Outsider

[Laowai]

Night hung over the hangar yards, a hot dusty Cretian night. If you were to look over the scene you would see hundreds of orange halos, some big, some small reflecting off the ever present dust that hung over the area after the evening northerly wind change.
This area never really slept. The business of being a Corsair was a 24 hour job, and these hangar areas existed to service a fleet that never had a weekend, business had to go on otherwise Crete didn't survive. There were no "Sundays" for Corsairs.

Suddenly from above, the dust was pierced by several powerful beams of light, seeking out one particular hangar. The lines of light being visible from the ground all the way to their source, which was a huge, hulking corsair Cruiser, the Xibanya Nuren. It hovered slowly and ungainly towards its target, a large, rusty looking hangar whose massive roof panels were currently opening with a loud clunking metallic knocking..

" The starboard aft thruster won't engage properly" the young helmsmen said, with a slight hint of worry behind his voice.

Captain Ben Laowai leaned over and looked at the indicator light on the helmsman's panel. An indicator light should be green, this one wasn't, in fact it was blinking, it's usual green flashing intermittently with an ominous red.

Red was bad.

Laowai creased his aging brow and frowned. "Compensate with the left, cut it and try a hard start".

"Aye" said the Helmsman, his expression clearly betraying his lack of confidence that the maneuver would work. He drove the left thruster and cut the right, quickly restarting it.

The ship have a sudden lurch and lunged. It's aft left side suddenly upwards everyone onboard was thrown violently to the side. Laowai fell hard against a sensor panel next to the Helm " Restart the other engine!" he yelled, The helmsman, a young Corsair called Phillip Alberto, hit the start command again. There was a distinctly loud BANG, and suddenly everyone was thrown in the opposite direction. "Stabilizing now!" Phillip shouted. Sure enough, the big ship began to level out. None too soon as it had continued to descend and was now much closer to the hangars below.

But it was still going too fast and at the wrong angle. Its right thruster, still not at full power had not leveled out the ship enough to avoid...

Laowai saw the angle of approach was not right, the lurching had thrown it off centre and there was no way to avoid the impact; the ship was going to clip the hangar roof.

He jumped back into his command chair and strapped a belt over his shoulder, he reached up and quickly activated the internal comm system control above his head. "BRACE" he yelled..

The ships rear crashed into the edge of the hangar roof doors. There was a hideous sound of tortured metal and the ships nose was brought sharply and violently down towards the hangar floor. Crashing hard into the ground it came to an abrupt stop, a cloud of dust and smoke filling the air. The nose, damaged and crushed lay on its left side, and the rear of the ship, sat tangled among the ruin of what had been the right side of the hangar roof.
Inside the bridge, Laowai unstrapped himself from his seat. No one spoke, save for some moans and groans as crewmen recovered from the violent thrashing they had just undergone.

"is anyone hurt?" Ben asked, there were mutterings to the negative and once again he activated the internal comm system. "Everyone out, evacuate the ship"

The crew around him rose to respond, shutting down controls and making their way up the awkwardly sloped deck to the rear bridge exit. Helmsman Alberto handed Ben a data pad. "thats the helm logs" he said quietly. Ben nodded without expression and took them from the young man. "ok, get out as well, there is no point hanging around here, we will have to start the repairs tomorrow".

Ben lingered... the bridge now empty save for himself.. blinking lights, mostly flashing red flickered on and off around him. He looked around him, I 'm doing a great job of getting this thing shot to bits


.......

The title of Captain came to a Corsair when they commanded a corsair Capital ship. It was not a title bestowed by a command structure, as a house militaries' would be. It denoted that a Corsair had command of a certain type of vessel and that the vessels' crew knew who was in charge. It didn't give that Corsair authority over other Corsairs who were not of his crew, as say a Brettonian captain would have authority over anyone of a lower rank but nevertheless, the title did come with great responsibility.
Corsair life was hard, but needless, foolhardy or dishonorable waste of Corsair lives was considered very poorly. Captains were expected to protect their crews, provide them with an income, and hopefully, give them opportunities for glory.
At this moment, embedded and upended in a hangar, the Xibanya Nuren did not look all that glorious.

Her crew were congregated outside the ship. Muttering amongst themselves they grew silent as Ben leapt out of a port escape hatch, now much closer to the ground that it should be. He approached them and looking them over he asked "anyone hurt?". Several of the crew had burns and cuts, earned during the battle with the Nomads that had led to their current predicament, others nursed broken bones from the Xibanya Nuren's less than textbook landing.

Laowai checked them over, and called for medics to treat the more seriously wounded. Mercifully, and almost incredibly, no one had been killed.

"those of you who can, make your way home, I'll need you technicians here tomorrow" There was a murmur of affirmatives and Ben went on "go home, get some sleep, you fought well today". They huddled and slowly made their way to the hangar doors, stepping out of the way of the medical crew as they arrived to take care of the injured.

"Tomorrow" Ben called out as they left. He sat down on the bent and broken nose fin of his cruiser. Leaning back he exhaled loudly. It had been a long day and he was exhausted.
This was the second time in as many weeks that he would have the Nuren in for major repairs. Caught in the Malvada cloud, unable to maneuver effectively among the asteroids against the smaller nomad ships the Nuren had been given a thorough drubbing. The damage was extensive and it was a miracle that the crew had been able to restore life support and thrusters.
He watched silently as the medics patched up the few remaining crew members still in the hangar. They had done well today, and he smiled quietly to himself. These thrown together recruits from the poorest parts of the capital city; They served with the Kusari Corsair, a name spoken usually as a form of contempt that Laowai had gotten used to dealing with. He wondered what they really thought of that fact.
The day before, he had conducted a few raids in Cambridge in his Titan. The traders there had grown complacent as Corsairs were usually thin on the ground so Ben had managed to get a pretty good haul of plunder.

I'll give that to the crew he thought to himself.

He looked at the battered hull of the Xibanya Nuren.

You I'll have to fix myself.

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