Star Wars - Tales of the Black Curs 5 - Vengeance Strike Read online

  Only an hour or so and Golthan will be dead.

  High above Wroona, Dirk Harkness and Jai Raventhorn peered out their transport shuttle’s viewport at the Vengeance, the Imperial Star Destroyer now berthed in Wroona’s only capital ship stardock. Blast marks had scored parts of the Star Destroyer, and certain sections were entirely darkened. A host of mechanics in power suits floated around the ship, trying to effect repairs on damage from the vessel’s last engagement with New Republic forces.

  Jai hefted the gear bag over her shoulder while she shifted uneasily in her starport technician’s uniform. She uneasily adjusted her cap, her hair bunched beneath it. Harkness picked up his case of starship tools, glancing casually at the other starport technicians aboard the shuttle. He returned his one-eyed gaze to the Vengeance. Golthan is aboard that ship, Dirk thought. Now it’s time to pay our vengeance back.

  For months after the Battle of Endor, Imperial Advisor Bregius Golthan and his spies had tried to keep Harkness and his team from collecting information about the crumbling Empire. They had even captured Harkness once, torturing him, blinding his left eye — but his friends in the Black Curs had rescued him just in time. Now Dirk was determined to make Golthan regret all the misery he inflicted …

  “Hey, are you feeling okay?” Jai asked, noticing the blank look on Dirk’s face. He blinked himself out of the stare and nodded. Jai peered out the viewport as they drew closer to the hulking Star Destroyer, hoping that their contact aboard the Vengeance had set everything up for their diversion. She adjusted her gear bag on her shoulder, careful not to jostle the five heavy detonation charges concealed there.

  Once the shuttle had docked, Jai and Dirk pulled their technician’s caps low and marched with the rest of the starship mechanics past the stormtroopers on patrol in the Vengeance’s docking hangar. Dirk slid his hand into one bulky pocket and pressed the small transmitter’s button. Somewhere on the bridge, sensor system wires would be smoldering away until…

  “Any sensors techs here?” an Imperial officer asked of the group leaving the shuttle. “Bridge reports main tracking sensors just blew.”

  “We’re qualified,” Jai said, flashing her fake ident badge. “We’ll take care of it right away.”

  Dirk shivered and restrained himself as two stormtroopers were ordered to escort them to the bridge.

  Tru’eb Cholakk, Platt Okeefe and Starter stood together in the Wroona starport docking bay, shaking hands. Their ships, the Luudrian Star, Last Chance and Starter’s X-wing, waited patiently nearby.

  “This is it,” Platt said. “I sure hope Jai and Dirk know what they’re doing.”

  “Aw, I only wish I could have gone,” Starter said. “I bet it would make a great story …”

  “We have all heard enough tales,” Tru’eb said, smiling at Starter. “Now it is time to forge some legends ourselves.”

  “Just remember,” Platt said. “All we have to do is sit around in Wroona’s approach and departure patterns until that Star Destroyer’s bridge blows, then we can roar in to finish the job and make sure those two get out safely.”

  “You don’t suppose Harkness is going to try one of his stunts, do you?” Starter asked.

  “Self restraint is not exactly one of Dirk’s redeeming qualities,” Tru’eb observed.

  “Harkness hates Golthan as much as the rest of us,” Platt said. “He just wants to put Golthan out of business. It’ll make life for us and the New Republic that much easier. But we’re not doing much down here gabbing, so let’s get up there and do some damage.”

  “Are you the sensors specialists?” the bridge officer asked.

  Jai nodded. “Just show us where to go to work.” She tried not to look toward the crew pit, where she knew the sensors had been sabotaged, right near that access panel near the outer bulkhead. The entire bridge was bustling with other officers, technicians, and a few security guards. Their stormtrooper escort from the docking bay was still around, too. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  “Up there, starboard crew pit, right up front,” the officer said, pointing at the crew pit and the panoramic transparisteel viewports. He glared at Harkness as the two passed, then headed off to update Advisor Golthan on the repairs.

  Dirk and Jai removed the sensor control panels quickly, tearing out clumps of fused wires. “Looks like some internal damage down near the control circuits,” Harkness said for effect. The few technicians and officers nearby didn’t seem to notice. The stormtroopers were interested in some activity outside the viewport. “You want to go down there and check it out?”

  “No problem.” Jai winked at Harkness as she carefully took her gear bag and maneuvered into the access area behind the controls.

  Harkness continued to “repair” the damage while Jai crawled into the sensor housing and into the access crawlway beyond. Pushing her gear bag ahead of her, she soon reached the area closest to the outer bulkhead. Jai set each of the five charges to blow, arranging them so they’d blast a hole right through the bulkhead.

  “We don’t have much time,” Jai whispered to Dirk as she pulled herself from the sensor housing. Harkness replaced several breakers and c-boards, then refit the sensor control panels into place.

  “We’re all set,” he said, packing his tools into the case. The two emerged from the crew pit just as the bridge officer approached them for an update. “Forward sensors are functional again, Lieutenant,” Dirk reported. The officer peered at him suspiciously again — probably the eye patch, Harkness thought.

  “Good,” the lieutenant huffed. “Report down to crew 12 — they’re working on the hyperdrive control systems.”

  As Dirk and Jai headed away from the crew pits, they began thinking of ways to ditch their stormtrooper escort. The two wouldn’t be going down to work on the hyperdrive — they had to get to the landing bay where Platt would be meeting them after the explosives went off.

  The two were almost to the turbolifts when a door to a side chamber whooshed open. “Let us see straight on this matter, bounty hunter Beylyssa,” said the hulking skeleton dressed in ornate Imperial robes. “I want Harkness and all his Black Curs eliminated before I move against Sluis Van.”

  The two figures emerging from the chamber almost bumped into the two figures passing the door. “Watch where you’re going, you incompetent technicians,” the tall Imperial Advisor barked.

  Dirk looked up into Bregius Golthan’s thinning face. Jai peered up and saw her own reflection in Beylyssa’s polished faceplate. Four faces from the past stood stunned for a moment. Golthan broke the silence. “Fools!” he cried. “It’s them, the Black Curs! Kill them immediately!”

  Dirk grabbed one of his stormtrooper escort, spun him around and pushed him at Golthan and Beylyssa. Jai kicked her stormtrooper down and quickly retrieved his heavy blaster. Before any other soldiers on the bridge could fire, she was moving toward the turbolift, laying down a deadly barrage of blaster fire. Sparks flew from control panels and two troopers fell back, wounded, into the starboard crew pit.

  “Harkness, let’s go!” Jai cried. “This is no time for getting even.”

  But Dirk had already grappled Golthan to the ground, the knife from his boot sheath poised to cut out the Imperial Advisor’s eye. A hard boot from nowhere threw Harkness back. He rolled out of the way just as Beylyssa razed the deck with her blaster rifle. Dirk threw the knife, but the bounty hunter’s armor deflected it. He tried lunging for one of the stormtroopers’ blaster pistols sitting unused on the deck—but Golthan reached up and grabbed his leg. Harkness looked up to see Beylyssa leveling her blaster sights on him.
/>   Jai ran screaming at Beylyssa, her blaster blazing away, hitting control panels, Golthan, and the bounty hunter. Beylyssa’s blaster went off, sending stray bursts in every direction. But by the time Jai fell over onto her bounty hunter adversary, Harkness was sprawled on the deck, blaster shots smoldering in his shoulder and stomach.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Jai said, keeping her eye on Beylyssa, sprawled prone and severely wounded nearby.

  Harkness opened one eye and smiled, something Jai had never seen. She realized Golthan was dead beside him, his spindly neck snapped. “Just hand me a blaster.” Dirk said.

  The turbolift finally arrived, its door sliding aside to reveal a squad of stormtroopers ready for battle. Dirk opened fire as Jai pulled him inside the room from which Golthan and Beylyssa had emerged—Golthan’s private chambers. The two took cover on both sides of the door and began picking off stormtroopers and bridge officers who returned fire.

  Dirk turned to Jai. “Well, this is it,” he said. “There’s no way we’re getting off the bridge before this whole place blows.”

  “Nice thinking,” Jai snapped. She looked around the chambers, then noticed the hatch against one wall. “Forget about dying just now and keep those stormtroopers busy.” Dirk continued to fire as Jai dragged him to the hatch. More blaster fire burst into the room as the stormtroopers reached the door. Dirk took another hit, but Jai kept dragging him toward the hatch. She had just opened it when the explosives went off.

  Platt, Tru’eb and Starter had begun their attack on the Vengeance as soon as the long flame erupted from the Star Destroyer’s bridge. Tru’eb had flown his freighter into the stardock framework first, blasting away at turbolaser emplacements with his mass drive cannons. Starter had zoomed in next in his X-wing, proton torpedoes tearing into the Star Destroyer’s hull. But Platt had carefully flown in beneath the giant ship, maneuvering into the docking bay.

  She had been waiting too long. The explosion had torn through the bridge five minutes ago, and the Vengeance was already listing within the stardock, slowly tearing it apart. Platt targeted the few groups of stormtroopers which headed for her ship, blasting them and parts of the docking bay deck with the ship’s guns.

  An explosion in the bay ceiling above loosed a TIE fighter rack — it crashed to the deck, each fighter popping like a bomb. “That was too close,” Platt said to herself. Jai and Dirk were nowhere to be seen. Another moment and the bay would blow.

  Platt’s face twisted into a sneer. If she didn’t leave her friends behind now, she’d be part of the Star Destroyer wreckage in another minute. After scanning the docking bay one more time, she punched the Last Chance’s ion drives and zoomed out of the bay. Behind her, the Vengeance twisted in on itself, small fires sprouting in parts of the hull. The ship which had harried the Black Curs and the New Republic was now a useless hulk of metal. Vengeance had died. And with it, Platt thought, so had Dirk and Jai.

  The explosion had been more than Jai anticipated. It was so powerful it had blasted both of them into Golthan’s private escape pod before depressurizing the entire bridge deck. Luckily the pod’s hatch seal and ejection controls hadn’t jammed.

  Jai smeared some soot from her face, then looked to Dirk. He was curled up next to her in the cramped pod. Jai used some of her tattered technician’s uniform to try and tend to his various wounds and burns, but this first aid stuff wasn’t her specialty. Harkness was still warm, though, so he wasn’t dead.

  Jai pulled her hair out of the bun she had concealed beneath the technician’s hat and let it flow out. She ran her fingers through it once to untangle it, then began searching the escape pod’s compartments for a medpac.

  Through the tiny viewport she surveyed the Vengeance, its twisted and dying hull drifting further away as the pod made its way back to Wroona.

  “If we ever get back, this’ll make one whopping story,” she said.

  Roleplaying Game Statistics

  Wroona

  Type: Terrestrial

  Temperature: Temperate

  Atmosphere: Type 1 (breathable)

  Hydrosphere: Moist

  Gravity: Standard

  Terrain: Oceans, plains, mountains, forests

  Length of Day: 32 standard hours

  Length of Year: 217 local days

  Sapient Species: Wroonians (N), Humans, various aliens

  Starport: Stellar class

  Population: 7 billion Wroonians, 1.5 billion Humans

  Planet Function: Homeworld

  Government: Trade guilds

  Tech Level: Space

  Major Exports: Luxury trade goods, mid technology

  Major Imports: High technology

  Capsule: Wroona is the homeworld of the blue-skinned, blue-haired Wroonians, an offshoot race of Humans whose culture is centered around trade, exploration, and smuggling. During the reign of the Empire, an Imperial governor controlled Wroona and constructed the immense Wroona Stardock, a capital ship-sized repair facility in orbit. Although the governor was just, he cracked down on the Wroonians’ less legitimate businesses such as document replication, ryll smuggling and piracy. When news of the Rebel Alliance’s victory at the Battle of Endor reached Wroona, the local populace rose against the governor and took their planet back — including the Wroona Stardock.

  In the time of the New Republic, Wroona has remained aloof from the new government and independent of other controlling forces. It has become a haven for smugglers, pirates, mercenaries, and other galactic vagabonds seeking refuge from the political turmoil of the New Republic and its conflicts with the remnants of the Empire.

  The Wroonian Guilds offer innumerable services to visitors, and frequently charge a hefty sum for visiting ships to use the Wroonian Stardock’s facilities. Wroona’s principal starport is located along the coast of its largest ocean. It’s a colorful mix of clocking bays, residences, businesses, repair facilities and guild complexes, and attracts an equally colorful mix of smugglers, free-traders, mercenaries and pirates from around the galaxy.

  Wroona Stardock

  Craft: Kuat Drive Yards Type IV-A Stardock

  Type: Orbital repair stardock

  Scale: Capital

  Length: 1,900 meters

  Crew: 200, gunners: 24

  Crew Skill: Capital ship gunnery 4D+2

  Passengers: 50 (technicians)

  Cargo Capacity: 5,000 metric tons

  Consumables: 3 months

  Cost: Not available for sale

  Hull: 4D

  Sensors:

  Passive: 25/0D

  Scan: 50/1D

  Search: 75/2D

  Focus: 3/2D+1

  Weapons:

  8 Turbolasers

  Fire Arc: Turret

  Crew: 3

  Skill: Capital ship gunnery

  Fire Control: 2D

  Space Range: 1-5/8/14

  Damage: 4D+2

  Capsule: The Wroona Stardock was initially constructed by Wroona’s Imperial governor during the Empire’s stay on the planet. Since the Wroonian revolt just after the Battle of Endor, it has been run by the Wroonian Guilds as a repair facility for anyone who can pay the expensive berthing and repair fees.

  The repair facility is large enough to fit an Imperial Star Destroyer, or several smaller capital ships. Sections of the stardock house storage bays, quarters for the crew and technicians, space tugs and shuttles, and repair bays. Only 50 technicians are on duty at any given time — for more important jobs more technicians are shuttled up from Wroona’s surface to help with repairs.

  The Wroona Stardock is exclusively for use by capital ships unable to land at starport facilities planetside. Wroona starport can handle many repairs for starfighters, freighters and smaller capital ships. Using the immense Wroona Stardock facilities is a large and expensive undertaking.

  Adventure Outline: Wroonian Clean-Up

  “Look! There’s another explosion from that Star Destroyer.”

  “Wow. Must be those New Republ
ic commandos or something. That’s gotta be sabotage. They must have wanted to put that Imperial Advisor out of business really badly.”

  “The Star Destroyer’s breaking up right there in the stardock. I wonder if there are any survivors … and if there are survivors getting out on escape pods, they’ll be landing here on Wroona shortly.”

  “Think of all the pay the Salvage Guild will be offering for those escape pods.”

  “And maybe we can find one with that Imperial Advisor. How much do you think the New Republic would pay for him?”

  Adventure:

  Episode One: During a layover in Wroona Starport, the characters witness the Black Curs’ strike against the Imperial Star Destroyer Vengeance, now slowly breaking up within the Wroona Stardock. Several escape pods have already jettisoned and are headed for the nearest landing site: Wroona. The characters hear that the Wroonian Salvage Guild is offering 100 credits for each escape pod retrieved in good condition. The characters quickly buy supplies they need — fusion grapples, duracord and lifting winches — and take off to begin homing in on escape pod beacons in the Wroonian ocean.