Hokey religions and ancient weapons... [open]

[Veg]

The swirling blue tunnel of Hyperspace slowly faded into a screen of stretched stars, as the Fighting Chance dropped out of light speed just outside the Dantooine system. The star lines slowly shrunk to their normal dot like appearance, as the freighter converted back to real space fully. Unlike the ship's last trip, the Hyperdrive didn't give out this time. No fires, no stops to planets on the way for repairs. Things were going smooth so far... That was never a good thing.

"Don't you think it's a bad idea to use Myto's Arrow if we're trying to slip past the Sith?" Nel asked from the co-pilot seat.

"It's Dantooine, hotcakes. This system is about as important to the sith as Tatooine." Jaden was busy flipping switches and lowering levers on the console. "They only took it to make a political point."

Nel had half a mind to pistol whip him for calling her hotcakes again. As if the name wasn't bad enough, the reason she got it was. "Excuse me, mister diplomat. I'm going to power up the guns for when your plan doesn't work."

Just as she stood up, all the lights in the ship turned off and the engines cut out. Nel could only sigh, thinking about the great number of things that could have caused a new problem on this bucket of bolts. The only good news was there were no sirens or alarms going off... Yet.

"Leave them powered down. I shut the main power off, we're going to glide in." Jaden continued to futz with switches both in front and above him.

"Glide...?" Nel sat back down, thinking to herself for a moment. Just then, one of those nifty light bulbs popped up over her head and illuminated. "Oh. I get it... I think."

Jaden smirked. "I have good ideas sometimes, you know."

"Sometimes." Nel added, sliding down in the seat and leaning back to relax.

The plan was to cut the engines and any other power that didn't support life, and use the gravity of the planet, along with the forward velocity of the ship that it retained from exiting Hyperspace, to move toward their destination. The reason for doing so was to avoid detection. The ship was small enough to seem like one of Dantooine's famous acid asteroids on approach to burn up in the planet's atmosphere. Long range sensors would probably pick the ship up, but dismiss it as one of the thousands of asteroids in the system that floated around and destroyed themselves in the atmosphere.

The smuggling pair didn't know that most of the Sith navy would be at Mon Calamari and Mygeeto. If they had, the ship would be powered up and it would have been smooth sailing to and from the planet. At most, the local patrol craft would try to stop them. Those poor ships never had a chance at keeping up with the Fighting Chance.

Instead, the trip from the edge of the system to the planet would take them almost an entire day...

[Veg]

(( So this is obviously old, had some real life stuff pop up. Disregard the stuff about the naval deployments. ))

Drifting in via gravity had worked both better and worse than Jaden had planned. Better because the forward momentum not only lasted, but the solar winds were pushing the ship toward the planet, too. Worse because the gravity of Dantooine was also pulling the ship into a grouping of acid asteroids, who were also falling steadily into the planet's grip. While this would add the benefit of sensor blinding and make the ship seem more like the asteroids it was impersonating, it put the ship's hull in a good bit of danger. Main power was off, that meant no shields for the asteroids to bump into. It would take a lot of luck to not be smashed to bits before they even made orbit.

"Problem?" Nel asked, reacting to the fact Jaden was out of his seat and craning his neck to look out the forward view port.

He shook his head, not breaking his gaze. "Well, maybe. We've picked up some friends."

Nel stiffened in her seat. She knew this was a dumb idea. Without the main computer on, they were running sensor blind. The Sith could sneak up on the freighter without either of the two knowing about it. "Fighters? How many?"

Jaden turned his head away from the view port to look at Nel, a smirk stretched across his face. "Asteroids, relax hotcakes. They don't know we're here..." The smirk slipped for a second, "Hopefully anyway."

A sigh escaped Nel's lips. He was probably right. "I'm going to get the systems prepped for a cold start. When we hit high orbit I want to be ready to burst into atmo."

With a wave of his hand, Jaden dismissed her and turned back to look outside. They were getting closer, but so was the planet. Only a few more hours now, and that was when the real fun started. Any Sith ships out there would be watching, and when they kicked the power back on it would be very clear the Fighting Chance wasn't an asteroid. Of course if someone on an orbiting ship got curious and did a sensor focus on the asteroids, the charade would be up long before high orbit. To avoid detection when they had arrived on the rim of the system, Jaden had avoided using a sensor sweep to see if how many Sith ships were out there, where they were, and what kind of ships they were. They were going in blind, and it was something to think about in the last couple of hours before they burned into the atmosphere hard and fast.

While Jaden had his mind out in the stars, Nel had real work to do. While the ship was wired, by hand she might add, to be quick started in as fast as four minutes. That was really only for emergencies, when the two had to run into the ship and then blast right out of a space port. No, with a few hours to waste Nel could do it the slow way. She could prime every system, maybe even start the energy start-up for the quads. Just in case there was trouble. That four minute start up was still an option if they were spotted and engaged, one she expected they would have to use. As brilliant as Jaden's plan was, it was half cocked and just too simple.