GALACTIC LEGACY: A STAR WARS D6 RPG STORY – EPISODE 1: THE BEGINNING (PART 10)

A long time ago in a galaxy far far way….

GALACTIC LEGACY: A STAR WARS D6 RPG STORY – EPISODE 1: THE BEGINNING (PART 10)

Malcom keyed his comlink.

"Shady, target the alley's rooftops in case he rabbits up the walls.  I'm pretty sure he's a Force user.  We have the entrance covered so he's not getting out this way."

"FREEZE WHERE YOU'RE AT OR GET FRIED!!" he barked out, aiming his blasters at the sniper while covering behind a durasteel box. The robed figure dropped to the ground, partially covered by the boxes and crates in front of Malcom.

Jhok tried to feel the entity in the alley as he had done a couple of times before in this type of situation. He watched the enemy and Malcolm, planning to follow Malcolm’s lead. He could feel panic, fear, and a sense of sickness. His acute Ewok hearing could make out retching noises, and his twitching black nose picked up the acrid scent of bile mixed with the salty smell of urine, and some kind of disgusting chemical odor.

The sirens of the local responders screamed in from three directions, the howling of the speeder engines dying about 10 meters behind where Jhok and Malcom stood. The area was bathed in the red, blue, and yellow flashes of emergency lights.

“Drop your weapons!” a voice boomed, artificially amplified by vehicle mounted speakers.

Another voice, this one without amplification, older sounding, gruffer, called out from behind Malcom.

“Hey! Are you on the job??”

MEANWHILE, ABOARD THE SHADY LADY…

"Forks,” Mykar said to his trusty droid. “Put us in hover right over the bastard, and track him with the ventral turret.  Make sure he knows it."

The droid whistled and burbled, his computer interface arm twisting in the ship’s socket. He held the Shady Lady above the alleyway, her lower weapons trained on the sniper. He continued to bleep and bloop in what Mykar knew was agitation. The warning indicators on Mykar’s control panel lit up like the decorations on a Lifeday shrub. There were speeders and aircars all over the area, converging on the Shady Lady. Soon they’d be surrounded on all sides by the local police.

Choe was on the floor near the stable Bulraba. Packing up the medkits and supplies, he anchored them to the bulkhead. Then looking for straps and such he anchored Bulraba to the floor in a makeshift suspension harness that gave her some flexibility of movement, but not enough to reinjure herself. When he could get another able body, he wanted to move her to the Shady Lady's medical.

As he finished the securing of patient and medical supplies, he heard Malcom's assessment of the culprit and the words "Force user." Choe growled under his breath but moved quickly to engineering first, where he plugged his laptop back into the ship's mainframe.

"Apex, please load anomaly algorithm into the ship's search parameters."

Cueing comms, Choe spoke to Mykar specifically and then flipped to general comms to all crew.

"Mykar, I may have a way to search for different energy signatures. The program is untested but it should be able to collect energy field data from a location and then separate the energy fields into specific identifiers. Have we lost all visuals with the shooter?"

"No better time to try it out.  Forks, you copy?"

The droid, his dome still spinning in excitement over the approaching police units, accessed the new files provided by Choe, and applied them to the sensor feeds from the ventral array. The results on Choe’s and Mykar’s screens looked like the kind of return generated by a thermal imager. There was an aura of energy around each living thing. Malcom glowed a deep red, as did the people in the surrounding buildings. Johk glowed a brighter yellow, but neither Choe nor Mykar knew if that was normal, because the equipment and algorithms were not configured to deal with Ewok psychomagnatheric signatures. The sniper glowed a hot, bright yellowish white. His output was so high that the system was unable to resolve him as a source, his glow overpowering the display. His aura flashed, expanding and contracting wildly around his crouched figure. Neither Choe’s Apex nor Forks could understand the readings the system was returning.

From their overhead vantage point, Mykar, Choe, and Forks could see what the two on the ground could not: debris in the alley within a meter or so of the hunched figure of the sniper was moving of its own accord. Bits of garbage and detritus were floating about 20 to 30 centimeters off the ground, swirling and dancing slowly, randomly.