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Stephen
no horseplay
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Jun 24, 2018 12:30:29 GMT -5
Post by Stephen on Jun 24, 2018 12:30:29 GMT -5
Janus let his curiosity get the better of him for a moment. He floated slowly toward the comlink before reaching out with the force and violently stopping himself. Just barely visible in the dust in the air was a faint red glow, in a line between the two desks. He stood there staring at it a moment before using the force to turning the comm on from a safe distance. He could just barely hear the audio from across the room
“Log 238, harvest yield improved 3.1 percent in arid environments with new gene sequence. Will test across different temperature scales. Joto send a new shipment of replacement parts but we haven't had time to crack int” A loud metallic shriek overtook the recording as the earpiece began drilling it's way deep into the metal table. A short moment later and a loud pop echoed through the desk, followed by a small fire. Janus moved back into the hallway carefully.
Janus slid back into the hallway and followed it through the darkness. He came to an abrupt t Joint and looked down the left path. The station shuddered and shook further the hallway lights came on one at a time. Janus found himself face to face with a corpse, dragging across the wall at the T junction. Ragged holes were burned in his half worn environment suit. His face was drawn back sallow and his eye sockets were empty save for a black dried smear that continued down his cheek.
Janus could hear the whirring of steel against steel just further down the hall. They burst out from a room with a hot flash of slagged metal. The droids were a strange configuration, bladed forearms, shoulder mounted blasters and triangular duel treads for legs. They dragged themselves down the hall toward Janus, scuttling with their razor sharp claws in the walls. The air around him erupted into a burst of deep green blaster fire.
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Jazen
Beelzaboot
1,617 posts
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Rocking from the Great White North
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last online Apr 20, 2022 19:46:47 GMT -5
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Jun 26, 2018 5:51:26 GMT -5
Post by Jazen on Jun 26, 2018 5:51:26 GMT -5
Jazen gave the tiniest of nods to indicate he heard Locke, then rolled through the door quickly, his senses on high alert of any sign of trouble or people ahead. Not a single thing rang out and he wasn't shot in his quick dash through the door, so he took the moment to study the hallways ahead before pushing forward. Gravity was still out, so he was able to float a short distance off the floor and to the side, likely spoiling the shot of anyone who might snap out and expect a normal approach.
It was odd, for them to have been set into a trap so masterfully, but then come out into...silence.
Jazen glanced left, then right at a junction, trying to determine the best route. A look back to Janus, he was supposed to have a layout of the place possibly, an idea, or perhaps they needed to find a working terminal for him to access. A bit hard with the...
As if on cue, the lights flickered to life slowly and Jazen quickly braced himself for the gravity to return. When it didn't immediately, he activated his mag boots and lowered to the ground, locking to the floor, braced and ready for sudden combat. His instincts remained sharp for danger and yet, again, there was nothing. No sudden life forms pouncing on them, no warnings in the Force that something was about to happen. It was like they had packed up and left right before the crews had arrived and left the EMP to maybe attempt to crash them on entry. But that made no sense unless...
Unless whatever defended the station had been hit with the EMP as well. And now that power was coming back...
There was a thump as something bounced off a wall to his left and he saw Janus staring face to face with what was clearly a very dead corpse. Had been for a while, based on the decomp. Then just beyond him, a room exploded and droids spilled out of it. Jazen spun to face them, his eyes taking in their details in seconds. Bladed forearms, best to keep distance. Shoulder mounted blasters, wouldn't have a full field of fire with their heads in the way. Treads, not legs, which meant their ability to manuever would be limited.
"Trouble." He called into the comm, pulling his pistols from the holsters on his hips. His blasters sang, quick, fast, and the first droid out was slag before it could even track Jazen as a target. The second went down, the third, Jazen reading the bolts as effortlessly as one did the backstroke, taking advantage of the limited space the droids could move in. His motion tracker sprang to life on his wrist, indicating incoming trouble from...behind. From where they came. From...well heck, everywhere.
"Looks like the house just woke up. We have incoming, Chinois, Bubble, on your six. Stranger, cover the left, I've got the right." He spun, dropping low, and caught a droid coming at him with its blades raised, blowing its head clean off before slipping to the right and removing the arm, then putting a hole through its chest for good measure. They were surrounded and the more droids fell, the worse this position was gonna be. "We need to be somewhere else!" He said, his voice calm, as this situation was no stranger to him.
To any of them really.
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Rugs
The ring-dang-doo, now what is that?
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Jun 28, 2018 14:10:41 GMT -5
Post by Rugs on Jun 28, 2018 14:10:41 GMT -5
“Someone who wants some cheap computers,” Locke quipped, though his tone hardly matched the tone of the words.
Next thing any of them knew, the droids were upon them. They were a strange sort, with mounted blasters and blades on their arms. The way Locke saw it, those blades might be the biggest danger—the suits could stave off a bit of blaster fire, but too much a puncture and who knew what would happen.
Locke’s saber hissed to life in his left hand as his took hold of his blaster in the right. He knocked a few stray bolts of green blaster fire away and returned fire when none of the others were in his line of sight.
“I don’t trust this place,” he said over the din, as if carrying on a casual conversation. The droids themselves weren’t a terrible threat individually, though their volume offered some challenge. “EMP before we get here and now we’ve got some damn droids to welcome us?”
A deflected bolt hit one of the droids in the head and it tipped over as its treads stopped out of sync with each other. The droids behind it pressed ruthlessly on and their advance bogged down into awkwardly trying to get over the fallen machine. Locke tore a loose wall panel free and hurled it at the machines, knocking them all over.
“If I know the Unseen, we’re walking into something fucked up, and I don’t like it.”
“Intruders detected,” the automated voice said again. “Initiating cleansing protocol. Please shelter in place until the protocol is finished.”
“She talkin’ about us?” Locke asked.
A door to one of the side rooms in front of the group slide open and a compact, round black droid with spider legs came scrambling out. It started rushing toward them, a single red light flashing with an increasingly high-pitched series of beeps.
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Neology
Damsel out of Distress
1,489 posts
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addicted to bad ideas and all the beauty in this world
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Jul 4, 2018 19:33:04 GMT -5
Post by Neology on Jul 4, 2018 19:33:04 GMT -5
The discovery of one sad, anonymous corpse was almost a relief. To a certain way of thinking, anyway. Collateral damage, bycatch, whatever you might call it; that body was proof that they weren’t sewn up so neatly after all. The Unseen could screw up too.
Lidah would have liked to get a closer look at that vac suit. Alas, the sudden emergence of a whole troop of battle droids put that idea on hold. She didn’t recognize the design. Between the treads and blades, it seemed like something that’d make an impression.
And they seemed strangely unsuited to the environment, tight corners and narrow hallways. Iffy gravity. Lidah ignited the hilt waiting in her hand with a thought, matching pace to engage one of the droids. She circled it, easily – and the bulk of the robot’s body swiveled to follow her, blades and bolts flying around rather indiscriminately. Her saber took off one of the blade-arms at the elbow, the other scraped the paint off the wall where her head had been a moment ago.
A blaster bolt pegged her in the stomach, a brief flash of dissipating heat and busing impact. The armor held, though her HUD came alive with amber lights, scrolling diagnostic text. Sloppy, time to stop playing with the thing. Lidah readied a thrust that would pierce the droid’s control cluster, fell back when a flying chunk of durasteel hurtled past instead.
”Behind us? How?” The empty hanger? Evidently. Forced through that security checkpoint one by one, claustrophobic even if you weren’t a giant robot with knives for hands. The spider-legged explosive drone gave her an idea. Lidah scooped it up with the Force and flung it as hard as she could back down the hall, bouncing off the partition. Second try got it around an advancing security droid and through the flapping door.
Urgent beeping gave way into a desultory, muffled whoomp as some kind of thermal charge went up. The spider-drone’s body crumpled inward, lighting up too bright to watch. Thick, acrid smoke quickly filled the security checkpoint, leaking out in black wisps. Multiple station alarms were sounding off now, layered atop one another. They’d have to find another route back to the ship, on the way out.
”Stranger, which way to engineering?”
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Stephen
no horseplay
221 posts
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Counting all the numbers between zero and one.
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last online May 11, 2023 23:39:47 GMT -5
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Jul 8, 2018 10:27:15 GMT -5
Post by Stephen on Jul 8, 2018 10:27:15 GMT -5
Right, engineering. Most likely through the T junction on the right, then straight through the biggest set of doors on that hall. Deep enough inside to protect it in case of an asteroid, near enough to the surface that venting heat wasn't an issue. To get to engineering however meant going through a hall with angry droids piling in behind you as well as in front, it'd be a miracle if half of them made it. Still, Janus had some options.
With an angry squeal of metal, long slender rivets began to pull from the flooring on the left path and lazily orbit Janus in a disinterested swirl. He twisted his extended hand around so that the palm faced the ceiling and concentrated. All around him the chaos of the battle dimmed. A blaster bolt skimmed his suit but the heat barrier held. Finally, the station quieted in his mind. He raked his hand upward and shoved it forward and the force obeyed. The left path's flooring wretched upward in a curling C before breaking into two pieces that Janus could use. He pulled his saber out of his pack and threw it toward the ceiling. It ignited as it left his hand and slashed a molten gash in the roofing steel. He let this serve as the guide to his new wall which slid angrily into place with a screech of metal. The orbiting rivets sprung to life a buried themselves in the edges of the rough plating, anchoring it further to the walls.
On path down, one cleared by an explosive. "This way!" he yelled, hoping to be heard. The only way left was straight ahead. Janus bolted down the hall in full sprint batting down blaster bolts as a ran. He dove past two droids and continued on before taking a quick left at the L junction that led to double doors. He hit those with the force just as he was about to him them with his body, and rode the shattered door into engineering.
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Jazen
Beelzaboot
1,617 posts
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last online Apr 20, 2022 19:46:47 GMT -5
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Jul 9, 2018 6:04:51 GMT -5
Post by Jazen on Jul 9, 2018 6:04:51 GMT -5
In the very back of Forte's mind, he wondered what Locke thought of him now, the way he effortlessly used his blasters to make scrap piles of the deadly droids around them. He had always been on his case to learn how to use the things and Jazen had always been against it. Now here he was, wielding them as easily as he had wielded a lightsaber. Fancy how the wheels of fate turn.
Jazen jumped over the latest set to attack them, blasting the shoulder mounted cannons off with practiced ease. They were the bigger threat, those blasters; the arms blades were only deadly if you let them get close. And Forte didn't; he flowed through the trio he was attacking, leaving them steaming piles of hissing metal in no time flat. A twitch of his finger lifted a fallen arm blade, which he thrust into the torso of another, before slamming that droid into its counterpart to clear a somewhat easy path ahead.
The suicide droid was behind him when it came out, but he spun to face it anyway. Just in time to see what Lidah was planning; he jumped the bot as it flew past and vanished behind a door as a new series of droids was advancing. A whoof later told him how close they had been to becoming paste, before he was engulfed in black smoke from the droid's demise, which he casually blew away with a wave of his hand. "Clever. Hope the pilot is paying attention and none of those got aboard our ride."
Dropping another droid, Jazen produced a small thermal grenade as he heard Janus call out, glancing over his shoulder to watch which way the man went. Tossing it in the opposite direction towards a group of droids, he used a small boost from his jetpack to jump back towards them, taking up the rear position as his grenade blew the droids to hell and made it impossible for more to follow them. At least from that direction for a while. Jazen spun to follow them, blasting any droid that stuck its head out that Locke or Lidah didn't nail.
He was the last through the door to engineering, watching their six. "What is the play now?" He asked, ready for any droid or other surprises that might come their way as they moved into the chamber.
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Rugs
The ring-dang-doo, now what is that?
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Jul 13, 2018 15:34:58 GMT -5
Post by Rugs on Jul 13, 2018 15:34:58 GMT -5
Locke gave Lidah a quick thumbs-up as she neatly handled the bomb droid that tried to ambush them. Still, he didn’t have much time to focus on that as droids continued assaulting them. Their numbers were thinned now, but still concerning. They still attacked like things possessed of some suicidal need to throw themselves at the “invaders”
He turned at Janus’ yell to move down and hall ,and motioned for Lidah and Jazen to keep pace. Following his own advice, Locke turned and ran, crushing a droid against the wall with a wave of the Force and hopping over its crumpled body.
Janus’ forceful entry into engineering got them away in, but didn’t leave much cover on their backside, should any more droids find a way to amble into the hallway they’d left behind.
Things seemed clear, though. For now.
“I think the play is hoping the loud team is having a better go of it than we are,” he said, holstering his blaster and his lightsaber. “How’s everyone holding up?”
Surely well. With the exception of Janus, he knew the team members and been through far worse than that hallway full of droids.
Engineering was silent, other than the quiet din of machinery at work. Locke walked deeper into the room, towards a control panel of some sort. A layer of dust coated everything, as if the place hadn’t been touched in weeks, if not longer.
“Weird,” he muttered.”It’s like no one’s even here.” Coupled with the lack of life on the station in the Force, and that corpse floating in the hallway... “Something’s up.”
“Hey, Stranger,” he called, motioning Janus to the panel. He couldn’t even tell if anything was on. “Think we can do anything useful with any of this while we’re staring at it? Get some more power on, find out what happened here — anything?”
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Neology
Damsel out of Distress
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addicted to bad ideas and all the beauty in this world
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Jul 15, 2018 0:03:00 GMT -5
Post by Neology on Jul 15, 2018 0:03:00 GMT -5
”I’m fine. Is this the right place?” Lidah asked no one in particular, stalking down a row of dark monitors. Parts of the station were waking up, lights and intercom and killer droid greeting party.
But not this place – which should by all rights be the pulsing heart of the whole station. Even with no one to tend it, the automated security had to be running from somewhere. Had Yarloc’s aggressive redecorating broken something?
Perhaps. Undoubtedly. But the PA was still going, cheerful warnings repeating ad nauseam – lucky them. With a care for station employees, that system seemed the legacy of better days rather than a recent addition. But what kind of space station needed explosive drones deploying out of the walls? That was dangerous to both personnel and the structure itself. Marginally less strange if this were some kind of secret military facility, but those would hardly warn you about the bombs.
”Bet this place did have some real secrets, once upon a time.” Lidah muttered, activating the flashlight on her suit to have a better look around. Access panels were already propped open, cables and pipes exposed like the nerves and entrails of some gargantuan beast. The work of a mad saboteur? As dusty as everything else.
Finally, one of the screens woke to her touch. Power diagnostics … It was all rerouted rather strangely, as far as she could tell. Basic essentials like lifesupport were experiencing brownouts all over the station, but the commtower and a few other systems that the computer failed to identify drew very steadily.
Lidah set her borrowed helmet’s visor to maximum tint, ignoring with effort a psychosomatic itch starting behind her left ear. She might as well have not had hands for all she could do about that.
So. Just what kind of trap was this? Not the killing sort, she’d wager, despite all appearances to the contrary. Historically, the Unseen knew their prey well enough to fuck with them a bit before the kill – and were most prone to failure when outside elements fucked with them in turn. No wasted movements. Lidah could admire that, from an outside view. Not so much from where she was standing now, with her arm halfway down the tiger’s gullet.
Besides, she was definitely more the type to over prepare. Elegance be damned.
“TacEval: Why would the Unseen need to waste our time?” She reached out to Locke telepathically, privately. Lidah was quite expressionless behind the armor as she covertly stole glances at the other two, studying them. No one was hurt or overtaxed, but that was hardly reassuring. That was the problem with ships and stations: conditions could change blindingly fast.
“Do we break script yet?” Turn around and go, press onward ... Or something else. The first, the surest, was complicated by the wrecked checkpoint. If they failed to find a way around, could they cross the entire station and meet up with the other team?
The other team. Vance. Lidah felt a chill at the thought.
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Stephen
no horseplay
221 posts
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Counting all the numbers between zero and one.
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last online May 11, 2023 23:39:47 GMT -5
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Jul 18, 2018 11:58:06 GMT -5
Post by Stephen on Jul 18, 2018 11:58:06 GMT -5
Janus bolted to the console and almost killed himself. The side paneling had just a bit of warping that caught his eye, and that saved his life. Delicately, he peeled back the plastic casing and took a peak and the sonic charge right behind the view screen. Janus left the bomb where it was and chose a more direct path. After a moment fiddling with the plug, he slotted in his suit AI and was in charge. The console wasn't even password locked apparently. MoBiva scrolled screens after screens of scientific data, shipping manifests, and engineering logs past Janus' visor before Janus found what he was looking for. “Everybody hold on to something.” he shouted and initated a hard reboot.
The station power died, and with it all light and sound. Coupled with the weightlessness, there was a convincing argument to be made for having just died. Only the teams personal lights disagreed, still the moment lasted a few seconds to long for Janus' liking. When the station came back online with a hard shudder and a roar, he almost cheered. Quickly he began diverting power toward doors and lights, and away from the defensive mainframes. He went ahead and updated his blueprint as well, almost as an after thought, but immediately honed in on the design.
“Hey guys, the core of this station is sequestered away from engineering. I can't even get any security feeds in that section.” He was already planning the shortest route, straight back out of engineering and down the hall, cut through the armory and then into the forbidden zone . “So I can put the bots I have access to here into a reboot loop for about 20 minutes or so, What is the plan from here? We bolting back to the ships and trying to get them restarted or we heading through the armory and deeper in?” He felt like he knew the answer. There were quite a lot of chips in the pot to be folding now, but he wasn't glorious leader, so it was time to agonize a bit before going further
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Rugs
The ring-dang-doo, now what is that?
6,347 posts
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Jul 20, 2018 19:30:28 GMT -5
Post by Rugs on Jul 20, 2018 19:30:28 GMT -5
“To fuck with us.” Locke answered Lidah silently. His telepathic voice perhaps carried a note of bitterness. She knew his past struggles with the Unseen as well as anyone. He kept an eye on Janus as the slicer went about breaking into the system. Was that a bomb? His brows rose, hidden behind his mask. “Good lookin’ out,” he muttered to the slicer.
”Something’s not right,” he continued in his private conversation with Lidah. ”I wish I could say what, though.” On the surface it seemed obvious. Send the Exchange — and friends, he supposed — into a death trap. Shut the door behind them. Kill them. Classic Unseen. But why the need for a dead station?
Janus’ shouted warning drew Locke’s attention away from answering Lidah’s second question. He gripped a nearby pipe, magnetizing his gloves fingertips to secure his hold as the lights went out and gratvity disappeared.
“I’ve always wondered what the inside of a casket’s like,” he muttered sardonically as they waited. It was dark as a tomb, save the small cones of light that filtered from their helmets into the dusty air.
“Guess we could’ve given them a warning, huh?” he wondered aloud as his thoughts turned to the other team. Too late for that now.
Soon enough the lights returned, and with them, gravity. The floor shuddered beneath their feet. This was different than when those lights had come on in the hallway.
“Full power restored,” the female announcer voice chimed over the intercoms. “Initiatitiating system diagnosis. Please remain in place until directed otherwise.”
“I’m starting to hate her,” Locke muttered.
Janus asked a question that brought him back around to Lidah’s silent inquiry. Press on, or fold and look for a way out? Locke sighed through his nose thinking. Nothing about this felt right, and were it a realistic option, he’d have them all hightailing it back to Nar Shaddaa. But the blasted checkpoint was a hurdle in the withdrawing direction.
“We’ve got to go further in, I think,” he said. “Even if we wanted to go back out, that way,” pointed toward the door they’d come through, “is blocked off. So we’ve probably got to find a way out, anyway.”
The only problem with that was Force only knew what other surprises were waiting on this blasted station. “Stranger, can you find us a route deeper in that maybe avoids some of the areas that might be more prone to our asses getting shot at?” Locke paused, thinking. “And, failing that, an alternate route to the hangar?”
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Jazen
Beelzaboot
1,617 posts
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Rocking from the Great White North
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last online Apr 20, 2022 19:46:47 GMT -5
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Jul 23, 2018 6:06:48 GMT -5
Post by Jazen on Jul 23, 2018 6:06:48 GMT -5
Most the chaos behind him, Jazen only kept a half hearted attention to. With Locke and Lidah there, he was sure that any trouble would quickly be dispatched or at the very least, delayed long enough for him to join in on it. Janus seemed to know what he was doing, which was good. They needed his skills in this dead station if they wanted to get anywhere. Jazen kept his eyes trained on the door they came through, watching for any signs that the murder bots they'd run into before had managed to get past the debris they'd left. He'd already signaled to Shine about them and got a confirmation back that the ship was sealed tight. It was slowly getting power back, no real time table on that, but it should be ready to fly soon enough to be back in the game. Good. That was their exit after all.
At Janus's voice, Jazen locked his one grip onto the handrail beside him, keeping his blaster trained on the door. He triggered the magnets in his boots to lock him to the floor as all power died away, leaving the room they were in dark save for the lights from their helmets. His eyes and head trained towards that door, just in case. The whole place was quiet, save for the odd creaks here or there. It was oddly chilling. Creepy. Yet Jazen had been in far more terrifying places.
With far more terrifying people.
"We could have but at the risk of giving both our positions away. If they weren't known already. They'll be fine, I'm sure. He answered to Locke.
Gravity and light came back a few moments later and Jazen released his hold on the rail, drawing his second blaster again and turning off his magnets so he could walk normally. "I could shoot every announce system along the way if you'd like sir?"he said with a bit of amusement in his voice, silent agreement in it. That voice was beginning to grate on him. He slowly backed towards the group, ready for trouble, but keeping enough distance that a single rocket wouldn't blow them all to hell at once. Locke was on point here, so his orders were what mattered.
The ship is okay and will be ready to go, hopefully by the time we need it. Shine says they had a little trouble with a couple of the bots, but nothing too serious. With the power up, he should be able to get out of the hangar...if not, he'll just blast his way out. He said to them all via the Force. The best communication system of all; one they shared, that could not be hacked. He tried to keep the smile on his face beneath his helmet from showing in his voice at Locke's comment.
"I believe that's cause someone threw a bomb bot around. Either way, going back the way we came isn't wise anyway. Too confined with all the dead bots. One grenade or heavy fire in there, we'd be paste. Further ahead passages won't be as obstructed, no?" That left it up to Janus to find them another route to take, which was what the tech Jedi was here for, among other things. "Worse comes to worse, if he can get out, Pilot can always blow a hole in the station we can use to escape out of. Either way, point me in the direction you need.
This was all getting to be a little too...easy wasn't the word. What would better describe it? Ah, he knew.
Simple.
And from what Locke and Lidah had said about the Unseen, simple just wasn't in their repertoire.
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Neology
Damsel out of Distress
1,489 posts
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addicted to bad ideas and all the beauty in this world
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Aug 5, 2018 22:26:34 GMT -5
Post by Neology on Aug 5, 2018 22:26:34 GMT -5
Lidah watched Janus grapple with the sonic charge, holding her breath. Plugging directly into the station seemed dangerous and distasteful in its own right – a technological bio hazard – but it seemed there was no time to come up with an alternative. Lucky that the slicer had tripped it rather than one of them.
The power shuddered out, a more complete silence than before. Save for the four of them, suddenly quite chatty.
”The hanger is bound to have a freight elevator.” Not that she wanted to go blindly searching and not that she thought such a conveyance would be safe. The hallways were bad enough, what nasty surprises would they find in that bare industrial space? Crushed between floors or worse. ”Or we could take a walk across the hull.” If that EMP weapon could be recharged and fired again …
Well. There would be no wondering about caskets then. They were wearing them, one hundred kilos of overdesigned lock-jointed durasteel plating. She offered no further comment, accepting that they’d keep going with a slight nod. It wasn’t just that they were trapped, that it’d be inconvenient or dangerous to scramble for a way out now.
The mystery was seductive; they had to know.
Twenty minutes without the droids. Lidah set a timer in her HUD and followed Yarloc’s directions, out into the hall and toward their next goal. The armory. She paused when they came across a squad of deactivated droids, violently disabling each with a lick from her saber.
The armory was barricaded – or had been, before the artificial gravity brownouts. Equipment lockers and benches spilled out into the hall together, the slumped metallic bodies of the strange treaded war droids tangled among them. Lidah clambered over the mess, gingerly at first and then resignedly giving up that fragile pretense. There were few empty places to step.
Someone had packed the missing station employees into the armory, bodies massed against the front wall as if swept there by an invisible hand. At a glance, it might be mistaken as the aftermath of a tragic last stand against the droids.
But Lidah knew lightsaber inflicted wounds when she saw them, even in this state of decay. Account for the dry station air and no vermin to help things along … They were a few weeks gone at the least, she thought.
”I don’t understand.” She stood in the center of the room and cast about, belatedly hooking her saber back on her belt.
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Stephen
no horseplay
221 posts
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Counting all the numbers between zero and one.
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last online May 11, 2023 23:39:47 GMT -5
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Aug 8, 2018 1:30:42 GMT -5
Post by Stephen on Aug 8, 2018 1:30:42 GMT -5
“We'll um” he gingerly stepped across the armoury, “I uh” Janus didn't have a great answer. He had several bad answers but none of them he was willing to voice yet. It could be some type of plot from his past, he had at least one suspect that fit the bill of building strange death traps guised as learning experiences, but this wasn't his style. Too many loose ends capable of being followed back to some place. Everything here had receipts and registration. It just wasn't his style. You couldn't scrub this away. Hell the hyperspace registry still had a page for this station. That being said, it wasn't impossible, just out of the standard.
Janus let his hardsuit computer slowly compile the room as it stood as an interactable image for him to sort through later. They were on a time crunch at the moment. As Janus walked through the room, tables and chairs righted themselves, cabinets were pushed flush against the wall, and individual clutter found itself back on to the shelves. The droids slowly d ragged out of the room and into the hallway, and the bodies seperated from their horrible jumble and laid out flat in neat rows on the floor. Equal parts dignity and completing the digital scene, Janus went about his grim work in practiced quiet.
Inwards toward the core of the station they wove, nearing the center enough that the hallways started to barely but perceptively bow inwards as the circle neared its core. He took a left through an empty section of dormitories. Each was complete with their own stories. Unmade beds and hastily rifled belongings. Posters and pictures framed the small living quarters. A glass carafe of coffee had burnt black and shattered inside one black streaked room. Most of the lights were left on, nearly every room was in a state of half disarray, with neatly folded clothes left untouched in dresser drawers pulled free from their moorings. Janus continued on in silent reverie.
The central hub was ahead. A conference room stuffed into a server room. The thermal gauges in his suit said that the servers were still online, as was the refrigeration. He could see them through the walls on sensors. A small city skyline, in fluorescent orange standing against a steel grey backdrop. One last door to open, and the tension stood on end inside Janus. His hands danced on the panel in a probing gesture, but the door wasn't locked. It slid open at his light touch.
Inside was a single steel table surrounded with eight steel chairs. A single light hung limply from the ceiling. Janus walked in spinning a moment trying to orient himself. The room was small, and walled on all sides but the exterior with dimly lit mirrors. Janus watched himself reflected infinitely against the far wall a moment before stopping. This room was much smaller than the blueprint had stated. “Guys, this room doesn't fit the floorplan.” Why would an agriculture research station need an interrogation room. The tension from earlier morphed directly to dread, as every instinct in his body told him to run. Janus was caught too dumbstruck to do anything other than suck air through his teeth.
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Rugs
The ring-dang-doo, now what is that?
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Friendly neighborhood CEO
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last online Jan 12, 2024 11:24:20 GMT -5
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Aug 14, 2018 12:38:59 GMT -5
Post by Rugs on Aug 14, 2018 12:38:59 GMT -5
Locke had learned, long ago to trust his instincts.
Not his instincts as Jedi teachers often liked to call the inherent intuition and clarity of mind the Force granted to those lucky few who could touch it. Instinct, as he saw it, was a more primal thing — naturally — something that was as hard to explain as the color red to a blind mind. Common sense. Intuition. A tingling of the head that made hair on the back of your neck stand up. It took so many different forms, and yet he knew it when he felt it.
Something was wrong.
That had been apparent from before they’d even set foot on the station. The EMP, the ambush, the corpses piled into a aroom, the dead starbase with its annoying automated voice droning on and on and on.
But nothing made him so uneasy as the small room the four of them shuffled into, with its lone light and wall of mirrors.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Locke said. He wanted to light his saber but there was nothing here to fight. Nothing in the room but them, the mirrors and that light.
The door slid closed behind them with a hiss. A mechanism, turned within, locking with a click that sounded like a gunshot in the silence.
“You made it,” a voice suddenly cut across their comms. “Impressive.” Locke looked around, momentarily disoriented at the stranger talking ot them. Still no one in the room but them.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but you won’t find what you’re looking for in there.” The voice was impossibly deep. Running through a filter. Hard to tell if it was male or female. “But I think the Exchange will have bigger things to worry about. I can’t imagine why they’d launch a raid to slaughter a bunch of scientists on an agristation.”
A long, heavy pause. “Can you?”
Something clicked and the line went dead.
A white light flashed, here and gone in the blink of an eye, at the edge of the Kessel system.
A massive ship emerged, it's dark hull hard to see against the inky black of space. Blue exhaust glowed against the void as its engines roared silently to life and it began to glide toward Agr Station 226.
The Basilisk, a Hutt cruiser, had patiently waited just outside the system. An alert triggered, signaling the ship to come just before the EMP knocked everything around the station out.
Now the Basilisk arrived to snap the trap jaws shut.
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Jazen
Beelzaboot
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Rocking from the Great White North
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last online Apr 20, 2022 19:46:47 GMT -5
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Aug 20, 2018 6:21:22 GMT -5
Post by Jazen on Aug 20, 2018 6:21:22 GMT -5
"I for one am completely against going outside unless we have too." He said softly, only loud enough for the people immediately around him to hear. It had been shocking enough to have the EMP knock out the ship's power on the way in; the thought of it happening again while they were in the cold dark of space, leaving them defenseless against the void...well no, he'd rather face whatever else hid within the station instead.
They began moving after that, and Jazen followed by Stranger as he led the way, keeping his eyes peeled for anymore droids or other signs of trouble. All he saw was the absence of life...but clearly not intended. It was like everyone had suddenly rushed out, or been rushed out and all that was left was the freeze frame of those final moments everywhere. The Force tickled at the back of his mind, a warning that something was amiss, but it couldn't locate the source. Jazen gripped his blasters a bit tighter and used a breathing technique to calm himself. No point getting razzed, not yet. The four of them were as dangerous as they came themselves; they could handle whatever came their way.
Or so he thought, till he saw the massacre.
The armory had become a morgue. Bodies were stacked there, the stations employees gathered into a single place. Droids lay felled nearby but Jazen hadn't been born yesterday. He knew a lightsaber wound when he saw one and the bodies had clear signs of them; something Lidah had clearly noticed as well. "I think we need to leave." He said softly as they continued on to the strange room Janus found.
Jazen's senses suddenly bloomed as they stood in that room, as the door suddenly hissed shut, locking with a click that no doubt echoed across the station. Jazen's blasters came up, ready for the attack, but really, they were in deep. The room wasn't big and they didn't have anywhere to go. Locke was closest to the door and Jazen knew instantly what he would likely do. But that voice froze them all for a moment and at that point, Jazen's Force senses were screaming at him.
"Frell...that sounded like a final message." Jazen spoke using the Force, the one communication whoever set this up couldn't tap into. They needed out of this room and Jazen glanced to Locke, no more then a twitch of his head, but enough that Locke no doubt caught the same idea. Lightsaber. Door. Now. They needed to get out of this kill box before something happened.
Like Pilot's voice coming across their actual comms.
"Guys, not to worry you or anything, but we got scanners up at least...and something just came into the system. Its far out, hard to get a good read from in here but...Otter thinks it matches the profile of a Hutt battle ship. Cruiser at least. And its coming in...fast. You might want to get back here sooner rather then later. Like...now...oh frell..." the line suddenly went dead, just as blaster fire could be heard and a familiar rumble of a droid chain arm.
Consider the trap very very sprung.
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Neology
Damsel out of Distress
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addicted to bad ideas and all the beauty in this world
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Sept 14, 2018 17:21:22 GMT -5
Post by Neology on Sept 14, 2018 17:21:22 GMT -5
Lidah watched Janus work in uncomfortable silence. This went so far beyond death-trap on the cheap, so far beyond one or two incidental casualties, that she needed the time to adjust her thinking. Every piece deliberately arranged, then. As she always should have known but the big picture tended to be strangely elusive up close.
And she still couldn’t see it all.
The dormitories told them only a little more. Whatever had happened, it had happened quickly. Most of the blood shed occurred elsewhere, probably the armory. There was the appearance of looting but she found it rather unconvincing up close. Most likely there was never anything worth taking and not enough gone. She was glad when they didn’t linger.
The next room was worse, in an entirely different way. A moment ago they’d been intruders in someone’s home, but this felt like a cage. Sterile, mirrored, and wholly unsettling. Anticipation and curiosity had turned to dust in her mouth some time ago but this spoke to Lidah on a different level entirely.
”We shouldn’t be here.” “I think we need to leave.”
”No shit.” Lidah muttered in agreement, circling around the bare table. Eight chairs, four of them … But there were eight if you counted the other team, less Jayec’s crew. That indicated a level of foreknowledge that she had no wish to examine now. At least Vance and the others were still alive, she could sense that much, and far from this central room.
Leaning on the table, Lidah breathed a soft ’oh’ of understanding. Cassius had been right about Botto starting a war. Except that had been avoided – only with his help.
”I bet you, credits to crumpets, that our saboteur is on the bridge of that ship.”
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