Rynn had his heavy blaster drawn as they moved about ship. He listened to the orders he shrugged, not really knowing what else they could be doing, aside from storming the bridge.


When he heard the footsteps, he immediately hide and tried to flank whoever was approaching.



18:20, Today: Rynn Culmar rolled 22 using 1d20+2. stealth.

Lyla was looking over the map when her pointed ears heard the footsteps. Shoving the pad back in her pocket, she whipped up her rifle to cover that direction. Something told her the scouts would have heard them talking and waking up the droids, and so wouldn't be stomping about so openly — unless it was for a distraction. She spun to face their rear, but they were more or less confined in the Droid Storage room, then dashed for cover.


OOC: Stealth 26, Perception 13
10:26, Today: Lyla Rahn rolled 26 using 1d20+10. stealth.
10:27, Today: Lyla Rahn rolled 13 using 1d20+8. perception.
10:27, Today: Lyla Rahn rolled 13 using 1d20+8. perception reroll.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:28, Mon 14 Apr 2014.

"You won't do that!  I'm standing against the outer bulkhead.  Do that and you'll open this entire section of ship to the vacuum." came the reply in a heavily accented Basic, perhaps an alien voice.

Tera frowned all the Imperials were human. "What species are you?" She hadn't even considered that they might be near the outer hull. It was good that she didn't actually have the thermal detonator.

"My species?", replies the strange buzzy, croaking voice.  "I'm a Quarren!  But don't think that means I'm going to help you!  I'm no criminal like other Quarren!  You ship-jackers have messed with the wrong Quarren.  You thought it would be easy to steal a ship from The Alliance?  Well you have it wrong!  There are dozens of Alliance personnel aboard this ship.  We're getting organized right now to take the ship back from you!"

"We are the Alliance personnel sent here to recover the ship." It felt true, though Tera had not received the full backing to join the Rebellion and in fact, was seen as an embarassment and something to be hidden, so she felt that intent was fair. "I'm going to come in where you are and see you. Please keep your finger off the trigger." Tera stood up from behind cover putting her blaster away and headed towards the room slowly.

Lyla swiftly stepped out and halted Tera, then called out, incredulous, 'You? A Quarren? What kind of self-loathing Quarren are you, to call your own people criminals?' She wasn't aware of any great Quarren crime movements to justify the statement, not like those among the Twi'leks. 'Me, I'm a proud Twi'lek.'

Keeping the supposed Quarren talking, Lyla tried creeping out into the doorway to check the corridor was clear, though walking and talking proved too much for her and she bumped into a tool on one of the work benches, sending it flying with a clatter. Screw it. Lyla peered around the doorway out into the corridor.


OOC: Stealth 11, rolled a 1
08:25, Today: Lyla Rahn rolled 11 using 1d20+10. stealth.

Perception 28, rolled a 20, gain a temporary FP, for all the good it'd do right me now
08:30, Today: Lyla Rahn rolled 28 using 1d20+8. perception.

The loud noise Lyla makes tells the Quarren just where to point his blaster.  He doesn't remove his finger from the trigger, but he doesn't pull it either.  He is hesitant to shoot, like he has never shot at anyone before.  And what he can see of Lyla doesn't look frightening enough to shoot at.  Nessquik had always pictured his first kill being a Stormtrooper.  He had never counted on it being a shipjacker, and especially not a Twi'lek girl.

The Twi'lek girl was engaging him in conversation.  And uneducated in tactics, the Quarren stood his ground in the middle of the port-side corridor never thinking that the Twi'lek could be creating a distraction for someone else to sneak around at attack him from behind.  Common sense was not one of his strong suits.

"I think you just answered your own question.  The self-loathing kind.  Maybe it's what my Mon Calamari commanders keep telling me about Quarren.  Or maybe it's my father always going on proudly about his criminal past.  You define pride your way, and I'll define it my way.", he replies to the Twi'lek girl.  "Or hey, easier explanation, we define it the same way, which makes you admitting to being a criminal.", he goes on.  The logic of it was strange and it swam around in his head so erratically that even he was starting to get confused by it.  He had his own pre-conceived notions about Twi'leks, but he wasn't rude enough to say it out loud.  One thing Nessquik had sworn himself to be was not as openly prejudiced about another species as Mon Calamari are.  Still, comparing Lyla's definition of "pride" to his father's felt like a prejudiced thing to say.  Nessquik immediately regretted it.  And by all appearances, the situation still warranted it.

Lyla peered around the doorframe and stared at the odd-talking cephalopod-headed being, feeling uncomfortably like she was listening to Oglo ramble on. At least he was quicker. 'Hey, what do you know, he is Quarren.' she called back to Tera and Rynn. She then answered the so-called Quarren with 'Don't trust those Mon Calamari, it's a trap. So, what you mean is: you're not a criminal like your father. Yeah? We all know that feeling, mate.'

'And nah-uh, my people were caravanners and freedom fighters, not criminals. We don't have to be what other people make of us. And we really are Rebels.' Lyla promised.

Tera walked out openly into the corridor "I can whole heartedly confirm the fact that her family were not criminals. Aside from the ones that were. Why are you on board? I was under the impression that the Rebellion left this gunship almost completely unmanned while they were loading cargo. Never mind, that's not important. How do we break into the bridge and stop this ship from reaching Imperial space?"

"Criminals... freedom fighters... same difference.  Anyhow, I'm listening.  It's not like the Mon Calamari were ever very nice to me or gave me the reasonable doubt that I won't go criminal.  Talk convincingly and I would do them the favor of being right about me.", says the Quarren.

He shakes the sleeve of his uniform jacket to draw attention to it.  Right away what becomes visible is that the uniform is shabby and thread bare in spots.  It had started out as a Rebellion Naval Officer's uniform, but by now it has to be second-hand.  The rank and service insignia on the collar and sleeves tell that he's an Ensign in the Supply Corp.  So if cargo was being loaded aboard, he would have been directly involved.

"If you want to get on the bridge, you'll have to blow through the blast doors with a shaped explosive charge.  Your Thermal Detonator won't do it.  And since this ship is loaded with medical supplies, you're not going to find anything more explosive than nitro glycerine... diluted and in pill form.  I was going to program the Treadwell droids to use their cutting torches to cut through the blast doors.  That would take hours though.", replies the Quarren.  "My other thought was to shut down the main reactor.  Something I am hoping the droids know how to do safely.  Not that that helps you get on the bridge, but it would leave the ship dead in space, which gives you more time to cut through the blast doors."  The Quarren does talk a lot.  More so than Oglo ever did.  Talking is likely this Quarren's best suit.

The Quarren begins to stroke his tentacles with his free hand while he thinks.  Is other hand continues to point the blaster at Lyla, but his attention has lapsed.  The Blaster is just a forgotten item with no place else to be.  "Can't just shut down a Fusion Reactor though.  If it loses magnetic containment, the plasma inside will burn straight through the housing and boom!  It has to be powered down slowly and allowed to burn off its fuel.  Of course, if the bridge is manned then they can over-ride the shut down procedure from up there.  So the alternative is to manually close off the hydrogen fuel lines.  When those are all closed, then the reactor will burn off its fuel and gradually the ship will lose power.  And there's nothing the bridge can do about it but come out and manually re-open the fuel valves.  Of course, I'm not going to go crawling around through the engine section to close all the fuel valves.  I was going to make the droids do it."
This message was last edited by the player at 18:03, Tue 15 Apr 2014.

Tera nodded "Now that sounds like an excellent idea. I'm afraid I'm not that great on the designs of this ship. Perhaps you should activate the droids needed to do this. If they're all stuck in the bridge, they'll need to come out to fix it and that should give us the opportunity to retake the ship."

Continuing to stroke his tentacles, the Quarren rambles on further without paying any attention to Tera's interruption, "Two problems I can conceive of:

"First, the droids have Integrated Comlinks.  They can receive instructions from the bridge and will regard those as more legitimate commands.  So we will have to delete the old scrambler codes, and input new codes.  Then command the droids to disregard any communications that come in that don't use the new scrambler codes.

"Second, a gunship has Auxillary Fusion Generators to power the Turbolasers.  Those could generate enough power to power the Hyperdrive.  All someone would have to do is reroute Auxillary Power to the Hyperdrive from the bridge.  Sure, it would deactivate the Turbolasers, but you don't need those in Hyperspace.  So we will have to choke off fuel to the Auxillary Generators as well."

Tera glance at Lyla with an amazed expression "Ok, so we're in trouble then. Big trouble. You're telling me the people on the bridge can use the droids we have here against us, that we need to shut all power sources down on the ship and get back into the bridge to make this work. How long does it take to do the code scrambling?"

"That's the easy part.  No need to change the scrambler code, just change the key code.  A new key I can generate with the touch of a button with my Pocket Scrambler.  We just upload the new key to the droids before powering them on.  Don't give them a chance to contact the bridge to ask for instructions.", replies the Quarren.  He then cranes his head as if to try to look over the shoulder of Tera and Lyla into the room behind them.  "Please tell me you haven't started powering them on yet."

'There's a black rycrit in every family.' Lyla muttered, thinking of a certain wheeler-dealer cousin, as she stepped out into the corridor and wasn't immediately shot at. She listened to Tera and the Quarren, and kept stepping out of his line-of-fire while he seemed to have forgotten about his blaster.

She didn't know enough reactors and generators and droids to say a word about the plan, but did drag a hand down her face in dismay at the talk of changing codes. 'Not more codes.' she groaned. 'That's if the ISC team have locked themselves in the bridge. There's no reason to if they think they're alone on this ship. They might be moving about, checking out other areas.'

Then the Quarren asked about the droids. Lyla looked to Tera; she could explain it.

Tera winced "We might have activated a few....can we turn them off again?" she looked hopeful "Ummmm, these Imperial are sneaky and conniving. I don't think they'd be in the bridge. That'd be a bottleneck. They'd do what they need to up there and break it so we can't fix it."

"A bottleneck it may be, but it's also the most secure place on the ship with the possible exception of the Armory.  But you can't fly a ship from the Armory, and that's another bottleneck.  Bottlenecks are easiest to secure.  You only have toe worry about one entrance.", replies the Quarren.  "If you break the bridge controls then the only other place on the ship you can fly it from is Main Engineering.  But that isn't so secure as there are many ways in and out.  Now the droids, the ones you have on need to be given a new key code now before your Imperials realize they have little helpers they can be giving orders to."

Realizing that he probably doesn't need it now, the Quarren puts his Blaster back in its holster.  He's still not sure if these two women really are Rebels.  After all, they're not wearing any uniforms and the only Rebels Nessquik has known have worn uniforms.  But even if they are shipjackers, as he still suspects, he thinks he has earned their trust and proven his usefulness.  It's scary just how much thought Nessquik has put into shipjacking when it isn't included in his duties.  Usually, the closest he comes to shipjacking is inventorying the cargo aboard ships stolen from the Empire by the shipjacking crews of the Rebellion Supply Corp.  He never seriously dreamed he would be promoted to a Rebel crew of privateers.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:15, Fri 18 Apr 2014.

Speaking of getting stuck somewhere, they'd been standing and yammering too long while the ISC team had the run of the ship, and Lyla was growing impatient. She decided to get things going again. 'Okay, Tera and New Guy, you two can secure these droids, right? Rynn can stand guard while you work, and I'll scout this deck to make sure we're alone. Sound good?'

"Fine then.  Just don't call me 'New Guy'.  The new guy always gets shot.  I prefer to be called Ness.  But not Nessy.  Nessy is a legendary sea monster of Mon Calamari.  I don't like being compared to a monster.", replies Nessquik with his beak-like mouth jawing away amid a flurry of waving tentacles.  His ice-blue eyes stare away unmoving.  This whole time, they haven't blinked once.  Finally the moisture on his eyes needs to be replenished and he blinks.  Only his two eyelids, though really an opaque membrane, close in from the sides rather than the usual top and bottom for most species.

He then rolls back his sleeves as if to get to work.  In rolling back his sleeves he reveals what he has to work with.  This item must be his most valuable.  It's a wrist computer that has all the functions of a Datapad alone with a Personal Holoprojector.  In addition, he has linked in by cable a Long-range Comlink, and connected to that is a Pocket Scrambler.  It's a nice little setup for the Slicer on the go who doesn't have the room to pack a full-sized personal computer.  With this setup he can connect to a droid to upload programs and instructions, or download any of their data.

His plan is to connect his Wrist Computer to the droids.  Any droid that has an Internal Comlink he will have to upload the decryption program from his Pocket Scrambler as well as a new key code so the droids can understand the commands he will give to them over the comlink.  He then will give them the instructions to disregard any comlink communications that don't use the correct encryption and key code.  That should stop anyone on the bridge telling the droids to stop what they're doing.  Once it is understood who the droids take orders from, then he will send them off on their tasks to go to the Hydrogen Fuel Tanks for the main reactor and auxillary reactors and close the manual cutoff valve.  And then hold them closed so they can't be remotely reopened from Engineering or the Bridge.  To his knowledge about technology, this is effectively the manual shutoff for the reactor.  Within a couple hours, much less time if a lot of power is being used from them to power something that's a power-hog like say a Hyperdrive, the reactors will completely shut down leaving the ship on only emergency battery power.  Loss of power to the Hyperdrive will force it to deactivate and bring the ship out of Hyperspace.  A very dangerous procedure, but given fair warning and no way to stop it from happening, Nessquik expects anyone on the bridge to bring the ship out of Hyperspace in a safe and orderly fashion because they don't want to die.  It isn't a permanent sabotage to the ship though.  It can be easily fixed.  You just have to remove whatever is holding the valves closed and manually pull the lever yourself.  And while he's looking over the droids, he has to find a couple that have plasma cutting torches that can cut through the blast doors to the Bridge.  He also has to make sure there is an Astromech droid in there with a Scomp Link that can fly the ship via the ship's computer in case the Imperials decide to destroy the bridge controls.

Tera shrugged "At least you're not wearing red. Ness. Let's get a move on before they realise we've coopted the droids" Tera had no idea what Nessquik was going to do, but she was going to help.

It was a good plan by the Quarren but as he activated his comlink he discovered that none of the droids assembled had comlinks.

At that time, there is another message from Klyn:

"Hello there. We had contact.  We took care of Meahonon but she was busy sabotaging the consoles when we arrived.  I will let you know how deep in trouble we are once we know more ."

Nessquik finds it both a relief and troublesome that the droids are not equipped with Comlinks.  It is good because then the Imperials on the bridge cannot give them commands.  But it is a problem for him because he cannot give them commands from afar.  He will have to give them their tasks and send them on their merry way.  But if there is a change of plans, or when he needs them to get to repairing the ship, then getting new orders to them will take time.

Upon hearing Tera's Comlink chime in with a message from someone else, Nessquik looks up from his task of programming the droids to do a manual shut down on the reactors.  Worried about what is happening, he asks Tera, "You have other crewmen?  I lied about having more.  My crew left when they were done loading the cargo.  Only I and some guards stayed behind to count the inventory of food and medical supplies.  What controls?  Where at?  They better not have sabotaged the reactor controls.  Without those we won't be able to reactivate the reactor after we have shut it down."

'Don't worry, we've all been shot.' Lyla attempted to reassure Ness. He and Tera went back to deal with the droids, and Lyla moved off the recon Deck 4.

She hadn't gotten far when the message came through from Klyn. She cheered back 'You got her? Great! That's one down, three to go.' Things were looking up.

Lyla kept moving, walking quietly around what seemed to be an engineering deck, first circling the Droid Storage & Maintenance area, then moving forward past other maintenance and storage areas. She peered around each corner, in each room, looked back now and then to confirm she was alone. She then went onto the speeder hangar and the brig. If there was any more crew on board, the ISC might have stuffed them in the brig.


OOC: Just scouting the area, starting forward of the droid shop on Deck 4.
Perception 16, Stealth 17
21:27, Today: Lyla Rahn rolled 16 using 1d20+8. perception.
21:27, Today: Lyla Rahn rolled 17 using 1d20+10. stealth.