The newest of the Rebel Alliance new recruits found themselves in the passenger hold of the Troop Transport HotBox . The ship was aptly named. Once a prisoner ship of the Corrllian Royal Guard, it was now pressed into service ferrying troops and dignataries across the war-torn galaxy. It's designers had imagined a passenger compliment of twenty-five. In this instance, it carried a surplus of ten.
The harried souls, so recently given of themselves to revolution, looked uneasily at one another. They asked similar questions of the others silently: "where did he come from?" "What did the Empire do to her?" "What kind of alien is he?"
However, the most common of the questions was this: "When we will finally arrive?"
They had all been assured before leaving the Nebulon class frigate, that the journey to the hidden Rebel training facilities would be short. It was merely a five hour hop. Those five hours had seemed a lifetime to most of them. They all reassured themselves the same way, however. As sacrifices went in the rebellion against the Empire, a little clausterphobia was a minor matter indeed.
So it was a relief when the captain broke the stiffling silence four hours later to inform them that they were coming out of hyperspace. He further cautioned them to take care to be securly strapped in.
But no sooner had he spoke when the ship suddenly lurched forward in a small macro of their stomachs as the ship entered realspace. They settled themselves and laughed at one another in the calm five minutes that followed.
Then the calm was broke once more. A crash echoed through the hull and the transport listed portside. Supplies and tools fell loose from their overhead stow lockers "What the hell was that??" a young human female, centered on the narrow starboard bench asked, voicing the querry everyone thought. She was lithe and pretty but her beauty was marred by a hairless head and mutiple rings and hoops through her nose, ears, lip and eybrows. She also adorned a
blue tattoo around her right eye in the design of a starburst. A galactic culturologist would have recognized her as a native of the religous planet Urik. The art/mutilations being their custom.
"I think something hit us..." a mousy sullustion posed, looking around the cabin.
"No," the jewled and bald-headed Uri responded. "That was a laser blast!"
Everyone looked frantically to her, searching her face for signs of jest. When the next crash sounded, knocking them all around as the inertial dampners strained to compensate, her case was closed. Everyone realized she was right. They puny transport was under atttack.
An eerie silence permeated the thick atmosphere of the transport. As they looked to one another for answeres, the new rebel recruits huddled in the transport, their expressions all reading the same. No one expected to die so soon.
A feeling of helplessness gripped the large majority as they waited in the tiny coffin with no view to the outside and the cockpit sealed off from the passenger compartment. Vac-suits hung forlornly in the transparisteel lockers and many looked to them. But it was well understood that there were not enough for everybody.
The ship was blasted again!
As a swarm, the rebel's rushed to the vacc suit locker.
Volpius the mad, or "Fox" as he was known to his friends, grimaced as the box was hit again and the others lunged for the Vacc suits. He hated this. Had he come all this way to be killed without a fight.
"Everyone calm down" Fox snaped, "Getting out of the ship is not and option. You'll kill everyone that does not have a vack suit. Just relax".
He frowned again. This was not his idea of a good start.
"I agree with the Shivistainian!" the voice belonged to the peirced and tattoed female. She looked to Volpius as she attempted to calm down the panicked recruits.
"What if the pilots dead?" A young sullustian shouted back. He was already putting on a vacc suit. "I think our best option is to try to get to the cockpit and hyperspace out of here!"
Several others nodded and murmered in agreement. A large human male looked as if he was about to say something when the ominous sounds of locking clamps reverberated through the hull.
"It looks like it doesn't matter now," the shaved headed female responded. "I think we are being boarded."
Everyone looked to the airlock to acertain what fate was about to befall them all.
Moruth Doole watched the red blips on his scopes swarm toward the slow moving transport. "Where the hell are the X-Wing escorts?" he wondered aloud. He stared in horror as he saw the helpless transport being targeted and shot at by one gunboat and two swift fighters.
The gunboat was an Old Repulic Orbit Patrol Ship. Stock, it carried a compliment of weaponry that often included concussion missles. The ships that flew with it however, were of an unknown class to Doole.
Doole powered forward slowly, trying to acertain the situation. If, indeed, he was the only fighter out here, he would have to move with precision. The gunboat was easily a match for his V-wing not to mention the smaller starfighters. It appeared, however, that they hadn't noticed him yet.
The fighters swooped in on the transport. Laying three precision blasts, they crippled the ships engine, antigrav and hyperdrive. Doole knew then, that the raiders planned to board.
At 2 kilometers, the raider starfighter saw him and turned toward his position. Meanwhile, the confident and slow moving gunboat turned parallel with the rebel transport. Doole pushed his throttle all the way forward.
He switched his targeter over to missles and armed the warheads.
The first starfighter rolled to port, the second to starboard. It was an old tactic. If Doole evaded one fighter, the other would have his six oclock position covered and could line Doole up for a volley of blasts.
But rather than evade, Doole grinned as the targeter went red. The simaltaneous targeting computers found the first ship and the second, even thought the two fighters were 180 degrees apart. Doole fired.
The starboard side starfighter erupted in a brilliant ball of flame as the ships solid fuel engine ignited. The second pilot got lucky. In an instant, the pilot juked his ship straight down and fired his thermo-chaff cannon. The missle, fooled by the heat signature of the chaff, exploded harmless in space. "Dammit!" Doole cursed. The remarkable skill of the second pilot worried him. He realized this battle was going to take far too long as all the while, the gunboat prepared to dock with the crippled transport.
