Expedition to Jenasha Station

[RC 212]

Station here
[member="Jorus Merrill"] - This concerns.

The Crop Duster
Edge of the Galaxy

Time hadn't stood still for Eliza. After the disastrous mission to Enigma Prime, she'd spent years in those frozen wastes, honing her skills. With what was left of her ship and her data connection she spent plenty of time going through old captains logs, pouring over every thing she'd ever written down. Even old ledgers.

And one thing came of interest.

A scrap of flimsi, passed off to her by a Cathar Pirate, with supposed coordinates to an Otherspace station.

It was worth a look, and now with her boat back in the air, and a fresh outlook in her hearts she was off to findit. Gone was the tiny girl. Gone was the Pirate. Gone was Eliza the lighthearted Cap'n of Expeditions

Now she was taking a new route. A route to power. To the secrets of the verse.

She reached out with senses, her Raxis blood firing up in her veins, and re-calibrated her Hyperdirve with a hydrospanner, some loose wires and some other riggin's and doo-dads. If she followed the manual correctly, she could rig herself a two shot makeshift Other-space Drive.

And then it was on to this phantom location, that was lazily scrawled on a non nonsensical map....

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Eliza Raxis"]

I miss my little sister something fierce these days, and there's a long story. Bottom line is, way back when, her will gave out a ton of stuff to folks that could solve her riddles. Some of'em never got solved at all. One lucky stiff got Jen'asha Station, a heck of a port. Modded Corellian/Omega station, half built by Ayden Cater due to some auction stuff - another long story - and moored in Otherspace. I'd only been a couple times. Kept my distance since it changed hands.

Otherspace is like hot sauce. A little bit'll wake you up, but you wouldn't make a meal of it. I've spent enough time there that I respect the burn. Appreciate it? Ehh... I've got a little too much caucasity going on. Not for a long stay, anyway.

But flying on the raggedy edge isn't always about freedom and happy. Half the time it's about your heart in your throat and the best of bad options.

Bottom line, I rigged up an Otherdrive effect with Imps on my tail, blew the drive, and wound up in the land of gray skies and black stars. I was short on parts, Jen'asha wasn't too far, so I tuned my sensors for undead Charon bioships and started the long burn.

 

[RC 212]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

Otherspace was not how she imagined it. As soon as she punched it, weird sensations of jellyfish crawling under every inch of her skin hit her. She felt cold, hot, and things in between. For a few moments she wretched almost losing her lunch, and then was launched into the inexplicable. A land of two planes. One gray one above, one gray one below and endless mists.

She wiped drool from the corner of her mouth and frowned, heaving to try and regain her air. Then she whipped out the map, flattening it on the console. It made sense now. A map to nowhere with no directions because, well there seemed to be no karkin direction here. Like six points in space and time, locating your single point, did not exist.

"Feth. Feth. Feth Feth......Feth..."

You're in the chit now.​

​

Maybe.​

She flung the map, and turned back to the yoke of her battered and nearly falling apart YT-2400. Gloved fingers flexed and then wrapped around the steering device.

She closed her eyes, using the one gift she still had left. A gift that ran in her family.

Paths of muticolored threads began to appear, thousands of them crisscrossing and muddling the sky. Thread by thread she traced them, running down their paths into the eternal void with her mind. Some felt like a lead weight in the pit of her stomach. These were discarded.

Others gave no sensation at all.

Also discarded.

She breathed deep, taking a heavy breath and refocusing.

One thought repeated in her mind like a mantra.

Find my way home....​

The last three threads all gave a warm fuzzy feeling. She chose the center path, set the thrusters to low, and assessed her damage.

Two Quarter panels gone, lasers gone, half a drive slagged.

"Well that's awesome. Another great start to an adventure."

From the cooler beside her, she pulled a beer, cracked the top off on the dash and kicked up her feet. Right after her first sip?

She ran right into an ugly bug looking thingy.

"What in the nine hells of the void?"

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Eliza Raxis"]

I cannot freaking stand how the FTL threshold is different in Otherspace. At least I think that's how it works. The math would make Cathul Thuku tear out her hair if she had hair. Anyways, the Charon wiped out multiple galaxies without hyperdrive tech. With just sublight engines, you can legit coast between the dead worlds and black holes that sort of pass for solar systems around here. It'll take you a couple years, but that's better than a couple million.

All that to say, I was moving at a pretty good clip when the other ship-slash-ships popped up on my screens. It was one sensor contact, but it resolved into a freighter and one of those blobular undead bioships the Charon stole from somewhere. Whether they were undead before the Charon got'em is an open question. Me, I'd think no. The Charon death cultists are gorram bad customers.

Physics is, like I said, weird here, but I know how to tune the comms to travel a little farther here. "This is Jorus Merrill to whoever's in that boat the Charon are boarding. If you're still alive and human, I'm on the way. If you're not, I'll nuke the bugs for you, free of charge."

I'm not one to devalue the diversity of sentient lifeforms by stooping to slurs, but the Charon are definitely an exception.

 

[RC 212]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

She was at the hatch as they sucked her ship in. Both hands clutching twin Sawed off's leveled right for the door. There was skittering on the other side. Her grip was white knuckled, jaw tight. She had come through many things, nebular storms, wormholes, FTL failures, and even escaped a few invasions. But she'd never ever been boarded.

She'd always been the one doing the boarding, back when she was a Pirate.

The shoe sucked on the other foot.

Then a call came through her comms. She spoke back, armor routing her through on the same channel.

​

"Bugs? This is Captain Eliza Raxis of the Crop Duster. Yeah, whatever it is it wants in bad. Will take any help I can get. Consider this a May-Day."​

The skittering increased, and she heard the tell tale signs of hydraulics groaning under stress. Her grip on the sawed off's tightened....

​

This will be fun...​

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Eliza Raxis"] -- not a Raxis I knew, and I'd met half the clan at one point or another. Good spacers, sometimes Wardens, sometimes too piratical for my taste. Either way, exactly the kind of people you'd expect to find drifting in Otherspace.

I didn't have much in the way of weapons. I'd taken one of the Wretched Hive's patched-up Niathal shuttles, and we'd stripped out the mag pulse launcher and a couple other things. I had, let's see, two laser cannons and two concussion missiles -- warheads total, not launchers. On the plus side, the Charon ship was sort of stuck, at least if it wanted to stay latched to Raxis' ship. The telesponder looked familiar, maybe a family boat I'd encountered before, maybe not. My memory's not the best.

"All right, Captain Raxis, brace yourself. Forty seconds."

If the Charon ship was docked up with the other one, it couldn't have particle shields up. I picked a target half by instinct and half because I knew this kind of hard-xeno ship design pretty well. The bridge was at the top of the vertically-oriented hull, nestled in a fold of undead biocrap. Wonky energy weapons started firing, but I looped through them and punched one of my precious little missiles right into the bridge.

The whole Charon ship lurched. Didn't die (again), the guns kept firing, but no more coordination.

 

[RC 212]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

Once the Charon ship lurched, her own smaller YT-2400 lurched with it. The impact sent her crashing left into the bulkhead as Jorus scored his direct hit on the bridge. She was unawares what the hell was happening out there, but whatever it was enraged the "Bugs" because the chittering grew louder. She shoved off the wall, just in time for a the hatch to open half way, with a very alien face poking through.

"Chit!"

She groweld and squeezed the trigger, sending a packed flehcette of rounds into the head. Two shots, and it went down, but another took it's place. There must have been a fair few of them. She had two rounds left in each sawed off and little time to reload.

​

"Captain Merrill, can you sever the connection between my vessel and theirs?"​

In waiting she sheathed one gun, and grabbed her helmet with the other hand, fumbling to ram it on.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Eliza Raxis"]

"No problem."

It was a problem. See, my loadout options came down to laser cannons -- against a shielded umbilical -- or my last concussion missile, which could do serious splash damage to the '2400. I'd need to do something extra.

Fortunately, extra is my middle name.

I set the simple autopilot to arc away, and ran down to the hangar, a distance of maybe eight steps. And when I say 'hangar', I mean a space just barely big enough for the hyperspace beacons. I unclamped them from their cleats and each other, then headed back to the pilot's seat. Shields were down to 40%. No fun at all.

I started a turn-and-burn straight for the connection with one hand on the inertial dampeners. Back in the hangar, a few thousand pounds of beacons shifted and groaned and bumped into the back hatch. I poured on speed in a nearly straight-line course that earned me enough incoming fire to drop my shields. At the last minute, I disabled the dampeners, opened the back hatch, and arced away. Around ten gravities crushed me into my seat and I grayed out.

When I got fully conscious again, those hyperspace beacons had ripped jagged lines through the connector and the nearby Charon hull. The '2400 didn't look damaged. It did, however, look...spinny.

 

[RC 212]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

Now it Eliza's turn to feel G forces. Mainly the force of her impacting every surface as the Crop Duster began to spin away at a rapid clip. The ripping free of the airlock started depressurization, just as her helmet seal clicked. She roared in pain as random implements, anyhting not bolted down made a beeline for the exit. Alarms blared, klaxons sounded.

She grabbed an article of crash webbing and clung to it, as the last of her air whooshed out of the craft. That was the last she had, and there was nothing she could do about a jammed airlock right now. Next she clicked her heels, mag boots clamping her to the deck and walked as fast as possible towards the cockpit. G forces from the spin increased. Her hand found the auto-pilot lever, not even sure what it was set to.

Last chance.​

She slammed it.

The ship stabilized, flying a straight line in a random direction.

She smashed into the dash and grabbed the lever as she flew away, spitting blood into her faceplate.

Then the spinning stopped.

​

"I uh......Thanks.....I'm out of air. Any help?"​

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Eliza Raxis"]

The one good thing I did have was a tractor beam. Wouldn't have done crap while the '2400 was still linked to the Charon ship, but now it was more than enough to help the Crop Duster stabilize away from the weapons fire. And without a bridge, they weren't gonna be following us anytime soon. Still, I gave'em plenty of distance and got us up to a good shared velocity. Didn't even take that long, not with both of us at full burn.

"We're clear, Crop Duster. I've got enough of a toolbox to start patching you up. Might only have enough spare atmo to pressurize your essentials - cockpit, engine room, path between'em. For anything else, we'll need to find a port. My hyperdrive's fried, and from the look of these scans, yours is too, so realspace ports aren't an option." I'd been known to pop ships in and out of hyperspace, but I'd only done things with Otherspace a couple of times, at extreme need, and it had cost me. "I was heading for Jen'asha Station - used to be an Otherspace mapping and research base for Akure before they sold it to Aurora. You should come along."

 

[RC 212]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

​

He said Jen'asha?​

​

Weird​

"Oddly enough that's where I was headed, though my map is quite crappy. I'll tag along. Slaving my ships controls over now."​

After that was done she glanced around. The damage wasn't too extensive. Save for the jammed airlock, and some odd's and ends that had flown out, most of her vessel was still intact. He was correct about the FTL drive though. That was definitely a goner. And the bugs, she wanted to know about those too. But there would be time for that later.

​

"I'm headed to the airlock to take a look at it. Let me know when we're there will ya? Again many thanks."​

Too curious for her own good.

She snatched a tool box and went to have a look...