Plenty of Biscuits

[malamosi]

Cursing in multiple languages rang out through the Engine Bay of the Last Ditch, along with a hydro spanner that rang off an inner bulkhead and clattered to the deck. If anyone had been listening, they would be insulted on behalf of all Hutts that the native tongue was being used in such a manner. The source of these admittedly creative expletives, was currently sucking on a smashed thumb and glaring at the Hyperdrive.

This was the problem with trying to be your own mechanic. Mal Amosi thought about kicking the unit, but figured he'd just break something, likely a part of his own anatomy. He stopped sucking on his smashed digit and sighed. It was time to admit defeat. He scrubbed a hand through his sweaty hair and left the buzzing machine to it's own devices. He walked to the small communications bay, really little more than a closet with some comm equipment set up in it. He stared down at the hated red button on the console. Oh, how hard he had tried to not resort to it.

The emergency hyperspace beacon was only to be used if the vessel was in dire straits. A life threatening situation. Even then, most smugglers would hesitate, because it was literally inviting someone to board the ship in order to rescue the crew. Mal sat down at the tiny little shelf of a desk and stared fixedly at the button, running some calculations in his head.

The Ditch had roughly 400 kiloliters of fuel. That included the backup reserve tanks. Then the emergency battery power could last another few days, if all it was doing was running life support systems. But neither the hyper drive, nor the main engines were online. The main power generator was still working, for now, depleting fuel slowly. In short, the ship was idling in space, unable to move more than a few dozen kilometers in any direction. Whatever was wrong, Mal could not fix and it wasn't going to fix itself. He needed a tow, or a mechanic.

Even if the beacon were activated, there was no telling when or if help would arrive. The ship had gone out of hyperspace near a main route to the Outer Rim, but Space was vast. Even if he were very near an inhabited system, Mal might be a cold corpse before anyone noticed him in all the great big empty. He closed his eyes and slowly pushed the red button. No alarm sounded, no audible message intoned. But the signal woke.

Mal rose from the comm bay and moved through the small galley/lounge area. He sat on the overstuffed couch and unlaced his boots. Pulling them off, he gave each one a toss and lay back with a groan, his forearm covering his eyes. All of this came of a simple job delivering dehydrated nutrient wafers to Tatooine? At least he would run out of oxygen before he ran out of food.

(OOC: Anyone welcome to join, lets have some fun)

[Karl the Unfettered]

Not too far away, Mal's signal was picked up by another, larger ship. It had drab colors and a conflicting registry, but it belonged to the Exchange and was currently carrying a great deal of hardware and goods. What kind? The kind it was best not to ask questions about, is what kind!

"Hey, I'm getting a distress beacon," the copilot told the pilot. "Intercept?"

The pilot, a grumpy-looking Twi'lek, scratched the base of her lekku and frowned. "We're on a tight schedule, it ain't my call. Ask the cap'n."

He shrugged and reached for the comm link, but was interrupted by the entry way whooshing open. "What's goin on, losers?" came an abrasive-sounding voice belonging to one of the most unpleasant people on the ship. Vivi the Hammer, in the flesh and the glory.

"Uh, M-Miss Hawke, we've picked up a distress signal..."

She swaggered up behind him and peered over his shoulder. "Last Ditch... Last Ditch WHAT? Now I wanna know, an' I'm bored! Swing around 'n see what's up! This is their lucky fuckin' day!"

But the cap'n-!" the pilot protested, to no avail.

"-answers t' ME! Turn this bucket around I said! Don't make me repeat myself!"

The pilot grumbled but did as ordered, dropping out of hyperspace and swinging around to get a new heading toward the disabled vessel. Naturally the captain came blustering over, but Vivi shut him down hard and backhanded him into the bulkhead.

Minutes later, after a very brief hyperspace jaunt, the larger vessel appeared near the Last Ditch and sent a hail. "Last Ditch this is the Expectant, we received your signal. Stand by for tractoring." The much larger ship activated its tractor beam and started dragging Mal's vessel towards it.

[malamosi]

"two hundred nninety -bottles of ale on th'wall..." Mal belted out another verse, giving his empty bottle of Lum ale a toss aginst the inner bulkhead of the lounge. It was made of aluminum. It bounced loudly. He sat up with a groan.

"M'head hurts, shuddup." He mumbled to no one, staring around at the wreckage his lounge had become in the last few days of being stranded. There were boxes, bottles, wrappers, and packs of things all over every surface. Mal shuffled to his feet and mosied to the refresher. He was enjoying a long-overdue draining when he felt a heavy thump reverberate through the ship. He looked up at the ceiling. "Hello?"

Receiving no answer, he flushed and turned to open the door of the fresher- except it wouldn't open. He gave an irritated grunt and pulled harder, causing the latch to break off in his hand. Mal stared at the handle and at the door, still sealed. He began beating on the thing in a desperate panic.

"Heeeellllpppp!!!"

[Karl the Unfettered]

No reply from the other ship. Whatever. The pilots weren't paid to care, they were paid to fly and haul things.

Meanwhile, Vivi was marshaling her forces for a boarding party. They weren't very inspiring to be honest, she was certain she could kick all their asses at once by herself, but they were what she had for now. "Lissen up, you clowns! We're rescuin' some loser out here cuz I'm bored 'n I wanna know what th' name a' th' ship means! I ain't expectin' a whole lotta trouble cuz it's one a' them one-man cargo cruisers, but we ain't survived this long by takin' chances! So once we got 'er clamped in, me 'n all y'all're boardin' 'n sweepin' fer crew 'n cargo! Any fuckin' questions?!"

No questions. They were smugglers and pirates, this was their bread and butter.

"Good! Stand ready!" The Last Ditch was dragged into range, and heavy industrial magnets clamped down on the side, holding it fast while a boarding tube slid out and made contact. A brief whine accompanied a rush of air while the pressure normalized, then there was a confirmatory beep and the hatch opened. "Go get 'em!"

Vivi and her pirates boarded the ship and made a quick sweep, finding nothing particularly exciting. A bunch of dehydrated shit and some moisture farming tech. And water. And someone locked in the refresher. That was sort of exciting?

Eh, she'd take it. From Mal's perspective there was a lot of booted feet running here and there, derisive voices dismissing his cargo, and then the focus on his location. One voice in particular honed in. "Hey pal! Better stand back!" Vivi shouted, briefly sizing up the door before stepping forward and kicking it in!

[malamosi]

Mal wondered if he'd had too much to drink. Or maybe he had eaten some of those mushrooms he tried one on Felucia. Those glowing ones that made you see things. Maybe the nutrient wafers were going bad? He'd bought them in bulk at a discount price after all. He felt certain he was hallucinating as boots marched all over his ship and voices called out insults and cat-calls. Then the fresher door Blew in and he was hurled into the sonic shower, still clutching the handle of the door. Dust cleared and a rather imposing woman was standing in the doorway, staring at him.

It occurred to him that he probably should have zipped his fly. He grinned his signature shit-eating-grin right into her face. "Hey there, pretty eyes. Don't suppose you're a mechanic here to fix my engines, are ya?"

[Karl the Unfettered]

Mechanic? Pretty eyes? Oh jeez, this guy was drunk. "What, got bored waitin' fer someone t' show?" she drawled derisively. Her glanced trailed down, but she didn't look too impressed. "Pull up yer fly, pal, yer embarrassin' yerself."

She turned and walked back out. "Buncha Tatooine shit, eh? Fuck, waste a' time. Well, whatever, grab th' water 'n th' moisture shit 'n let's git th' hell outta here then. Bozo in there's too drunk t' know his ass from his head!"

Raucous laughter, followed by scraping and thudding as they started hijacking his cargo! She appeared back in the doorway again. "Hey pal, what's yer ship name mean?"

[malamosi]

While it was true that Mal was drunk, he was sobering up fast, beginning to catch on that these were more along the line of invaders than rescuers. He got to his feet while the woman was ordering her men around. At her question, he grinned again.

"It's pilot slang darlin. You know, when a pilot has to bail out of the cockpit, abandon his ship, we call it ditching. You could call my former life a kind of bail out situation, and this here ship is my last chance, so the Last Ditch. Get it? From here it's just a long fall into darkness for me."

He sidled past the woman and over to the Lounge, picking up another half empty bottle of Lum Ale and taking a big slug. "But yanno, even if she looks like she's a pile of rust, this baby does have a few tricks." Mal did three things in rapid order here;

He slapped the underside of the Holo projector.

He threw the bottle at Vivi.

He made a mad dash to the cockpit.

The button under the holo projector caused blast proof bulkheads to slam down in all entrances of the Cargo Hold, cutting off anyone still inside, cutting through anything in the way.

The bottle hurtled through the air with surprising accuracy, right at Vivi's face.

Mal stumbled over a few bottles and fell headlong into the cockpit, costing himself a second.

[Karl the Unfettered]

Vivi knew when someone had an ace up their sleeve, having done her share of bluffs and calls before. It crossed her mind that the drunk thing might have been at least partly an act, which his next set of actions confirmed rather adroitly! "Son of a bitch," she hissed, snatching the bottle out of the air before it could hit her. Slamming noises indicated the ship was being locked down, or was it just the cargo hold? Hopefully none of her men had been caught in that.

They weren't going anywhere though, not until the Expectant cut them loose. She ran after him, trusting her men to figure their way around; indeed, two of them were already headed for the engine room and the hyperdrive to sabotage it even further.

She threw the bottle herself, and it shattered against the instrument cluster spilling liquor all over the delicate electronics. "Coupla things, pal," she drawled, hefting her hammer as she waltzed into the cockpit with him. "First, yer ship's clamped in an' there's a boardin' tube, so we ain't goin' nowhere. Second, we found ya floatin' dead in space, unless this was some shitty kinda trap. D' you even know who we are, anyway?" Her tone of voice said she really doubted it.

"An' third, if you try anything else STUPID you'd be pissin' off a whole lotta folks a guy like you REALLY doesn't wanna piss off! So why don'cha sober up 'n simmer down, ey?"

[malamosi]

When Mal stumbled into the cockpit, he didn't count on all the bottle lying on the deck. This was why the military had been so intent on making things squared away. He needed to get back into good habits. His head was buzzing a bit from the fall, so though he heard Vivi talking behind and above him, he didn't really pay much attention to what she was saying. He saw what he was looking for and reached out to yank the Sonic scatter-gun from it's place on the co-pilots side of the main panel. He rolled over and fired point blank in one movement.

[Karl the Unfettered]

The hell was he fumbling around the floor for? He'd really been drinking, if all these bottles were anything to go by. A person could hardly walk ar-

Something caught her eye on the other side of the cabin. Gun! Gun! And he was going for it!

Her hammer came down, knocking the gun aside just enough so the blast splashed harmlessly against the ceiling above them, and in the same motion jabbed downward to trap his hand against the floor. "Feisty one, ain'cha? Ya do this to everyone who's ever came 'n rescued ya?"

Meanwhile, the goons were standing over the hyperdrive, puzzling out how to fuck with it. One of them knew a thing or two about ship tech, and he sighed irritably. "All this over a busted converter... whatever, cut those lines and power couplers, that'll stop this thing deader than it already is." They backed out of the room and fired several blaster shots into the drive and its components, and a shower of sparks and smoke ensued. Some of the other goons were at work trying to get the cargo hold open again, tearing the control panels away to puzzle over the wiring beneath. Sooner or later they'd cross the right ones and open these doors, right?

[malamosi]

The sonic blast crashed into the upper deck, shattering some thing and causing a bundle of wire to hang tangled. The sound of the loud noise in the small cockpit rattled Mal's head, but the feeling of that hammer coming down and crushing his hand caused him to grit his teeth and grunt.

"Feisty one, ain'cha? Ya do this to everyone who's ever came 'n rescued ya?"

"Most people who come to rescue me, don't immediately try to rob me. Oh, and leave me stranded again when their done. Told ya. Last Ditch."

Mal attempted to sweep her legs out from under her with an Echani move, despite his hand being pinned.

In the Lounge, where no one had been paying attention, the liquid and open circuits had caused a small fire to break out. Nothing serious, yet the ships confused anti-fire systems decided now would be a good time to begin blast clouds of extinguishing foam all over the ship, wherever there was smoke. There also came a loud klaxon of alarms reverberating throughout the hull, like the inside of a bell.

[Karl the Unfettered]

This was getting tiresome. Alarms going off, her guys probably fucking with things they didn't need to fuck with, and this bozo down here trying to act all martial arts on her! Too bad for him, she knew those tricks too.

So while her goons panicked and swatted at the foam and the sparks and tried to shut the alarms off, Vivi fell down atop Mal, landing on his crotch with her knee; the haft of her hammer came down too and she tried to pin him under the chin with it, to trap his neck and choke him. "GET MORE GUYS IN HERE!" she shouted over her shoulder, and one of the goons radioed to the bigger ship for backup.

[malamosi]

The breath in a man can leave his body very quickly when the right amount of weight drops down onto his delicate parts. Mal managed to get his left hand up to grip the haft of the hammer, barely keeping it from choking him. His lower body felt numb from that slam to the crotch and his belly was full of bile and booze already. Mal used his freed right hand to grip her pigtail and bring her face closer to his. Then he projectile vomited. He really couldn't think of any other rebuttal.

[Karl the Unfettered]

"Hey! Leggo my- AUUGH WHAT THE FUCK?!?!" Desperately she jerked herself backward and punched at his face, trying to redirect the gruesome flow to the side, but she was just a bit slow and some of the vomit hit her cheek and chest. "YOU LITTLE ASSHOLE! FUCK YOU! FUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUUUUCKYOOOOUUUU!!" She flung herself to her feet and kicked him over and over, in the side, in the stomach, in the side of the head. "MOTHERFUCKING MOTHERFUCKER YOU'RE GONNA WISH YOU'D NEVER BEEN BORN!!!"

She grabbed her hammer and brought it up over her shoulder, fully ready to turn Mal into bloody paste, when shouting and running feet caught her attention instead. Ah, there, more goons. She caught herself and took a deep breath, knowing it'd look bad if she killed the guy she dragged everyone off schedule to rescue. Even if he'd thrown up on her! FUCK that was rank!

She made sure he was fully unconscious, then tore his shirt off and wiped herself down with it. It might have been filthy, but it was dry-ish, and that was the important part. Then she grabbed him by the ankle and dragged him to the main hold. "Strip this piece a' shit down, haul everything out 'n fix 'er up! An' take THIS dipshit to th' med droids!" and she tossed Mal to the floor.

"Uh... what happened, Miss Hawke...?" one of them asked hesitantly.

"Rescue gone wrong, pal, s' all you need'ta know," was the grim-faced reply.

-------------------------

Hours later...

Whenever Mal would wake up, he'd find himself strapped and chained to a bed in a medical bay, bandages on his head and sides. It was not a very comfortable bed, and he was tied down very thoroughly. He'd also find himself sober, doubtless to his regret. He had also been stripped and searched, also very thoroughly. An IV was stuck in his arm, dripping fluids into his bloodstream.

Floating nearby were two black droids, spherical and with red sensors. One of them whooshed out of the room, the other kept on hovering. "Greetings, sentient," it said in a menacing, gender-neutral tone of voice. "Please do not attempt to escape confinement. This medical unit has been authorized to use force in restraining you."

It floated a little closer, focusing on Mal's face. "Secondary units sedated and cleaned you, sentient, and then this unit treated your wounds and your intoxication. This unit presumes your clothes were sent to the engines to be incinerated, although it is not certain. The other unit is fetching Miss Hawke now."

[malamosi]

Mal stared at the Orb droid through slitted eyes, his head pounding, his ribs aching. He tasted something he didn't want to think about. It was cold in the med bay. His ass was sliding on the stupid slick medical mattress. His balls hurt and felt swollen. Obviously there would be no painkillers coming his way any time soon.

"Hey droid." Mal rasped. "If you want me to talk, I could use a drink of water."

[Karl the Unfettered]

The droid made a bzzt sound, but floated backward, and one of its manipulator arms reached into a small cooler. It came up with a bottle of water, popped the top off and floated back forward, raising the bottle up to his face. Obviously it wasn't going to release his bonds, so it would pour the water down his throat instead.

[malamosi]

Mal opens his mouth and gratefully lets the Droid pour some water in. He swishes it and swallows, then asks for another and finally lets his head fall back onto the bed. At this moment, he is done fighting. Maybe talking will work out better. Though (eyes the droids) it could still be quite painful if things didn't go his way.  "Relax little droid, I'm not an animal or anything."

[Karl the Unfettered]

"This unit has its doubts."

Soon enough the second bot reappears, followed by the loud-mouth broad who'd stomped Mal before. She stared at him, eyes narrowed. "Y' made sure 'is stomach's empty, right?" she demanded of the droids.

"Yes, Miss Hawke, these units can confirm the prisoner has an empty stomach."

"Good! Don't need no more fuckin' vomit on my skirts!" She stepped a bit closer. "So what's yer name, pal? Mine's Vivi."

[malamosi]

Mal got a good, sober look at the lady. She was pretty, in a sort of insane clown kind of way. Mal smiled at her, his best megawatt grin.

"Name is Mal Amosi, darlin. Now be honest with me, did my friends get me a dominatrix for my birthday?"

[Karl the Unfettered]

Mal Amosi, eh. She laughed at his comment and shook her head. "I dunno who yer pals are, pal, but I'll guarantee they couldn't never afford ME." If he just cleaned up a bit more he wouldn't be so bad looking, she decided. "So why're ya haulin' spoiled protein bars all th' way out here, eh?"