Living on the Edge- Episode 12
Emerging from the D’anjon Nebula with their brand new Consular class light assault cruiser, Redemption, our heroes receive a hail from an approaching Marauder corvette. They identify themselves as the Red Skull and demand to know what Redemption was doing in their nebula. A quick scan reveals that, while their new ship is significantly better armed than the old Pink Lady/Lonely Refuge the Red Skull marauder has them outgunned 2 to 1.
Not wanting to get her new ship damaged, Captain Verci opts for a diplomatic approach. She agrees to dock in order to discuss a transit fee. When they come along side, a tall Cerean comes aboard, escorted by several pirate thugs. He introduces himself as Atretie Rigil, leader of the Red Skulls. He is curious how they entered his nebula without being spotted.
When Verci introduces herself and reveals her past dealings with Red Skulls captain Wins Tidnea, Rigil seems intrigued. He asks them about their other ship, which his men had spotted entering the nebula a few months prior. Verci waves this off as an error on his men’s part, as they entered the nebula together, and unaware of it being part of Red Skull territory.
Inviting Rigil up to the ship’s well apportioned conference room, Verci convinces Rigil that she bears no hostile intent to Red Skull and entering the nebula was in error. She convinces him to take her cargo of loot, taken off the Reliance, as compensation, going so far as to convince Rigil to pay her 1500 credits in addition. During the conversation, Ria tries to help but is in explicitly silenced when Rigil identifies her as the Lady Antilles.
As the Red Skulls depart, offering Verci an opportunity for work once the Lonely Refuge returns, the crew docks with the Gulf Fueling station nearby. Depressed at being reminded of her dead family, Ria leads Evie and Emiko to the local cantina. After Ria gets completely trashed, an Imperial officer walks into the cantina, and noticing the three beautiful human women, approaches them.
He begins to hit on them, buying them all a drink. When Ria orders something from Alderaan, he complements her choice, saying its very valuable now. In the process he dismisses the destruction of the world as a good thing, as it killed a lot of useless rebels. Enraged by the comment, Ria staggers to her feet and lunges at the officer. Fortunately, or unfortunately, her drunkenness causes her to miss and instead just collapse into the man’s arms, passing out.
Seizing the opportunity to get away without bloodshed, Emiko summons Sam and the four of them haul the unconscious Ria back to the ship. As Sam arrives, the Imperial officer recognizes him and remarks that he would like to buy the war hero a drink. Sam waves him off quickly leaves.
The next morning, with a raging headache, Ria asks if she “got him”. Wanting to soothe her friend, Evie says that yes, she killed the Imperial. Now convinced that she killed an Imperial officer with a single punch, Ria insists on being called “One Punch Ria” and begins some heavy training with Sam. She tells anyone she can about her exploit.
During the next two weeks, while the crew wait for the slow approach of 1D-J0 and the Lonely Refuge, Verci meets with the stations administrator, Mintaka Offin, whom she previously charmed. Getting in good with him and his family, she learns about how the Red Skulls started rapidly rising to power just in the last year, when Rigil appeared. He isn’t sure if he man took over or not but he has been central to their rise. They have gained defacto control over this system.
While waiting, Emiko decides to start playing around with the collection of nonfunctional lightsabers the crew has acquired. She begins by tinkering with the two found on the Reliance, discovering that they were merely out of power. With confidence she then begins tinkering with the badly damaged one found on the remains of Jedi Knight Corma Marr.
Unfortunately, Emiko was too confident. While tinkering with the weapon, she triggered managed to repair it while in a compromising position. The green blade ignited severing her left arm at the elbow.
Letting out a scream of pain, the rest of the crew came running. Moving into action, Dr. Evie drafted Ria into service as a nurse and rushed Emiko to the infirmary. Working quickly, Evie approached the daunting task of reattaching a limb severed by a lightsaber. Her skills as a master doctor were put to the test, but in the end, she managed the near impossible. After a few days in the bacta tank and a few weeks in a sling, Emiko’s arm should be as good as new.
After the trauma of the near disaster, the crew took the remaining time easy. When the Lonely Refugee finally emerged from the nebula, they were all well rested and ready to go. Docking the ship with the refueling station, Verci went to meet Vaj Upari, the Red Skull contact onboard.
Using her growing reputation and natural talents, Verci quickly worked out a deal with Vaj. He agreed to purchase the badly damaged Lonely Refuge and the Y-wing aboard for 10,000 credits and a replacement back up hyperdrive for the Redemption. She also got him to agree to give the crew a 15% cut on the next mission and provide complete repair service for any battle damage received.
Eager to take the fight to the Empire, make some profit and try out their new ship, the crew took aboard a Red Skull assault team and headed for the Imperial world of Arkanis. There, they joined up with two Red Skull Z-95’s before heading into for a raid of an Imperial supply depot on one of the orbiting mooons.
The base was lightly guarded with only two turbo lasers and eight TIE fighters. The Z-95’s and the Redemption‘s powerful turbo lasers made short work of the fragile TIE’s. Due to being short handed, Emiko and Sam spent the battle hopping quickly between gunnery stations as the slow firing turbo lasers alternated cool down periods.
Exchanging fire with the base, the Redemption slowly disabled the defenses, taking significant hull damage in the process. By the time the shields were disabled and the Red Skull assault team dropped in for their attack, Imperial reinforcements from Arkanis had appeared in orbit.
Taking the ship back up while the commandos did their part, the crew engaged a pair of veteran TIE Interceptor pilots, another six TIE fighters and a YE-4 gunship. The two veteran Interceptors engaged the Red Skull Z-95’s, killing both for a loss of one in return.
Moving in to engage the Imperials, the crew quickly dispatched the remaining TIE fighters before turning to the gunship. Blasting away with their multiple turrets, the YE-4 disabled the already damaged Redemption‘s shields. Fortunately for our heroes, she was equipped for anti-fighter duty and bore only laser cannons instead of turbolasers.
Rushing to make hasty repairs, Emiko kept the ship going through the fight, long enough Sam and Evie to finish off the gunship. Returning to the surface of the moon, the crew picked up the Red Skull commando team along with 28 crates of valuable military hardware. With new Imperial reinforcements on their way, Ria blasted past them and jumped the ship to hyperspace.
Living on the Edge
