"Spectacular," Shard replies to the droid.  "No, seriously."  The last thing they'd need would be to lug a pile of unconcious bodies out of the mine.  "Thanks, Juragga." There's no way her wiry muscles could manage the Ubese, not for long anyway.  "Haarmon, good job in the firefight."

Kid did well.  Better than I did, anyway.  She really should put in some time practicing with blasters.

With the Ubese stabilized, Shard leans back and brushes an errant lock of hair behind her ear. "He'll live," she repeats, satisfied.  Lips thin, she turns left and right, glancing up and down the hallways.  "We should check out what's up in here, but...YouWhy, do you have an idea where the slaves are kept?  Or did they wipe that?" Bastards.

Haarmon put his hand around the detonator and stood up. Slowly. He stood. Stared. Oddly enough, this was more disconcerting to him than getting shot at by blasters was. Slaves. Those are slaves over there. Like from holovids. He'd imagined rescuing slaves to be a more romantic endeavour. Swooping down on a transport, cheering happy workers throwing down their chains and crowding all around (more than a few of them scantily clad, busty, and very grateful, as a rule). But this? This was something altogether different. Just seeing them there made him feel soiled. Even the idea of rescuing them seemed dirty. Almost as though he were the one that owned them. His trooper armour suddenly felt hot and tight and oily, somehow.

For the first time, he didn't even register Shard's voice.

"Guys," he said, his voice an unfamiliar low and flat version of his usual tone, "Guys." A pause. Then, a little louder. "Rags. Shard. C'mere."

He still hadn't moved. Still stood there. Detonator in hand. Staring.

She hears the numbness in his voice.  Oh.  Shard closes her eyes for a moment and slowly nods her head.  "YouWhy...can you keep an eye on him?"  She points down at the Ubese.  "Let me know if he starts bleeding suddenly, or his breathing changes."  Feeling old - terribly old - she pushes herself to her feet.

"Coming, Haarmon."

Her feet are almost silent as she pads over the rocky ground to Haarmon, heel-toe, her breath loose and even.  Calming exercises.  But her right hand rubs her left wrist almost unconciously.  She hates this part, the part where she sees things again that make her want to simply kill every Imperial she finds on this base, from stormtroopers to office functionaries.  All simply because they're here and 'doing their jobs'.

She doesn't know what Haarmon has found, but she can guess.  It's a mine, Shard.  You've been there.  You know what they're like.  You just try to forget, so you can be human.  The poor kid.

No.  Not a kid any more, the older woman figures.

Coming up beside Haarmon, she puts her palm down on his shoulder and carefully takes the thermal detonator from him with her other hand.  Then Shard looks.

Guess they had a little something besides comm gear in there, some part of Rhijans' mind commented drily, keeping a tenacious grip on rationality when part of him wanted nothing more than to throw the trooper's body off his chest and get clear of the elevator.

Forcing himself to work slowly, he shifted the trooper to the side.  He didn't want to start jerking things around and bouncing the elevator...not until he knew if it was stuck, safety-locked, or on emergency power, at least.  He'd gone far enough up the tower that he didn't want to reverse the journey in a free-falling elevator car.

At least he could be relatively certain that there wouldn't be Imperial reinforcements arriving.  As he got the trooper's body clear of his, he pushed himself up to a seated position and took a look at the elevator's display panel.  If it was still under its own power, indicator lights should be showing.

If not...well...he was going to have to figure out how in the Void he was getting down from here, because he was pretty sure this would also be high on the priority list of targets when the Headhunters came in on their bombing run.

Juragga lumbered forward, mildly irritated - he'd just finished this damned sling, and was about to load the Urbese into it.  But his irritation faded as he realized what the kid must have found.

His teal eyes widened as he took in the sight, then narrowed.  He let out a slow lament, a direct translation of which was unnecessary.

There are a lot of them, all clad in dirty, tattered, fluorescent yellow and black coveralls, not at all like the uniforms worn by mine employees.  Some are human, most are aliens - Bith, Duros, Bothan, Cendiri, Erichok, Kethad, Osad'In, Sior, Stochok, and several more, but no Wookiees.

Several of them start to edge forward, muttering in various languages and nervously hefting tools.  As they get closer, it becomes clear that they are all wearing some sort of collar in addition to their shabby clothing, collars which bear a series of pulsing green lights...

The elevator panel is cracked, and not showing any indicators.  Flickering light is, however, shining faintly through one of the cracks, which is also emitting whisps of oily black smoke which smells of burnt insulation.  On the plus side, though, the elevator shows no sign of shifting as Rhijans moves about.

There doesn't seem to be any sound from the comms room, apart from the occasional sizzle, hiss, and pop of power discharges, accompanied by flares of blue-green light.

Suddenly he hears a voice, faint and distant, "Hello!  Can anybody hear me?"  It doesn't come from the comms room though, it seems to be from somewhere above him in the shaft...

For his own peace of mind, Rhijans decided to vacate the elevator before making any attempt at response, and kept the helmet in place, even though he was privately cursing the narrowed field of vision and its accompanying restriction to his awareness of his surroundings.

He stepped up the meter or so to clear the elevator car and step onto the communications level.  He made a quick scan of the room to assure himself that there were no threats before he turned his attention to the voice calling down from overhead.

"Who's up there?" he called back.  He had no idea, at all, what would be proper trooper protocol for this situation...he hoped there wouldn't be one, really, because his best bet for pulling this off would be operating outside the standard Imperial rules of engagement.

There is a momentary pause, "Hello!  Hello!  This is Senior Technician Collis!  I'm up here with a tech squad, and we're trapped!  The elevator looks to be wrecked, and the hatch to the emergency ladder is jammed!  My team have stopped the fire up here, but we have no way out."

There is a brief, ominous rumbling, and another section of the outer wall drops away from the comms centre.  An equipment cabinet which has been sparking continuously since the explosion suddenly starts emitting smoke and flame...

In the mines, the mob stops walking, and a Stochok, its mouth a horrific forest of fangs in a face that might possibly have been severely beaten and tortured, but just as possibly might have been born looking like that, snarls at the Rebel team, a long, drawn-out growl which ends on a higher pitch.

UY-3PO shuffles forward, "She wants to know if you are here to rescue them."

Another growl.  "And does anybody want to challenge her for the right to eat the flesh of the stormtroopers?"

Juragga gapes in horror at the condition of the slaves, his eyes wide, and yowls a low, mournful Wookiee yowl.

Glancing to Haarmon, he rumbled, "Are those shock collars - or explosive?", not knowing if the kid would know or not.  He might be able to tell, with some examination.

Then the massive Stochok growled at them, and YouWhy translated helpfully.  Juragga glanced meaningfully to Shard, knowing the Jedi wouldn't want anyone eating prisoners.

"gggGGGRRRRRAAAAuuuuhhhhrrrAAAAAWWWLLL!" he roared back.  We are here to rescue you - but no eating the prisoners, was the translation.

Rhijans debated whether or not to respond to the tech, or take advantage of the audible rumble to leave the tech wondering if something else had happened down here.  He shot a glance through the hole in the outer wall, trying to assess just how far above the ground the comm center was and whether or not climbing down was an option.  The fire would definitely add haste, but if there was more altitude to be covered than there was cord available in his gear, he'd be trading death by fire for death by impact, and he wasn't interested in either option.

Until he'd made that assessment, he'd let the techs upstairs wonder what had happened...

Haarmon makes a face at the droid's translation. "Can I choose the challenge? I think I could take her at basic arithmetic. You-Why, don't translate that."

He was starting to get a little of his equilibrium back. Part of it was time. Part of it was the way Shard and Rags were handling things. Part of it was simply that there was an audience now and that meant Raalla Dak's favourite son Haarmon had to man up and put down.

Sometimes there's no escaping one's nature.

"Good call, Rags," said in response to Juragga's query. He didn't know. But maybe with a quick look? He took a step toward the mist timid looking slave that was the furthest from the Stochok.

Her bloodied hand brings the rock down, again and again, battering the trooper's head against his own helmet.  Stunned, he relaxes for an instant and Shard's other hand wins the battle, wrenching the blaster away.  Air screams as she fires into him at point-blank range, one-two-three, and the young woman falls away to the rocky ground, gasping for breath.

She can't really blame Stochok.  At all.

"Like...like he says," she rasps out, jerking a thumb at Juragga.  "No killing the troopers.  Leave them here." If they die when the place goes  up, so be it.  That's war, and they have a chance to get clear.  "But yeah...this is a rescue.  Rebellion's busting you out, people; line up, and my friend here will see about getting your collars off."

Haarmon can, or so she hopes.  Otherwise, they'll have to cut them away, and if they're explosive...no, the Imperials wouldn't risk explosive collars.  Not in a mine like this.  They kept the slaves cowed already, and likely didn't want even small charges going off around the ore.

Speaking of Haarmon, he seems to be keeping it together.  If she didn't miss her guess, some of the swagger has crept back into his poise.  Maybe a defense mechanism, maybe he's just handling it; either way, Haarmon is still on the ball, and for that Shard is grateful.  Juragga, of course, is a solid wall; something to lean against and catch their breath.

Maybe we aren't the best shots, she muses, moving forward to help the slaves, but we're a fine team so far.  Which brought up worried thoughts of Rhijans and Jacobs.

They'll be all right.  Professionals, those two.  She hopes.

Up close, the stench of the slaves is nearly indescribable and Shard fights to keep her eyes free of tears at the sight of their pitiful condition.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:50, Fri 30 Dec 2011.

Leaving the tech officer upstairs guessing, Rhijans looks out of the hole in the wall.  The drop looks to be about twenty or twenty-five metres.  Thirty tops.  There is a spool of line in the belt that came with the trooper armour which looks like it should put him close enough to the ground that any remaining distance would be survivable.  Especially since there looks to be a snow drift almost directly below him.

Behind him another equipment cabinet, doubtless encouraged by its neighbour's behaviour, starts to crackle and spark...

UY-3PO translates for the Stochok, then apparently for some of the other species present.  This is followed by some excited chattering, growling, and the odd hooting.

Haarmon examines the collar on one of the Bith, while the other slaves quieten down to see what happens next.  Except the Stochok, which continues to grumble.

"Oh, dear.  She says that not eating the flesh of her fallen enemies will bring great shame upon her, unless there is an honour challenge."  UY-3PO shakes his head, "I really can not fathom how some organics ever manage to learn to walk upright, given their barbaric attitudes."

Rhijans debated with himself for a moment as he pulled out the line, making one end fast to an equipment cabinet that should easily outweigh him by several times and wouldn't be likely to slide as he lowered himself down the outside of the building.  The debate was what to do about the technicians on the level above him.  On the one hand, they were just technicians, and likely hadn't done anything directly injurious to anyone.  On the other hand, they were Imperials, maintaining a facility that was supplying materiel to oppressive government forces and using slave labor to do it.  They were hardly innocent bystanders...

He hooked a descender rig to the safety line, and to his belt...and figured he'd at least give the techs a heads-up to the threat that awaited them.  He wouldn't do anything to help them escape...but they should have the wherewithal to overcome the lack of assistance from one enemy combatant.

"Fire!  There's a fire burning down--!!!"  He fell silent, as though something had happened to injure him or render him unable to say more, and then slipped himself out the large hole that had been rent in the wall and began lowering himself down to the ground level, churning through, in his head, a cover story to tell anyone who came to confront him once he got down there.  Most of the truth would probably do...a trooper reported to the comm level and some kind of explosive went off.  Reporting too many details would be suspicious, if he was just supposed to be a guard on duty...

Spitting a curse, Shard stalks over to the Stochok. "Can't say I blame her," she mutters, facing the impressive set of teeth.  "We don't have time," she states flatly but quietly, letting the edge fall out of her tone.  "This entire facility is going to be bombed, and we need to get you to freedom.  Besides, you didn't kill these enemies.  If you need an honor challange, I'll be glad to give you one when we get out of here.  Your terms."

She's not sure what an honor challange would be - there's always the concern of it being 'unarmed combat under water' - but better to get them out of here now and worry about What Might Be™ once they're in the clear.

And there is no cursed way Shard will browbeat or threaten the Stochok into compliance.  Not here.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:13, Wed 04 Jan 2012.

Haarmon wished he'd listened more in school. Maybe he'd know what, precisely, an Honour Challenge was. Maybe it was a trivia contest and they were all freaking out over nothing. But no time for that now.

"I don't think they're gonna explode," he called out, "But there's something shady going on here. Maybe they're proximity alarms? And they shock them if they leave the grounds?"

Juragga glanced to Shard.  He was torn.  The idea of letting the weary, petite Jedi face an angry Stochok in an honor duel was an anathema to him.  But just as much, the idea of fighting the Stochok to protect her enslaving and no-doubt abusive Stormtroopers?

He didn't know if his own honor code would permit that.

"RaaaAAAUUGGGnnnn," he warbled.  We don't have all day...

"All right," Shard whispers, reaching into her coat.  Out comes a silvery rod about the length of her forearm.  As she walks toward the trussed stormtroopers, she pushes open a cap on the back with her thumb.  It squeaks; evidently the hinge hasn't been oiled in some time.

Void, she hates this thing.  But it's loyal - like an attack dog, always ready to kill at her command - and Shard knows she should treat it better.

Dropping into a crouch next to a helmetless trooper, she brushes back a strand of hair and meets his eyes.  "I'm the only thing standing between you getting eaten alive right now."  Letting out a breath, she waits a beat, giving her words ample time to sink in.  "You're not gaining anything by not answering this question, and you're risking a very great deal.  So."

Her fingers find a specific dial within the cylinder and slowly click it down to its minimum.  The near-forgotten yet familiar feeling relaxes her muscles, allowing her to focus as she works.

"What's the deal with the collars?"  One eyebrow cocks.  Ceasing her work, Shard reached out her free hand and lays it down on top the trooper's head, keeping it turned toward her.  "They alarmed?  Fused?  Gonna explode if we cut 'em off, or get too far away?  Or they just have remote pain-compliance systems?"
This message was last edited by the player at 12:51, Wed 04 Jan 2012.

"She says that, even though she did not kill them, she is entitled to eat of their flesh because of the harm they have done to her.  They have stolen her life from her, taken her from her young, tortured her, and forced her to work here, where she can not see the faces of her gods." UY-3PO continues to translate the grumbling voice of the Stochok, "She says that it is her Right of Retribution, and that only losing an unarmed honour duel can remove her right, and her obligation, to wreak vengeance on these, her enemies and the enemies of her family and of her people."

The alien, almost as tall as Juragga, and only slightly less bulky, and with an extensive bone exoskeleton falls silent, folding her arms over her chest.  Her expression is unreadable behind the bone mask which is her face.

Shard, meanwhile, has turned her attention to one of the troopers.  Her demand for information is met by immediate denial, "I'm not going to tell you anything, Rebel scum." 

In the tower, or rather, outside the tower, Rhijans slides down to ground level easily, only having to drop the last metre or so.  Looking up, he sees that the damage seems moderately severe.  There are broken windows up there, in addition to the  makeshift exit that he had used, and smoke is pouring from all of the openings.  A look around the compound reveals that there is more smoke coming from the warehouse, and he can see flames through a large fissure in the wall of the building.

All in all, it looks as if his own small team, at least, have managed to make quite a mess of some parts of the facility.

It was a tough call, whether or not to push their luck when things seemed to be progressing relatively smoothly, but Rhijans decided that making his own luck was working for him thus far, and began making his way back to the entrance to the vehicle storage bay.  For one thing, the remaining E-web was still there and operational, and while he didn't think it posed a major threat to the incoming fighters, it would make a mess of the slaves, if Shard had to lead them anywhere near the mouth of the compound to get back to the hangar.

And there was always the chance that there might be some kind of transport craft...a cargo speeder or something of the sort...that would let them get everyone moved from the mine entrance to the hangar quickly, rather than having the slaves slogging across the open terrain.

If he was really lucky, there might even be an armed speeder.

He glanced quickly at his chrono, trying to figure just how much time he had left before the Headhunters started raining danger out of the sky, and focused on the yard, looking to see if anyone had made note of his descent from the tower or if they were all occupied elsewhere.  He really hoped, if Jacobs and Lund had set off the detonator in the storage area, that they'd had the sense to try and stay out of sight when it went off.  Their best ally right now was the anonymity of looking like every other Imperial soldier, and acting like any attack was targeting them, as well...he could only imagine that, after being caught on the fringes of two significant blasts, he was starting to look the part, as well.

Shard takes a brief glance over her shoulder at the Stochok.  Void.  What does one do under these circumstances?  The woman has a point, even if her own traditions disgust Shard.  She's not cannibalizing, and the Stormtroopers did worse to living people than she's considering doing to the unfeeling dead...to satisfy a religious imperative.

Not that religious imperatives are any reason for atrocities, but.

And then there's the matter of Shard needing to win an unarmed duel with her, here and now, to stop it.

We don't have time for this.  She grins at the Stormtrooper, and it's darned near as toothy as the Stochok's smile.  "You just did."  Her knees ache as she pushes herself to her feet.  "Juragga, Haarmon, we're looking for the officer of this bunch - he has a control unit for their collars.  It might have an release switch, it might not, but they're shock-collars, not explosive.  We can cut them off, if necessary."

Slowly she turns to the Stochok.  She could let Haarmon or Juragga decide.  She could pass the credit.  She could...

...pop open my flask and drink, right?

"Take a finger from each, then, because we're in a bit of a hurry." Her eyes hard as flint, Shard steps closer.  "From the dead ones.  And just what you need.  I've got my own imperatives and Rights."

It's not going to do the rebellion any good if the newcasts get ahold of desecrated corpses, but at the moment it's coming down to that or they fight the Stochok.  No time, and frankly, Shard doesn't feel the inclination to take on the abused woman.  "Gonna be fun explaining this to the general," she mutters, rubbing the back of her head and moving to assist her friends find the control device.

More grumbling from the alien, and "She agrees, though she does make a point that you, her saviour, seem just as prone to interfere in her ancient customs and impose your own restrictions on them as the Imperials are."

"Quite honestly, I had not realised that a Stochok's vocal cords and subsonic emitters were capable of expressing such bitter irony quite so effectively."

Juragga and Haarmon search the bodies, both dead and merely incapacitated, and soon come up with what looks like it might be a control unit for the collars.  Some brief experimentation (carefully avoiding the large red button with the lightning bolt on it, which incidentally seems to be much more worn than any of the other controls) reveals the release mechanism.  One by one the collars are removed from the slaves...

Rhijans makes it to the vehicle bays.  The large door is currently open as a heavy cargo crawler is coming out into the icy compound.  Inside the bay, Rhijans can see various speeders, skiffs and crawlers in various states of repair.  Techs seem to be working on some of them, while others look to be operational and ready for use.

There is, of course, the small matter of the troopers on guard at the door.  They seem much more alert than the ones by the first E-Web had been...

"Stuff it," Shard snaps (at the Stochok, not the protocol droid).  "I'm damnsure putting up with you taking a moment to do your thing.  We're on a tight time-table here, so do it and be done."  She doesn't bother going into the whole 'If I were like them, I'd leave you in that collar' thing - it smacks of a threat, and threatening a victim to get some kind of personal satisfaction or win an argument doesn't sit at all well with her.

With clicks, the collars are removed.  No longer needing the adjustment, Shard flips open the cap on the silvery cylinder and fiddles with the dial again for a moment.  That'll do.  "Anyone here need to be carried?" she calls out, moving to check the Ubese and make sure he's still alive.  Some of the slaves might be half-crippled - able to work, but not capable of running.

Which...could be a problem.  They're already carrying one unconcious person.  We'll find a way, she assures herself, but not without a hint of doubt.

The very moment he has the control unit worked out, Haarmon hands it over to Shard and goes back to the bodies. He needed a terminal. The longer they spent unplugged from the facilities systems the more blind and lost he felt.

Dammit, Rhijans muttered succinctly, only audible to himself.  This was a little more trouble than he'd been hoping for...

His mind flashed with different options, playing out scenarios...most of which either ended in a decidedly unsatisfactory fashion or relied upon an utterly unrealistic amount of unwitting Imperial cooperation.  Only one really seemed, to him, to have much chance.

"Where's that crawler headed?" he barked out, acting with authority that he'd have to blame on someone else, if questioned, but he was hoping the stress of the situation had the troopers reacting to confident authority as if it belonged, as long as it wasn't doing anything overt to compromise them.

"It needs a guard...that damned Ubese is still running around here and there's no knowing what he's gonna hit next!"  He tried, as best he could, to appear torn between talking to the guards and stopping the crawler, and finally made his way toward the crawler, one arm up in a 'halt' gesture.