A Smuggler Walks Into a Bar (Part 3)

The interceptors are far faster than Jaspar's ship - the aging freighter's engines strain to perform as he requires and the defensive roll takes it toll on their speed, TIE's screaming by either side of the cockpit, overshooting the freighter and banking hard to come around for another pass.

"Angle deflector shields...put them all fore, then switch to the rear when they pass us. Back, front, back, front. Got it? Imperial pilots are nothing if not predictable..."Vane instructs, rising from the co-pilot's chair and despite the ship's wild manuevers, she somehow maintains her footing as she moves briskly across the cockpit, clapping a gloved hand onto Ka's shoulder as she goes. "You're with me on the turrets."

The ship's pop-guns light up the system with their fury, rocketing forth with the requisite action-movie theme music (heh). Jazz keeps his foot down on the accelerator, and his eyes forward toward escape. "Yeah!" The smuggler crows gleefully as the gunfire impacts the TIE, giving the old junker just that much more distance and room to work.

"Gotcha." Is Ka's simple enough reply to Vane's words, and she pushes herself up and away from the comms. That effort was quite futile there, because the frequencies are anything but jammed. She hurries through the ship towards the back, even as the sounds of the first shots fill her ears. The 'yeah!' makes her smile. A good sign.

The laser fire explodes in a cloud of black chaff on impact, the pristine grey of the TIE's thin hull thoroughly ruined, angry scorches attesting to the little freighter's fury as the fighter craft wobbles, a surge of power from its damaged stablizers overloading the controls and the craft streaking ground-ward trailing a plume of black smoke.

"Good shooting!" Vane cheers encouragingly, slapping the cockpit hatch as she moves aftward toward the turrets, bouncing off the bulkheads of the narrow corridoor when the concussion wave of the TIE fighter's return fire shakes the ship. "...them too, it seems." as she breaks for the left turret, landing heavily in the gunnery chair.

Ka lets out a grunt as the ship gets shaken, but she keeps her footing well, slipping silently right behind Vane. "Them too." she echoes. "If this takes too long, this won't end well." She leans right, slipping into the seat of the second turret, eyes flicking over the controls. Not too hard. Rotate around. Shoot. There's not much more, if anything, expected from turret gunners after all.

Jaspar jolts forward in his seat, though thankfully held fast by a safety harness, at the impact from the remaining TIE's weapons-fire. "Damn!" He growls to himself. It's going to take weeks to get the ship sparkling again, more if this keeps up. "Come on, baby..." He whispers to his ship. "You can do it." He inhales, exhales, and concentrates, Zen-style.

The TIE screaming away from the freighter banks back and executes a tight roll to bring the freighter squarely into its guns, laser fire lancing toward the ship and striking the deflector shields - bright white flashes filling turrets viewports for an instant as the invisible barriers absorb the damage without so much as a shudder to the hull. "Take the straggler..." Vane yells across the space linking the two turrets. "...the plucky one is mine!" her chair pivots, cannon tracking the approaching TIE as targeting computer calculates its trajectory.

No targeting computer can help Ka. At least that's what she figures. As much as the twi'lek can repair ships, she really sucks at operating them. The targeting computer is mercyful though, and her instincts to just FRIGGIN' FIRE AT THE DOT are sharp enough, to actually score a hit! As she does, there is a slight widening of her eyes in actual surprise, a clenching of teeth, but she is not really in any mood to cheer anytime soon.

The smoking TIE fighter wrestles with the combined forces of gravity and ionized controls when Ka's laser cannon fire hits the support strut connecting its right foil to the cockpit, the stabilizers already straining as the pilot fights to maintain altitude spiral out of control and the ship ploughs into the open ground, skidding near a hundred meters before rocking to a stop in the rear view.

Vane's shots go wide, the remaining TIE jinks left, a volley of red bolts streaking harmlessly through the air as it tears by mere meters from the hull, turret swinging around and the pirate captain muttering a string of expletives under her breath. "Crinking kriffer..."

The TIE fighter's shot impacts the rusty bucket of bolts in just the right way. One of the consoles adjacent to Jaspar erupts in a series of sparks. Jaspar utters a rather coarse string of Huttese, and redoubles his piloting efforts.

Ka's head shoots around at the sound of damage, her eyes behind the dark goggles assessing the extend of it. -That- she is very good at, and she turns around again a moment later, a tad more tense, but hey. She's remaining in her seat, isn't she?

"YEAH!" Jaspar crows again, practically leaping out of his chair and briefly sending the flying museum piece off-course, before correcting and settling into his seat once more, as the TIE fighter veers away. "That's how it's done."

Ka grins behind the mask, wide, and she lets out a "Woooo!", lekku sliding and curling as she watches the second tie go down. There is a slow, long inhale before she audibly sigh, but her fingers stay on the controls, lightly curling. "What's the scanners say, Jasper?"

"Looks like.." Jaspar runs some scans of the area. "We're all clear." He breathes a sigh of relief, before glancing to Vane. "Where to?"

Vane's chair lowers slowly back to the deck as her turret powers down, hanging the fire-control headset over the control stick. Her back arches, spine cracking noisily before she rises to her feet and produces a thick cigarro from her belt and clenches it between her teeth and leans over the blown panel in the cockpit to light it on the small flames licking from within. "Might want to put that out..." she nods to it, billowing a thick haze of grey smoke. "...and /then/ you can show me what fabulous riches my heroics have earned! Haha!"

Jaspar grabs a little fire-extinguisher from behind his seat, and tosses it to Vane. "Have at it. I need to find us a place to bed down, and *then* we'll get to your payment." He begins scanning for suitable sites.

Another audible exhale leaves the twi'lek, and she hits the switch to lower her own seating. Her rise and turns lacks the cracking, as she quickly makes her way for the cockpit. Seems like she is not relxing just yet, as she finds herself back in the seat there, eyeing the instruments. "Food for thought, but..are we sure orbit will be clear?"

Vane turns to flash Ka' a smile as the twi'lek joins them in the cockpit. "Your ship..." the pirate grumbles, extinguisher held in a loose wrist like a blaster and sprayed with laissez-faire across the control panel. One. Two. Three bursts. "She's right, though. We need to get clear of the gravity well and make the jump to lightspeed. They won't have time to scramble another patrol for us, but they will if we hang around. And you're probably going to want to avoid Imperial systems for a while." she sets the extinguisher down, and looming over the pilot's chair, the muzzle of her blaster presses into Jaspar's cheek. "Now...pay me."

Jaspar notes the blaster-tip pressed into his cheek, and nods, manipulating the controls and heading to lightspeed, making for the nearest friendly-looking planet outside of Imperial space. "Cargohold. Immediate right. It's in there, and I think you'll like it."

Ka goes through the motion of arching an eyebrow subtly at the display. Given the twi'leks lack of hair, the motion is quite probably a grown habit, a mimickry of the human expression. She leans back, seemingly relaxing a bit more, finally, while she crosses her legs, the arms doing the same while her four lekku drape down the back of the chair. "Straight up and out of here." she says and glances through the cockpit glass at the night outside. "Let's get far away from this place."

"See!" Vane crows, the blaster removed from cheek and slid back to its holster as the pirates disperse toward the cargo hold in search of their prize. "That was not so hard, was it? You have your ship, I have my payment, Ka'una still has all her lekku..." the Rattataki slumping down into the chair alongside the twi'lek and running a finger idly down one of the draped tails. "What could be better? We'll rendevous with my ship and be out of your hair..." a gesture plucking at imaginary strands on her smooth scalp, her tone lowering, the resonant growling quality reverberating through the cabin. "...although, you might like to contract with my lovely assistant to give this old rust bucket a once over. Those shield's will need repair and your transponder code is almost certainly going to throw up red flags from now on."

Jaspar nods. "I'd like to think this could be the beginning of a mutually beneficial relationship. If you're interested. I certainly wouldn't mind working with you two again." He offers, sincerely, moving to bring his ship to the proper locale.

The brush over the lek certainly is dampened by the ferooweave suit, but the lek still twitches as the finger rurns over it. Ka pulls her glance away from the cockpit's glass dome, looking at Vane for a moment from behind the goggles and mask. "Can do." she says. There is a tinge of amusement in her voice for some reason, and her cheeks move, showing a light smirk. "After we leave the system." she then stresses. "I will try to get an overview of the damage in the meanwhile." Her head turns towards Jaspar. "Get us out of here." she says, before she rises and pulls off the items covering her face, while making her way to where she's last seen the toolkit.