Smuggler Archive

The reason for all of her augmentations and special additions was for her primary role, that of a smuggler. Which she was performing at this very moment. She was on her way from Nar Shaddaa, half way across the galaxy, to the war stricken planet of Anobis in the Bright Jewel Systems cluster for a pick up.

The Sonik Rogue was at ease. She’d be settling into her docking birth in a base of one of Anobis’ warring factions within a few hours. Her captain, on the other hand, wasn’t so much at ease.

“I don’t understand this. I can handle my own and your bosses should know that,” grumbled a young Zabraki man. “I’m not one to avoid company on a long trip, but I’d prefer to invite my own guests aboard my own ship.” He was leaning over a star map on a vid screen inside the ship’s cockpit to check the current position. The captain looked back at the passenger, anticipating his response.

“It’s not whether they think you can handle your own butt or not, it’s just that they don’t trust you.” The passenger replied. His name was Dash Loram, a dark haired Corellian smuggler, and he knew his way around the ship and how to spar in a conversation. “And you can’t blame me for it. We both knew about each other before we went up the boarding ramp. It’s hard to keep secrets of who’s in and out when you’re in our line of work.”

Captain N’Joh Sonik analyzed his words and Dash was right. “Fine. But why not just send you to do this, Loram? You’re as reputable as I am-if you want to go that far.”

Dash Loram grew a sneer grin on his face and threw out a cocky reply, “Well, seems that they don’t trust me either. I’ve been doing a fair bit of work for them in the past few months and they don’t want me getting traced back to them. They’ve invested their fair share of credits in me and they don’t want their valuable asset getting lost.”

That had gotten under Captain Sonik’s skin and he was getting irritated “Who is they or them anyway? I think if I’m going to be traveling half way across the galaxy to smuggle cargo back across the entire galaxy along the Corellian Trade Route, of all the lanes, with my ship, I deserve to know whose flag I’m flying under.”

Dash reclined back in his chair with a smile, “I don’t think I can divulge that information. It’s classified.”

Sonik shot right back with a narrow finger pointed strait at Dash’s head. “You can take your classified status and cram it where Corell doesn’t shine, bud! And if it’s all classified with people who don’t want traces leaking to them, I can think of a very short list of who it could be.” A short silence filled the air as both smugglers glared at each other across the cabin. “If it’s the Alliance-the Rebellion-I need to know. You know what the Empire will do to us if we get caught running cargo for the Rebellion. They’re not the Fed-Dub or your run of the mill Corellian Security!”

Dash just laughed and replied, “Easy there, man! The Rebels have deep pockets. In fact, I’ getting my own ship refurbished while I’m on this run. And it’s all because of them. We aren’t running anything right now, anyway! We’re perfectly legit. Besides, we can have the headquarters on Anobis run a system-wide scan before we lift to get the best route off planet. Ninety percent of this trip is going to be made through hyperspace, safe and sound. Assuming this Hutt-stolen ship doesn’t fall apart. So just relax.”

“I knew it! We’re going to be running weapons and supplies for the Rebellion, fighting against the Empire, through some of the thickest hyperspace lanes in the galaxy! I wish I would have known this back on Nar Shaddaa. You’re getting a bargain out of me and my ship on this one, Loram!” replied Sonik with a stern look across his face.

Dash got up from the observer seat in the corner and paused at the cockpit hatch, “Listen, Sonik, there’s nothing we won’t be able to handle. We’ll be safe in hyperspace most of the trip.”

Captain Sonik kept his eyes locked on Dash, “I still don’t have to like it. You just remember where my priorities and allegiances lay when it comes down to it. Jabba ain’t going to like it too much if I’m going to be out of commission for a while.” He paused and sat down in the operations chair, and began scrolling through the vid screen’s information.

Dash countered, “No one said you had to. I’m not in this for their Rebellion. I’m in it for the money, just like you.” N’Joh kept quiet, continuing to view the ship’s status screen. “Listen, N’Joh, I’m going to hit that parcel of take-out I picked up in the Corellian district on Nar Shaddaa. Find me in the galley when we get there.”

“Well, I knew they were pretty dressed up. Sounds like the new SoroSuub yachts are going to be big sellers. Might have to drop a few credits into their stock with all this money we’re going to be pulling in.” Dash Loram noted. “Speaking of which, how far out are we? Couldn’t be but-,” Dash was cut off by a loud alarm coming from the ship’s diagnostic and general computer across the room.

“Hey. It looks like we’re dropping out of hyperspace now.” N’Joh walked to the terminal to flip the alarm off and noticed something, “Dash, this isn’t right. According this, we should still be another 10 minutes out. The charts must be-” WHAM! N’Joh was thrown up the corridor a good two and a half meters while Dash was tossed out of his chair, over a holochess table, and against the ship’s hull, falling into the seat of a curved couch and then the floor.

Alarms were going off all over the place as both got to their feet faster than their heads could clear. “What was that!? Sonik, you still with me? We must have dropped out of hyperspace cause of your faulty computer.” spouted Dash. “I guess this thing really is going to fall apart!”

“I’m still kickin’ and it wasn’t the ship! If it was, the alarm wouldn’t have gone off!” replied N’Joh. “I’ll take a look-”
Dash interrupted, “Hey, comm chatter up in the cockpit. Let’s go.”

Both smugglers sat in their respective stations and started to get their bearings. “Isolate that local chatter. I can’t make anything out of it.” ordered N’Joh.

Dash punched three buttons and tapped a fourth for volume as they listened in, instantly going wide-eyed, “Smuggler vessel, Sonik Rogue! I repeat! This is Captain Bordack of the Imperial Decimator patrol vessel Longspear! Stop your engines and lower you shields. Prepare to be boarded. You are suspected of carrying illegal contraband for the Rebellion against our Emperor. Your mission to transport arms from Anobis has been thwarted by the Empire. There is no escape.”

“It’s a trap!” exclaimed N’Joh. “I thought you said the Alliance wanted to protect their interest! What is this?”

“Don’t look at me! They must have laid some sort of hyperspace mine for us or something. Ships that small don’t carry gravity well equipment!” Dash was thinking of how this could have happened, “If they set us up, they must know I’ve worked for the Rebellion! I’m done for!” Dash Loram responded. He began punching buttons and scrolling a vid screen.

“Well they ain’t getting us without a fight! How many are out there and what’s our location? We can’t make a jump until we recalibrate the hyperdrive after getting pulled out of lightspeed like that.” N’Joh’s brain started grinding like a droid factory in high gear. His hands started flying over his own side of the console getting read-outs on weapon and shield status.

“Looks like a contingent of one Decimator-class attack ship with four fighters. TIEs. One hundred meters back aft. Scopes show a Lambda-class ship in-bound with five more TIEs on its wing about fifteen thousand meters out off our starboard side.” Dash looked over at N’Joh who was obviously working up a plan, staring out into space. “What you got in mind, Sonik? If that shuttle and the extra fighters hop on us, we won’t even have room to breathe.”

N’Joh smiled and replied, “Give up. We let them dock with us peacefully.”
“You’re crazy! Damn it, we’ve got to fight! Get out of that station! I’ll show you what a real pilot can do.” exclaimed Dash.

N’Joh stayed calm and answered, “Settle down, Loram. We’re going to set them up just like they set us up. Wait till they lower their guard and then we’ll strike. Start powering down the shields. Slowly.”

“No way! Power down our shields? How is that a trap for them? You sure that pointy head of yours ain’t backfiring again?” Dash returned.

“Ok, here’s the plan. We power the shields down but not all the way. Then we’ll engage the sensor jamming so it looks like the shields are going down. Once the jamming signal is engaged and their communications are out, we power the shields back up and boost them to double dorsal side. Next-”

Dash bumped in and took off with that sneer from earlier, “I am going to man that top canon! That Captain Bordack is going to regret this. And here I thought I was going to get some pocket change from an easy delivery. This is your fault, man. I should have known things would get complicated with you around.” He finished with a laugh and stood. “Just give me a minute to get situated.”

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s show these Rori river rats some tricks!” N’Joh shouted.
Dash jogged down the cockpit ramp and started climbing the turret access ladder. N’Joh started gradually lowering the Rogue’s shield power while initializing the jamming system.

“All set up here, Sonik! You tell me when you’re ready but hurry up, I can damn well see the whites of the pilot’s eyes on the Decimator!” shouted Dash into his headset “Looks real ugly too. You don’t have any twins in the Imperial Navy do you?”

N’Joh rolled his eyes while he snugged his comm headset around his ear,then spoke into the mic, “Yeah, yeah. You hold tight, man. Shields are lowered enough. Let’s set the bait.” N’Joh keyed up the Longspear’s return frequency, “Longspear. This is the Sonik Rogue. We are ready for boarding. Hatch is cleared.” There was no reply except for the scopes showing the Decimator moving into position above the Corellian ship.

N’Joh keyed off the Longspear’s frequency and turned back to Dash Loram in the dorsal turret, “The jamming signal is being activated.” There was a short pause after that. “Ok, all Imperial communications for a thousand meters should be down. I’m powering the shields back up around you to double capacity. You take it from there, Loram.”

Dash adjusted the mic on his own comm headset and tuned his blaster to an extremely short range blast and replied back, “Copy, Sonik. Once they latch on, it’ll be time to get gone!”

“She’s extending the boom now. Three meters away.” Dash started dictating what he was seeing from a flit’s eye view, “One meter. And she’s on us. Looks like one TIE is closing in too. Probably getting an external view of the seal for precaution.”

Sounds of magnetic clamps attaching to the hull echoed around the ship. This was it. They were connected.N’Joh snapped the restraining belt around his waist and pulled it tight. Both of the smugglers heard it through the ship, an Imperial Navy crewman was banging on the hatch through the umbilical arm. PLANG! PLANG! PLANG! “You ready up there, bud? It’s now or never.” Announced the Rogue’s captain. “Take it when you’re ready! Buckled in, course laid in, and I’m ready to go!”

“Whoever’s in that connector is in for a world of trouble!” Dash counted it down, “Three. Two. One.” Dash flipped up the blast shield in front of the gun mount and pulled the trigger paddles down with his thumbs. The automated aiming he’d set not a minute before kicked in as the MandalMotors quad-blaster swung around fast, locking onto the connecter arm at the Decimator’s port and fired a rapid succession of bolts tearing through the large tunnel-boom like it was a piece of flimsy. A split second later it was whipped forty-five degrees towards the Imperial ship’s view port, pumping more bolts into it at point-blank range.

KABLAM! PLANG! BOOM! Bright blue light filled the cockpit of the Sonik Rogue as she was violently thrown down and away from the Longspear and her exploding aft section. N’Joh Sonik tried to right the saucer-shaped freighter, yawing her around and pitching her up. Then he saw it. Two of the Longspear’s crewmen had been sucked out of the umbilical arm before the ship’s emergency seals could take effect. There was scorched durasteel for ten meters around the blasted ship’s pilot view port with a half-meter gash which was still spewing the internal contents of air, debris, and what he thought was a body part. Obviously, the sudden damage was just too much for the Longspear’s emergency systems to kick in on everything and its crew would pay for it with their lives.

The Decimator was dying in a hurry and it was taking the closer TIE down with it. The Longspear’s bow hull portion on the starboard side had broken off and flew right through the lone TIE’s engine array and reactor stabilizer. Both were immobilized. There couldn’t be any survivors on either ship, and if there was, well, there wouldn’t be in a few seconds.

Captain Sonik rolled the Rogue over and sent her hurtling towards the planet below while reaching over to adjust new settings for shields, jamming frequencies, and engine stabilization. The TIE’s peeled up and started a long arch around the two dying Imperial craft, trying to catch up with the two smugglers.

N’Joh had forgotten in all the confusion about Dash! He brought the headset mic back up to his cheek, “Dash! Loram! You better be back there! What’s your status?”
The communications crackled open, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here. How’d we do? I can’t see nothin’ with this damn shield up!”

“Not much better, Loram. I need you to readjust that gun for mid range fighters. You got the Longspear and a lone fighter but we’ve still got three TIEs on our tail. Closing fast! I think we might be able to pull a few maneuvers to lose ‘em through Wolport on the southern continent. The planetary enforcers might not like it much but I can’t think of anything else.” N’Joh sneaked a grin, a bit relieved to know Dash was alright.

“Here I was looking forward to some casino action. Thanks.” Dash let out a short laugh but got right back to business at hand. “I got the fighters on my scopes up here. Looks like we lost the Lambda and the second fighter wing-negative! They’re still coming but too far out to catch us.” Loram shouted back. “You think your flying garbage truck can get us home free?”

Why that dirty piece of -“Not with you in that turret, Loram! We’re done for now!” It was scary thought, but this was sort of fun for N’Joh, getting some action in with another smuggler again.

Loram was pumped up, “Take her down, Sonik! I’m ready for some target practice!” He began resetting his gun and dropped his blast shield, all the while keeping an eye on the three incoming TIEs.

Dash laugh back over the headset, “Yeah, yeah! You just fly this thing in any which way but strait and I’ll take care of those fighters!”

A busting port city with flashing lights was two kilometers below them and coming up fast. It was extremely early in the morning and there was an orange hue mixed in with the overcast pink clouds covering the planet. The city they were coming up on was like someone had sliced a piece of Corusant-no, too clean-Nar Shaddaa and placed it in on a coastline surrounded by yellow fields.

“Dash, you been through the Smuggler’s Run field lately?” N’Joh shouted over the comm.
Loram replied, “Not in the last six months. Why?” No response. Dash thought for a second. “Hey. Hey! Yeah. Great idea! No standard Imperial pilot could keep up with that. Go for it!”

“Ok, hang on! We’re going in! Doubling rear shields and auxiliary power to engine power and maneuvering thrusters.” N’Joh concentrated as he made the correct settings and took the Rogue lower, merely 100 meters off the ground.

The Sonik Rogue rolled on her axis as she slipped between two closely neighboring towers near the ocean dock and then rolled back level to swoop under a pedestrian bridge. N’Joh took her low over the streets below and had to lift her suddenly to avoid a large billboard down a major road. He held her strait, bobbing up and down over pubtrans vehicles humming below.

The TIEs were close now and still right on their tail. “They’re within firing range! Opening up the canons now.” Dash announced. He held true and nailed one fighter with his opening salvo. “They weren’t expecting that! Wahoo!”

“Great shot, Dash! Nail those last two and let’s get out of this!” N’Joh shouted. “Try and keep the stray fire to a minimum but, you what needs to be done.”

“Better them than us, right?” Dash answered.
N’Joh spoke into his comm set coolly, “You got that right.”

The Corellian freighter rolled on its side again and nosed up forty-five degrees to bank around a tight corner and immediate nosed back down in another right angle to make another turn. N’Joh put her back up on her belly and pulled her up. “Keep an eye out there for local security forces, Dash. I don’t know how much they’ll like us flying through downtown with Imperial fighters on our butt.” No reply. Dash had his hands too full to reply with trying to get a lock on two swift TIE fighters while bridges, spires, cables, billboards, and tunnels zoomed in and out of his scopes in front of the TIEs.

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! “Direct hit, Sonik! Get movin’!” yelled Dash from the gunnery well. The Rogue had just taken three good licks from both fighters. “Rear shields at thirty-one percent!”

“I got it!” Sonik shouted back and bobbed over a bright flashing sign that read Pink Sky Casino.
N’Joh put the Rogue in one cycle of a barrel roll, nosed up, and pitched her hard to left and held the course. KAPLOW! Dash nailed the second TIE fighter square, knocking her into flaming atoms! “Yeah!” he yelled with excitement, “One more to go!”

The two ships dodged and weaved for a few minutes more. Rolling under walkways and looping around buildings. Dash had taken three shots at the fighter but missed by a hair each time, taking out considerably chunks of the surrounding urban culture. The local communications chatter that N’Joh had tuned in on the way to the surface broke in on both of them through their headsets, “Unidentified Corellian ship on intercept course, sir. Yessir, he’s got one of our Imperial TIEs on him too. Roger, put the freighter down. We’ll make contact in five thousand meters. E-T-A, seventy-six seconds.”

That didn’t sound good. “Dash, did you catch that? We’re going to have to get out of here quick. Whatever local law enforcement they’re running now it sounds like they’re a lot more Empire-friendly than I remember.”

“Copy that. I sure did. Since the locals already have it in for us, how about we set a little blockade of our own for this last fight and bug out to somewhere else?” Dash replied

.
“What you got in mind, Loram?” N’Joh asked and he threw the Rogue in a turn to get her closer to the edge of the city.
Dash knew precisely what to do, “These damn flashing signs are about to blind me. I don’t see how the locals sleep. How about we use one as the teeth to our boar trap? You just point me one out, I’ll take a few shots, and this Imp won’t have anywhere to go but out?”

“Sounds like a plan, Dash! Check your scopes at point 274, mark 895!” N’Joh called out and put the ship into a dizzying spin and loop back down the way they had just come, looping right over the TIE. BWAP! BWAP! Two grazing hits from the fighter. A couple more and they’d lose the rear shields.

Dash fired another blast that missed high and to the right and sent a stray blaster bolt streaming into the sky, “Alright! You just say when to let her rip!”

The freighter came up on the huge Fifteen Moons Casino and Resort Complex sign in a matter of seconds. It was flashing bright shiny blue, red, and pink colors as it hung on the actual Fifteen Moons’ main concourse building. Impossible to miss even from a few kilometers up. By design of course.

N’Joh put the Sonik Rogue right on course for the side of the building, “Get ready to light him up, Loram!” He knew Dash had been ready. He checked his scope one last time and saw the TIE at a mere thirty meters out and the Fifteen Moons complex about two hundred meters out. “FIRE!”

Dash Loram in the gunnery well opened up with a full salvo from his quad-blaster. The TIE ducked and dodged but, as planned, Dash kept firing above the TIE. It was either dodge below the bolts or pull up into them, there was no room to roll off left or right for the tiny one-man fighter.

N’Joh Sonik put the Rogue into a vertical climb so hard that the artificially gravity on board temporarily went out. Both Dash and N’Joh felt the enormous pull of G’s as the ship hurtled upward.

That could not be said for the last Imperial TIE fighter. Dash’s suppression fire had kept the TIE dodging below the fire arch so long that it couldn’t pull up. The tiny fighter slammed head long into the sign causing sparks and debris to fly onto the street below while the remnants of the unshielded craft plowed into the upper floors of the casino. Pedestrians on the street blow, leaving the casino from a night’s worth of gambling, scrambled for cover. Dash couldn’t see anything but fire inside the giant hole in the upper floor as the Rogue few up and away.

N’Joh replied, analyzing the situation, “We don’t really have a choice, we need to set down for a couple hours. We have to get the hyperdrive fixed. After that, we can jump out of here and get back to Corellia or Nar Shaddaa. We could head back to that dump of a planet, Tatooine with Jabba. And there’s always Smuggler’s Run.”

“Smuggler’s Run sounds good, Sonik.” Dash was going over ideas too. “Wherever it is, it needs to be low-profile, that’s for sure.”
“No argument here.” N’Joh said. Twenty minutes later the Rogue sat down in a dusty landing field to the northwest of where they’d originally started. It was still dark on this side of the planet and even the holonews feeds wouldn’t have spread too quickly to this area. It was rural and different from the big cities on the southern shores.

Both smugglers climbed out of the cockpit and walked down the walk ramp. They looked around. “So, how about I get cranking on that hyperdrive.” N’Joh said. He was tired, stressed, and just wanted to get back home to Nar Shaddaa.

“Sounds good. I’ll scrounge around this place for a public comm unit. I should be able to slice into it with some borrowed codes and get an encrypted channel to contact the Alliance and let them know what happened and not to expect us. I should be back in an hour.” Dash Loram was tired too. He wanted to get back to his ship and get some rest.

Both smugglers worked on their respective tasks and met back at the Rogue and hour later when it was starting to get light. The small city they were birthed in was slowly coming to life and no doubt the search for their ship would heat up too. The two smugglers worked together and it took all of ten minutes to get the sensor array back to operational standards. Afterward, they dragged back up into the cockpit and slumped into their stations to run a quick pre-flight check list.

They strapped their selves back in and lifted off, pulling up into the higher reaches of the Ord Mantell sky past the masses of pink clouds. N’Joh began inputting coordinates for a jump to lightspeed, “So, Iridonia good for you? Close enough to get some supplies and better repairs for a longer jump back to Nar Shaddaa.” N’Joh asked.

“Yeah, that’s fine.” There was a definite coldness to Dash’s voice as he spoke. “I caught a quick message on the holofeed newscasts for this sector. I got some bad news, Sonik.”
“Oh yeah? Lay it on me. This day couldn’t get much worse.” Sarcasm was thick in his reply.
Dash just laughed and shook his head, “It’s about to get a lot worse, Sonik. And a lot of the days that follow too.”