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| - Many hours had passed. Two X-wings bearing the insignia come out of hyperspace in the space lane between Ord Mantell and Nar Shaddaa. Having spent two hours patrolling a total of four different jump points to no avail, Raxis "Raptor" L'ygr piloting Ghost Three into what he was beginning to believe was a fish tale designed to reap insurance money from a downed freighter. Yawning after a short cat-nap in hyperspace, Raxis keeps his X-wing's strike foils closed and takes a moment to munch on a ration bar. Opening the comms, he queues Ghost Nine in. "All right Sparks we're earning our paychecks today. Only one more jump point and I'm calling it a day. I hope you got some rest on that last boost." He adds, checking the radar as he veers his ship on the flight path. Rebecca opens the com back to the other X-Wing. "Yes I did." Her eyes hit the sensor board as soon as she reverted back to realspace as she had done the previous times. "I knew those two were fishy, I think they may have been affiliated with the Empire to lure some New Republic ships into a trap for some payback against the raids we've been pulling against them." She says over the com, and voicing her suspicions about this whole mess. The blackness of space can be liberating for some, constricting for others, but one's thing's for sure: at the moment, it is certainly quiet. Not a ripple on the radar, much less any sort of visual, breaks up the darkness dotted with silvery, twinkling stars. It's as though nothing, living, dead or inanimate, has ever come upon the little inch of the galaxy that the two are currently staking out, and certainly nothing of the magnitude that the two rather unorthodox aliens were ranting about in the bar. Perhaps they were out of their heads after all; space can do that sometimes. "Entering sector BV-45, Raptor and Sparky. No sign of disturbance." He adds to his log. Sighing, Raxis keeps his eyes open and patches his comm to Vee-Ten. "All right keep your eyes back there, count the stars if you must I think we're on a blind chase" He says, hearing a binary response of boredom from the astromech droid. Clicking over his comm again to Rebecca on a nonrecorded frequency, he begins to chat with her. "So...apparently Askra has a crush..." He says, not needing to say much more than that. Rebecca keeps her eyes on her sensor board as an idea pops into her consciousness. She speaks to her droid. "See if you can manipulate our sensor image and make appear to be a larger ship, increase shield output if necessary to give us the size of about a Corellian yt-1300, and relay that to Raxis' astromech." She flips over to the same channel that Raxis' is ranting on. "I /truly/ hate to interrupt this interesting conversation." Though her tone, what can get over the com through the distortion all NR coms produce doesn't sound apologetic. "I'm thinking what if this supposed creature feeds on Energy, like a Mynock and our ships aren't producing a big enough jolt to look appetizing. I've had my astromech send the info to yours and it should be going through the same routine as mine, we just need to scoot a bit closer for added effect." After saying that she sideslips her X-Wing and overlaps her port S-Foil merely centimeters over Ghost 3's Starboard S-Foil." The silence continues as the two converse, though perhaps there's something in the woman's idea about energy. What that something is is hard to tell, but after a few moments, there's a bump against the hull, not unlike one that might come from being hit by an asteroid, and it seems to have come from the top of the ship. It's not even hard enough to be classified as a bump...more of a tap, really. It's so light that it's very difficult to discern if really happened at all. However, a navigator might notice that the ship is in a slightly different position than the one that by all rights it should be in at the moment. "Roger that, Sparks, I'm uploading the setting now, good work..." Raxis adds with a huff. "Imagine that, you telling me to cut the cross chatter." He muses, watching her ship bump around a little bit. "What are you cold over there? Hold that yoke steady, Sparky." Raxis calls, looking around his cockpit for any signs of movement, and then checks his sensors again. "Roger that, Sparks, I'm uploading the setting now, good work..." Raxis adds with a huff. "Imagine that, you telling me to cut the cross chatter." He muses, watching her ship bump around a little bit and jostle towards his craft. Banking quickly, he rights back into position alongside her. "What are you cold over there? Hold that yoke steady, Sparky." Raxis calls, looking around his cockpit for any signs of movement, and then checks his sensors again. Reacting very quickly to the bump and helps to manage a disastrous situation as Raxis' reacts to her sudden dip. "What in the name of a Hutt's tiny sphincter. Something just /hit/ me." Her eyes scan through all sides of her canopy even twisting her head around to look behind the ship. "Why hadn't the astromech screamed a warning, it was sitting on top of the X-wing with a 360 degree view around the ship? Perhaps the pilot had imagined it, because after this tiny little blip, there's nothing for another few minutes, except for silence. Except, after a few minutes, there's another bump...and this one is slightly more noticeable. The bump is followed by a soft scraping, as though something is sliding along the hull, agonizingly slowly. This time, the ship is definitely pushed off course, thrust ever so slightly forward by some invisible pressure. "Well I don't see anything..." Raxis says over the comm, pulling away from her as her ship is rocked again and begins moving ahead of him. "...what the kark? Tractor beams?" Raxis says, becoming a little spooked as he wildly looks around his cockpit. Not seeing anything, he begins to consider the possibility of a cloaked ship. Hoping dearly that it wasn't the case, because although rare, cloaking technology usally had been known to accompany brute force. Turning on his log, he keeps Rebecca on the comm. "We're encountering some kind of disturbance. Something is bumping into Rebecca's ship but I don't have a visual..." He adds, rolling his ship to look beneath. Rebecca fully operating on instinct slams her thrusters to full throttle and inverts her fighter away from where see thinks this blasted thing is. She flips a switch and her S-Foils split into attack formation, the same X shape that gives the snub-fighter it's name. She continues to roll as she dives away from the spot, then slams the thrusters to zero and pulls sharply up on the stick and noses the fighter over keeping the fighter on it's same path and when she comes about she lets fly a few red energy bolts at the spot where she thinks the beast is. The sudden increase in energy output generates a visual disturbance around the ship. The distortion grows as the activity of the ship increases, and by the time the lasers are fired, the apparition is complete: a dark creature, so dark as to almost blend into the background of space, has wrapped itself around the X-wing, long appendages clutching tightly to the hull. The energy bolts fly out into open space, as it is impossible to fire on something that is attached to your own hull. Then the creaking begins, as the monster begins to squeeze. "Holy Kark it's a ... what the kark is that!?!" Raxis calls out into his log, flipping on his nose cam and Vee-Ten begins recording the image that Raxis sees. Flipping his S-foils into attack position, he powers up his weapons and maneuvers his ship to line up a shot at the tentacle gripping Ghost 9. Slowing his ship, he takes his time to aim his shot precisely. "It's black, very hard to see but it's got Ghost 9. Firing to remove it. Hang in there, Sparks!" He calls, squeezing the trigger. Gets another idea from a holo-vid she saw once and starts flipping of power systems and shutting the whole X-Wing down. She leaves the com open but powers it down as well just strong enough for Ghost 3 to hear. "Hold your fire! Shut down everything except life-support and narrow frequency so we can communicate. I have a feeling this thing will get stronger if we pump energy into it." She prays that Raxis heeds the warning before he fires." She finishes shutting off the systems leaving life-support active and the weak com signal. She fears her astromech has already been drained of power since there's been no response from it in quite awhile. "Also shut off V-10." She winces has the hull starts to get crushed. "She'll hold together...." A loud popping noise issues in the cockpit. "C'mon baby, hold together." She whispers to herself. Rebecca's warning does not get to Raxis in time, and two laser bolts fly through the air from his X-wing, striking the creature squarely on one of its bulging tentacles. As Rebecca shuts down her systems, the creature begins to fade slightly back into the darkness. But before it disappears, it can be seen releasing its crushing hold on the powered-down ship, for an X-wing with no power output has no reason for its interest, and beginning to drift towards Raxis's X-wing, which has just pummeled it with precious energy. "Vee-Ten shut down -now-!" Raxis calls, flipping switches and turning off his drives as the black feature begins to drift towards him. One by one, monitors and drives begin cycling down to match Rebecca's suggestion. Pulling out a handset battery powered tape recorder, he continues his log. "Powered down the anomaly left Varn's ship alone..." Raxis adds, his X-wing now a dead rock in space. "We're about 3 klicks from waypoint one to waypoint two...it's about...50 or 55 meters. Tentacles." He talks, daring to take his eyes off of the beast to look for the wreckage of the Freedom Fish. Rebecca's breaths a sigh of relief as the blasted creature moves off towards Raxis ship. "C'mon, power down." She notices the lights fade from Raxis' astromech and the greenish flicker as the shields drop. Now how to get out of this predicament. She searches around the cockpit for anything that might be able to damage the beast that wasn't energy related, but no such luck. Her brain frantically tries to come up with a solution, and not finding an easy one. She decides to power up some of her systems, and tries to detect any sense of movement out of the corner of her eyes, as her peripheral vision is the most sensitive to movement. She attempts to estimate what power levels the creature can detect. The drought of power seems to have discouraged the creature. Instead of continuing to head for Raxis' ship, it veers off and it can be seen drifting away from both the ships. As it drifts further and further from the power supplies, it becomes harder and harder to see, eventually nearly blending in with the background and emptiness of the local space. There is no sign of the Freedom Fish. Perhaps it was devoured, or the creature had moved since its last catch. Regardless, these potential meals no longer interest it and it moves away. Staring, Raxis watches the creature head off as he records its heading and apparent speed in his handheld log. Breathing quietly for a long moment, he opens the comm to Rebecca. "All right...so those crazy old men were right. There's enough distance now." He pauses, chewing his lip. "Power up and head to the hyperspace point to back home. We've got to get this data back." He says as he begins to flip on the power, letting Vee-Ten remain off as he would have to manually power on the droid at this point. Turning to meet up with Ghost 9, he prepares to fly with her to the exit point and initiate a timed jump together. "Maybe someone knows what the kark that thing is..." Rebecca powers up her ship and slaves it to Raxis' as he's the better astroguesser. And prepares for the run to lightspeed, her mind reeling over the details of this encounter. Then both ships lurch into hyperspace and heads home.
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