Post by DreadPirateMike on Feb 23, 2014 13:42:56 GMT -5
Name: Jenek Fayne
Race: Human
Age: 52
Birth place: Aquaris
Allegiance: Himself, his crew. More loosely, the Republic.
Status: Pirate. Sometimes privateer. Depends who you ask.
Rank: Captain
Height/Weight: 6'0" / 195 lbs
Appearance: Jenek is a tall man, and he's done an admirable job staying fit for a man of his age. Very admirable, actually, considering a raider's jealously guarded degenerate lifestyle. Even so, despite an active lifestyle and a knack for staying one step ahead of the danger of grievous injury, he's not quite what he used to be. A couple of those wrinkles, laugh and frown lines both, have made their stay on his face a permanent arrangement, and he's a little softer around the edges than a disciplined career soldier his age might be. His eyes are a fairly striking bright shade of green, though. He tends to fancy them his best feature, though he also takes a certain pride in his full salt and pepper beard. That's actually the one element of his appearance he pays the most attention to. His hair is otherwise kept short enough that a finger combing generally suffices for maintenance, he dresses for comfort or utility - Although, reputation being critical to his line of work, a certain theatrical flair may be considered utilitarian. - and he's utterly un-self conscious about being coated in sweat and hydraulic fluids after doing some particularly hands on ship maintenance. But almost without fail, he'll make the time once a week for a good trimming.
He has a handful of tattoos as well. These include a bluish- white starburst pattern across his back, and a sequence of letters and numbers along the underside of his left forearm. Any spacer would recognize these as a ship's transponder code, though the ship it once belonged to hasn't existed for almost twenty years. As for the clothing which commonly conceals such things, about the only near constants are a white silk scarf and an ankle length duster of a light russet shade and an armorweave construction and a little bit of extra width in the sleeves. While "on the job", of course, he will typically add a baldric to hold his extra equipment, and a signature metallic face mask to make a lasting first impression without allowing anyone he might offend to ID him on a second encounter.
Personality: In his early years, Jenek was that kid with the over-active imagination, starved for stimuli in his daily life, and dreaming of a universe that could compete with his fantasies. Nowadays, he's taller.
Oh, some of his dreams have grown darker over the years, of course. He has, at times, felt almost like a passive and dismayed witness to the moral degeneration that has befallen him over the years. He always had a taste for a bit of mischief, and it wasn't long after he discovered his love for storytelling that he concluded the very best stories were rarely the whole truth, but piracy? Following a path of theft and violence through the stars, (honor) was hardly what he had in mind when he blasted off from the oceans of his birth all those years ago. But that doesn't mean his thirst for adventure has abandoned him. He's learned strange tongues, fought duels in towers that pierced the clouds, and flown through deadly and deserted corners of the galaxy simply in hopes of seeing things that other men have not. And despite an occasional irritation at having to supply some mercenary pretext for these adventures to his crew - Pirates, it turns out, are seldom either a civilized or a romantic breed. - he pursues new stories and new risks with an ever-increasing zeal, always in hopes of proving his best days are not behind him. To date, sadly, no matter the thrill, one critical component to true joy is always missing.
In less prosaic and more everyday terms, Jenek is a man of somewhat extreme moods. He's long suspected, based on his understanding of the term, that some manner of bipolar disorder may be at work, but he's never consulted any sort of professional, preferring to seek his own remedies as he needs them. He switches back and forth between periods of energy so seemingly boundless as to elicit jokes from his crew that they should hook him directly to the ship's grid and thus give the fusion reactor a break, and bouts of profound melancholy that leave him wishing to do little else but sit in his cabin and stare into space for hours. Similarly, he's known to be very solitary, OR so irresistibly sociable that he maintains a separate identity and ship just so he can visit cantinas populated by folk other than fellow criminals. These two extremes may or may not be related, for he values his privacy, and his cabin is his castle, the place he goes to find his way back to balance. There, he has his window with which to lose himself amidst the stars for a time when he's down, or his long-handled pipe or a mug of rum to slow his thoughts to a useful pace. But his favorite diversion, and a near constant of these private sessions, is a well worn old second-hand mandolin.
Ships/Vehicles: The Void Fox
Equipment:
Eureka armor vest
Two Rev'Ant 62 light blaster pistols
A baldric containing pouches for extra power cells and assorted other surprises
A fancy mask. Creepy AND utilitarian!
Tanto Butterfly Knife
Durasteel grapple launcher under his right sleeve.
Repulsorlift boots
Long handled pipe, and the accompanying tabac
Aged mandolin, lovingly maintained
Stats:
Strength - Average
Agility - Below Average
Intelligence - Superior
Charisma - Legendary
Combat Training:
Blaster pistols - Expert
Rifles - Expert
Brawling - Adept
Knives - Apprentice
Other Training:
Mechanics - Expert
Slicing - Adept
Piloting - Expert
Musical Instrument (Mandolin) - Adept
Tactical Rhetoric (Lies, half-truths, strategically placed truths, etc.) - Master
Languages (Other than basic):
Durese - Fluent
Huttese - Fluent
Bocce - Fluent
Humani - Conversational, with some patience. He's a bit out of practice.
Jawa Trade Language - Passable enough to conclude a deal without losing his shirt.
High Galactic - Theoretically solid. He's mostly just studied it as a hobby.
Smuggler's Cant - Fluent
Bio:
Waters of Awakening: (0-18)
Jenek Fayne was born to the rolling waves and vast oceans of Aquaris, a backwater in the most literal sense despite its location inside the Republic's Expansion Region. More than a thousand years earlier, a great cataclysm had driven its original inhabitants from the world, and nobody had paid it much mind since, although Revan's Sith Empire had briefly taken possession of it in name only. Jenek's direct ancestors were amidst the first wave of a modest new settlement movement which began a little over a century later, Corellian migrants seeking to stake a claim and try their luck at deep sea mining. There were still those in Jenek's day who'd say that by rights, that placed him among the planet's elite, but so far as he could tell, nobody ever paid such talk much mind.
Yet whatever sentimental affection he may hold for his birthplace these days, it was clear to those who knew him that it was never his destiny to stay there. That much was obvious from the time he first picked up a book with the capacity to understand its pages. That first book soon became as many as the lad could get his hands on, and before too long, his exasperated parents accepted the inevitability of their son lying awake in his hammock of the family houseboat well into the small hours of the morning, accompanied by his little reading light, and entranced at the strange new worlds spreading out before him in those pages.
Worlds so thoroughly covered by their gleaming cities that nothing of the ordinary dirt could yet be seen, even from space? The jungles of Rodia, so thick that one could walk that ground, and yet find the next stone's throw ahead as mysterious ( Aye, and perilous. So much the better; what true hero would have it any other way? ) as the deepest ocean trench! Even quiet, sun scorched Tatooine, described by so many as the ass end of space, seemed his homeworld's opposite, and thus an irresistible oddity. It wasn't just childish curiosity that moved him, of course. In time, good old-fashioned jealousy played its part.
Remote and insignificant as that little world may have been, it enjoyed a certain niche with passing spacers all the same. Maintenance for vessels of good size, or those simply not designed to land in a standard gravity environment could often be accomplished while floating in water, and for a fraction the price ordinarily associated with proper orbital facilities. As such, it was a popular destination for spacers passing through on a budget, and more importantly for those who wished to avoid registering their movements with the Bureau of Ships and Services, never mind having their cargoes subjected to a proper customs inspection. In short, all manner of backgrounds were represented, and still more stories.
And it wasn't just the worlds Jenek admired, the panoramas frozen majestically in his mind's eye; even back then, he was a people person, and damned if he didn't have his heroes. He had lots, spanning across two worlds and the glorious early days of the Republic. Those insatiable Duros explorers in the days of good Queen Rana, as well as their counterparts among his own ancestors, ingenious enough to invent the hyperspace cannon, and crazy enough to use it. Those tiny celestial gods had long since passed into immortality by the time Jenek Fayne arrived, of course, but the same thirst for adventure yet survived, and he got to meet the heirs to that legacy. He met them coming off their ships when he was apprenticed to his father, Dale Fayne the starship mechanic, or in the Deadman's Reef cantina adjoining the shipyard when father and son adjourned there for some hot (Not to mention discounted. His mother, Saphira, was a cook there.) soup after a rainy day. People commonly enough spoke of the almost uncharacteristic passion Duros had for strories, and their flawless memory for it. But Jenek saw and heard it for himself, as often as he could.
It's difficult to overstate what it means for a curious child to witness one of his cherished tales confirmed. If one of them was true, then no matter how vigorously his practical-minded parents tried to rein in his wilder imaginings, they could all be true! Even so, he began to want more as he got older. First came the revelation that as much as he loved hearing a good story, it couldn't quite compare to the sheer joy of TELLING one; to this day, in all earnestness, he will swear that no drug - And yes, he's experimented briefly with a fair few. - can compare to a captive audience. And he was GOOD at it. What his folks grasped only with difficulty was that an active imagination, indeed an over-active imagination, was a valuable attribute indeed. When he told a story, that story came alive in his head. Every scene he described played out for him as though it were real, and therefore, in a sense, WAS real. And so, as he began to add embellishments to spice up a story here and there, as he began to play around a bit with the bounds of credibility, he discovered something very interesting. People believed him, because regardless of whether a statement of his lined up with actual events in the physical world, HE believed them. Combined with a keen memory for keeping these liberties with the truth straight... well, he'd heard all the tales of people able to shoot lightning from their fingertips, and that was surely nice. But this was actively shaping reality as he saw fit. The power of the gods!
A power he of course used for good... mostly.
But it still had it's limits. Maddening ones. He had good stories, yes; he'd met any number of interesting characters, and could hold his friends enraptured with the story of how, for instance, he'd spent most of a day crawling around the bowels of famed Selonian blockade runner Leyfan's personal craft, tracking down and exorcising an elusive hiccup in his power grid, and been gifted for his efforts with the Rakghoul tooth he wore around his neck. He could hold them spellbound by improvising the tale of how Leyfan got it, exploring long forgotten old transit tunnels of Taris in search of the fabled lost Undercity tribe. But what about him? Jenek knew he was remarkable in his own right, talented at just about everything he'd ever put his mind to. Why couldn't he be the star of his own stories?
Because he'd never even been offworld, and everyone in his blasted floating metal town knew it! Where was his treasure to be found? Granted, he was a pretty good shot with a blaster. He'd had his mother to teach him that, and aiming for a floating target from a swaying boat deck in rough winds made for great practice, but if he'd ever had occasion to put the skill to work for real, everyone would have known it already. No, the best he could manage was to spread the glory of others, all too often men and women of lesser ability but greater circumstance. And some days, it was a little like WATCHING someone dine on gourmet Moonglow while he choked down re-heated vegash.
If he wanted to do better, he needed to do what he'd been dreaming of from early childhood: put down the books, and actually travel the stars. See the Senate building with his own eyes, even if he had to sleep on the bare deck and scrub plasma manifolds in exchange for nutrient paste! That, of course, would be precisely his parents' notion of wasted potential, a young man of such gifts, squandering his future in pursuit of one passing fancy after another. And yet, by the time Jenek was 14, it became clear that he would not wake from this fever dream, and they began to despair of anything to do about it. Ascent to manhood meant he'd be free to chart his own course, no matter how disastrous, and the boy had absolutely no fear of taking his chances by skipping out early. There seemed no way of ensuring they would not wake up to find their son gone as soon as the next day.
But his intelligence had not simply come out of nowhere. Dale was not his son, but he was still quite ingenious in his own fashion. He found a way.
Dale had been young once. He'd traveled for a time, as his son dreamed of, and he'd read stories before that. And he knew that it took more than simply wanderlust to forge one of these epic figures. The star hopping hero might start out scrubbing decks, true enough, but that wasn't the part of the story for which people turned the page. No, the explorer whose exploits you covered always had their own ship. Big, little, old, who gave a damn? But always THEIRS. So, if Jenek wished to go off and have his adventures, what if he could skip right to the good part?
This was not a hypothetical. Dale acquired a ship, to the considerable gratification of a passing ship captain who had resigned himself to selling off his aging landing craft for scrap metal. Aging may have been a kind euphemism; the rusty SL-350 model courier had been sixty years old, hard used, and on its last legs when its now former owner had gotten his hands on it. Many would have written it off as a lost cause, but in its prime, the little vessel had boasted a fine engine, and even now the veteran grease monkey judged the hull battered but sound, and the hyperdrive salvageable...with a lot of work.
So he showed the purchase to his son, and presented two options. One, he could do exactly as the captain intended, and have the thing scrapped. Or two, Jenek could commit as long as it took to help restore the ship atop his regular shipyard work. He'd work his daydreamer's ass to the bone, and at the end of it? It would be his to do with as he saw fit, legal holder of the deed at a family discount and with his labor counted against the cost of replacement parts.
It was a master stroke, one which ensured his son's lifelong respect. For all his no nonsense life view, dad understood him after all. As he looked upon the beleaguered old ship, Jenek saw no rust, no dents, only those far off worlds this ship would take him to, and his chance to at long last take his rightful place as the star of his own stories. In short, he was looking at the love of his life, and he spent the next few years treating her as such. Sadly, this meant he wasn't telling many stories anymore, save to friends who visited him while he worked away into the evening, but it was a necessary sacrifice. During that period, Jenek attacked the project with a single-minded fanaticism. He slept when he could force himself to, which just about amounted to the bare minimum required to maintain his health and safely do his shipyard work the next day. Virtually every moment not spent on those two priorities, eating or basic hygiene maintenance went to the restoration.
And so, not long after Jenek' s 18th birthday...well, for starters, he was 18, and that alone meant the plan had paid off. The last thing they wanted to worry about was their son wandering the galaxy with a head full of fantasies AND trying to stumble his way through puberty at the same time. Now, while it might be optimistic to say Jenek Fayne was a wise man, he was at least a man. A man with marketable job skills; Dale had faithfully put in many an hour assisting his son, and between the reprogrammed nav software, stress tested bulkheads, and a thousand other intricate chores, Jenek's apprenticeship was complete. A man who could manage his finances; while most young men his age splurged on cheap lum ale and flashy speeders, he had carefully put aside every last credit toward the parts he'd need to make his ship work, the training programs that would teach him to fly it, and the sum needed to one day purchase it outright. And most importantly, Dale and Saphira could hope, he was a man who understood the limitations of fancy. Yes, they both had to admit that their son had taught them something as well, for it was indeed a dream that had shown Jenek this end, and given him the boundless energy to see it done. But it was focus, patience, and hard work which had gotten him here.
In any case, as the day arrived and the supplies were stowed, they all agreed on one thing. He had a good ship underneath him, a good head up top, a blaster at his side, and who could demand more than that? He was ready to fly.
And so fly he did.
Desert Interlude, Part 1: (18)
Dreams of Etherium.
That was the name he ultimately gave his newly re-christened ship (He wouldn't discover until quite some time later that he'd seriously misunderstood the references made by passing spacers that inspired him, but to be fair, the name still sort of worked.), and that was one major problem crossed off the list. The second, and he had to admit the somewhat more pressing, was how to reliably acquire the fuel that would keep them both flying. He chose to see the issue as an opportunity; really, one planet seemed as good as the next, provided the locals knew a starship from a flying metal demon, but closer was probably better, so why not start by crossing a name off his childhood "must see" list?
He must have been the only spacer (Ha ha, he was a SPACER now!) who ever found himself in the Arkanis Sector on account of having always dreamed of seeing Tatooine, and even he realized it. So, the first thing he did upon arrival after securing his ship at the Anchorhead spaceport was to dip into his modest credit pool, and buy himself a wide-brimmed hat so that he could avoid both sunburns AND incredulity as he wandered about like the wide-eyed tourist he was. And then, after a leisurely street tour of the marvelously strange local architecture, followed by some rooftop gaping at the immaculate white dunes as they stretched seemingly out into infinity, he judged it time to begin his career as a dashing, devil may care adventurer. And his life to date had furnished him with all the experience he needed in order to know where to start.
It was just a matter of finding the right cantina.
Alright, so it may not have been quite so easy as just sliding into the first free bar stool, and ordering up all the local information worth knowing with a juma juice chaser. But eventually, after several days, several different cantinas looking for the right sort of restless or forlorn someone, in need of cargo or person delivered elsewhere...he went back to his ship and found an ad placed on the holonet. Whatever; the cheap drinks really were cheap here, he already owned his accomodations, and there HAD been at least one nugget of local wisdom imparted to him by word of mouth: Stay clear of the karkin' Jawas.
The advice was promptly ignored, of course, but appreciated all the same. After all, he'd made arrangements to transport a couple of dour local farmers to Druckenwell (Something about a bank loan, or a parts supplier. In truth, he barely listened to anything past their agreement to pay his modest fee, plus expenses.), and it was necessary to invest in outfitting his small cargo hold with some basic passenger accomodations. By the time he blasted off from that remarkable world, he'd already picked up a few useful phrases of the Jawa Trade language, he had a bit of haggling experience under his belt (He didn't think he'd come out too badly. All that careful credit watching and shopping around for replacement ship parts really HAD served him well.), and his mind was abuzz with descriptive words that would do that smell justice when he told the story later.
Man About Town: (18-27)
So, that had been Jenek Fayne's first actual meeting with the distant stars and amazing worlds that had crowded the view of his mind's eye all these years, and whatever others may say about it, Tatooine had not disappointed. It hadn't been exactly as he pictured when he was twelve, of course. He'd had no occasion to shoot one of those much feared Sand Raiders, never mind to the gratitude of the beautiful if weathered homesteader. He'd not seen a single blaster leave its holster, in fact, but nor had he seen anything to suggest beyond the realm of doubt that such things did NOT happen there, and he'd only walked the streets of Anchorhead and its immediate outskirts. He swore he'd return some day for the full Tatooine experience, but he'd come away with a profit, and by the standards he'd develop over the next few years, that was certainly a win.
They were good years. Just thin.
Essentially, his problem was much the same as that faced by any young man attempting to establish himself in a new career. When doing business, people generally preferred to put their trust in someone with experience, and yet experience could only be built up from nothing by doing the job, which in turn required first securing it. In his case, fortunately, that accursed loop did not prove entirely closed. He had the ship, after all, and thus the obvious means to see the job done; therefore, it was sometimes enough simply to SEEM not entirely wet behind the ears. There were ways to affect such a persona, which he would discover over time. Different clothes, growing a beard to look just a bit older, and of course a few years of living on limited means helped with that as well. He started small, closed deals where he could, and eventually, he managed to build up the credibility he needed.
There were, of course, shortcuts theoretically open to him. Jenek had also counted Nar Shadaa among those places he must one day see, and that meant the Hutts. The Hutt Cartel always had use for fast ships with capable pilots, there was no question that such an arrangement could be quite lucrative, and a man’s lack of established experience was less of an issue with them, for they had a very straightforward system of collateral: If you screwed up the job, they’d take their investment from your skin. But Jenek considered those offers only in passing, and his refusal was swift and final. It wasn’t the healthy caution his parents might have preferred that kept him clear of the Hutts, of course, for while he wouldn’t risk danger simply for its own sake, nor would he shy from it if the reward was there. And it certainly wasn’t any sort of moral objection. Honest work was just fine, but the thrill of being a real smuggler or blockade runner, on the wrong side of the law, of pulling a fast one and getting away with it, was almost an irresistible lure.
But it WAS idealism of a different sort that kept his nose relatively clean. He’d deliver for anyone who paid, and he was prepared not to ask too many questions so long as the credits spent, but Etherium was not just some ship. It was a means to glory. The ship was his, and its course his to set. HIS. Not some slug’s, or anybody else’s. That insistent pride certainly cost him some business opportunities, but in the long run, his mindset paid off. It was no secret to anybody that there were risks to doing business with the Hutts, and not few were those who looked kindly on a reasonable alternative, whether they made an honest credit or not.
In any case, those poor years were valuable in their own way, for they fostered an expanded skillset in and of themselves. If Jenek had thought himself a decent haggler during that first run ins with the Jawas, his appraiser’s eye and negotiator’s tongue became vibroblade keen, for few things stop a smart man from parting with too many credits than having nothing extra to spare. His skills as a navigator also improved. Lack of fuel required careful consideration of the systems around him, pondering whether some celestial body’s gravitational pull could be creatively exploited to give him a free boost. Such economy also made for some long and lonely trips, but that just gave him more time to practice his languages, or develop his soon formidable dejarik game. And yes, while he couldn’t say he enjoyed either the necessity of taking a life or the act itself, he got that opportunity he’d missed on Tatooine, to use his blaster more than once.
And then, at 24, after six hard if thrilling years of paying his dues and earning his stripes, he got his big break, the opportunity of a sort that did not require a romantic like Jenek Fayne to covet it. The Republic Astronomical Survey Group based on Coruscant was at that time undertaking an initiative of expansion into previously uncharted regions, or one that might one day lead into such expansion. The idea was to send ships out to stars previously glimpsed only by long range telescopes, there to survey any and all planetary bodies associated with them, be it habitable worlds for colonization, significant resource deposits for potential mining ventures, and everything in between. But as the initiative required only initial surveys, to be followed up on later in the case of any truly significant finds meriting a concerted effort to stake a claim, it would not be cost effective to jump right to dedicated research ships with full crews. Thus, the call went out for “independent contractors”, and Jenek and Etherium together qualified. His hold may not have had a lot of space for prolonged trips, but for a crew of one, it was sufficient, and its engine was certainly up to the distances. The job required a trip to Coruscant to have the ship outfitted with an array of scanning equipment, and about a month of training in how to operate it and evaluate the results, but the hassle was nothing to him.
The pay was modest; it would be unfair to call it a pittance, but charitable to call it anything else. So what? Financing food and fuel was the Republic’s job now, and the security was the least of it. This was so much more than just visiting exotic worlds he’d read about. This was something he’d scarcely even dreamed could be possible. No more would he simply idolize those intrepid explorers of Corellia and Duro in days of old. He’d join their exalted number. Entire worlds, utterly unknown. No matter that they should be lush jungles or lifeless rocks. His eyes would be the first ever to gaze upon them!
There is no question in his mind of it, to this very day. Those were the best years of his life. Maybe not perfect, but perfectly imperfect. One needed the stiff neck from falling asleep at the console, or the occasional stubbed toe to remind him that this was his life and not just some dream that would pass beyond recall in a few moments. And yes, it was lonely on occasion. After all, he operated beyond the outer edge of civilization for weeks, sometimes months at a time, all alone. But it was worth it. He didn’t just do his job to the letter. Whenever possible, he would walk those new worlds with his own two feet. Usually, he glimpsed them from behind the reinforced visor of an EV suit, but occasionally he could go without. He once sat for hours on the surface of some asteroid, simply watching the stars with no atmosphere to dull the spectacle. He literally forged new paths, walking where no feet had ever walked. And always, he made sketches, recorded his impressions, and sent them back for posterity.
He was taking some foolish risks, he supposes. At any time, he could easily have fallen victim to some alien pathogen, or been run through by some high speed meteoroid, lightyears beyond the reach of any sort of help. But it was necessary. He was an explorer! Simply a man, flesh and blood against the grand infinity of the stars, yet still managing to make his mark. What else could ever be so beautiful?
Perhaps it couldn’t last forever. And it didn’t.
The Loss: (27)
At this point, it must be noted that Jenek Fayne was not, and is not Force Sensitive. He'd been tested at birth, and at one point, years after the tragedy, he had the test run again. Just in case they'd missed something the first time. But the midi-chlorian count remained right where it had always been: on average, about 2,700 per cell. Slightly above the human average, perhaps, but far short of what was required to levitate so much as a hubba chip, to say nothing of prescient visions.
And yet, however it was possible, he knew. As he shot up from his bunk, jolted from sleep at what his chrono confirmed was an entirely unreasonable hour, he knew. As he pulled on his pants with shaking hands, he knew. Something was very wrong. And as he ran toward the cockpit, gunbelt in hand, he discovered what.
He had to throw his hand over his eyes as a bright white light engulfed the ship. A blink of the eye later, sparks were flying all around him as circuits blew and equipment died. A frantic inspection of the control center confirmed it. Every bit of instrumentation was dead.
All but one, of course. He still had his eyes, and as he looked up through the cockpit window, he saw it. At first, it was just an inky blackness of impossible to determine size and shape, blocking out the stars as it glided closer and closer. Jenek had never thought himself afraid of the dark, and yet as that darkness moved to engulf him, like a demon squid back home, he changed his mind. His one comfort, as the pirate ship's running lights began to come on, was the realization that at some point, he'd finished securing his blaster to his side. And, as the ship's running lights began coming on, illuminating its sleek and graceful lines, some part of him dimly registered that the pirate craft was actually quite beautiful, if in a predatory way.
It was VERY dimly registered, in much the same way one might acknowledge the majesty of a Sand Panther even as its jaws closed around their neck.
And the jaws were closing very quickly now. Forcing down the mounting panic, he made use of his severely limited time to consider his even more limited options. That he'd been disabled rather than simply blasted into cosmic debris meant pirates, and ordinarily, the solution would be to run, but a sprint down to the reactor confirmed this was not an option. The reactor was intact, but the power relays were blown, and repairing them was an hour's work at the very least. He considered hiding, maybe awaiting some chance to turn the tables on his attackers, but even his fertile imagination came up with no instant and plausible way he might accomplish that, and Etherium was a little ship, with only so many nooks and crannies. Sooner or later, he would be found. That left him with but one option.
Stay. Find himself some cover, grab the extra blaster power cells, and fight. Death was all but certain, of course, but a man had to protect what he had, and he'd be damned if he left his ship. So...vessel and captain, together for one last adventure in a fine, fine string of them.
It was only as he began to make for his cabin and the needed cells that he found his feet grounded to the deck as if by magnetic boots. It wasn't fear that stopped him, though he knows that would was probably the assumption back when he deigned to tell the story of his misfortune. No, death in battle against scoundrels and impossible odds wasn't such a bad way to go, not if it meant dying with his home around him. It was Etherium herself. The faithful old ship had seem him faithfully through any number of dangers and close calls, and now, noble to the last, it wished to save him one last time, if it could. Tears streaming down his cheeks, he reluctantly looked back to the cockpit window, and forced himself to concentrate on how much time he had until that ship could move into position and successfully dock.
There was still one chance. The ship's lone escape pod had not been hit, and it had no direct connection with the ship's systems. A quick check confirmed it was still operational. The launcher for it was still dead, but there were still the emergency explosive release bolts. Working against a mental image of the pirate ship's progress, he blasted his little life boat out into the void, and carefully put the dead Etherium between himself and his hunters, one briefly fired thruster at a time. And then, he waited until his best guess told him a competent pilot would be lined up and extending the docking tube. He waited a few moments more, and then, forcing himself NOT to imagine that pirate filth burning their way onto his beloved ship, he opened up the engine to full, and ran for his life.
What was left of it, anyway.
Desert Interlude, Part 2: 27-29
Tatooine was a life-sucking, God forsaken sandy waste hole. He knew on some level that he should count himself lucky that his distress call had been picked up by a passing ore freighter and not pirates come to visit the job, and grateful beyond words that they'd ferried him even this far out of charity, but in truth he felt no such thing. And yes, he did dimly recall thinking better of it once, but it was utterly remarkable how quickly a place lost its charm once you'd lost the freedom to pick up and leave.
RP Sample:
