Nau'ravi(Arya and Co.)

[Ecks]

Ecks didn't spare a look at Montegue as the light freighter in front of them fell through the sky of Sullust like a meteor. He did have a tractor beam, but his ship was smaller than Ravenwing's. At best they'd be dragged along with Old Maid, or Harbinger, or whatever it was called; at worst both ships would explode into the side of one of the planet's volcanoes.

The big Falleen remembered the tiny blonde human, and cursed as he activated the tractor, the emitter coming to life with a thrum as the invisible modified force field lanced out towards the free falling freighter. Ravenwing was already straightening out her ship, no small feat with no power steering. Razor's Edge shook as it caught a hold of Harbinger, which suddenly started transmitting the new name Wing of the Raven as its transponder rebooted.

"Hold on," Ecks gritted out, as his thorn shaped craft slew around to port, the freighter's momentum slowing slightly and vector changing. Her repulsors flared suddenly, but there was still too much speed for any sort of safe landing.

Razor's Edge bucked and shuddered as Ecks threw the engines into reverse, a risky move with such a large fish on the line.

[Arya Ravenwing]

"Can't go back," Arya looked up at the bulkhead above her as the freighter slowed, repulsors on full and the ground coming up fast. Thankfully they weren't going to land inside a lava flow or a volcano, but that was about as far as their luck was going to take them.

Sensors flickered, and she saw that they were caught in a tractor beam, but it didn't seem to be making much of a difference. The vornskyr inside her was trying to leap out of her skin, and sweat slicked her hair down as she put everything she had into getting Wing of the Raven down in relative safety.

The last few moments were a blur, and then momentum ceased, the freighter creaking and groaning around them from bellying down into the rough volcanic ground. For a few seconds Arya just sat there, hands white knuckled on the yoke, eyes staring out of the darkened cockpit through the transparisteel viewport.

She remembered to breathe.

"Tak? You okay?" She yanked on her crash webbing, suddenly all thumbs as she struggled to get free and check on the little girl.

[Teagan s'Ilancy]

Her death grip on the crash webbing had been what kept the girl from slipping out and tumbling from her chair, and with shallow, paniced breaths, Tak was frozen. Eyes wide, the little Lupine found it impossible to speak.

The landing had been chaotic; she'd closed her eyes a moment before Wing of the Raven had kissed the dirt, and as the freighter had plowed through rocky, blackened earth she'd clamped her mouth shut, resisting the urge to scream.

But now, with the ship having ground to a halt, she stared straight ahead, unblinking.

She wanted to cry, and she bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling too much.

I want Dama...

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

The captain had insisted that she take an escort - well, rather demanded - and s'Il found her shuttle flanked by two X-wings as they descended into Sullust's atmosphere.

The Lambda dipped low, her pilot taking her along the trajectory that Arya's ship had gone, and it wasn't hard to pick up the freighter's crash beacon. Nor was it hard to miss the wide swath cut into the planet's surface that Wing of the Raven had made. A trail of pulverized rock, metal, and smoke extended like a burned tail from the point that the ship had finally come to rest.

Standing behind the pilot's seat, s'Il slowly uncrossed her arms, laying her hands on the headrest as she leaned forward slightly to get a better view.

The pilot pointed out an open area just beside the downed freighter.

"I'll be setting us down over there, Ma'am."

The Lupine nodded.

"Very good."

[Hugo Montegue]

Hugo grunted, extracting himself from the tangle of chair and console. Ecks' efforts had slowed the descent of both craft, and they'd released the tractor beam at the last possible moment, giving them a few precious seconds to slow their own descent enough to stop the impact from crippling the ship.

Even so, it had hardly been the most gentle of landings, and Hugo was genuinely surprised to find that he was only bruised; nothing broken. Hopefully their luck would hold, and the same assessment could be made of the Falleen's ship.

Speaking of; Hugo grunted, shifting himself free of the console as best he could, and managed to jab an elbow into Ecks' emerald hide. "Nice landing," he muttered.

[Ecks]

Razor's Edge was making all sorts of noises, but all indicators were blinking that the systems were within acceptable limits. Ecks took a moment to re-tie his top knot, and looked at Montegue. "Lets check on our girl." He followed the human out of the cockpit, both making last minute adjustments to weaponry and armor.

They'd landed just a few yards away from where the freighter had plowed a large furrow in the earth. Jets of superheated exhaust were venting from ports on the hull of the ship, and the ramp was still sealed up tight. Ecks stumped over to the hatch and slapped a lockbreaker on the controls, stepping back and letting it do its job while he lifted his blaster up and held it at the ready.

[Arya Ravenwing]

Tak was okay, just shaken up. Arya unclipped the girl's restraints, wiped ineffectually at the mess that was now her own coveralls, and then heard a thump on the hull. A light on the console lit up and beeped a quiet alarm.

Someone was picking the lock. She scooped Tak up and launched herself down the passage past the hatch and towards the cabins. Arya set the girl down by the door that led down into the cargo hold and hurried into her room. There wasn't enough time to do much more than grab the belt with her railgun on it and stuff her blaster into a utility pocket on her dirty coveralls. "Hide, Tak! Don't you dare come out until I say its okay."

The tone of her voice told the girl it was not a drill. Tak knew all the smuggler hideyholes, and she was adept at scurrying up and down the ladder that led into the hold. Arya stalked up the passage towards the hatch and belted on the railgun as the alarm beeped a little more insistently and the ramp began to descend.

Her first whiff of Sullust's air was hot, dry, and full of sulfur. Arya wrinkled her nose against a sneeze, and leveled her blaster at the opening hatch, snapping off a shot that sizzled down into the dirt.

[Teagan s'Ilancy]

The urgency in Feathers' tone was unmistakable, and Tak obeyed wordlessly. She could hear the alarm beeping, and it seemed to send her scrambling down the ladder into the hold and to the furthest concealed compartment from the boarding ramp. Little hands made quick work of the hidden latch, and swinging the top open, she slid inside.

She had to hop up, arm outstretched to catch hold of the lid's edge, missing the first two time. On her third try, her fingers hooked around the outer edge, and she let the weight of her body pull it closed. It shut with a clang, and sealed up in the dark, Teagan s'Ilancy huddled up in the far corner, her wide eyes staring upward and her fast-paced breathing the only sound to be heard.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

There was a tight pull at the edges of her eyes as s'Il marched down the still-extending boarding ramp. The shuttle's pilot had been instructed to keep his craft ready, and he'd dutifully nodded. Her outer robes she'd left folded neatly in the copilot's seat.

Approaching Wing of the Raven from the front, the Lupine had no vantage of the two bounty hunters as they did their work to open up Arya's craft, but at the sound of a loosed blaster, she ground to a halt. The brilliant orange of her sabre gauntlet flared to life with a snap-hiss, and mindful to mask her presence in the Force, the Lupine started forward once more; this time at a brisk pace that took her on a path around the freighter.

Severe lines cut across her features, her eyes narrowed. She was the image of a determined Jedi if ever there was one, but she was also of the same blood as Arya, and would protect the Loveloxx whether the other woman liked it or not.

[Ecks]

The ramp was descending as the hatch opened up, and the bounty hunters were greeted with a sizzling blaster bolt that missed them both completely. "Come out and you won't get hurt!" Ecks bellowed up at the smuggler, who he could now just barely see peeking around a bulkhead.

She answered with another blaster bolt that pitted the ground right by his boots, making him jump back.

And then he heard it, a weird snap-hiss and the strange smell of ozone cutting through all the sulfur. The Falleen turned in time to see a short human female rounding the front of the freighter, orange glowing blades extending from one hand. Almost before his brain registered that he recognized her, Ecks was firing his blaster at Loklorien s'Ilancy, Jedi.

The stun blast ringed out towards her, but she wasn't close enough and he quickly thumbed it to regular and snapped off several bolts intended to keep her at a distance as they hit the ground in front of her.

"Get Ravenwing, I'll take care of this one," he said to Montegue without taking his eyes off of his former prisoner.

[Hugo Montegue]

Hugo wanted to disagree. He wanted to slam the hatch closed and weld it; entomb the women in their ship until they were good and ready to deal with them. He wanted to yell at Ecks for being an idiot, trying to take a Jedi on alone; at least, he presumed it was a Jedi. He wanted to look and confirm, and to do everything else that his tactical mind insisted, but he couldn't: he couldn't pull his eyes away from the shuttle, and from the notion of Arya Ravenwing within.

Whatever it was that spurred him into action, it was insistant, and irresistable; it wouldn't relent in it's constant pestering for him to comply. He tried to battle against it for a moment longer, then surrendered.

A hand fell to his belt, and unclipped a small metallic orb, thumb flicking the control that would power up the device. His eyes peered at the hatch for a moment longer as a high-pitched whine built to a creccendo from within the orb and then, sparing only a moment's thought to hope that Ravenwing had been smart enough to tell the child to hide, he tossed the stun grenade casually through the hatch, and counted silently from five.

[Arya Ravenwing]

She couldn't tell what was going on outside, but someone was shooting, and it wasn't at her. Arya was just about to poke her head around the corner to see for sure, when a stun grenade bounced into the passageway. It took a second for her brain to process it, and then she dove away from it.

The grenade detonated, the concussive force expanding nearly four meters in every direction. She hadn't gotten far enough away, and the door to her cabin opened belatedly as she fell to the ground against it. Dazed, Arya struggled to get back to her feet, her head ringing from the grenade, and her ears bleeding.

She leveled her blaster down the passage, knowing that they were coming inside.

[Teagan s'Ilancy]

There was an explosion, and Tak braced herself, arms shooting out reflexively to steady herself along the compartment's narrow walls. She was still scared, but a small hint of curiosity nibbled at her. There was silence that lasted forever, and she hoped that Feathers wasn't hurt.

Slowly, the girl slid around on her knees, her hands feeling along the walls in the dark, moving upward to where the lid had closed down on her.

Feathers had better not be hurt. She still had to take Tak to Dama!

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

As if the bolts that hit the ground had drawn an invisible line, s'Il stopped abruptly, her sabres angled away and to the side. The lines in her face cut a stern expression, and she dipped her head, gaze locked on Ecks. Still out of range of the stun setting of his blaster, she squared her shoulders back, nostrils flaring as she took one half-step back, affording him her left shoulder and effectively cutting her exposure to him by half.

"I remember you," she growled, her voice low and terrible.

And overhead, the scream of engines filled the sky as if to punctuate her words, and her escort, the two X-wings that had been sent to accompany her shuttle, passed low over the crash site.

[Ecks]

"This doesn't concern you, shifter." He kept his blaster aimed at her, though her profile didn't afford much of a target and her lightsaber made the defensive advantage hers. But his mind worked faster than most gave him credit for... it obviously did concern her for some reason.

A smuggler could be a Jedi, but Arya Ravenwing had not been listed as such in the bounty listing. That was probably not the connection between the two women. They didn't look anything alike. But Loklorien s'Ilancy was a shapeshifter...

Suddenly everything snapped into focus. "This is the woman who helped you escape Cloud City." His yellow eyes narrowed.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

She chose not to answer. Instead, the Lupine stood rooted, her eye never leaving his.

"This is an Alliance world, Ecks." Her voice, still low, carried between the two easily as they stared one another down.

"Your bounty is not honored by us, nor will we allow you to continue on as you are."

[Ecks]

"I never got paid for you," he continued, as though she hadn't spoke. "You can't deny I brought you in, fair and square. Only its not square, because I never got paid."

Ecks stared at her. The one that got away - literally. "Won't make that mistake again," he rumbled, opening fire at her with his blaster at full strength. With her armed as she was, his best hope was to distract her long enough for Montegue to extract their real target, Ravenwing.

Ravenwing. He felt stupid for not recognizing the name earlier.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

It was out of sheer reflex that she swung her arm around, the twin orange blades thrumming through the air in a tight circle. Two of his shots were deflected, the other going wide. She frowned - without the Force her defense would not be so easy to maintain, but s'Il was determined.

The Lupine backed away, her steps smooth and sure.

"Think about what you're doing," she cautioned in a stern, motherly tone.

"It isn't smart."

[Ecks]

She was backing up, probably trying to get him to follow her, and so he did. Ecks narrowed his eye at her, taking a few steps forward. "Interfering with a lawful bounty isn't smart, either.

"Especially when you are on the list, too." He shot towards her again, aiming to keep her occupied while he took large strides towards her and got her just within stun range. Ecks thumbed blaster to stun and shot again.

[Hugo Montegue]

As the initial afterglow of the stun grenade subsided, Hugo crouched low, scooping up a few scattered rocks from the ground beside them, and tucking them into a pouch on his belt. The hand then strayed to another section, plucking a second, slightly different-shaped grenade this time, which he triggered, and tossed into the open hatch, sending it rolling along the corridor. The chemical reaction inside the device triggered plumes of thick, opressive smoke, that rapidly expanded to fill the narrow causeway that represented his only approach.

Gun held ready, his head peered around the hatch. He selected one of the stones he'd gathered and threw along in the grenade's wake, listening for it's clank as it struck the deck plates, and waiting for Ravenwing's reaction.