As FR-11987 cleared the smoke of the concussive missile hitting their batteries that blinded him upon leaving the hangar bay of the monitoring station he could see the Milano was now stabilizing in speed from its initial surge and steadily making through the opening in the asteroid field of Pressy’s Tumble. It left behind a smoking trail from the last bit of docking tunnel that. He didn’t see the usual mist that crystalizes by the extreme temperature drop of outer space, which indicated the ship had, probably automatically, closed the docking hatch in response to the sudden drop of pressure. On the Milano’s starboard the Enforcer was just retracting it’s boarding tunnel and veering towards the back of the Milano to avoid an asteroid.
“Why did this have to happen now for fucks sake… right when the field is at its low density.”
He opened his comm channel to his other 5 fellow pilots.
“Omega squadron, flank that ship on the portside, aim for the hatch, might be that there is structural damage there. Zeta’s on me, we’ll tail the bastard.”
A few aye’s indicating his orders were heard, even more so the 3 TIEs that were speeding out into a wide turn towards his left. FR-11987 never liked these assignments, apart from flying in between the asteroids he knew the Milano was packing ion cannons that, if they hit a TIE, could make them fly helplessly into an asteroid ahead. Besides, the ship had shown to be carrying ordnance, something he wasn’t thrilled about either. His assessment had to wait however for his helmet communicator crackled to live:
“Zeta Leader, last count showed us that they have 3 aboard alive, including officer Dasheer, fire to cripple. We are trying to establish contact using your ship as a relay.”
Due to the interference this happened all the time, and FR-1987 had already flicked the switches when he was still in the Hangar.
“Copy that Command, We will stay on their tail.”
“This is …. Tumble, halt your ship and slave to ch…… TIE’s are in pursuit I repeat .…… will be destroyed.”
Was the message being relayed to the Milano’s comms with bad interference for those in the position to listen. It sure weren’t the two of the search crew that were now standing in the dark Cargo bay.
“The air is going stale, they turned off life support.”
“Fuck. Not dying in this bloody second rate cargo hauler Zel, manual hatch should be that way.”
Orpel pointed his flashlight towards the end of the long corridor, slightly veering up.
“Why didn’t we get those nice carbine mounted flashlights…”
“Couse we don’t get payed to do combat Orpel. We get payed to inspect, look at where we ended up.”
Zel was nervously swaying the small carbine around his eyes wandering over every nook and cranny. He was just taking a look over his shoulder as he bumped into Orpel who had stopped.
“Easy now trooper, I got the hatch, should take us close to the cockpit. With any luck we might hold up in there and get this ship to fly back.”
“We’ll get killed you fool, didn’t you hear them take out Rita and Dayel…”
“We’ll get killed either way Zel. Might as well risk a promotion while we are at it. Might be that they even killed that Chagrian cunt.”
A vicious smile went over Orpel’s face, Zel knew he was a bastard, the bony human had a reputation that way, Zel just didn’t think he would live up to it under these conditions.
“You’ll be officer Zel, imagine the credits huh? Now hold this.”
He gave Zel his flashlight as he pulled out the ladder to the hatch, ready to open it manually.