"Given destroying the station is not a priority I suggest we not focus on it too  much. Unless of course we plan to use said evacuation or asphyxiation to assist our larceny.  After all, can we in good conscience take all the fun from the General's people?"

"The General's people will find steady employ no matter whether it is in this instance or that of a later target," Cor comments, sounding amused at the idea of cutting in on the bombers' 'fun.'  "It is not a priority, this is true, but it is firmly preferable if we manage it - or, at the very least, if we happen to destroy the station's fixed defences and therefore keep the assault fleet's bombers a little safer.

"As for relative skills, CC9," she adds, "everyone's abilities will be tested, including your own, as we tend to from time to time - with new recruits, especially.  It is always vital for Devon and I to have details as up-to-date as possible in what our team can and cannot achieve.  To allow anything less is to invite disaster and death."

Aderek had been listening and contemplating the options.  When the topic of spacing the entire station came up, he too turned pale a distinct emotional reaction as a very vivid memory seems to be activated.  Additionally, the arm which had been so recently missing had seemed to involuntarily closed its hand in an extremely firm, almost unnatural, grip.  He seems to quietly hold his breath for a moment, glancing over at his arm, bringing his other hand over towards the arm as if he could in some way comfort his cybernetic arm.

When his hand opened a badly crushed and misshapen plastic object can be seen in resting in his hand, and he breathes out, continuing to listen.  Anyone noticing would note he seems to ponder and consider before he says anything.

"Any attempt to forcibly take over the whole life support system of the station, and force venting of air section by section into vacuum of space would encounter quite a few obstacles, given the manual overrides, and automatic sealing protocols at each section portal.  But there are very standard ways they work, which could be leveraged by someone experienced enought with them."  He pauses, "And as pointed out, some people may have access to air and will immediately begin attempting to regain control of sections and controls.  Which the causing the station to lockdown into its various sections would likely not be hard, controlling it after the fact would definitely be a battle, which would get more difficult the longer people remain in sections."

Tapping his fingers against the side of a chair, "However, aside from venting all air from sections all at once or one at a time, it might be easier to try instead to manipulate fire control protocols.  Depending on the systems, sections may utilize a variety of fire control countermeasures, ranging from venting all or most the atmosphere, injecting inert gasses, or using flame/plasma retardant foams for instance.  If we can find out what systems they have we could put together a reasonable plan that might be able to potentially incapacitate or kill those aboard who aren't in flight suits.  If we have a good enough slicer to actually take over the section interfaces, we might even be able to use it to phish for valid access codes that might be useful in stealing information from the station core.  If we were able to insert a big enough supply of carbon monoxide and take over the air distribution, we might be able to put the bulk of the station to sleep.  And those remaining, might without realizing what they are doing, hand over their own access codes as they attempt to remedy their immediate problems, potentially opening up our own options in the process."

CC9 watched Aderek for several moments.

"If that is indeed possible it would be a tactically efficient plan.  Incapacitating a broad portion of the station's population in such a way, utilising systems already in place, would significantly reduce the amount of hostilities required to fulfil our mission."

"Not that these ain't good ideas, guys.   But lets back up a step - You're plannin' for how we incapacitate the station - and we ain't even in the front door yet.
Start workin' on how we're gettin' aboard."

The shipjacker stood, scooping up his datapad but leaving the half finished caf behind.  He tapped something quickly into his datapad.
"Find us a freighter.  Work out how we're gonna stop it.  How we're gonna take it.  What kit we'll need to get the job done.  Are we stopping it in deep space?  infiltrate it in port?  Get me some answers.  I'm gonna go brief Zyra on what we've got in the works."


Halfway to the door, he paused and glanced over his shoulder.
"Arcas, walk with me.  I wanna ask you somethin'."

"As you say," comes Cor's voice.  The M4 droid pivots in place to face the rest of the room.

"Ms Trake, Ms Melan'nel, you are two of our best pilots, skilled in the control of starfighters and space transports between you; Ms Trake, you are also one of our best in the uses of computers.  Sergeant Dulvan, you are skilled with all manner of vehicle-mounted weaponry.  Would the three of you like to start this discussion, from your own perspectives?

"The task: tracking, disabling and boarding a civilian freighter.  What would we require?"

Lin looked at the droid. "You are going ahead of yourself there. First, you need to find a freighter that delivers cargo to the station, one that would serve us, figure out its whereabouts, the crew, everything. Honestly, I believe, we might even be better off capturing one somewhere planetside - less of a chance of the crew sending a distress call and possibly less crew to subdue, if some are on a shore leave. Or, should you insist capturing it in space, then at least finding it and putting a tracer on it would allow us to follow it without attracting too much of attention - then strike at it at a remote location, where we could capture it without any audience. That would, of course, require jamming the possible distress calls."

The M4 rotates to look directly at Lin

"I had not forgotten," is all Cor says, and her tone is mild.

Then it rotates again to look back at the Talons Cor had previously addressed.

Fiarr spoke up.  "I would suggest some of us start scouting the trade lanes and gathering data on shipping.  I was going to recommend we try to requisition a pair of fighters and I take Kyvarr, if you can spare her of course.  Thought it a good chance to practice her fighter skills in a real environment.  We could drop sensors along major trade routes, maybe even try a ballistic flyby on the station.  Of course the latter would take a lot more time."

Mika considers.  "Some of the details will depend on the freighter and if we want to snag it in space or not.  My knee jerk thought is in space, if it's in port then we have to deal with the local authorities and the crew would have help, or comms, immediately at hand.  If we snag them in space, we pick a spot that works for us.  We'll need to jam their comms, beat their shields, cut or way in and take it.  That's pretty tough.

How about this?  We find a freighter in dock and make sure their pilot, or their mechanic, or load master is indisposed.  Then one of us can step in, wait until the ship is in an isolated area and kill the engines.  The rest can be ready to jump in, and while thay're distracted with a pirate attack, transmitters can be disabled, shield generators shut down, air locks opened, whatever.  It'll take some work to arrange, but maybe doable."

Kyvarr didn't hesitate.  "Ion cannons are the only logical solution for a space intercept.  We have access and they cause minimal damage.  Ion torpedoes will be even better but I don't know if we have access to them."

"If we plan a ground acquisition then the nature of the weaponry would be dictated by the mission plan."

"Nice idea Mika."  Fiarr acknowledged with a grin.  "Only hitch I see is it would probably limit us to a civilian vessel.  Imperials aren't just going to take some person who just shows up.  Not without a lot of info to support them."

"Only other tweak I'd make is I wouldn't pick someone as prominent as a pilot or engineer.  Most of my infiltrations I pose as someone you don't notice.  Like a galley hand or the person who cleans the freshers or the like.  Nobody pays attention to you and you can still get where you need to go."

"While I like the plan, I think we'll be better to do a straight disable and capture in space.  Doesn't even matter if we damage the ship.  Damage adds realism and gives us an excuse to remain at the station."

She looks to the door where Devon had left with Arcas.  "Anyone else find it amusing, our expert in stealing ships ducks out the second we need to plan stealing a ship?"
This message was last edited by the player at 03:14, Sun 11 Feb 2018.

"Yes, the irony has not escaped my attention either, Ms Melan'nel."  Cor's droid continues to observe as its mistress speaks through it.

"These are solid beginnings and some very salient points have been raised.  Would anyone care to elaborate?"  The droid looks first toward Lin, given that she has already shown full willingness to have herself heard, and then over the others present.

"I would suggest sending out multiple teams to track down a suitable ship. That way we can cover more space and find ourselves multiple options. Once ready, we compile the data and figure out, which one is the most viable one. The thought about infiltrating the ship is not exactly a bad one either, though it does come with risks. I would, however, prefer more than one infiltrator aboard the ship. That way, there is a backup, should the primary infiltrator be discovered. Once aboard, the infiltrator should work disrupt the ship's sensors and possibly navigation in order to bring it in to our clutches. Disrupting communications upon our attack would work well to keep the distress signal from going out and the infiltrators could possibly take at least some of the crew by surprise, not to mention opening the airlocks for the assault force."

Fiarr nodded at Lin's suggestions.  "Agreed.  We need pilots scouting the normal space lanes, but we need a team of slicers as well.  If we can track shipping routes, routine cargo transfers, job lists for the refuelling station then we get info on our targets ahead of time."

"I'd recommend we send out recon teams in ships while another group works on getting what information we can from data sources.  Perhaps even a little socialising at known Imperial watering holes."  She gestures at Heigren with her last suggestion.
This message was last edited by the player at 10:00, Sun 11 Feb 2018.

"If we plan to patrol spacelanes we will need to see if we can requistion ships from Colonel Jax.  While we have access to three craft already I imagine one of them will be needed to ferry our teams around."

Fiarr nodded.  "Of course, instead of simply borrowing the ships, if we find ourselves light on manpower we could ask if the fighter squadrons be given 'training exercises' that has them scouting the space lanes for us.  When I was in a fighter squadron we did practice scenarios like that all the time."

"Personally I'd rather get some stick time in and Kyvarr needs it.  But it's an option if we're needed elsewhere.  The squadron commanders may prefer performing jobs for the XO then lending their precious ships to a bunch of marines."

Kira listens to the plans on the table and can't help but smile at Fiarr's plan, simple, yet effective. Something she would do....the problem with Kira not thinking of it was that Fiarr thought of it first (And given her experience that was understandable)

Kira sniffed as she listened to the plan. "Maybe a possible bounty hunter at the dock looking for a job? I could maybe scope it a few days earlier before the others arrive....act as back up."

Aderek considers as they are brainstorming how to get on the station.  "Correct me if I'm wrong... but while a ship that is supposed to deliver to the station would certainly be convenient and in many way preferable, on the other hand if we have a competent enough forger, wouldn't it be possible to create a manifest that would appear to be a legitimate delivery which got lost in their bureaucracy, or if we can duplicate an expected delivery of goods, we might be able to make it appear someone put the wrong ship name on the schedule?"

Pausing he continues to consider.  "Are there different procedures for different types of supplies being delivered. Would life support supplies, for instance, get loaded into a general loading area, or would they get moved instead moved directly to the life-support systems area?  Would there be any goods that would be delivered into the command section of the station right away?  Good caff or liquor?  I appoligize, I know that's kind of step 2, what we do when we get their, but it might affect what loads we might want to choose or target."

Heigren looked at Aderek.  "Are you proposing we use one of our own ships?  It would need to be a very specialised cargo if we were going to take a ship as small as our Ghtroc.  I did suggest we might try to find a cargo that one of the senior officers would move out of the bay quickly but it was agreed we really don't have time to work out what that might be."

Kyvarr nodded.  "Sounds like we have several ideas on how to locate a suitable freighter.  I think we also have a few strategies for disabling and capture.  Obviously these are contingent on the freighter's location, makeup and contingent."

She looked to Cor's droid.  "How should we proceed ma'am?"

The door hissed open and Devon entered, looking thoughtful.
He glanced around the room then dropped into the chair he had been using before.
"OK, so what have you got for me?  Tell me how we choose our freighter."

He gave the group an expectant look.

"Pleasant to have you back, Devon, Mr Endeel."

The M4 settles in position next to Devon.  Not slightly behind him, this time, but level with the human.  It swivels to address the entire group.

"We have had several suggestions as to the  best way of tracking down a freighter.  It would be most wise to utilise the skills we have in as wide a scope possible, not only to track down the freighter we shall require but also to pick up any additional information on the region and its socio-political activity that may become useful, either during this mission or otherwise.

"To that end, I believe most options presented are viable, though none of them will be an easy path.  Patrols of starships monitoring relevant space lanes will be able to track middle and long-range movement; this force can be composed of both those Alliance forced loaned to us and whatever Talon personnel unsuited to other tasks.

"Meanwhile, Heigren and whichever other members are suited should deploy in disguise to local cantinas and similar places to pick up information from the word-of-mouth level.  Thirdly, any remaining Talons skilled in slicing will be obtaining what information they can from the local 'net, and be prepared to drop to any relevant locations for on-site slicing at a moment's notice."

The M4 falls silent as Cor pauses a few seconds.

"It would be preferable to have a ship in the target's system scanning traffic lanes but that may too easily alert the Imperials on-site to hostile activity.  I believe our starship experts may wish to consider workarounds, but that step, while most valuable in terms of extrapolating the information we require to locate the right transport, may be too risky an endeavour."

"If we want close in base traffic data we could try doing a ballistic flyby."  Fiarr offered.  "A pair of Y-wings come in out of sensor range, crank up to max speed and then just kill all power bar passive sensors and minimum life support.  While a pair of Longprobes would be ideal I think we can make do with regular Y-wings."

"Only downside is if we're detected we'll need to move fast and may put the Imperials on higher alert.  Additionally we'd be out of the comm loop for the duration."

"I don't think we want to use any of our own ships.  They're too small and the sort of specialized cargo we'd need to use would go past the rank and file Imps.  Plus, if things go bad, no reason to give them another source of intel.

We should be able to snag a bulk freighter, food stuff or routine parts or something.  I'm thinking I might be our best cap ship pilot, so maybe that's my role once we get a ship picked up.  Before that...  Maybe I'm good at slicing or maybe I should check out some of the local swoop gangs and see if I can pick up anything.  Or maybe I should be working on the fighters, try to boost the systems there to make them more suited to scouting."