Entangled

[Stephen]

Hazard pay always looks better on paper, or his datapad, as the case may be. Janus saw the zeros on the holonet posting and hit accept before he even finished reading. He sat hunched in his cockpit chair, checking and rechecking the low atmosphere flight controls. Janus exhaled quietly, and spun in his chair toward the copilot chair. His datapad came to life in his hands, playing a five note medley and breathing cyan light into the dim cockpit. He sat it on the empty copilot's chair and spoke “Datapad, let's go over the plan once more.”



“Of course Janus. Here is Cilpar.” A light blue sphere, dotted with color spun quietly in front of Janus' face, held by slender strings of light. “You are here” she added helpfully, as a yellow dot appeared in low orbit. “In roughly 32 minutes, we will begin reentry here and enter low atmosphere above the ocean.” A saffron dotted line swooped toward the sphere and his dot dutify followed. “You will approach republic base Dunstal from the west, keeping below 200 meters from the ground, as to avoid incoming anti aircraft fire from the enemy emplacements here and here.” The sphere quintupled in size as Dunstal appeared on the surface as a dark blue bump on the virtual shoreline. Two angry red dots completed the equalateral triangle.



Janus closed his eyes a moment, sighed and punched in the final cooridinates. The Wayward Light sluggishly listed in response. “You will dock with Dunstal and unload your cargo. You will stay on base until a safe window is obtained to leave.” Datapad finished. Janus punched a button above him and shouted “Tee Eye, do we have all cargo accounted for and ready” He sat a moment, his head cocked to side, pointing his ear at the speaker before a long string of binary chittered in response. “Good, report to the engine room. We are on battlestations from now on.” Janus stood for a moment, pacing between his quarters and various rooms, doing a final manual system check. He finally hooked his lightsaber to his belt, checked the power pack on his blaster, and belted himself into his seat. It was time



The Wayward light shivered as it grew closer to Clipar. The engine screamed a deafing warcry behind Janus. Binary over the coms informed Janus that the heat shields were holding. After an excrutiating few minutes, they broke through. Janus pushed the throttle all the way foreward and brought the ship level to the ocean. The ocean rose and parted on the surface, leaving a massive wake and mist cloud. The sun spun rainbows in the air behind him, and the underside of Janus' ship cooled in the crisp ocean air. Janus couldn't help but smile



A red ui element popped into the air next to Janus, hissing warnings. Two gunships had found him, and were somewhere behind him, lost in the sun to visual confirmation. Janus swerved left and right as green columns dove into ocean around him, leaving huge steam clouds behind him. His ship shook from multiple hits and it drove him even closer to the ocean. Janus spun the main turret battery backwards and down, and turned a tight circle to his left. He opened fire as he turned, making a huge steam cloud. He killed the turret and drove angrily into the sky.



Before he cleared the cloud, The Wayward Light jerked suddenly, spinning on it's axis. A cannon blast of sound tore janus' hearing from him momentarly as he hung in the air by his saftey belt. Wreckage shot past the cock pit window and toward the ocean at incredible speed. Janus fought for conciousness against the spin. The second ship plunged past him at an angle far too steep. Janus caught momentary glances of it through his cockpit window as The Wayward Light piruetted. The other ship broke apart on the waves, unable to pull out it's dive in time.


Janus regained control of his ship, and leveled it to the ocean again. Port side thrust was sluggish and he was forced to steer into an imaginary turn all the way to base. Tee Eye rattled off damage reports through the garbled comm and Janus took stock. The damage was substantial, but not fatal. Luckly landing gear was intact. Leaving a smokey smear in the sky behind him he landed at Dunstal.

[Krowbar]

Funny how money snowballs. Blitz had seen alot of credits change hands in a short amount of time, but not this many and not this fast. Wherever there was death for some there were riches for others who knew how to manipulate it.  Or at least, that was the pattern.


This was probably the first time in quite a while that he was glad transportation was subbed out to an outside pilot.  The Typhoon wasn't built for anything like this, as if he'd want to get it all banged up in the first place.
Either way, this was a bloody good craft for his taste.  Anything that helped prevent imminent fiery death tended to find its way onto his good side. 


Blitz and the rest of the hired guns on board spent most of the orbit checking equipment and occasionally reviewing their infil plan.  It didn't seem like very long before they felt the turbulence of reentry.  Blitz strapped in, his red beskar'gam clicking against the frame of the ship with every jolt. 


After they descended to nearly sea level, he heard the unmistakable rattling of blaster cannons outside the hull.  The fire increased, closing in until the ship was riddled with it, shaking its contents like a margarita.  Despite the external chaos, he could make out several distinct explosions, each one silencing some of the fire being put on them. "Must be one hell of a pilot."
The ship finally reached a point where it seemed it had been tossed out of the air like a crumpled can, spinning and flipping in place until stabilizing once more. Some of the men nearly blacked out, others mistakenly dropped equipment that was haphazardly slung around the cargo bay in a blur. 


After what seemed like an eternity, he felt the ship slow to dock.  He couldn't tell the extent of damage the ship had taken, but it wasn't their concern now.  They needed to secure the area around the dock and ensure that level was clear.  None of them seemed to waste any time in hauling themselves off, with short bursts of small blaster fire erupting a little ways off.  Blitz unclipped from his seat, blindly signalling that everyone was off once he slid onto the deck.

[Stephen]

Janus sighed quietly, unbuckling himself from his chair. The rough canvas clung to his chest, still dug into his chest. He peeled them off and stretched his back and arms painfully. He fumbled a moment with the blinking to his right before it finally turned on. A paper thin square of blue light lept out of the console and centered itself in front of Janus.

A harried man in a Republic Officers uniform appeared on camera. People ran around behind him, in opposite directions with wild eyes and readied weapons. The viewer feed shuddered a moment and the officer flinched reflexively to the right. Janus decided to wait a moment before interrupting him. A hiss of steam came from a loose vent hose dangling from the ceiling, waving around wildly before running itself to exhaustion and lying limp in the air.

Finally, The officer turned to face the feed and said “This is Janus Yarloc right? It'd be a hell of a time for a case of mistaken identity.” He looked exhausted. “Yes sir,” Janus replied, transmitting his information, “With all crew and cargo accounted for.” He looked around the cockpit quickly, checking his readouts. “We took some serious damage, but we are still space worthy.”

“Good to hear,” The officer said, with an earnest smile. “It'll be a nice change to not be out gunned for once out here.” The comm went silent for a moment, muted, while the other side appeared to swear for the better part of ten seconds. It finally cut back in “Well if we are going to do this, let's get going. We have lost control of sections one, four, seven, and nine.” A pale blue layout of the base appeared on Janus' right, a capital E on it's back. The three phalanges of the E turned red with enemy occupation. “Your squads job is to clear those wings at all cost.”

Janus hit the intercom button with his left hand, still staring at the layout, “You guys getting this down there?” He said to the ship. Janus stood up and stretched his legs for a moment, “We've got our orders I suppose. Let's get to it.”