Dohr shook his head at the M4. "I should be able to handle any transport-sized ship, but as you may remember from our simulator training, fighters are really not my thing."

"I personally find the hijacking of a transport both appealing and very dangerous. For an... alien such as myself, fitting in would be far easier as a member of a freight crew although I am not sure how the imperials would react to having us less human like people walking around the station. For all we know, we might be confined. And as what comes to taking heavy weapons to the station, I am sure Mr. Endeel can confirm that we probably would only be allowed carry blaster pistols, if even those."

"Which brings me to the shuttle option... Mr. Endeel or may I call you Arcas? I am either Dohr or the Doc or Eight."

Dohr turned to Devon. "Should we assign callsigns to the new people too?"

The Kel Dor sipped some caf, turned back to Arcas and carried on: "As you have by far the most experience and knowledge of the imperial operations, how plausible would you say it is for some high ranking officer to use bounty hunters instead of imperial agents to hunt down criminals, Alliance members or other enemies of the Empire?"

"If not, then we will simply be captives being shipped to a prison colony or camp. That too will limit our access to the station more than a little. Were I to be an imperial officer in charge of a landing bay, I would definitely assign an extra squad outside a prison transport."

"If unclear after all of this, my preference and vote would be on the imperial shuttle just because it would allow some of us more freedom of movement. It is definitely not a risk free option, but it should give us better access to military supplies and ships for Devon to hijack."

Arcas tapped on the armrest of his chair as he pondered the situation.

"I can see no reliable plan for getting our nonhuman personnel to walk freely on the station. Bounty hunters are not a standard practice, so unless they are specifically invited by the ranking officers, then they would be confined in the transport."

"The prisoner transfer would allow for the crew to appear heavily armed. And it would give the security a reason not to focus on the guards themselves, giving us some leeway to work. Then it would just be a matter of getting our captives to sneak aboard to do their work."

Arcas rubbed his chin.

"So, how are we going to exactly steal the supplies? And what supplies are we stealing?"

"Whatever supplies are useful," Cor replies to Arcas via the M4, "and accessible by whatever means we deem viable.  Food, medical supplies, ships, droids, armour, weapons - whatever we can lay hands upon.  We have no restrictions as to our methods, though of course should we not be able to destroy the station then a bomber squad will do that, though in that case, the louder we are in our mission, the more resistance that squadron will undoubtedly encounter.

"Therefore if we are required by plan or circumstance to use lethal force, it would be most prudent to ensure that we also destroy, or at least severely damage, the station."

"Request for information: what percentage of Imperial staff regularly utilise environment-sealed protective wear?"  CC9 is, as always, straight to the point.

"If circumstances permit and it is possible to seize control of the computer systems, it may be most efficacious to open the majority of doors, eliminate artificial gravity, vent the station's atmosphere and allow any unprotected Imperials to asphyxiate.  This would significantly reduce organic defences, allowing us to commandeer the widest selection of resources before detonating the station and exterminating the remaining staff."

Arcas folded his arms. He was glad that the droid made the point; Arcas had wondered whether he should play the devil's advocate and suggest poisoning or asphyxiating every person on the station by sabotaging the air filters, if the objective of the attack was to render it inoperable and incapacitate the imperials inside. After all, it would risk least amount of Talons and would only require a shipment of toxins, which could be easier to smuggle there.

So he said nothing for the moment and scrutinized the others in the room, very eagerly seeing their responses. For himself, Arcas was firmly against any sort of weapon of mass destruction; After all, if fate had decided differently, it could have been him on that station, oblivious to his sudden, horrific suffocation.

Devon gave a long whistle at CC9s suggestion.
He'd had similar ideas himself, before now.  Knock out gas in the air vents, that sort of thing.   Back before he had joined the Talons, when he was just a ship thief, one gang he had ran with had been putting together a plan to fake a fire in a starport hanger using a combination of hacked environmental controls and some strategically placed smoke bombs.  The plan had never come together somehow...

CC9 was taking the same idea to its logical extreme - instead of something harmless in the air vents, make it something lethal or at least debilitating to the enemy.  If they could get people in place to override life support settings and prevent alarms, it could eliminate the majority of the stations crew in one fell swoop.

"Added bonus to that is that we could be the ones to raise the alarm ourselves - when we're ready."
Seeing the puzzled looks he was getting, Devon elaborated.
"If theres somethin' seriously wrong with the stations lifesupport, or some other critical system, the reaction might be an evac."   he gave Arcas a questioning look, the former Imperial would hopefully have an idea what SOP would be for such things...

"So if we decide its time to leave an' need an excuse to launch, or we just need to cause some chaos an' distraction, we could call in the alert ourselves..."

"It could provide a suitable distraction if used as you describe," CC9 allows.  Whether the droid has an opinion on using such tactics as a distraction rather than for outright slaughter is another thing, and it does not elaborate further yet.

"Not a fan of wishbones but I can certainly fly one.  I can also attest that Kyvarr is getting quite good in heavier craft like the Y-wing."




"I think that's a must do Doc.  After all, we can't have the number one slot left open for Sheppard anymore.  He's obviously not going to be flying with us again, no matter how much he wants to."

Fiarr didn't contribute to the ideas of 'distractions' yet.  Playing with environmental controls was something more suited to Lin and the mechanics.  Besides, she tended to keep her planning open.  She liked doing things on the fly.  Benefits of being a lone operative.

Heigren shrugged.  "I'm no pilot, know nothing about sabotaging environmental systems or the like.  If we go with the civilian freighter option I can probably play a believable cargo master.  Transporting freight and slipping it past customs is something I'm VERY good at!"

Mika notes, "The freighter option seems better for those of us not likely to pass for Imps.". Sure, Mika is Human, but she was a small one and had no skill at the sort of mindless military behaviors the Imps seemed to require, when to salute, when to make (or not make) eye contact, etc.

"I've never tried flying snubs, I don't know how well I could handle a y-wing.  Cap ships are more my thing.". She doesn't point out the obvious that their stock in cap ships is low, and their numbers small to crew anything but the smaller ones.

When the droids talks about de pressurizing the whole place, she blanches a bit.  She'd killed a few times when they had to, but nothing on that sort of scale.  Still, they were supposed to blow the place up, they could hardly do that without killing the garrison anyway.  And they were at war and killing masses of Imps was going to be required if they wanted to survive.  Glancing over at Devon, she starts to speak, clears her throat when her voice cracks and she starts again, "A reactor breach is usually seen as a pretty good reason to beat feet."  maybe she wasn't a hardened soldier or the like, but she had best at least practice being able to offer thoughts without sounding like a weak little kid.

"Well I guess we need to make a decision here.  Going in as a prisoner transport means we need the shuttle, Imperial and stormtrooper uniforms and false identities and documentation.  We'd also need to rehearse our roles.  Going in as a freighter means we need to find a suitable ambush point, ambush a freighter and capture it.  Then we just need to take over the ship and slip whatever false identities we want into the manifest."

She looked to Devon.  "So which way we going boss?  We Imps or civvies?"

Kyvarr was surprised, and privately pleased when Fiarr had mentioned her flying skills.  She'd been practicing hard in the simulators, devoting at least an hour a day since they'd returned.  She'd also poured over technical manuals.  Unlike most pilots who seemed to love the speed and agility of fighters and interceptors, she'd appreciated the raw power of fighter-bombers and gunships.  They reminded her more of the tanks and walkers she'd started in.  The Y-wing did appeal to her with it's mix of durability and firepower.  While she still thought the prison transport was a more suitable plan, part of her hoped the other plan would get through as she might get to actually fly a Y-wing in combat.  The impulse was childish and she silently berated herself for it, but she couldn't deny the appeal.

Kira sat silently while the rest of the group pondered the decision of a prison transport or freighter....the pro's and con's. She prefered the freighter option....was more her style, but this was a group, and she deferred to the boss.

Likewise, she had little on the piloting...she had a little skill with small fighters but her skill was with freighters.

She looked at the group, waiting the decision

Cor's M4 also looks toward Devon, silent in its observation of the meeting.

Devon chewed on the edge of a finger nail for a moment, before nodding to himself
"If we go the freighter route, we're gonna need a few days to track down and set up to capture a suitable ship.  An' if we're usin' the 'we're all Imperials' route, we're gonna need fake IDs, uniforms, weapons armour... an' the registration on that shuttle givin' a good scrubbin' so they dont make us the second we jump in.
Both those options are gonna take time, so here's what we're gonna do for now - I'm gonna go tell Zyra about our two option an' see if she can get all the stuff we need.  Knowin' her she probably can.  In the meantime, we're gonna start huntin' freighters."

If in a few days, we cant find a freighter we like, or somethin' happens to put us off that idea...  then we've still got the prison shuttle plan on the go."

Devon looked around to see if anyone disagreed.
"Everyone like the sound of that?"

Arcas unfolded his arms. Devon's decision wasn't exactly assertive, but it did make sense. "Sounds like a rational choice. What about the theft itself?"

Arcas laid his hand down on his chair's armrest. "If the plan is to suffocate or poison the station's occupants, then you can count me out. Indiscriminate killing is the tool of a dictator. But the idea of inducing an evacuation is sound." Arcas cocked his head slightly.

"When a critical alarm goes off in an Imperial spacecraft, most an evacuation order will be given to most personnel. The security and maintenance, however, will troubleshoot the problem and report to the command. If the problem is contained, command can call off the evacuation."

"So if we can cause a false alarm and deceive the maintenance investigation to confirm that the danger to the station is imminent, then we could slip out during the evacuation. We could even commandeer a fully loaded transport on its way out during the confusion."

Arcas tapped his finger. "If we can do those two things, I'd suggest that as our plan."

As Arcas finishes talking the huge battle droid immediately speaks up.

"Moral standpoint formed from an unsound calculation: attacking a hostile military space station, irrespective of method chosen, is not 'indiscriminate.'  It is an extremely discriminate targeted act of war."  CC9's synthesised grating voice is implacable.

"If the target were a civilian space station the suggestion of decompression would not have been put forth.  It is an illogical assertion that such a tactic, applied to a dedicated military installation, is somehow morally reprehensible; it is intended that the station will be destroyed in its entirety either during the mission in question or a later mission.  Additionally, combatants on both sides of this conflict die exposed to hard vacuum in every single starship battle; these deaths number anywhere from their dozens to their thousands.  Precisely how the Imperial forces on the target station are terminated is a matter of semantics: they will all die."

It turns its head back toward Devon and the M4 droid hovering nearby.

"It is most efficient to exterminate as many Imperial forces with as little expenditure of time and effort as possible.  If that can be achieved with minimal damage to infrastructure, leaving our task force with time and relative safety to work until it has acquired all possible supplies and craft, that is more tactically desirable."

Dohr looked at CC9 questionably. "Do you actually see it a plausible solution? Emptying the whole staying of breathable... well air breathable by humans? I would imagine a station floating in a vacuum has been built to prevent such an event by all possible means... Prevented in such a way that when part of the station is compromised, the rest is locked down automatically to prevent the problem from spreading.

I am not an engineer, but I do know a thing or two about computers, firewalls and networks. I am fairly sure all environmental systems and outer doors cannot be accessed via a single server or by a single administrator. Access within the entire network will probably be limited from certain management nodes of selected networks through tightly controlled tunnels to control machines so that all subnets simply cannot be hacked from a single point. I believe we would need several simultaneous hacking attacks to pull it through.

So while we might be able to hack open some of the doors, the IDS or intrusion detection system will doubtlessly pick up our attack probably sooner than later even if we disguise it as a fault in the system or especially so. While they might not realise they're under a attack, the system engineers will certainly make sure no other area of the station will be lost."

There was a break as the Doc gave it some thought.

"Or that is how I would build it. Fortunately we have more skilled and experienced hackers in the team who can tell me I am wrong and all or at least most of the air on the station can be released into the space. So... what am I suggesting then, I can hear you asking... I do not know. As a diversion decompressing parts of the station should work extremely well, but I still see destroying the whole station as something beyond our means. Perhaps we could concentrate on disabling the stations defences as much as possible, destroying as many ships as possible... after confiscating some of course... of and stealing supplies? We could then leave the whole destroying work for the bomber squadrons.

CC9 turns its head to regard the Doctor.

"It is not a simple task, that is factual, and depending on the functionality of the station's systems may be impossible to achieve in any sense of practical efficiency.  However, one member of this meeting has repeatedly expounded its - her - skill with slicing."  It points directly toward Lin, then returning its arm to its side.  "If her skill is not severely exaggerated, and the slicing relay boxes that she proposes are possible to make and place by stealthy operatives in pressurised protective wear, then the plan should be theoretically possible.

"It was never stated that complete decompression must occur all at once, nor that such a plan is necessarily tactically viable, given that we lack infrastructure plans and system specifications for the station in question.  But neither, given the claimed skill of Talon members and historical examples of this task force's capacity to improvise, is the plan particularly unviable.  It is worth noting that slicing will be a requirement of this mission, as it will be necessary to disable or take control of the turbocannon defences that such a station will inevitably possess."

It shifts where it stands.  "Regarding the matter of detonation of the station: it is a refuelling station.  This makes it a volatile location.  It should not be difficult to at least severely damage the station.  If it is viable to place slicing hubs then it should be equally viable to place detonation charges that will damage or destroy most of the infrastructure.  Several members of the task force have familiarity with explosive devices, myself included."

"Keep in mind that even a sudden loss of atmo would likely not take them all out.  Some of them will have breathers or be in suits or something, and anyone in a ship will have independent atmo.  It would thin the numbers for sure, but we'd still be fighting.  We're still supposed to blow the place up if we can though, right?  No matter how much we tear into the atmospheric generators, the Imps would be able to fix them pretty quick.

Mika didn't speak to morals of killing everyone, not because she didn't have qualms, but because she wouldn't be able to stay focused if she started thinking about it.

CC9 looks toward Mika.

"Correct.  That is why I queried the percentages of Imperials that would be likely to be so equipped.  There is a vanishingly small but non-zero probability that this mission will complete without combat, but if that is possible to achieve it would be highly preferable to any active hostile engagements."

Arcas glared at the droid and let his discontentment show. He had so many objections; Combatants in an active battle had the option to surrender, no-one had yet put up any evidence that the station didn't contain any civilians, resorting to mass murder via sabotage plays right into the hand of Imperial propaganda, and as a recent reminder, had Arcas not given a chance to change sides, there could have been an actual Imperial spy sitting in this very chair.

But the Talons seemed disinterested in continuing the analysis of morality, so Arcas stayed silent. As a pilot and a scholar, he did not have any pertinent remarks to make anyway.

If CC9 notices Arcas's discontent it makes no sign of the matter.

"Far easier than to vent the whole station empty of atmosphere would be to lock down the station and open the required doors when needed. If given an access to a security station, it should not be that difficult to achieve. Of course, gaining access to one would be the hard part, but still easier than to decompress the whole station or even larger parts of it at once", Lin said. She did not adress CC9's query of whether she was as good as 'she claimed' or not - she had no reason to. She'd already proven her skill by hacking the code cylinder on the fly.

"Final repeat: I did not suggest the possibility of venting the atmosphere all at once.  That is a false premise.  It is a non-constructive claim to assert.  If it is a simple enough matter for you to open doors one at a time, the systematic decompression of the station should be equally within your skill, should that course of action be taken."