A Mon Calamari Deepwater-class Freighter jumped out of hyperspace and began its approach to the Luxor beacon. At arrival, its captain opened his comm channel to frequency 127.75.

"This is the Dark Waters," a harsh-sounding voice called over the comm, "requesting permission to land, over,".

The Dark Waters dropped out of hyperspace with a slight shudder that her captain knew was not normal. A quick check of the ship's systems showed that nothing had malfunctioned but there had been some sort of minor power flux in the hyperdrive -the sort that can occur when a ship passes too close to a large gravity well while traveling through hyperspace.

Something was not right. The Luxor beacon was coming in, though faintly. And the large blue planet that should have dominated the viewport was not in sight.

OOC: Stupid Oeming Stellar Nursery.

Can you send me your CS and ship stats via private message please.

Actions?

Butarl's tentacles twitched slightly, which was more concern than the Quarren usually showed in the face of possible danger. He was a fair pilot, but space combat was not his speciality, especially if he had to face a larger ship.

Butarl ran his hands over his sensor controls, activating them in Scan mode.




(OOC: Sensors, scan.)

The Dark Waters' sensors probed the space around the Mon Cal transport. There was nothing in the immediate area that would cause the ship to drop out of hyperspace. There was a large contact at the edge of sensor range, but Butarl would have have to get closer to figure out what it was.

R2-V9 jacked into the cockpit controls and twittered off an string of blats and boops. In a small corner of Butarl's command screen the binary was translated and displayed as text: "It is probably the Oeming Stellar Nursery. There was a footnote on it in the starlogs. But I doubt you noticed."

As the ship's stellar gyros stabilized Butarl was able to orient himself towards Kaal. It was a small and distant orb. Just eyeballing things he figured it was several hours away.

A few minutes passed and then the comm crackled. The voice was full of distortion and sounded weak. There was a time lag because the distance was so great. "Ship calling Kaal Approach, last transmission was garbled and unreadable. Please repeat. I say again, this is Approach Control to ship attempting to contact Kaal Approach. Repeat last message.

"Control, this is the 'Dark Waters', requesting permission to land," Butarl repeated darkly.

Quiet minutes pass as the message travels to Kaal and the reply is sent.

"Dark Waters," said the same tinny voice. "ComScan is showing you out beyond the debris field. I make that to be approximately 487 DSU. You are cleared direct to the Luxor Beacon. Do you require any assistance?"

"No," was Butarl's reply as he piloted his ship to the beacon.

OOC: sorry for the delay. Work's been crazy.

IC: An hour or so had passed and the Dark Waters was finally entering what could be considered "close" to Kaal -another 40 minutes or so and she would be at the Luxor Beacon.

But first. . .

"Are we just going to truck through this?" V9 booped and chirped from where it was still jacked into the cockpit controls.

"This" was a thin belt of debris that was part asteroid field and part starship graveyard. The data records of Kaal noted that it had large gaps in places so it was not a true steroid "belt", but that it contained enough mineral wealth to bring several local mining operations out to it.

OOC: actions?

(OOC: Completely missed this<G>).

Butarl was silent for a few seconds. He activated his sensors to see if he could find a gap.

(OOC: Sensors, Search mode).