Disclaimer: Look, I don't own. Not that anyone is accusing me of owning this stuff, but while I may own my original characters, the concepts and characters that other people own belong to Nickelodeon, Schneider's bakery, Disney, or Lucas Film. So, non-existent people who keep asking me, stop. I just don't own.
:}
Jade sighed, pulling herself out of the maintenance tubes at the right floor, and made her way to the command officers quarters. Jade decided to switch tactics, and tried bluffing. "Excuse me, can you tell me where the captains quarters are?" Jade asked the first Storm Trooper she saw.
"ID please." He replied.
"Like you can check it." Jade said, pulling out her ID. "I'm supposed to check the captains quarters, make sure his, uh, special possession is still there." She gave her most board look while praying 'Please let the captain be a male. If not, I'm gonna have to fight.'
"Stupid junior officer." Another crew member growled. "The first officer has the Twi'lek slave girls. The captain doesn't believe in any such indulgences. "
"S-sorry..." Jade tried to salvage her mistake.
"Don't be sorry, girl." The other officer snapped. "Be correct. Now then, the first officer maybe sent you, but I doubt that. Why are you trying to get into the command quarters?"
"I wanted to see a princess." Jade said, using a truth to back up a lie.
"Bad timing." The officer said. "We've been boarded, so everyone's on high alert. I'm even having trouble getting past the guards, and this is my job.'
"So I'm not getting in there?" Jade asked, getting ready to fight.
"That depends on how badly you want to see a princess?" The crew member said. "Show me something..." He leered.
Jade's hand slipped towards her hidden weapons, not trusting her aim with the blaster. Only, she realized, she didn't have too. "Not in front of the guards." She said.
"Okay, then, there's a supply closet just a bit back. We can go in there, have us some fun, and then I'll show you a princess." He informed her.
"Or, you'll have your way, then walk back past the guards, leaving me out here, along, humiliated, and getting nothing." Jade growled. "No, if I'm giving you anything, I get to at least see her door first. And I'll need more then just you pointing out a door to believe that's where the princess is."
"Then I guess you're not seeing a princess today." He said, turning to walk back beyond the guards.
Jade smiled. "Maybe... Or maybe I'll just go find me someone who I know can show me both a princess, and a good time. All I have to do is wait for the emergency to be over, so this is a totally limited time offer for you. Guessing you'll have to go back to playing with yourself, since the girls back their, I'm guessing the one's who don't out rank you, belong to those who do. Wait, that would mean they outrank you too." Jade snickered.
The crew member froze, rage crossing his face. "You bitch. I'll show you. Just try and find someone who can get you past this point. There's no one. And when you do try, I'll be there, waiting, laughing, knowing you failed."
The Storm Trooper stood there, shook his head. "Even I don't believe him." The trooper said, and Jade got the feeling he was rolling is eyes at the man. "Okay, girl, here's the deal. There are only two rooms with an honor guard, and neither is the captains. There's a guard outside the fist officers room, and one outside the guest quarters where the princess is. Not letting you past, just letting you know..."
Jade smiled at the trooper, counting the men at this checkpoint. 'I see four guards, but bet there are at least two more somewhere waiting to reinforce them. Plus, there are the two guards inside, and probably two more patrolling. That makes ten, and I'm trying not to play my hand just yet, so...'
"Okay, I'll show you where the princess is." The crew member said. "Trooper, let her past, on my authority."
"Okay, but your not getting any." The guard said, stepping aside to symbolically make way for Jade. She walked past the guard post, the spot where the guards had pop out hard point barriers from the wall to hide behind in a firefight, and walked through the secured hallway into the block of rooms reserved for the highest ranking officers on board. Soon, she was down the hall a bit, past the now closed blast doors, and she could see two rooms that each had a storm trooper guarding them.
'Not that big a section, but there have to be more guards then this...' She thought as the man with her tried to move her into a room.
"This guest room was used by a VIP, but he left, just eight hours ago..." The man was saying.
Jade buried her knee into his crotch, sending him doubling over in pain. Not taking chances, she slammed him with a quick grappling move, using leverage she wasn't aware she knew about to lift his body up and over, tossing him back down to the floor.
"Okay, whats going on here?" One of the troopers asked, walking closer to her. She'd used the room to obscure their vision of her, so she was, for now, fairly safe.
"He said he'd show me a princess, but then he tried to take advantage of me..." Jade said, breaking into fake tears.
"You should have known better." A second guard said, stepping closer to check on the downed crewman.
'Three? Guessing that's as good as it gets...' She thought, using a pulse of force to enhance her moment, and her perception, drawing her blaster in one swift move and taking a shot at each of them before they were fully aware she was moving.
For the second time that day, Jade was amazed to see she'd hit two of her three targets. The last one spun about, aiming at her with his carbine. Jade pulled one of the bodies up and used it as a shield, while taking aim again with her own weapon. It would take her several shots to drop this man, and a tossed grenade to get the last guard, who came out of what was probably a break room in time to see the shootout ending. 'Okay, that should have brought the others running, unless….' She then realized the blast doors had cut down all the sound. 'Lets hear it for vacuum sealing.'
Jade walked to the first of the two doors that had a guard, and pushed the open button. Nothing happened. She went back and got the crewman's ID and used it to try and open the door. His ID stick didn't do anything. 'Okay, lets try something a bit stronger...' She pulled out her light saber, and quickly sliced open the door. "God, that took forever." She groaned, since it took almost thirty seconds to slice open enough of the door to open it.
"Are you here to kill the first officer?" A red skinned woman asked. She had some kind of thick tentacle things instead of hair, maybe two of them, and wore a way to revealing outfit. Jade could tell her teeth were just a bit sharper then a normal humans.
"I'm looking for a princess." Jade replied.
"Take me with you, and I can get you out of here without having to face the checkpoints." The woman bargained.
"Okay, but if you betray me, well, you won't have time to regret it." Jade warned.
"I doubt I'll regret it more then I've regretted what the man who owns me makes me do." The alien said. "I'm Hirani 'Afan, a twi'lek slave girl. But you can call me Hirani. I also accept Hira from friends, but we're not quite there yet, are we? No, but it doesn't mater, cause we're about to be good friends, seeing that your gonna get me out of here. You see, I'm kinda done serving my master, and will serve you, if your more gentile."
"Don't like him, huh?" Jade asked as she moved to the other door.
"Trust me, bruises show up just fine on my red skin." Hirani said. "I've had to much experience with that. Just, wherever your taking me, please be kind, and find me a master who doesn't hit. And, I suppose, regular meals would be nice too."
"Watch the hall, let me know if someone is coming." Jade ordered.
"Or, since your outside, we could hot-wire the door." The slave girl recommended. "Probably faster."
"Okay, give it a try." Jade said, not sure she wanted to be forcing her way in.
"Um, Merrick is still alive." The soon to be former slave noted as she pushed a couple of buttons, getting access to the wiring behind the control panel.
"Just felt kinda wrong to kill a man who couldn't fight any more." Jade said. "Besides, I want him to feel that shot I gave him to his nuts for a bit longer."
There was a sparking, and the door slid open. "Glad to know I can still do that." Hirani said, smiling. "Princess." She greeted the girl on the other side of the door.
Jade saw Tori hiding further into the room, behind what could only be the entrance to the bathroom. "Vega, that a bathroom or a walk in closet?" She called out.
"Both, really." Tori called back. "Um, Jade, not to make too fine a point of it, but what are you doing here?"
"Rescue mission, princess." Jade said, only for her smirk to freeze. "It's just not as much fun, now that I know it's true."
"Yea, well, they took Trina." Tori said. "Now, I know you don't care about her, but we have to go get her, or a lot of people will suffer."
"Yea, I head something about an ultimate weapon that involves her singing." Jade sniped. "Um, Vega, we're leaving now. It's only a mater of time before they realize there was combat here, and open that blast door."
"Just let me grab a couple of things." Tori said, going back into the bathroom slash closet to get something.
"Vega, we really don't have time to pack." Jade growled.
"Actually, if we have a moment, there are a few things I'd like to take with." Hirani said, going back to the room she'd been in. Jade found herself wondering how long before that door opened and the dark order discovered she'd killed the guards.
The twi'lek and Tori both finished very quickly, only grabbing a small bag each. Then the slave girl led them to the captains quarters, and opened the door the same way she'd opened Tori's. The open portal revealed the captains personal valet droid working at keeping the place clean. The former slave shot the droid, using the carbine from one of the dead storm troopers. The droid sparked as it fell, systems shutting down with the violent loss of it's central processor. "Believe it or not, he deserved that." She said, showing her sharp teeth. "Now then, the captain has a private launch, and we're taking it out of here."
"You can hot wire that too?" Jade asked.
"Not really, but we won't have too." The red skinned girl said. "We just need it to get us to the hanger bays, and then we can steal one of the shuttles there, and get away. This thing, while nice, is too notable. No, we get out of here by taking..."
"The maintenance people, they come from outside, or do they tromp through the captains quarters?" Jade asked. "No, there's a maintenance tube, has to be, and it goes for some distance to a connecting hallway, with access to the hanger bays. Okay, this is a plan. Everyone ready? We'll need a couple of those bodies, and to rig a signal from their armor, but this might work."
Jade had both slave and princess get into emergency space suits, then loaded several bodies into the captains launch, unaware that one of the bodies being loaded in by Hirani was Merrick. Jade believed that they could use the armor's systems to give an artificial life signs, just in case the tie fighters didn't shoot at unoccupied ships. Next, once that was done, they launched the captains private transport, causing it to zip away from the Star Destroyer in a fairly straight line. Jade had found she could launch the ship on a timer, and had managed to do so while she and the others hid in the maintenance tube, behind it's sealed but unlocked blast door.
Seconds after it's launch, the captains yacht was shot out of space by a couple of fighters. "Okay, that's good to know about. We're gonna have to pull those fighters away so three can get the Beetle out of here." Jade said, as she started to lead her group down the access way toward where it cut back into the ship, outside the officers quarters.
The access tube was taller then may might expect, tall enough for them to walk, while wide enough for them to go one at a time, and potentially carry parts. That allowed them to make good time, walking the good hundred meters to where the tube turned sharply into a supply room. From there, Jade led the two girls through the halls, avoiding as many troupers as they could.
"We need disguises, so they won't recognize us." Jade hissed.
"No, we need to exchange disguises." Hirani countered. "Miss Jedi, you need to change out of that uniform, put on something else. Princess, you should put on the uniform, and do something to hide those cheeks. People here know what you look like, so we're doing what we can to disguise that."
"How will the uniform disguise her?" Jade asked.
"It won't." The twi'lek replied. "But the guards are looking for a junior officer, a woman, moving through the halls. We'll find ourselves some way to pretending to be more then a single officer, and that will help hide us. If only we had another uniform..." Her eyes lingered on a couple of officers, young men, checking a hall. "Excuse me, I'll draw one off..."
Jade glanced at Tori. "She changed her mind." Tori said, as if that explained everything.
"Yea, it's hard coming up with a good plan." Jade said. "Um, not that I care, but we do need to find out where they took your sister."
"Some place called Tansarii station." Tori said. "I don't think they cared if I knew or not. The man who took Trina just said I was staying here, and if she did exactly what he told her to do, I wouldn't be tossed to the officers. He made a point of telling us the order, that the senior offices would go first, and I probably wouldn't be recognizable by the time the junior officers had their go's."
"That would be Lord Rend, another Jedi type." Hirani added, arm around an officer. But the young man wasn't moving, beyond the easy breaths of the unconscious.
"Lord, or Darth?" Jade asked. "Because Rend is a Sith name. A Sith title." She didn't much care as to how she knew that, given her vast knowledge gained in the dreamtimes.
"Sith, Jedi, I've never been able to tell the difference." The slave girl said, shrugging as she lowered the boy to the ground..
"Um, Jade, no comment about the unconscious man in her arms?" Tori said, pointing to the boy.
"Yea, are you sure his uniform will look good on me?" Jade asked.
"Okay, how did you knock him out?" Tori asked.
"I was able to snag a pocket stunner from the captains quarters." Hirani said, smirking. "Okay, technically, it's a small, pocket blaster, but this model has one hell of a stun setting."
"And you stunned him why?" Jade asked, pulling the boys uniform off.
"Because young officers may not be totally corrupted yet." The red girl explained. "Like this boy. He came with me willingly, trying to comfort what he knew was a scared slave girl. He may have wanted to take advantage, but he was being nice, which is a lot more then may of the older officers would do."
"Okay, lets put him in Vega's survival suit, so he won't be in just his undies…. You know, Vega could wear his uniform.." Jade smiled.
"No!" Hirani snapped. "She wears yours, because notice the differences?" She gestured back and forth. "He was a different department. We're adding to the differences between you two, as well as any description they could have spread before the alarms went off. Now hurry."
Lord Grey, meanwhile, was making his way back from his own mission. He'd taken the time to fight a few skirmishes, but always had a way out. But his crowning achievement was tossing several recovered storm trooper grenades into an access tube, using the force to ricochet them towards engineering, and listening for the detonations. 'Probably won't stop them for fixing things, but if I'm lucky, that will delay them getting everything on line for quite some time.'
Malcolm stopped to listen in over one of the captured storm troopers radios. 'Technically a radio link, cause that's what they call it when they put one in a helmet.' Through the link, he heard only static, with the occasional short range pulse letting Grey know troopers were near by, attempting to find each other so as to not accidentally shoot a friend.
The gray knight realized that Three, and maybe Four, had been jamming the enemies communications. 'Damn droids probably were using their own system to jam them, then relying on our own to communicate, cause I have a special comm unit that includes old Sith frequencies that modern ships don't use, do to the shorted range. But two miles is far enough out here….'
But the results were that the empire had resorted to other methods to keep in communication with each other, and that was slowly bringing the weight of the full legion, over eight thousand troopers, down on their locations. 'Jade has the princess, but then launched herself in the captains yacht, only she didn't, because I never felt her die. No, she tried a distraction, and it worked, so far… But they're looking for her now, and still trying to box me in. Too bad for them I'm smart enough to get past them. Just a bit of distraction, while their ability to identify who's in the armor isn't working yet...' He thought, having snagged a downed troopers armor, making sure that the damage from his blade wasn't obvious. 'Time to head to the hanger bay...'
:}
So, we met an alien. Plus, we're making some progress on this whole rescue thing, so I think their doing okay. Still a lot f action before our girls confront any possible romantic complications. But hay, never promised you more then a little violence.
Thoughts?