Flying closer and over the beacon signal the Rebels saw the crater. Scattered all around the crater was rusted, twisted mining rigs and processing machinery. The centre of the crater was a deep mine shaft going deep into the planet. The shaft was about fifty metres wide, any of the ships would fit in the mining shaft but flying down or up it again might take some skill.

Peering out the porthole, Lyla looked down into the crater, over the wrecked mining equipment and the ominous dark hole that it seemed they had no choice but to go into. 'Looks like the Scourge have occupied an old mine. Clever. Without knowing about the beacon, no one would find them. Dega must be riddled with shafts like this. We'll have to go down there, I don't see anyone landing a ship amongst that junk.' she considered.

Then she turned around and reported what she'd learned in her research before the Varnay had interrupted them. 'Chalmer Trillili is an ex-Rebel, one of our own. He's been up against the Empire too, so he'll be as cunning and scrappy as we are. So we've got to be careful.' She sighed, not liking the next bit, but knowing it had to be said, and done. 'And he's a deserter, now a traitor. He's turned on his brothers and sisters, turned on the people we're fighting for, and turned to the Empire. But he's still the Alliance's responsibility, and we've got to take him out.'

"Then I assume we are going in? If so I'll need Rynn to pilot this ship, as the remote will be tricky and I don't think even I could do both with such a dangerous maneuver." Lamar said with a sense of chagrin.

"I'm on it." Rynn said, popping up from his seat and heading toward the ship he'd be flying. "What's the plan when we get down there commander?" the ubese pilot asked over the comms so that the whole team could here.

The small fleet of Rebel ships flew down the mine shaft. The mine shaft went down for over five hundred metres below the planet's surface.

OOC Pilot checks for the three ships. Difficulty will depend on speed - let me which speed you will be flying at - slow/moderate/fast/all-out.

"I thought we were going to crash the pirate barge into the closest buildings and then go in guns blazing." Lamar said while looking intently at the computer screen. The maneuver was tricky, and piloting such a big ship by remote through the twisted metal and banking tunnel/shaft was taking his attention. Beads of sweat were popping out on his forehead from his concentration. And it was actually cool in the cockpit.

'Ah, let's keep that one in our back pocket.' Lyla told Lamar, leaning over the pilots' shoulders to watch their progress down the shaft. She might not be doing anything, but she felt almost as anxious about making it safely to the bottom without any bumps and scrapes along the way. 'Take it nice and steady, like we know what we're doing. We can pass off being slow, not getting scratched and crashing. And as for once we're down there... We play it by tail, recon and play pirate for as long as we can get away with it, and look out for the Gray Griffins and Chalmer Trillili.'
This message was last edited by the player at 09:43, Tue 30 Mar 2021.

"You got it L.T." Lamar said.
03:34, Today: Lamar Danar rolled 19 using 1d20+9.  pilot.
03:33, Today: Lamar Danar rolled 28 using 1d20+13.  Use computer.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:34, Sat 06 Feb 2021.

The space barge followed by the Wayfarer made it's slow progress down the mine shaft. All went without accident. At the bottom of the shaft was a natural cave. The only item present in the cave was a repulsor disk, three metres in diameter. There were six mine tunnels heading in various directions and a blast door in one wall.

Klyn followed precautiouly.

"I don't think they put their 'interdictor like' ship here, it looked too big.

So, I suppose we have to open the blast door?  Any idea?  Did the pirats give you more intel about it?"

Slowly the Alabak's Gold followed the others down the mine shaft. The cave was large enough to serve as a hangar for the three ships but the large pirate ship they saw earlier would not have been able to reach the hangar.

At last, they'd reached the bottom and touched down, safely and with no alarms raised. This was getting to be almost too easy, and Lyla had the proverbial bad feeling about this. Maybe she was too used to operating on the edge of catastrophe and stuffing defeat back into the jaws of victory. She looked carefully around the vast cavern, assessing the situation.

She pursed her lips and crossed her tails in a frown. 'A little. The container ship is their main mobile base. This is a hideout for resting and storing stolen goods until they find a buyer. Maybe that includes captives too. So, let's look around, try to find some intel at least. There might be no-one here, or a skeleton crew, or a big gang of off-duty pirates, so let's stay alert.'


OOC: Sorry, I got busy and kept forgetting this.

Is that repulsor disk meant to be an elevator up and down the shaft? Are there any other ships here?

An examination of the repulsor disk proved it would only be used for loading and unloading cargo as it had a flight ceiling of only one hundred metres. Whereas they were five metres metres from the surface of Dega.

The blast doors were thirty metres high and thirty metres wide. The others passages varied in height and width between ten to thirty metres. The stability of those tunnels were uncertain.

"L.T. We're not going to get to do our plan. If we cause an explosion we might very likely  get trapped in here. That is if we don't get killed along with them." Lamar said after noticing the area. "We need a new plan and fast!"

But Lyla paused, thinking it over for a few moments before shaking her head and tails. 'Uh-uh, nothing good comes from rushing.' she said, not that she was slacking off herself. 'Now, our core mission is rescuing the Gray Griffins, and this is a damn good place to keep them locked up: secure cells, no ship, no way to the surface. And the other pirates don't come here often. So I'd like to do recon while we have the chance. So let's gear up and get out!' Lyla rose and led the team to the airlock, grabbing her blaster rifle on the way.

Geared up the Rebels disembarked from their ships and approached the blast door. The blast door looked sturdy and had a secure operating panel that required a code to open.

Lamar pulled out the datacomp he was carrying and hooked it into the door's maintenance panel. "Don't suppose the code was gotten from our guests.." He muttered while checking to see if it had been in any of the logs he had decoded.

No one provided them with a code for the blast door. Lamar hooked up his datacomp, with his security kit he'd most likely be able to access the controls. How long it took would depend on his skill.

OOC Give us a Mechanics check if you want to try and bypass the security.

Klyn will do his best to help Lamar and speed up the process.

20:46, Today: Klyn Cors rolled 28 using 1d20+17.  mechanics help.

While banking on them being alone down here, Lyla wasn't about to rely on it. She readied her DC-17m ICWS blaster rifle and turned her back to the wall, watching the other passages and covering Klyn and Lamar while they worked to slice the blast door. She would've preferred to take one of the ordinary tunnels first, hoping to get lucky on easy intel that explain the rest, but she wasn't about to order them to give up now. Clearly something important and valuable was behind this blast door. 'They didn't think to share. And we didn't know what to ask for. I could go back and ask, but they'll just lie and stall for time.'

A little help from Klyn had the security lock overridden. The blast door swished open to reveal another tunnel. The tunnel was in better shape than the others and looked safer. The tunnel was dark but at the far end was a faint glow.

"Now, hoping that we didn't raise some kind of alarm the way we opened the door, we are up for some walk.

Boss, Wwe should ask for a speeder on our next stop at the base, it would have been useful." he added.

"The place doesn't look like it will fall on us, but I'm not sure how stealthy we can be while we get to the end. Any marching order advice ?"

This is clearly more Lyla's field of expertise.

'I figure that if there was an alarm, we would have triggered it when we brought a ship down. Anyway, no point worrying about it.' Lyla mused to Klyn, peering down the dark tunnel to check that the way was clear and nothing and no-one was rushing out them. 'And you know if we had a speeder, we'd lose it as soon as we needed it – whatever happened to our last speeder, anyway?' She shrugged. 'We'll steal the next one that's available, the way the Alliance gets all its gear.'

She'd already walked in, stepping carefully and stopping after a few paces to examine the ground. The hard cut-stone floor of a mine, but there ought to be enough dust to take a print. 'Fan out behind me. I'll look for tracks to see how much the pirates do use this place.'


OOC: Perception 16, rerolled to 28 – looking for tracks

The tunnel was well used and the air was much more palatable. The toxic and poisonous gases in that filled Degas's atmosphere were absent here, some kind of environmental controls were evident. Lyla's search found tracks that showed the tunnel was well used with plenty of people passing through but that no one had been near the blast door for a few days. The light ahead appeared to be artificial light.

'Well, they come here often enough to make a trail, but haven't been back in the last few days at least. See how the dust has settled back over these recent prints? No? Well, you get what I mean.' Lyla explained, pointing out some impressions in the stone dust that may or may not mean anything to the others. 'Us and those blast doors opening is the most disturbance here. Still, let's not get relaxed.' She rose, patted dust off her knee, and ventured onward to the light at the end of the tunnel.