"Good shooting back there, Omad." Sumatra said
"It could have been better." Omad said morosely. "As it is, we nearly didn't make it, and our shield
generator must have been slagged. Speaking of which, I'd better go down and look at it before we
come out of hyperspace. Keep an eye on the controls will you?"
"Will do." she replied.
The shield generator had indeed slagged, and there was nothing he could do to fix it. However,
they were not without shields, and a quick scan revealed that the backup generator was in perfect
working order. "Sumatra!" he
called, "reroute shield power through the auxiliary generator and see if it's working OK. An unpleasant
sounding POP! answered him just a second before Sumatra said, "It's not working Omad. "I had figured that" he said dryly. "I'll try and see what's wrong with it"
He went in to the small compartment where the generator was and found that the wires on the
Command circuits linking it to the cockpit had rubbed against the power socket beside them and were
being confused by the electrical charge. He moved them away from it and put a bit of packing foam
over the power socket, then asked Sumatra to try it again.
She replied, doubtfully "It's working... but I don't think the shields'll last long in another fight."
"We're not going to be in another fight." Omad replied "This ship is heading straight for the
repair yard as soon as I've switched the ID beacon. What would be a good one to use?
"Use the Corellian registry since we're in a Corellian ship. YT-700s are pretty rare outside
Corellia since the newer models came in."
"OK, I'll go and look that out. Look for a port that's not too far away, but that probably wouldn't
have heard of our uh.....departure. They've probably forgotten that the hyperdrive on a 700 is in a
different place to all the other YT series, so they'll think that our hyperdrive was knocked out or
damaged by those hits. Anything more than a few hours journey away should be safe.
"I'm working on it already." she said absently and Omad heard the click of keys as she queried the nav
computer.
Omad went into his tiny cabin and, extracting his box of datacards from a small corner locker, he
pulled out one entitled 'Useful Phrases in The Most Common Languages of The Galaxy', a popular
and well known publication, and took it up to Sumatra in the cockpit.
"Found a likely place yet? he asked.
"Not yet." she replied in an abstracted manner.
Settling into the pilot's chair, he inserted the datacard into a small slot tucked under the console
and entered the passcode CRL-6S-140, the astrographic name for Corell, Corellia's sun. That
changed the ship's ID beacon to that of a Corellian ship called the Yellowbird, owner one Chad Chocoune, co-pilot, a Devish named Zamentha.
"Sumatra?" he said.
"Mmm-hmm?"
"I've switched us to the Yellowbird ID now, so remember: You're Zamentha and I'm Chad. Got it?"
"Yeah. Zamentha, Chad. Got it."
They sat in silence for a while, as Sumatra typed furiously and Omad watched the hypnotising
patterns of starlines outside the viewport.
Then suddenly Sumatra said
"I've got it! Here it is, about six or seven hours away from Zeggate. It's called the Halian system.
Eleven planets, three inhabited and all ruled by a royal house of the same name. The middle planet,
Halian itself is the most highly populated, the others, Halia and Halios are farming and
manufacturing outposts with very few inhabitants and only one spaceport each. No affiliation to
either the Empire or the Rebels. Looks safe enough to me."
"Yeah. Sounds fine to me too. Drop out of hyperspace as soon as you find a decent spot and we'll
reroute to there."
So saying, Omad decided to head for his cabin to look out clothes to fit his identity as a slightly
down-on-his-luck textiles trader. Their hold was carrying a cargo of high quality (and highly illegal)
silk made by the immature Sukha larvae on the planet Merim, but it would pass as the readily available
lower grade Sukha silk from the same planet. Sumatra would do fine as she was. Devaronians all
looked the same to most humans and other races and she didn't have any distinctive markings.
He was brought out of his reverie before he could actually get up by Sumatra's voice.
"I've calculated where we should be, travelling on this vector at the speed we're at, and we should be in clear nothingness at the moment."
"All right," Omad replied, "I hope you're right. Stand by to come out of hyperspace on my mark.
Three, two, one...Mark!"
They dropped out of hyperspace into the reassuring safety of completely empty space.
"Well done Sumatra, thanks. Now to head for this Halian place. You sure there's nothing closer
to here?
"Nothing." she replied.
"OK. Give me a second." And he glanced at the co-ordinates on the nav computer. "We're about
5 hours away from it at the moment so we have a bit of a trip. I could do with a rest."
The ship wheeled round and headed off into the blackness.