Private CDS: Order 2

[Ru Comet]

Flight Map | Music
Pick-Up Location: Byss Spaceport, Marlon Sularen
Phase 1: Byss -> Fresia
Phase 2: Fresia -> Xa Fel
Phase 3: Xa Fel -> Reecee
Phase 4: Reecee -> Gargolyn IV
Phase 5: Gargolyn IV -> Celwis
Phase 6: Celwis -> Csilla
Phase 7: Csilla -> Avidich
Phase 8: Avidich -> Thearterra
Phase 9: Thearterra -> Cathay
Phase 10: Cathay -> SYSTEM-LESS SPACE <UNKNOWN REGION>
Phase 11: SYSTEM-LESS SPACE <UNKNOWN REGION> -> Nothmir
Drop-Off Location: Nothmir Spaceport, Agent 66
Utilized Hyperlanes: None
Hyperlane Transfers: None
Influence Clouds: Galactic Alliance

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Ru Comet, the ever vigilant, was playing a popular holonet game with some individuals across the galaxy that he'd most likely never meet. It was a good game, mostly a reflex based game, something that he would have thought himself fairly competent at considering him being a pilot "No! Why? That doesn't even make any sense! How are you supposed to dodge it when they can just grab you and throw you off the map? This is why I hate this gamemode.... Well yeah of course I'm mad! Whatever, I've got a holonet contract." there was some laughing and chiding from the others in his party over the microphone "Oh I'm sorry." Ru backed up with his hands out to the side "I forgot you were a Hutt, Timoth, I knew you had rolls but I didn't think you had creds to." more shouting came from his datapad "Uh huh, yeah. I'm sure pal, real scary. Hey, hey tell me when you get a job and you stop using daddy's credit chips, huh? Enjoy your report nerfherder."

The pilot turned off the game and pulled up his holonet terminal store. There was the new order, the second one ever. Ru Comet peered at it and then walked to the cargobay, the cavernous space was definitely larger than he'd expect for this kind of ship though when he looked at the order form again he looked back up to the empty hold "Great..." there would definitely not be space for three packages of this size! About an hour later Ru had finished unfastening and moving the furniture out of the common room and into his room and other ill-suited locations around the YT-1760's interior. Finally having cleaned enough space Ru looked over the empty lobby "Well I hope that's enough space, really not looking forward to buying a new ship."

Walking into the cockpit and taking a seat he pulled out his datapad again and looked over the order form then keyed into the navigation terminal the entire route to get a idea of what he was looking at "Really man?" he said with exasperation as the route had no hyperplanes and took him into the Unknown Region, not the most hospitable part of the Galaxy "You better have done your math right." he grumbled and started to tally up the credits then did a double take at the number "12,600 credits for three packages? Nice. When in doubt, 5% extra." he grinned "I love this job." he tossed the datapad onto the dash as he accepted the contract.

Ru aligned himself to Byss and jumped into the star system where he hailed the Spaceport "Comet's Delivery Service. YT-1760, nice paint job, requesting landing permissions." an Imperial accented voice broke over his communications terminal "YT-1760 you are cleared, set sub-light speed t-" Ru poked the button and silenced the radio. He had heard what he needed to hear. The atmosphere grew ever closer as Ru Comet did justice to his name and streaked through high orbit, and impacted the Byssian atmospheric ozone layer with a sonic boom which shuddered the whole starship "Haha wow." he chuckled as the space port raced towards him. He reached over and with his left hand flipped a few replusor generators onto reverse and stabilize while using his right hand to whip the ship around and drift backwards into the starport to the surprise of the personnel below which scrambled out of his way.

The ramp lowered with a hiss and out strode Ru with his hands on his hips "Evening. I believe you have my payday?" he motioned towards three large cargo containers "That's probably it. Order for three large containers, bound for Nothmir. Contracted to Comet's Delivery Service." he put a hand out to the slowly reacting deckhand which was still stunned from almost being hit by the light freighter. As he reached for it the impatient Ru Comet walked past him and patted him on the shoulder "Ru Comet, nice to meet you to." the employee continued to staring forwards at the shimmering main engines of Ru's starship. Long streaks of carbonized gas laid on the bow of the starship where he had a hard entry into the atmosphere.

"Lets move people! Real high priority freight here." he put a hand up and circled it calling attention to himself then lowering the finger at the packages "I need replusor lifts on these and put them into the cargobay, and one in the lobby of the ship." one of the employees quirked an eyebrow "The lo-" the spacer put a finger to his masked face "Bup, bup, bup! Shhh. Less speaking more working." the man sneered at Ru and waved him off as he went to get the repulsor lift to which Ru called over to him with his hands cupped around the helmet "This is why they're replacing you with droids!"

 

[Ru Comet]

It would take several minutes for the spaceport logistics personnel to get the three large containers onto the ship, especially since one was placed into the lobby of the YT-1760. The small interior of the ship was made nearly impassable due to the huge bulk "Nngh!" Ru squeezes through the narrow gap which was now the only exit and entry space past the crate. As Ru sat in the seat and started to activate the systems to the ship he took another look at the navigational terminal "Easy enough, straight line, take a turn, and hopefully don't get swept up in the mass-shadow of an unmarked celestial body!" he looked forward as he gripped the flight controls "Fantastic."

Comet's ship roared to life and it slowly ascended then moved forward through the hangar doors of the spaceport. He leaned over and turned his communications receiver back on. Pushing the accelerator forward enthusiastically the sub-light engines blazed. Propelling the starship back through the atmosphere and escaping the gravitational hold of the planet, Byss, below he was well on his way. Alignment and jump cycles took several long hours due to the caution he had to exercise while not utilizing a major hyperlane for such a long stretch.

He had been sleeping in the leaned back chair of the cockpit, while the ship stood stationary in deep space. Ru had decided on sleeping after he had reached the Phase 9 waypoint. Bing, bing, bing. His alarm chimed to wake him up. Pushing his hand around he grasped the timekeeping device and silenced it "Not as comfy as the bed but, it worked I guess." he stretched side to side and yawned. Keying in the proper alignment the ship's autopilot began to make course corrections so that he could follow a previously route, non-hyperlane, that had been recommended to him "This is going to suck if I die." he mumbled and activated the hyperdrive.

The signature tunnel of light of hyperspace surrounded the ship for a dozen or so seconds before entering realspace once more "Great piloting Comet, you're not dead." clearly minimal piloting went into jumps like these but he had to entertain himself somehow "Lets see... Cathay... Cathay." Ru peered out of the cockpit's considerable viewing ports but did not see the planet. Mild panic began to creep over him. He definitely did not misplace a planet! Opening up the holomap of the system he could see his mistake. He was several tens of thousands of miles away from Cathary "Really?!" he groaned and then punched the dashboard with a bubbling range "Stupid, stupid!" he kicked up under the dash as well. This was going to require another, lesser, jump within the same system. Every jump he made in this mostly uncharted space was potentially lethal, not to mention time wasted!

 

[Ru Comet]

"One of these, uhhh lets try that." Ru was tapping away at the screen for the navigational terminal as he plotted a course to, hopefully, shoot past several smaller celestial bodies and enter just outside of Cathay's gravitational field. Meanwhile the YT-1760 began to align to the new inputs "Annnndddd, here it goes." he pushed activated the ship's hyperdrive. In a blink he was near where he had desired. Taking a look around through the viewing ports he didn't see any signs of space debris, ships, or anything else except for the planet which seemed more of less empty "This place gives me the creeps." he grumbled.

Ru pulled up his datapad and looked again at this contract as he rewrote the navigational computer's flight plan. He wanted to make sure that this didn't happen again, but this is what he got for getting Unknown Region data from a shady message board on the holonet. After the hyperdrive was ready for use the pilot activated the engines and entered the most sketchy part of his journey, the empty system.

What Ru Comet saw was absolutely not what he expected. A dozen ships were before his battling it out in the middle of the void. Mostly light freighters and some older fighter starships were locked in combat "Yep! Nope!" he scrambled at the controls and activated the blaster turret on top of his starship. The arms control terminal lit up. "Nice and easy, they probably don't even know you're here."

A loud blast impacted the deflector shielding of Ru's starship sending alarm claxons blaring "Holy!" he slammed the accelerator forward. As his ship swiftly exited the engagement two smaller vessels tailed him "I don't know you guys! Back off!" he shouted through his communications terminal while he wheeled the turret to the aft of the transport and began to send blaster fire in the general direction of the pursuit craft, the response was an alien language he didn't understand "Typical, nobody speaks Common anymore."

 

[Ru Comet]

Several blaster cannon bolts streaked past the cockpit of Ru's starship as the pursuit craft persevered through the inaccurate return fire from the light freighter "Listen, we can talk this out!" Ru shouted at the the hostile pilots. Ru turned the ship suddenly and attempting to shake the pursuit craft, to no avail. They were far more maneuverable than him! Looking to his right he tried to locate the alignment point for the jump to his final destination.

"I've got a thirty child workers in my cargohold!" he lied "You can have half if you let me go!" there was no response from the pursuit craft duo which continued to chip away at the deflector shielding of the YT-1760. A blaring beeping noise alerted Ru Comet to the fact that his deflector shielding was now breached. Turning on the automatic alignment he grabbed the controls for the blaster cannon turret and began to fire at the ships.

In a stroke of luck one of the pursuit craft was winged by a blaster cannon bolt which cased it to lose some maneuverability, and begin to move in erratic circles as the remaining engines continued to remain active "Haha! You see that? That's what you ge-" a blaster bolt shot through the the cargo hold of his ship sending off air alarms and the doorway to the cargo-hold slammed shut, airlock in place "Are you for real?!" he exclaimed and continued his counter-attack "So help me if that was my cargo I'm going to eat you! Yeah eat you! You hear me scumbag? Eat you! I'm like a rancor! I love eating pirates!" he was hoping that his talk about eating another sentient being would scare the pirate pilot away, but being a tad more reasonable than that the pirate did not waver.

Bling! The navigational terminal sounded off that it had reached alignment with the next waypoint listed. Ru looked over his shoulder and grabbed the hyperspace actuator and activated it. The ship flew forward into the tunnel of blue and black that was iconic of hyperspace travel. Ru unbuckled himself from the chair and rushed backwards towards the cargo-hold. The panel near the door had a small screen which he could use to see into it via an internal camera. All he could see was the massive cargo container "Ugh!" he clicked the camera off and walked back to the cockpit and plopped down in his chair.

It wasn't like he could charge for the damage to his ship. This technically wasn't dangerous space in terms of criminal activity. It was just him being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that wasn't something in the client's control.

 

[Ru Comet]

The damaged starship slid out of Hyperspace and once it had decelerated, Ru, got out of his seat once more and walked to the cargo hold "Alright lets see the damage." he said to himself with confidence as he cracked his knuckles. The airlock was overridden with a command and the door slid open pulling a huge amount of the pressurized air from the lobby towards the breach. Ru was wearing a pressurized emergency space suit so he would be fine for now. Grabbing onto the interior hand-holds he closed the airlock behind him. The pressure venting ceased and he began to search for the breach.

"Huh, that's not so bad." he grinned and looked at the melted metal hole that had nothing missed the cargo container but also was relatively symmetrical. For about an hour, just outside of high orbit of Nothmir, Ru Comet was using his toolbox and some heat-resistant foam metal to repair the ship's hull. Standing back he admired his work "Well that's that." he left the cargo hold and put the tool chest behind his chair. Taking hold of the flight controls he spoke into the radio "Comet's Delivery Service, YT-1760, minor hull damage, requesting landing and services."

"YT-1760, this is Control, you are cleared for emergency landing at the designated landing pad. Services on standby." the Nothmorian controller sounded off over the communications terminal. Ru Comet had rarely had a re-entry so carefully planned as he needed to be sure that he wouldn't tear open a new hole in the hull of his stricken vessel through the patchwork repairs he had made. A tear could mean the absolute obliteration of not only his vessel but himself during re-entry.

With his cargo delivered to the spaceport, his credits acquired, and his ship given servicing by the local mechanics he spent a relaxing weekend on Nothmir. On the edge of the Galaxy the magnitude of his journey didn't escape him "I love this job." he smiled while taking a bite of a Thyrisian Fried Chuckoo.

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End
Marlon Sularen