Hendricks and ANDI were currently on the Appalachia standing in the hallway connecting the two ships while waiting for the captain to respond to Hendricks. Hendricks had gotten bored waiting and began throwing popcorn at ANDI trying to land them in its mouth hoping it would react. After several attempts that ended with popcorn hitting ANDI's face and falling on the floor Hendricks finally landed one in its mouth, but ANDI didn't respond in any way.
After a couple more minutes of this the captain finally responded telling them to forget going after the girl and lockdown the ship. ANDI, who had now been ordered to listen to Hendricks again, assisted locking the place down, but after a couple minutes more pirates arrived trying to break into the ship. From what they could tell one of them was attempting to Hotwire the panel to open the door, but wasn't having much luck.
While the pirates where busy Hendricks took the opportunity to arm himself. He went over to the panel, and the weapon shelves opened up again. He picked up a random rifle from the shelves, and returned to the airlock door to discuss with ANDI how they should take care of these pirates.
"We could take one of the grenades and toss them out there, then just reseal the door, and keep doing that every time one of those patrols comes by", Hendricks suggested.
"Negative, we only have three remaining, and these grenades are not easy to acquire according to the captain", ANDI replied. "We need to be conservative with them."
"We'll we can't really win in a straight up fire fight", Hendricks retorted. "They'll overwhelm us next time a patrol comes by."
ANDI conceded to Hendricks’s point and the two of them tried thinking of other ways they could deal with the pirates.
"We could just detach the Appalachia from the Baron, then they wouldn't be a problem", Hendricks suggested wondering why he hadn't thought of such as simple solution earlier.
"Then they will start focusing all of their attention on the captain and the rest of the crew", ANDI pointed out. "Their survival depends on us staying here and splitting the pirates’ forces until they can deactivate the jammer."
"You have a point there", Hendricks admit, then went to trying to think of another way. After a moment an idea suddenly struck his mind. "Wait ANDI we can use the Charlotte", Hendricks declared excitedly.
"How will Crewman Morgan's mech help us?" ANDI asked curious about what he had in mind.
"It's simple, we can use the mech to blow a hole in the airlock and it'll suck all those pirates out into space", Hendricks explained. "And then the crew on the bridge will be forced to reseal them with the blast doors to prevent the rest of their buddies from flying out into space."
"The plan is crude, but it should be effective in taking care of the pirates." ANDI agreed with the plan, and the two of them ran to the cargo bay to towards the Charlette. Upon arrival Hendricks entered the cockpit and had ANDI stay on the ship in case any pirates got in. He was able to open the cargo bay doors on the roof and direct the Charlotte outside with relative ease once ANDI returned to the ships central room.
Hendricks piloted the Charlotte to the airlock on the UFS Barn next to the one attached to the Appalachia, and pulled out the rifle on the Charlotte's back.
Meanwhile, inside the Baron the group of pirates trying to break into the Appalachia couldn't hear the laser fire since the Charlotte was out in a void, but they could hear a banging sound on the ship’s hull. This was followed by a sudden bang, and a strong wind pressure started suddenly sucking them down the hallway, and out of the airlock. The last thing they saw was the Charlotte and the deep emptiness of space.
After a few moments another group of Kelafi pirates who were presumably on their way towards the captains group got sucked out of the ship as well before the blast doors were resealed. Hendricks tried to do the same thing again with another airlock, but once he got through it appeared that they had already sealed that one too.
"We'll ANDI I think they caught on to what we were doing and sealed all of the airlocks", Hendricks said over the com. " I'm returning to the Appalachia. We'll have to come up with something else if they try getting into the ship again."
Meanwhile The Owl, Blackbird, and Harpy we busy trying to hold off Kelafi pirates who had come from the opposite side of the ship. However, they didn't feel any air pressure leaving the ship since there were enough doors between them, and the airlocks that none of the air got sucked out when Hendricks blew a hole in one of them.
Just as they had planned all the chairs and tables throw about made it difficult for the Kelafi pirates to move around in the common area. One of them tried crawling under the table they had placed in front of the door, but once it got up from under it was gunned down by Harpy. A couple of them tried shoving both of the tables in front of the door, but as they did they were no longer in cover and Blackbird and the Owl managed to take them out before they got very far with it.
These tables continued to impede their ability to enter the room, so one of the pirates got under them, and lifted each of them up and tossed them over in the direction of the Appalachia's crew. The tables didn't get very far, but that Kelafi was left wide open and taken out by Blackbird.
A couple of the pirates were excited to finally have those tables out of the way, and made the mistake of charging into the room without thinking. One of them was shot by Blackbird after entering the room, and the other managed to get further in but was stopped in their tracks by one of the chairs that had been flung around giving The Owl the opening he needed to take them out.
When another group of pirates tried to come into the room from the door in the other side a similar sequence of events went down leading to half a dozen more pirates getting shot because of all the obstructions they had setup. However, once the two tables were removed from the other side as well there was nothing preventing more pirates from entering the room. They began rushing into the room, and eventually there were enough firing at once that the crew of the Appalachia couldn't even stick their heads out to fire back.
It was at this point that The Owl pulled the other grenade out of his coat, and rolled it under the tables they had placed in front of the door to the kitchen. It managed to roll a fair way across the room, but it stopped once it bumped into one of the chairs that had been randomly tossed.
Seeing this The Owl took his gun and shot near the grenade a couple of times hoping the force of the blasts would get it to move a couple feet towards the center. After a couple shots the grenade was just close enough, and he detonated it with his wrist watch taking out all but one of the dozen pirates who were in the room. The last one was taken out by Harpy since she was now able to get a shot off now that there were dozens of lasers firing in her direction.
