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This is not worth five percent of the Empire’s treasury, let alone the moldy remains of some blasted Jedi camp! Nothing is worth sitting a mile down in an unnamed ocean listening to the Spanner’s hull creak and hoping that the depth charges from the dear old Relentless don’t come too close.
Yes, the Relentless is currently in low orbit over this unnamed watery-grave-in-waiting, presiding over god-knows how many fighters, that are currently dropping bombs just a little too close to my current locale for comfort. With luck, that major storm system that’s coming in will force them back to the Star Destroyer.
It’s not that I’m unused to being in trouble. I’m unused to being in this much trouble with this many people. I can look after a reasonably sized crew, and myself - but to suddenly have the entire crew of the Rose onboard, all saying “Tell us what to do now. You’re the captain,” is too much, too fast. Blasted Meric had to stay back on the Rose – which I hope the Relentless didn’t blast out of space while it was following the tracking device that came aboard the Spanner in M3-B3’s chest – and Val, the so-called second-in-command seems perfectly happy to leave me looking after things while he and Duvessa go scrabbling in the dirt at the Jedi temple.
Oh yes, the temple’s here all right. But five percent of a desiccated corpse and antique clothing isn’t going to do me much good, and it certainly won’t compensate for having my hyperdrive slagged down shortly before we had to go play submarine. So much for this ship being my ticket out of debt. Hmph. I’ll worry about debt if we get off this watery hole.
Gods, I hope Geehan can tell me what creatures down here might want to eat the Spanner… With the hyperdrive out of action, we can’t even power the lasers and I’m sure we don’t have enough giant-undersea-monster repellant on board to cover the entire hull.
I don’t have time to kvetch, I’ve got things to do. I need to rig one of the scoops to pull oxygen out of the seawater. Artoo and Dev need to get to work on the hyperdrive. Maybe it can be salvaged. While they’re busy, I hope Annison Seven can build us a couple of active-radar decoys. Something with a delay-switch and a compressed-air propulsion rig. I want some decoys to send out to the far side of the ocean before we try to blast our way out of here.
If it looks like we’re going to be here for more than a couple of days, food is going to become a problem. I had better ask Geehan to go out and find some edible creatures for us – the pressure suits I’ve got on board aren’t much good at this depth, but I think Geehan can tolerate it. Maybe we can rig a trawl net that we can throw outside the ship…
Pause
If only I could warn the Rose, damn it! I’m sure Meric has enough sense to scan the area before he comes in, but I would be much happier if we could just warn them to steer clear. But at this point, I don’t even know exactly where the Relentless is - never mind warning the Rose. The storm overhead is hiding us in a nice fat cloud of ionized particles, but that’s a double edged sword…
Wait. Ionization. Laser fire ionizes the atmosphere. I know the Relentless has cut loose with a couple of laser salvos. If I rig the Doppler sensors to pick up areas of low ionization – especially areas where the particle count drops suddenly – it would be a likely bet that the Relentless is close to over that spot… Especially once we send out some decoys. If nothing else, it’ll tell me if the Relentless will fall for a dummy signal…
I’ve got to go talk to Annison.
Chuckle.
Then I have to let Waithe, Rachel and Rran sock me on the jaw for drugging them. Maybe they’ll forgive me. Hah, a likely story. Maybe they’ll defer my drubbing until after we get out of this. If we get out of this.
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