With a fanged grin and low rumble, Juragga wishes Rhijans, Jacobs and his team good luck and good hunting.

Then he follows Shard and the kid out the door.

Just don't get killed.

Shaking her head at Rhijans' comment, her stomach tied in knots, Shard takes a moment for a last glance at the other group and heads out the door.  "Right," she mutters.  "We need to find those slaves, and quickly.  Any guesses as to where?  My first choice would be 'down', but...Haarmon, you find them on your waltz through the computer?"
Under the coat, she carefully arranges her gear.  Pistol in the shoulder harness, easily accessible.  Flask in her inner pocket, ready to be drawn at a moment's notice.  And balancing the pistol, hanging down from the other side of the harnass....

Shard shakes her head.  "Juragga.  There are Wookies here.  Stupid question, maybe, but will your people fight?"  She considers the question and amends it.  "Given the way the Imperials treat them, do you think your people will be able to fight?"

Juragga snarls as he unlimbers his bowcaster from beneath his poncho, keeping it low and at his side.  Then he huffed, considering Shard's question.

The answer, given in a long warble, was simply: it depends on how long they've been here.  But if they were capable of manual labor - the kind of work Wooks were mostly used for - they'd be capable of fighting.

Then: Where?

Where were the Wookiees, and how many?  Did anyone know?

"Grrrrrrrrrrmmmfff," he rumbled.  Down would be the logical choice.

UY-3PO walks along with the others, and steps onto the elevator platform, which starts to descend towards the ground level.  Shard speaks to Juragga and receives an answer.  The droid feels compelled to point out, "Actually I don't believe anybody has confirmed that there are Wookiees here.  I certainly can not confirm it.  I have not seen any Wookiees, at least since my last mind wipe.  With the obvious exception of Juragga, here."

They reach the ground, and the protocol droid starts through the building towards the nearest exit.  "I would wrap up well if I were you.  We are going to have to go outside to get to the mine itself."  Haarmon Dak, disguised as a snowtrooper, brings up the rear, his blaster cradled in his arms.

They reach the door, and the temperature drops sharply as Shard slaps the controls and a blast of cold air, laden with snow, blows in.

"This way, please."

Meanwhile, the other team, all disguised as troopers, take a different route after leaving the elevator, going back through the building, past the admin office, where staff (including the administrator) are still cursing the computer failure which has wiped out most of the day's shipping orders...

The team step out through the external door, and suddenly discover that their armour is surprisingly comfortable under the right conditions.  Drawing only brief glances from two snowtroopers who appear to be on guard detail outside the admin office door, they march away through the snow towards the landing field and the parked ship...

Haarmon followed Shard and Juragga. Don't slouch, he told himself, Shoulders back. Look like you know where you're going. Look like you know what you're doing. You're the man. Walk it like you talk it.

As soon as they were out of the exit he shuffled up next to the other two. Just to look more like he was escorting them. And not following them like some idiot kid who never been off-planet before.

"We know where we're going?" he asked.

"Yeah," Shard murmurs.  "How long they've been here."  She grimaces, having experienced Imperial mines herself for a few painfully long days in the past.  "Worst week ever."  Reaching out, she touches Juragga's arm.  "We'll find them."  Her jaw sets.

We'll find them.

But UY darkens her hopes with his observation.  "So if they're here, they're pretty deep," she mutters.  It does make sense; one doesn't allow enslaved Wookies to mix with the general populace.  People in captivity become...irrational, and understandably so.  Someone says or does something wrong, and you're suddenly short a few slaves.

She zips up her jacket and throws her hood over her head.  It locks in her weapons, but...would stick out like a sore thumb if I went out there jacket open.  The cold slices like a razor; while in her youth Shard tended to run through the worst possible places (and often in the least possible clothing - it just seemed to turn out that way, almost as if some guiding hand arranged such things), these days icy winds cut her to the bone.

"We're following You-Why!" she shouts over the wind.  "He'll get us to where we go down!"

Then...we go down.

Moving through the bitterly cold conditions, UY-3PO leads the rebel team, and the temporarily seconded Ubese through the gateway to the inner compound of the mine complex.  The site which meets their eyes as they pass through the gate is not the sort of thing calculated to make them feel warmer.  There are snowtroopers, either in pairs or in groups of four or more stationed in several locations around the area.  Near the entrance to a large structure two teams can be seen setting up tripod-mounted weapons.

"That, I am afraid," UY-3PO says, "is the entrance to the mine itself."

One of the troopers, in a group of four about fifty metres to their left, suddenly notices the odd mixed group, and points them out to his companions, all of whom look in the indicated direction...

Meanwhile the other team makes it back to the landing field.  A half squad of troopers passes them, and they cover their presence there by pretending to search around the parked ships.  When the coast is clear, Vekkis Lund opens the hatch of Bold Gambit, and they all duck inside quickly...

Rhijans proceeded quickly back to the engineering section, digging out the packets of explosives that the techs had loaded for him back at the Rebel base.  They wouldn't have much time on here, and anything they left with, if noticed, might be subject to seizure by someone else...which would really impact their ability to make things happen.

He ran the inventory in his mind, checking it against what he had...detonite, detonators, remote triggers, timers...

As he was doing that, he also began calculating...how much time would they need to get things done?  By the time he'd managed to tuck his supply of 'goodies' away in the utility belt on the 'trooper armor, he only had a small amount that he needed to carry in some other way.  For now, he'd have to settle for an innocuous-looking container.

"Think we better call the Y-wings...by the time they get here, we should be trying to get out...and if we're not on our way out at that point, we're probably never getting out of here.  Figure that should give us at least two hours..." he said, as he rejoined the other two.  Check the warehouse, take out comms and exterior weapons...two hours should be about right, he calculated again.  Maybe three...

Haarmon sees the knot of Stormtroopers and a little worm of fear sank itself into his belly and started gnawing at him. He found that his knees and his hands were trembling. More than a little.

He took a breath. Shard was watching. And even more importantly, Juragga was watching. Even that stupid droid was watching. And the last thing he wanted to do was give goldenballs there ammunition. Didn't need that kind of hassle.

He looked back over his shoulder at his companions.  Nodded to them in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. And he turned, put his shoulders back, and started toward the entrance to the mine.

For his own part, Juragga moved behind Haarmon as if he were subdued and defeated, and belonged there.  Meanwhile, he did his best to track the enemy with his peripheral vision.

Vekkis takes only a few moments to send the message - a seemingly random burst of static, which is actually precisely formatted.  The "random" pattern of the static exactly matches one that the fighter pilots have been told to listen out for...

Far above Alrirkr, hidden close to the small, shapeless moon which orbits the same gas giant planet as Alrirkr itself, engines flare briefly into life, and four Z-95s start the long, slow stealth descent towards their target.

Aboard Bold Gambit a timer starts its equally long, slow countdown... 

The snowtrooper and the protocol droid, accompanied by the odd trio of a human, a Wookiee, and a Ubese move across the open area towards the mine entrance.  Perhaps worryingly, the troopers at the entrance appear to have finished setting up the pair of E-Web heavy repeating blasters, and they seem to be pointed a little to close to the approaching group.

The strange group gets close to the doorway, and one of the troopers calls out, clearly addressing Haarmon, "Who are these, and what are they doing here?"

Rhijans paused, for an uncharacteristic sigh.  He wasn't used to racing an actual countdown...sure, he typically set a timetable for himself in anything that he did, and tried to stick to it, but the prospect of trying to pull all the various strings together on this one and get them tied off before chaos started raining from the skies overhead was just a little daunting.

Still, it had to be done...and letting himself dwell on the odds wouldn't make things go any smoother.  "Okay, clock is running.  Let's get to the warehouse, see if we can locate our cargo and the stuff the Ubese was looking for, and see about some way to get it here.  We probably can't get away with moving it now...pretty sure snowtroopers don't run cargo gear around here...but we need to identify what's there and what we can use.  And we've gotta do it fast."

He laid out the checklist in his mind.  Cargo ready.  Slaves freed.  Comm systems decommissioned so the Imperials couldn't call for reinforcements.  Any local emplacement weapons taken offline.  Cargo loaded.  Slaves loaded.  Exit procedures.  Rebel pilots blow the place apart.

It sounded so much less troubling when he just listed the objectives, and didn't worry about all the potential complications along the way...

They're close now - close enough to the troopers that the repeating blasters are less of a concern.  A false move, and at a longer range those voidawful blasters would burn them down.  Now...they only have to worry about a squad of troopers.

Shard isn't particularly sanguine about repeating her feat in the cafeteria.  For one thing, her hands have begun to shake from the cold.

The lead trooper calls out to the group, and she relaxes further.  Questions are normal.  Questions give Haarmon a chance to respond, and he did excellently with some of his retorts back in the cafeteria before the Bantha dung hit the recirculators.  Questions also give the group a chance to get closer still.

She just hopes Haarmon doesn't toss a quip into his answer.  It's not exactly Imperial com procedure.

Rhijans and the others prepare to leave the ship, checking that they have everything they need, and a clear idea of what they're going to do with everything.  Searching the warehouse should be the easy part.  That area of the facility is filled with troopers who are doing exactly that - a few extra probably won't be noticed.  The difficult part will be, of course, getting whatever they find out of there...

Out on the ice, approaching the entrance to the mine itself, the other group have suddenly become the centre of attention for the handful of troopers with the heavy weapons protecting the doorway.  More worrying, perhaps, are the much more numerous troopers who, while further away, might still be close enough to join in if trouble starts...

UY-3PO urges caution, speaking as quietly as possible, "Please try not to aggravate them.  This is probably not the best place to be if anybody starts a fight."  Privately he prays to the Maker that the Ubese will understand this.

Haarmon stops dead in his tracks in response to the trooper's question. The armour made any kind of accurate body language almost impossible. Which was probably for the best, all things considered. But he manages a sort of half-shrug.

"No clue. I'm just supposed to bring 'em over, bring 'em down, check 'em in, and leave. Personally, I think the administrators think they had something to do with the shipping system going all Alderaan around here today. But what do we care, am I right? Ask me no questions and I tell you no lies, you know what I'm sayin'?"

Haarmon bites his lip inside the helmet to shut himself up. He always talks too much when he's nervous. And most other times, too, for that matter.

As they entered the warehouse area, Rhijans pulled Jacobs and Lund aside for a moment.  "We've gotta take care of two things, here.  We have to locate the stuff we were sent in after, and the stuff for our new friend.  And, we need to locate whatever cargo conveyance they've got to move it to the docking bays.  No need to actually move it, yet, but we're not gonna have time once things get hot to be puzzling things out.  We need to be able to come back and know exactly what we need to do and where to go to do it."

As they stepped in the door, his gaze started sweeping the building, as best it could in the helmet.  His mind was analyzing everything it took in...the number of troopers here, the way cargo was organized, any markings that might help indicate what was in which sections, computer terminals, surveillance systems...

The fact that they were, supposedly, searching the space for a threatening individual that was trying to avoid capture made his scrutiny less obvious, as his progress into the space was slow.

As Haarmon talked to the trooper, Juragga did his best to sag and look defeated.  Inwardly, he was ready to spring; but he was also proud of Haarmon.  Keep it up, he thought.  You're doing great.

The troopers stand there, staring at Haarmon.  At least they look as if they are staring.  Their attention appears to be in his direction - that is where front of their helmets are pointing.  For all anybody knows though, most of them could be asleep in there, or talking to their control centre about the recent discovery of several naked troopers in the miners' break room...

Finally, after what feels like several hours but is in all probability a second or two, the trooper on duty replies, "You must be one of the new batch."  He walks out, past Haarmon, pausing to examine the presumed prisoners, before turning back to the imposter.  "In future remember that prisoner transfers are supposed to be done at times specified in the orders of the day.  You're thirty seven minutes late."

Turning away, he looks up, waving to a window some twenty metres up the side of the building, and with a loud screech the massive blast door starts to scrape open, revealing blackness inside.  "Sub-level 25.  That's where they're processing prisoners."


The warehouse stretches out before Mark, Rhijans and Vekkis, vast and lit with a cold, harsh light.  There are snowtroopers everywhere, searching for any sign of trouble.  There are also others here, wearing the work uniforms of the miners, they are hurrying about, comparing markings on shipping containers to datapads that they are carrying.  Sometimes the comparison results in nothing more than an angry scowl or a few curses, but other times it results in the mine worker using a hand held comm set to summon a CLL-8 load lifter droid to come and collect the container.

In most cases it takes several minutes for the droid to get there...


UY-3PO politely thanks the troopers as Haarmon directs his "prisoners" inside, and they find themselves in a large, dimly lit freight elevator.  A touch of the correct control stud, and the elevator starts to descend, dropping down towards sub-level 25...  The protocol droid, his receptors shining brightly in the gloom comments, "I have a bad feeling about this."

Haarmon was quiet on the elevator ride down. Quiet and still. At least to all external appearances. Inside his system was so ramped up he wanted to jump and dance and scream and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. Between the buzzing in his head and the roiling combination of terror and relief in his stomach and the swirling of walking that close to the edge and walking away, it was taking all of his willpower to keep himself from throwing up inside his helmet.

But underneath all that was a small warm blooming thought. You did it, that thought said, Talked him down. Put one over on the man. And beneath that thought was the entirely unusual desire to find another Stormtrooper.

So he could do it again.

Rhijans cursed a little bit, to himself.  The crowd of people that was providing them an effective blanket of anonymity was also making it effectively impossible to research what they needed to know.  None of the troopers, apparently, were talking to the miners--if they started asking questions, they'd be immediately out of place and noticeable.  If they asked the wrong questions, it'd be even worse.

He gestured Lund and Jacobs closer.  As he spoke, he was mindful of the fact that they could potentially be overheard.  "We should move on.  They've got plenty of hands here, we're only going to wind up tripping over somebody.  We can come back later, if we need to."  He looked at Jacobs (as best he could), 'waiting' for 'the sergeant'.

Distraction, he thought.  If we can get the troopers out of here, maybe we can come back and get one of those datapads...and the comm units...  He ran through the layout of the mine compound in his head again.  The comm center...or power for the emplacement weapons.  One or the other would be a good crisis-inducing target.  Maybe they could capture an emplacement and use it to chew up the compound a little bit before they blew the power...

As they moved on, Juragga let out a low warble to Haarmon.  "RrrraaaaWWWwwwr."

Great job kid!  ...Don't get cocky.

"Good job," Shard mutters as they slip into the mine entrance.  Her heart almost stopped - twice - when the troopers stood staring in silence; Haarmon's com-ettiquette needs some work.  But they're past them, 'safe and sound', and descending into the darkness of an Imperial Mine.

Her lips thin as bad memories bubble up.  This time, though, she's not alone, with a wookie, a surprisingly competent rookie, and a droid for company.  It helps a surprising amount.

"Prisoner processing.  They'll have records."  She allows herself a twitch of a smile that would look like a grimace on any cameras.  "We're headed in the right direction.  Just keep it simple, Haarmon - so far, so good."

Turning, she squints at the shining droid.  "Why does someone always say that?  It never helps."  With a sigh, Shard relents.  "Though you've been an enormous help so far yourself, Youwhy."

Mark Jacobs looks at Rhijans for a moment, then nods his head.  "Let's move on to the next section.  Keep an eye open, the target could be anywhere."

There.  That sounded nice and official, just in case.

His biggest concern though is not missing the target.  It's still being on the ground when the fighters start their attack run.  Second only to that is the idea of still being in a trooper suit if a bunch of Wookiees decide to go on the rampage, because he doubts he'll have time to explain who he is before he loses vital body parts.

The elevator descends into the gloom of the mine, and for those not in insulated and temperature regulated armour the cold becomes almost bearable.  The door slides open, and a cool mist billows into the car.  The display indicates that they are at SL-25, and the car doesn't seem to be showing any tendency to descend further.

Outside the door, a wide tunnel with water trickling down the walls and dripping from the ceiling, leads directly away from the elevator.  It's in almost complete darkness, lit only by small dim glowglobes every hundred metres or so, and by what faint light spills from the elevator.  The only other source of light is at the far end, which a quick count of the glowglobes would reveal to be perhaps a kilometer away, where a set of blast doors stand open, allowing illumination to seep out from beyond.

The dim light makes the hulking shapes of mining equipment standing in the tunnel look eerie and menacing.  There is nobody in the tunnel, but there do seem to be shapes moving about at the far end.  Difficult to see in the gloom and the mist...


The new snowtroopers move through the warehouse.  The structure is vast, and there are a lot of items to check and little time to do it in.  For all any of them know, they could have walked straight past the cargo they're looking for.  They enter the second section and...

... suddenly it seems that luck, or maybe the Force, is with them after all.

Twenty or thirty metres to their left as they pass through the door is something which doesn't look like it belongs here.  It looks almost like a safe, but large enough to hold an AT-AT.  Well, perhaps not quite that large, but large all the same.

The structure looks like a blockhouse, complete with closed blast door.  And it's guarded.  There are nine troopers stationed outside...

Rhijans ran a glance around the panorama.  Maybe, just maybe...one of the emplacement guns he was thinking about commandeering would be able to fire on this position.  He'd rather hit it with one or two blasts and narrow down the number of guards than try and fight his way in at some point.  The fact that the troopers were here, guarding this, when everyone else seemed to be out searching for the Ubese was a good indicator that these guys would not be running off to answer alarms when the comm center went up.

There had to be a way to get rid of them, though...and if it was something that would actually blow through the front doors, so much the better.  He hadn't exactly planned on advanced demolitions when he put together his little grab bag of surprises, and even if he knew how to blow the door...or short out the security system and get in, for that matter...as long as there were other troopers on duty, he wouldn't get a chance to do much along those lines.

Adapt the plan...adapt the plan...  The mantra ran in the back of his mind.  It was pretty easy, as the plan itself seemed to be all about adapting to the conditions as they discovered them.  He kept walking, as he looked...he didn't want to become conspicuous as the only non-guarding trooper standing still out there.