Dr. Zak?!?!?

We get back to our home base and have a little down time. I get Spook a good oil bath and get her all cleaned up (and out) and do a quick refresh on her paint job so she is looking her best. I find a few interesting things she has hidden, and I remind her that she gets a cut, but not everything from a job. I also take time to go over my X-wing to make sure she has been all freshened up. Our time on this planet has shown that it is particularly important to be prepared for the unexpected. While I am working on various piloting tasks, Salbur walks up and we chat some. He is feeling displaced and lonely. I am reminded about his hawkbat ship that I had captured, and I decide I have some time to take it for a test drive. When I get in, I discover that there is no control stick or any other steering mechanism that I recognize. I do see a helmet, so I put it on and discover that the ship is controlled by a neural net - that explains why it turned so quickly and smoothly during battle! - if which is the last thing I think until I wake up two days later with a blinding headache. So, I guess I have to give the hawkbat back to Salbur- which makes me very sad. But I can at least get him back into the air and encourage him to think about what he wants out of life and that we can help him. We saved him once and we can save him again by helping him to find a purpose for his life - whether he decides to make a stand on this planet or start a business moving goods around. He agrees to think about it and let me know if he needs help.
 
Life is starting to settle down nicely and then there are a lot more refugees coming into town from the south with horror stories about buzzsaws and telling us that Port Nevermore has been entirely destroyed. We are tasked to go provide assistance against an overwhelming force. Yeah us! We fly in - me in the X-wing and Davish flying the Night Sparrow with the rest of the team. Spook and I get the kinks worked out of the X-wing and just in time. We pop over the horizon and can see a LOT of enemies. I ask Spook to find me a weak spot and she lets me know that they have shields!! I check with Davish to see what his preferred plan of attack is and he suggests we hit the middle and zoom over the downed ship to draw their attention from our allies on the ground. I fire a torpedo to hit the landscape in the middle of a group and I see them all fly around and even some sparks.
 
Then one of the enemies lands on a wing and another lands on the back end and begins to pound the hull. The one on the wing puts a buzzsaw to the hull. I tell Spook to reverse the polarity of the shields and while there is a minor cut to the wing - do they have any idea how expensive space worthy repairs are??? - and then both are knocked off my ship. Their rocket packs kick in, but now I have targets! I fire lasers at the two and hit one of them. The other does a barrel roll and gets away from me, but I get the shields down on the one. I ask Spook how much time we have before they can get them back up and she calculates we have one more shot. I tell her to keep a tight target on that one as we prepare to fire again! Before I can fire at that one, four of them start firing at me and I do a rolling swoopy fly by and through them trying to knock them around if I can't knock them out of the sky. I manage to line up my lasers at the one with shields down and I pull the trigger and I am rewarded by seeing it hit the sand.
 
Spook then mentions that she has an incoming message from Reece about a way to blind these buggers to reduce their shield capability. Just as Spook is in the process of putting that into action, the three remaining flying droids come in for a landing on my X-wing! I do a barrel roll to get away from them and hopefully disrupt their flight path. It works for two of them, but the last one manages to land near my engine compartment and pulls out a buzzsaw like it is going to harm my engine containment field!! I tell Spook to reverse polarity again, but to switch it back and forth in five second bursts because I am positive that these droids learn from previous experience. Spook warns me that there is a chance that the shields will go down for a second, but that is a minor problem compared to losing engine containment. IT WORKS! The droid falls off again, but is able to recover with the rocket pack again. I still have three flying to deal with and then Vanya chimes in over comms asking for help as a different three is about to take out those we have come here to save.
 
I check the battle map display and make a quick decision to break off the battle with my current irritants and fly a long loop to come from the back of the downed ship and drop a torpedo on the top of the ship. I know that if anyone else is inside they would be safe as this is a spacefaring vessel, but there are some outside. I use my external speaker to broadcast about the incoming attack so they can get to cover. It does mean that the droids will also hear, but that is a risk I have to take in order to have an acceptable risk level for this maneuver. I drop my second torpedo on the droid in the middle of the pack on the top of the ship. It is a solid hit and that droid explodes and between the torpedoes explosion and the droid's explosion, I take out all three of them. I quickly check and all of the mercenaries are safe! Next!
 
Suddenly I see three beams heading for me so I do a quick dodge and two of the beams miss me easily. Sadly I manage to fly into the third beam and it hits my shields. I have a lot of red lights and warning beeps going off and I scramble madly to cycle the shields and bleed off the energy without any permanent damage. Then I am flying out the other side of the blast in one piece. I see three more of the droids ahead of me and do a laser run and manage to take out one more and at least damage the other two. Then they all start flying away to the east. I do a sensor scan and see that there are some armored shuttles out there - probably the pirates. I can't tell from this distance if the droids are going that way or not. Maybe for repair? Maybe to fight? I share that with the team and then land beside the Night Sparrow.
 
The mercenaries tell us about some box they have been carrying and they hand it to So'Zen who is suddenly NOT So'Zen anymore.