched) she had managed to get the pod down in one piece. Mostly. As she stood outside the burning pod, she wondered how much of it was pure dumb luck.

Sxle adjusted the backpack she always carried, now looking like a simple native leather backpack. She didn't really know what to bring so she had brought the small reactor along with her. She can't power the Heat Wave herself.

She stiffenned as she remembered about the insect. Where was it? Plotting to kill her? But if it wanted that it could have done it in the shuttle. She could eat it, but Captain said not to harm it yet. Should she take care of it? Perhaps she should. The captain was letting it live for a reason. It may even grow huge while remaining perfectly docile, like those bugs they farmed in Vander. But she needed to go far from here fast. If what she was thinking was right, they meant to capture her alive.

"Uhm... Bug thing? Are you out there?"

[WittyReference]

Still staring forlornly through the force field, Jabber set again to pacing the floor; the steady clink of his multitudinous teeth once again filling the silence of his enclosure. It was nothing new to him, the syndicate would often go weeks without disturbing him until they needed a captive either interrogated or 'disposed of', mostly both. Scanning the room in which he found himself, Jabber took stock of what were his quarters for the time being.

The roof was relatively high for a ship, maybe two meters, the ceiling itself looked to be metallic which was far from surprising. Along the perimeter stood several plasteel lockers containing discarded jumpsuits and the like. Of interest was a neatly folded though scorched suit. It was small, feminine by the looks of it...

"Lisa."
"I'm curious."
"What happened to your Dad's old crew?"

[pyrak]

Having finished killing the bandits that had been pestering the village enough for the villagers to agree on paying a merc a decent amount of gold Antrana decided to take up the offer. Put the bandits heads into a sack which she had brought for that purpose she cleaned of her weapons and placed them back in there proper places, she pulled out another sack and than looted there lair. There wasn't much but it was more than the villagers had offered so she could hide it on her flying iron boat and have more than twice what the villagers originally payed her. walking out of there den she looked up to the night sky the stars glowed brighter this night than usual as she stood there a for a bit she noticed that there was a falling star coming her direction. It crashed into the forest only a few dozen meters off from where she was, quickly hiding the sacks about halfway in between the star and the lair she quietly shifted over to the area in the forest where it had landed, she found an easy spot to hide and watched it patiently to see if something would come to it or come out of it for it looked like the description of a device which a bard had apparently seen a few years ago. Seeing someone clime out of it she was so existed that she nearly exposed herself but the stranger never noticed her, she waited for the stranger to move away from its sky boat which was smaller than hers and oddviusly ruined.

[Hikari Sama]

Michi had already been on her way to the Grasshopper when the anouncement was made that two of the crew had left the ship and they would be heading out immediately. She started to sprint to the bay and was cut off by several other crew members. She was thankful that the Launch Bay was close to the Med Bay since she was not the most physically fit member of the crew. Once aboard she strapped herself in to one of the passenger seats, it was clearly designed for combat personnel and was terribly uncomfortable but efficient in it's design. "I'm starting to think we might need a few more medical personnel, considering that we are almost always in some kind of danger."

[Holeypaladin]

"I could use a combat medic," said Drake with a shrug in response to the doc's comment, "We can train you up for that task, if you want. Get you out of the med bay some, at least. Anyway, it may be a rough ride, we're going to need to go full thrust."

He waited until all crew members were aboard the Grasshopper, before launching the vessel into space.

Immediately, he had the stealth systems up and running, glancing to Ran, "You can go through the tutorials if you like," he said, "Or just assume copilot controls, it doesn't matter. This won't be a long trip."

Engaging the gravity drive at full power, he accelerated at a massive hundred gravity pace, the effect damplified but not completely nullified, so a good deal of force could be felt by the passengers of the vessel as it sped in pursuit of the pod.

He noted two Zikaren interceptors locking on to the pod, and activated the grasshopper's weapon systems. The Zikarens missed their first couple shots, but made themselves easy target for Drake's light antiparticle cannons, which blasted them out of existence to allow the pod to safely crash-land on the planet.

"Just saved her life twice," muttered the privateer. "She owes me twice over."

He had to break off pursuit of the escape pod as three more interceptors were sighted on sensors, moving into position to lock onto the pod. Flipping the landing craft over, Drake pointed the nose of the Grasshopper at the fighters, shooting once, twice... two targets down. The third was making evasive maneuvers and returning fire.

Drake dodged some fire himself, but didn't really have to, as the fighter was incapable of doing much damage due to its inferior size. A short time later, he was able to lock on and blast it out of existence.

"Targets destroyed.." said Drake. "Sxle's pod managed to land... but we lost track of exactly where it landed as she has disassembled the IFF mechanism. So we're going to have to land in the rough vicinity of the crash site and search on foot... using this vessel in the atmosphere is a clear violation of the second galactic law."

He took the Grasshopper under stealth into the atmosphere of Kolan III. Within the atmosphere itself, the grasshopper was virtually undetectable by normal means, and completely invisible to the naked eye, so he was able to find a small cave at the edge of a lake near a town. Thankfully, it was in the same general vicinity of the ancient city in which his objective would supposedly be found. "Lisa must have at least managed to alter the trajectory of the pods to land near this so called City of the Dead prior to its launch," said Drake to the landing team. "We should be grateful. It'll save us a lot of travel time. Anyway, we've landed. Hope that little dogfight didn't bang y'all up too badly."

He opened the airlock and stepped out of the grasshopper, securing his two swords to his sides. "The nearest town is about a three-hour march. So it'll take about a half day at Michi's pace to get there." He was calculating the added affect of the doctor's less than soldierly shape, "We should ask around town about any falling star sightings, that'll help us find Sxle and Scree."

---

"Last crew?" Lisa said, appearing in front of the G'lp. "Let's see... well, Daddy has had many crew members come and go. Some have died in battle, others have just gone their separate ways after various expeditions... well, this one time, before I was born, he had a bunch of crew guys join up with Jack Jaimeson's pirate gang... so Daddy killed them all. But that was a really long time ago!"

She thought to herself, "Mostly, they just go their separate ways. Or die. A lot of people die in this line of work. Why do you ask?"

[Bainshie]

The slow click as the door locked behind him caused Scree to turn away from the feline and rush back towards the entrance, desperately trying to open the door, banging forlornly and desperately against the metal. Fire or no fire, he did not want to be trapped alone with the crazy cat lady.

This issue however was made irrelevant as the world around him began to spin rapidly and the escape pod caught on fire and began to spin out of control towards the surface of the planet. The driver was securely fastened to her seat, however the Anarti didn't have that luxury as they made their untimely landing, leaving Scree battered bruised and dizzy as he clawed his way out of the burning wreckage, landing on the ground with thud.

"Ugggg, that was so much fun... lets never do that again.".

He heard the feline shout out, this causing him to quickly get back to his feet as much as the still spinning world would let him, backing away slowly with both hands up, clear worry in his voice as he addressed his unintended pilot. "OK! Ok! I'm not touching! Don't do anything crazy! No petting!" Scree paused for a moment, staring at the feline with look of confusion. "How did you learn my language so quickly? That's remarkably fast... How did you do that?" He looked around, no longer in space but a planet's surface that looked vaguely familiar to his own. although slightly colder. "Where are we?"

[Kangaroo]

It'd been a hell of a rush but he'd managed to make it to the landing craft just in time for them to descend to the moon,making out some enemy craft on the way. When they finally managed to land, Drake was the first out of the airlock and Turok followed him straight out, eager to stretch his new knee and test it out. When he talked of walking to the next town to hear rumours he piped up saying "Is there no way of scanning the planets surface using either the Grasshopper or the ship? Although we're stuck in a medieval world we don't have to do everything the medieval way."

[GreenGoat]

She hissed as the insect started to speak. Sxle tensed, ready for any move it might make, but relaxed as it seemed not to want to hurt her. All the better to keep it as an emergency food supply.

She stood straight, her ears pricking up, and remained still for a moment.

"Follow me. The captain wants you alive. Capilanis ni ordo."

With that, she scampered towards the forest on all fours. She didn't feel safe in the open, especially on another planet she had no knowledge about. There could be larger versions of the hunter bug here! Or some bizarre multi limbed creature that isn't picky about what it eats. ANd to top it all off, there was some enemy race up there, who would no doubt be searching for occupants of the downed pod. She did try to take precautions however.

There was a dull boom in the distance, as the pod exploded.

That should be enough to make them think the pod crashed and exploded upon landing. Maybe. But she had bigger problems.

She had arrived at a crossroad it seems. There were creatures there walking past, some of them using some sort of primitive wooden vehicle to carry bundles of long grass things. Some of the creatures are vaguely recognizable however, looking like some of the people she had seen on the ship, and a few that looked like her walking and speaking quietly amongst themselves. And some that looked at the insect.

Sxle stood straight, and walked slowly behind a group of what seemed to be travelers, acting as naturally as possible. None of them gave her a second look.

[Holeypaladin]

"I thought about it," said Drake, "But the problem is, scanners reveal our position. We already know Zikaren fighters are protecting the planet... so fiercely that they're willing to shoot down a pod in full view of locals."

He frowned. "Believe me, I'd scan if we didn't have Zikarens. But since we do, it's a bit more complicated. We have to maintain a low profile... both in accordance with the Second Law and for our own safety. We don't have the resources to fight the Zikarens, as evident by the fact that we needed Syndicate help to get into the system."

Anne faced Drake and stepped out as well, nodding to herself. "I'm going to have to agree with James," she said. "We will need a bit of assistance from local sightseers in this one."

Drake noted an explosion in the distance.

"My guess is the pod is that way," he pointed towards the sound of the explosion. "So is the village, incidentally enough. So if we miss one, we'll find the other, probably."