Rebel Squadrons

RS Miniatures Mission - Pirates on the Southern Flank

By RA Lamin Zykara
Unit: The Rebel Squadrons
Narrative, Jun 02, 2014
Back to Articles

Cody Qel-Droma dragged the bloody and beaten pirate through the hallways of the Liberator–Class Cruiser Zealot, other members of his team prodding along their own captives behind him. While the Zealot itself never reached quite the pristine cleanliness of the RS flagship Redemption, their procession to the hangar bay was leaving a mess of blood and grime that even this front line special operations ship would need scrubbed away come morning.

It wasn't necessarily the job of the Zealots to interrogate the pirates they'd found probing RS defenses in this sector. Protocol dictated that they should send prisoners off to the professional intelligence guys back at RS HQ. Perhaps it was that they'd spent far too many idle months in this sector. Idle months are never good for soldiers that live off the adrenaline of war.

Interrogation had been brutal, and answers had been spewed, so many answers that Qel-Droma didn't really care to sort through them all. These unfortunate mercenaries had just been at the wrong place at the wrong time and encountered some very bored soldiers who didn't care what information they were spewing. Needless to say, Qel-Droma now knew their middle names, childhood pets, and how one of them had broken his parent's holo-projector as a child and blamed it on the baby.

Cody grabbed and twisted the ear of his captive, to get him moving forward again. "So you call yourselves the Howling Akk Dogs, huh? Didn't anyone ever tell you idiots that Akk Dogs don't howl?" Qel-Droma shook his head. "I swear, if we have to stay out hear one more month doing this pirate duty..." The door to the hangar opened and Cody and his group poured out into its massive expanse.

As they entered the hangar, the deck crew stopped from their tasks readying Lambda Shuttle LCS-937 to stare at the disheveled mess of pirate captives being forcibly herded towards them by their newly promoted Fleet Commanding Officer. While many Fleet COs settled into a life more akin to a desk job, Qel-Droma continued to get his hands dirty, quite literally in this case. It took the deck crew a few brief moments to rationalize the sight in front of them before they got back to work.

Qel-Droma signaled to his second in command, who took his prisoners off his hands, and walked over to the encrypted comm-station, inputting the necessary codes to connect to Admiral Sienn Sconn, RS Operations Officer, currently tasked with reorganizing RS assets to deal with an increase in problems on the fringes of RS space. Admiral Sconn was requesting the return of some of Qel-Droma's resources, including shuttle LCS-937. Qel-Droma figured he might as well pack it with a few goodies for him.

Sconn appeared on the holo-viewer and Qel-Droma wasted no time. "Long time, no see, Sconn."

"Cody Qel-Droma...I heard they made a Fleet Admiral out of you."

"Yeah, well, you don't die long enough and eventually they start to run out of ranks..." Cody chuckled but got down to business. "Anyway, you're requisitioning one of my shuttles, so I'm going to be sending along some important data that might help you make some headway on all this pirate activity in this sector."

"You can just send it via our encrypted channels."

"Nah, that's the thing actually." Cody Qel-Droma briefly disappeared from view, suddenly appearing and lifting another man's head into the frame by pulling his hair. "These guys are a bit too big to transfer as a file." He smiled and dropped the captive out of the frame by releasing his grasp on his hair.

"Do they know anything?"

Cody nodded. "Yeah, they know all kinds of things, I'm just not sure what YOU need to know from them. So I'm sending them along as a little bonus along with the data we ripped out of their captured starfighters. Between that and whatever these guys have left to tell you, you should be able to figure out what's going on with all these pirate attacks."

"Thanks Qel-Droma. I hope these operations haven't been a problem for you."

"Oh, no problem at all...but I do have one request." Cody briefly let his gaze trail to the Lambda shuttle that had ferried his men into so many operations where they'd posed as Imperials. He nearly laughed remembering that time they'd posed as an Imperial military band for a wedding/assassination.

"What's that?"

"That shuttle you're calling back from the front lines here with us. She means a lot to me and a lot of the other Zealots. She's carried us safely into and out of a whole lot of combat operations. She's kind become something of a good luck charm. I know you need her right now, but we'd sure like to see her again sometime soon." Cody paused for a moment before continuing.

"Yes, Qel-Droma?"

"Don't get her blown up is what I'm saying." With that he flicked off the comm and got back to the business of loading the prisoners onto Lambda Shuttle LCS-937.

Comments

There are no comments for this news post yet.