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The Zuza's Petals rocked from another near-miss and Lanie choked out a curse, flying with one hand while she entered figures on the navicomputer's keypad with the other. Even with the sublight engines wide-open, the Imperial customs corvette was still gaining on the modified light freighter. Her only hope of escape lay in making the jump to lightspeed.
"Fire's out," announced Tren, Lanie's co-pilot, from the cockpit doorway. The spent extinguisher was still in his grey hands. A moment later a blast pitched him forward through the door. A new light began flashing urgently on the console; Lanie slapped at a switch just below it, diverting remaining shield power to the rear arc. "Strap in!" she shouted to Tren as he picked himself up off the floor. The Duros needed no encouragement. The computer pinged cheerily to announce that it had finished chewing over the numbers. Lanie pulled back the twin hyperspace levers and watched the distant stars stretch toward and past her viewport before melting into a tunnel of light. Tren sighed in relief, settling back in his chair and closing his large ruddy eyes. "Safe," he said. Lanie shook her head slowly. "No... not yet. They had plenty of time to get our hyperspace vector. They'll be tracking us. Unless..." She reached for the new box under the console, the one she'd had installed there last month. For a moment she hesitated; then she flipped open the protective cover and pushed the single button. There was a faint lurch, as if Zuza's Petals had launched an escape pod. Which she had -- more or less. Commander Kodi Baltura glanced around his ship's small bridge, smiling thinly. He never felt so alive as when he was in hot pursuit of a criminal who had made the mistake of trying to run. The thrill of the hunt, the inevitable victory. It made up for the long, boring hours of patrols and routine inspections. This smuggler probably thought that he had gotten away from Imperial justice. He was about to find out how wrong he was. "All hands, prepare for hyperspace," Baltura ordered. Moments later, Vigilant surged forward into that chaotic other-realm. But before the commander could do more than begin to ponder how long he should remain in hyperspace before dropping out to take another reading, the choice was made for him. There was a stretched moment of vertigo, accompanied by a shudder passing through the corvette's hull; then starlines snapped back to pinpoints and the ship coasted to a halt in realspace. Baltura gasped and looked around as the tense precision of his bridge dissolved into bedlam. Alarms were going off. He ignored them, reaching for his intercom. "Engineer! What in the name of the Emperor just happened?" He had to wait several seconds for an answer. "Commander, there was a power surge... the hyperdrive is offline and it took about half the board with it. We need a few minutes to reset and replace everything." Baltura stared. "A few minutes? I need light-speed now!" The voice on the other end of the intercom acquired an irritated edge. "Sir, I'm telling you, that's how long it'll take. Things are a mess down here. Did we run into an Interdictor or something?" When Baltura did not answer immediately, the engineer signed off to get to work. By now things on the bridge had returned to some sort of order. Baltura barely noticed. All he could think of was that his quarry had eluded him... and ruined a perfect record. For those smugglers out there that have been chased through hyperspace by an Imperial patrol, help is at hand. Now available at nominal cost is the Grav-Mine Mark I. Consisting of rebuilt escape pods and hyperdrive motivators constructed around a specially modified variant of the fearsome Imperial Gravity Well Projector, these technological marvels are guaranteed to deter any and all close hyperspace pursuit of your vessel. Just launch one soon after making the jump, and it will hold position along your vector for up to 7 minutes, waiting for pursuit to arrive. Upon detecting an approaching hyperspace signature, the mine detonates, producing a moderate gravity well directly in front of your pursuers, thus wrenching them back to realspace, and effectively ending further pursuit. Sure, they're a little expensive, but not as expensive as having your ship impounded by the Navy! Act now and receive installation at the one-time low cost of 5,000 credits. Gravity Mine Scale: Starfighter
Game Notes: After deployment in hyperspace, the gravity mine holds position via a specially modified hyperdrive motivator that can hold the device in hyperspace for up to 7 minutes. The mine detonates when it detects the hyperdrive signature of a passing ship, immediately dropping the ship back into real space. This effect is similar to that of the gravity well generators found on Interdictor-class Cruisers. While the effects are not lasting, ideally the fleeing ship can make good its escape while its pursuers attempt to repair any resultant damage and jump to hyperspace once more. After 7 minutes the hyperdrive motivators burn out and the mine's internal components melt, destroying the device before it can revert to realspace. |
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