Fwurg

[Nathan Miodrass Asillion]

Nathan was conflicted between his feelings and his duty. Not to mention somewhat distracted by Ezaspa's figure.

When she started to walk away, Nathan's body reacted without thinking. Grabbing her wrist, he stopped her.

"Wait. You don't want business, that's fine. I just want to get to know you." He didn't notice he was still holding Ezaspa's wrist. "We'll let someone else talk business outside, while we just talk. Please?" Nathan pleaded, his eyes gazing into Ezaspa's.

He knew Ariana could get the information they needed, if Ezaspa agreed.

[Ariana Danacia]

At the moment Nathan grabbed the wrist of the girl Ariana could see the tension in the room rise. This physical contact is most likely seen as a provocation.

Ariana stood up from her seat and spoke towards Nathan in an aggressive: "Nathan stop flirting with the girl, can't you see she is working, we are leaving!"

Ariana walked towards the exit, expecting Nebesnogo to join her. Worst case scenario they would at least have a better strategic position near the exit.

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC: @Nathan: Be careful with declaring actions that influence other characters. Here you delcare that you grab her wrist, and immediately assume you succeed -- this might work with random goons, but not with named operatives. I will allow it this time, but keep in mind that NPCs are not always pushovers!))

The moment Nathan grabs the twi'lek's wrist, four things happen nearly at the same time: Ariana rises and tells Nathan to stop flirting as she moves towards the exit. The Wookie behind lets out a loud roar and pulls out a battered and obviously patched-up bowcaster which he points at Nathan. The muscular Theelin charges forward towards Nathan, vibro-blade held low. In reaction to all the ruckus near the bar several patrons looked up, and a single patron flips over his table and ducks for cover when he sees the bowcaster.

Ezaspa Zel herself only reacts by turning around to look at Nathan. "Let go off me!" she says with a loud voice. Nathan got the distinct impression that she said that mostly for his benefit.

((OOC: I am calling combat round 0 here. This does not mean that this is, or will become, a fight to the death. What I mean to do here is prevent confusion and unclarity about how many actions can be taken, and who participates in this conflict. If everyone backs off without entering combat, things will remain tense, but no combat ensues.

((Combat, round 0:

• Wookie: Bowcaster Battle Style + Bowcaster;
• Theelin: Righteous Defender of Freedom Style + Vibroblade;
• Ezaspa Zel: Trained Combatant Style

))

))

[Nebesnogo Sveta]

"Ok!" he responds drops a few credits on the table and follows after Ariana.

He keeps on his guard but does not try to attack any one.

((OOC: ill declare this but I don't want to fight. I want to disengage.))

((Combat, round 0: Trained Combat Style))

[Ariana Danacia]

Ariana waits at the door and gives Nathan the room to leave if he wants to.

((Combat, round 0: Trained Combat Style))

[Nathan Miodrass Asillion]

Realizing what he was doing, Nathan immediately let go of Ezaspa. Stepping back, he held up his hands in a non-threatening manner.

Seeing the Theelin charge at him, Nathan barely managed to control his reflex to take out the threat. Instead he pulled back further, making use of the room Ariana created.

He cursed himself for acting so stupid. He had endangered the mission, the jedi had every right to court martial him for this. But it would have to wait until they got back, right now he had bigger issues.

Taking notice of the wookie, Nathan's hand went into his jacket. He grabbed his lightsaber but didn't pull it out yet. Moving further towards the door, he opted for to disengage. His head and eyes darted around keeping an eye on as much as possible.

"Okay, I regret doing that. But how about we don't do anything more we'll likely regret later?"

((Combat, round 0: Trained Combatant Style))

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC: And combat's over!))

As Nathan steps back the muscular Theelin's charge places the Theelin between Ezaspa Zel and Nathan. The wookie carefully tracks Nathan's movements with his bowcaster, but doesn't make a directly threathening move.

The muscular Theelin points to Nathan while keeping his sword low, and calls out with an angry voice: "You'd better get out of here, before I change my mind and dice you up for that!" Ezaspa had an unclear expression on her face as she looked at Nathan from behind the muscular Theelin.

And with that, the three Jedi were standing outside in the street again... No information gathered, and seemingly without new friends...

[Ariana Danacia]

"Can we leave this place now before we really get into a fight... I am going back to the ship and will fly to the coordinates provided by the Sundarians. You are welcome to stay if you have any real plan to gather information."

Ariana waited for the reactions of the others. Unless they had real objections she walked back to the ship, paid the docking fee and prepared the ship to leave.

[Nathan Miodrass Asillion]

Nathan resisted the urge to make the Theelin eat his own words and show him what happened when you provoked a quarter ton, ex-marine, Jedi cyborg.

Outside Nathan turned towards Ariana and Nebesnogo and bowed.

"I'm sorry. My actions just now where inexcusable and endangered the mission. For that I apologise. It will not happen again."

As he straightened himself something donned on him. "Why are they here?" He asked.

"Ma'am, could you wait a moment. Something doesn't add up. Why is a squad of Ultramarines this close to the Union, this far from the Slave Rebelion? You don't send elite operatives like that somewhere for no reason. And lets not forget that the smugglers seemingly possess cloaking technology. Tech of that level usually requires a superpower to back it.

I know I have no right to propose plan after what just transpired because of me. However I would suggest going to the Crimson Janissaries. They are sure to have logs about ships landing and taking off here. Including our targets. We might even be able to get them to help us."

[Ariana Danacia]

Ariana halted for a moment.

"We only know that she is a Ultramarine. The rest could be just goons, she could be in hiding, she is only running a bar...

Do you have any plan to convince the Crimson Janissaries to give us the information? We don't have any jurisdiction here.. They run the place and probably don't like Jedi."

[Nebesnogo Sveta]

"I like ariana's plan better. Unless we can figure out a way to get these people to help us." he scratched his head.

"And I don't know how to get them to like us."

[Ariana Danacia]

"As long as we don't start a fight here we can always come back. Maybe we find some hints at the location provided by the Sundarians about what merchant, shop or person we actually need in this city. Since somebody probably has their hands in this. However if we don't know who it is we are flying completely blind here. Let's go?"

[Nathan Miodrass Asillion]

Nathan didn't feel they had any reason to think the Crimson Janissaries were hostile, but he kept his mouth shut.

"Aye aye, ma'am." He said after a short pause. At the very least he could report that they had found an Ultramarine hiding close to Union Space when they were done. The brass could figure out what to do after that.

[Ariana Danacia]

Ariana continued to their ship and paid the docking fee as intended. When back in the ship she sets course for the coordinates provided by the Sundarians.

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC: The coordinates provided are actually a rather large area, as I already said. In the interest of saving you the lookup-and-post-the-place cycle, I have assumed that Ariana actually wants to go to 3641-Anuradha. Next time though, please try to add some detail to your action instead of the generic "I do the thing with the information"... :P))

The droid at the docking circle chimed a happy "Thank you for your visit" as Ariana pays the docking fee.

Within the hour the three Jedi were en-route to the coordinates of 3641-Anuradha, the small system roughly in the middle of the larger sphere of coordinates. Their trip takes another full day, allowing them to arrive refreshed and ready to go.

As their vessel drops out of hyperspace, they see the red dwarf in the distance. Scanners indicate that the description form the Jedi star maps is right: there are three planets are very close orbit around the star, and the system features a nearly contiguous sequence of asteroid belts. Their scanner also indicates three sizable vessels holding orbit around star. The size signatures roughly correspond with a 400 meter and two 300 meter vessels. From their current distance, their scanners weren't strong enough to determine any details other than rough size due to the background noise from the star itself. Since the vessels are near the star, it is very likely that they haven't seen the Jedi's vessel on their scanners yet...

[Ariana Danacia]

"We could hide behind one of the planets and try to get in closer to get a better view on those vessels. If we go in directly without even knowing who they are we won't stand a chance with this horribly tiny ship."

[Nathan Miodrass Asillion]

"Or we could blend in with the asteroids to get closer." Nathan suggested. "We shut down everything but lifesupport and let the ship drift. I can probably mask our lifesigns with the Force. Then when we're nearly on top of them we reactivate the engines and attach to one of their airlocks and board one of them."

If the others agreed, Nathan sat down in a meditative posture and concentrated on hiding their lifesigns.

((Check: 10 = 6 Force Level + 3 Energy + 1 Life Energy Manipulation -- Hiding the lifesigns of Ariana, Nebesnogo and himself.))

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC: No clear action has been taken, except a conditional action by Nathan... Since little time passes while talking, I'll give you another posting cycle to actually do something.))

[Ariana Danacia]

"Sounds like a plan. This should probably get us close. I am in."

Ariana directed the ship towards the largest vessel and shut down all systems except for the life support.

((Check: 17 = 8 Force Level + 6 Reason + 3 Telekinesis -- Carefully directing the ship on a course towards the largest vessel taking into account avoiding the large asteroids on the path. Pushing the small asteroids away with telekinesis if she can not avoid them. Carefully timing the moment to shut down the systems of the ship except life support.))

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC: Checks approved! @Ariana: why don't you describe that cool plan in IC text?))

Ariana carefully steers the vessel into the asteroid fields. Using the force to guide her approach, she disables all systems after a lst short burst of speed. Now, the three Jedi were floating in the silence of space. Through the viewport, massive rocks silently floated by as their small vessel slowly moves through the bands of asteroids in approach of the three vessels. Using the force, Ariana has to gently nudge one of the smaller asteroids to change it's trajectory while Nathan masks the life signs of the three Jedi.

As they approach, the ships come into view: one of the smaller ships is a sensor vessel. With sensor arrays and dishes attached in an irregular pattern all over the ship, which seems to be of Echani design, it is clearly equipped for deep space monitoring. The second smaller vessel seems to be a communications vessel, with several normal and hyperspace communications arrays protruding from it's body. The second smaller vessel is of an unknown make, but seem to be military in nature. The larger vessel is a carrier of Hutt design, though it has clearly been modified: a very large communications dish has been mounted in place of the normal hangar. The orbital formation of the group of vessels is one regularly used by the Union military.

Strangely enough, all three vessels lack any normal identification marks: no clan, family or superpower colours, not even a name or identification number. This makes it very difficult to determine to which superpower these vessels are related to any one superpower, or if they even are related to a superpower.

With their stealthy approach, the Jedi still have the element of surprise. Now it is up to them to determine which vessel they want to board, if any.

[Ariana Danacia]

While they were floating towards the vessels they had some time to discuss their strategy.

"These ships could explain the smugglers. They might be supported by a Union traitor which explains the formation and the reason that the Union forces were always one step behind.

However this could also be a group from a different faction or even a official Union scouting group.

Normally I would contact the vessels but since we only have one puny ship and have no idea who they actually are we have to be bold and surprise them.

We should board one of the ships to find out who they are. All of these ships have large communication or scanning arrays. I think we can not really cut their outside communication by shutting down one of the ships. I believe the Echani vessel should be the easiest to take, however the carrier will probably be the commanding vessel and will have their commander on board who should be able to provide the most answers. I would say we go for the carrier and go straight to the command deck to find some answers.

I believe we have no chance to hide the fact that we are Jedi when we want to move through their ship. However we should not kill anybody yet, set your blasters to stun. Our primary objective is to find out who they are. Are you guys with me?"

Ariana changed the settings of both her blaster pistols to stun and made sure she could quickly draw her regular blade lightsaber in one hand and a blaster pistol in the other.

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC: For the record: Setting blasters to stun is only possible if your blaster can actually do that. It is not a common trait of Star Wars blasters: normally a blaster is either lethal only or stun only. The DH-17s used by Ariana explicitly have the option to use a low-powered stun (which stuns for roughly 10 minutes). I am not sure whether the sidearms of Nathan and Nebesnogo can do so... If not, it'll require a Weapons Engineer check to open up the weapon and modify it, if you want to change it to stun-only ^_^))

As they are slowly floating towards the largest vessel, Ariana's voice echoed a little through their small ship. Both Nathan and Nebesnogo remained absolutely silent as they stared out into space, not reacting to anything Ariana says.

As their ship approaches the largest vessel, it seems that Ariana's aim was spot on. They silently float past several large cannons, as they glide towards an airlock. The only thing needed now is to reactivate the ships systems and manually dock with the airlock, using the automatic docking procedure would give away their presence immediately. And, they will need to slice into the local airlock controls to open it up without triggering the safety alarms.

Overall, their work was laid out for them... That is, until they can actually enter the other vessel at which point their route was unclear.

[Ariana Danacia]

Since Ariana expected Nebesnogo to work something out with his blaster she offered Nathan her second DH-17 blaster pistol if he had no blaster with a stun option.

Ariana quickly reactivated all the systems that were required for a manual docking procedure. She quietly maneuvred their ship towards the airlock. When she was sure she had completed the manual docking she went to their airlock and opened the door to slice through the airlock of the vessel they had docked with.

When she managed to open the airlock Ariana sneaked into the vessel expecting Nathan and Nebesnogo to follow her. At the first sign of trouble Ariana would draw her lightsaber and blaster pistol.

((Check: 16 = 8 Force Level + 6 Reason + 2 Slicing -- Slicing the airlock of the vessel they had docked with.))

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC: @All: I'd like for someone to make a pilotting check as well for the manual docking manoeuvre. This is actually one of those things that's not as easy as it looks ^_^ (I'm thinking it goes either on Vision or Reason, pilot's choice.)))

[Ariana Danacia]

((Check: 15 = 8 Force Level + 6 Reason + 1 Stealth -- Smoothly piloting the ship towards the airlock without being noticed))