Juragga snarled silently at the Stochok, but it was only defensive of Shard.  He bore the creature no real animosity; if anything, he felt sympathy.  But he would stand by the tired Jedi if it killed him.

Taking advantage of a lull, he took the harness he'd jury-rigged and secured the Urbese to his back.

The slaves all seem to be capable of walking, though some look as though they may be a little slower than others.  Partly due to their having shorter legs.  They surround Shard, waiting to have their collars removed while the Stochok moves about, sulkily taking her small trophies from the dead troopers.

For each body where she removes a finger, she bows her head over it and makes an odd keening sound, followed by more of her usual bass grumble.

Haarmon returns to the entrance of the tunnel and thoughtfully studies the parked crawler which UY-3PO had said served as a sort of admin office for this level of the mine... 

"It was scheduled to take a cargo from the warehouse to the landing field, but that's been cancelled because of computer problems.  For now it's just being moved outside to make room in case the maintenance bay is needed for anything in a hurry." the stormtrooper explains to Rhijans, leaving his post and falling into step beside him.

The crawler grinds to a halt in front of the disguised Rebel.

Rhijans nodded.  "I was told nothing was to leave the compound without a guard...no telling what that Ubese will hit next.  Who's available to escort it out and keep an eye on it until we know the threat's passed?" he asked, still playing off the prospect of being authorized to be issuing commands.  Hopefully, the answer was nobody...then Rhijans would be stuck with guard duty on the thing after it was out of the compound.

Even if there was someone, that would mean he'd probably have to take their place in the guard rotation...which would give him a chance to sabotage something else.  But he was feeling time pressing on him...sometime very soon, the threat would stop being some mysterious alien running around and blowing stuff up, and would become a flight of Rebel starfighters.  And he really didn't want to be in the middle of an Imperial compound when that happened...

"Thanks, Juragga," Shard murmurs, working dilligently on the slaves' harnesses.  Getting the collars off was a bit of a trick, even using the control device.  With ruthless intelligence, the makers hadn't allowed for a master switch to unlock all at the same time - that would be a fool's game for something designed to keep people under control.  Instead, each and every collar needed to be unlocked by the device, keeping the population more easily controlled and less likely to break free in the event of a single, critical error.

Disgusting, the older woman considered, snapping off yet another collar.

"Does anyone here know where they keep the Nergon?" she inquires, quite loudly.  "Stockpile, something like that?  You people are the primary issue for me, but if we can snag some of that, more the better."

"It isn't going to leave the compound.  It's just being taken outside and parked somewhere so that it won't be in the way." the trooper answers, then adds, "I don't think we can spare anybody to guard a parked crawler, but it could be left where we can cover it from our post."

A warning klaxon on the crawler blares, an off-key tone designed to get attention.  In the cab the driver can be seen, wearing mine coveralls, waving for the two armoured men to move aside.

The trooper simply looks at the mine worker, then back to Rhijans, "The E-Web should be enough to discourage this Ubese."

One of the slaves bows to Shard when she removes his collar, a Kethad whose scaly hide shows injuries through rips in his coverall, "Pardon.  They not keep Nergon here.  We dig, they take away."  He stretches out a hand, pointing past Haarmon in the tunnel entrance.  Then the hand lifts in a smooth arc, to point up through the ceiling.  "Take out of mine.  Last skiff goes just before you comes."

He turns to point to a small bin near where the slaves had been working.  "Only that left here now."

The guy was fast, Rhijans gave him that.  Cursing to himself, he replied, "He already took out one of them.  I don't know how, but nobody saw him in the compound."  He stepped back, as though clearing a path for the crawler.

"I'll follow the crawler over there, make sure the area it's parked in is clear.  I'm not putting anything beyond this....thing.  If it can blow up an E-web in the middle of the compound, who knows what other surprises it's capable of."  He waved for the driver to continue, using the vehicle as a screen as he reached into one of his pouches and took out a small block of detonite and one of the remote detonators, putting them together as he walked along its path toward where the driver was planning to park it.

Rhijans gestured, indicating that the driver should park it just off to one side of the compound entrance.  It was a calculated choice...it would, hopefully, appear to the troopers manning the Eweb as though he was parking it in a location where their weapon could easily cover it as well as the entrance.  In reality, if the driver cooperated, it would be in a position where a well-placed charge could flip the crawler and block the entrance, forcing traffic up and over or around it and potentially destroying anything that might be going through the entrance at the time.

Shard glances at the small crate then dismisses it.  She's not going to ask the slaves to carry it, and they have more things to worry about than a little container of Nergon.  "All right.  Anyone with actual weapons training grab a blaster from the guards."  They appear to have a few spares. "We're getting you all out of here, but we're going to have to do it quietly, so only people with military training," she stresses a second time.

The last thing they need is a rookie letting off a blaster bolt out of nervousness.

I hope Rhijans has figured out where the Nergon is, or the general's going to be mightily honked with us, she moodily considers.  Their mission isn't, strictly speaking, a slave rescue.  Well, void take it.

The general can fire her.

"Haarmon - you got anything?" she fires off at one of her partners, now studying the electronics.  If they can get up the elevator...and to the landing field...and aboard the Ubese' ship...and...

It has been a long time, but Shard silently breaks into prayer.

Haarmon squints at the crawler in a suspicious fashion. Part of him thought that maybe he shoudl go back and get some back-up before he started mucking about with abandoned Imperial vehicles. But it was a small part. Most of him was all CRAWLER! WOOO! BRING IT!

Plus, he hadn't seen any wall-mounted terminals and no mobile ones on any of the Imps. But there had to be some. So that left the vehicles.

And so up he went, into the crawler, blaster rifle ready, on the lookout for trouble. Once in the crawler, assuming nothing kills him, he goes right to the largest bank of blinky lights he can find.

Somewhere behind him he thinks he hears Shard call out. Probably yelling at Miss Finger-Food, he thinks, and goes back to his business.

Haarmon pops the hatch of the crawler, and discovers that things are probably not going to be as simple as he had imagined...  Inside the windowless compartment a row of terminals sits along one side, providing most of the illumination.  Four of them, each of them with its own operator.  Four men in mine uniforms, all operating the terminals and speaking quietly as they work.

"We're closing Four down for the day in ten minutes.  Prepare to send the excavators over to Five."
"No, just send whatever Irillium ore you have now to the belt, Seventeen.  They're screaming out for it up in Processing."
"Fourteen?  Are you there Fourteen?  What do you mean, 'blaster shots'?"
"Tunnel Five, management want to know how long you expect it will be before you're operational again?"

One of them spares Haarmon a glance before looking back at his terminal.  "What do you want, soldier boy?  We're kind of busy here."

Shard removes the last of the collars and orders the released slaves to take the stormtroopers' blasters, as long as they know how to use them.  The rest of them, including the Stochok, start picking up mining implements, checking them for usability and, occasionally, discarding them for more dangerous ones...

Rhijans walks back outside, directing the crawler driver where to park.  The heavy vehicle grinds slowly across the ice and snow and finally comes to rest close to the gate.  The driver scowls at Rhijans as he climbs down from the vehicle, "That all right for you?  Or would you prefer it half a metre to the left?"

Through the gate, from the direction of the warehouse, Rhijans can hear the sound of heavy weapons fire...

Rhijans walked around the back of the machine, as though checking it's clearance from the compound wall, and tucked the charge he'd prepared in an unobtrusive location.  "Close enough.  You may want to clear the area, it sounds like something big is happening over at the warehouse and we may have incoming fire here if the detachment there can't deal with it," he called from behind the crawler.  He hoped that would get the driver scurrying along...he probably wasn't combat-trained, after all, just given the basics.

Still behind the crawler, he pulled out a second block of the detonite.  He tore it roughly in half, tucking one piece beside the prepared charge and taking another remote detonator, making sure this one wasn't armed yet, and sticking it in the remainder of the stuff.  He didn't know if the charge would flip the crawler...but it would definitely attract some attention.  He'd only need everyone looking in that direction for a couple of seconds to make the second Eweb go away, if this worked right.

Then, maybe, he could get into the garage and see if they had something with a good heavy weapon that he could take to reinforce the troops at the warehouse.  His troops...all two of them...

"Haarmon?"  Moving away from supervising the group of slaves - who seem to have themselves well in-order, and Shard's certainly not going to argue with them collecting melee weapons - she glances around the empty corridor.  Juragga is here, in all of his seven feet plus of fur-covered mass, but his lean partner has disappeared.

"Juragga, you see where Haarmon went?" she inquires of the Wookie, making vague shushing motions at the milling former slaves.

Rhijans' warning about incoming fire may have been wasted on the driver, who is already on his way back to the maintenance bay almost before the disguised Rebel has finished speaking.

He does stop and look back, though, as the boom of a new explosion rolls across the compound.

From his position near the gate, Rhijans can see a fresh plume of smoke rising from the warehouse, mixed with red tongues of flame...

The slaves all seem to be satisfied with their choice of weapons, if not exactly happy (except the few who have blasters).

As Shard wonders where Haarmon has gotten to, a Kethad approaches her and Juragga, possibly the same one that had spoken to her earlier.  In one hand he holds a tool of some sort, a short blade set at right angles to a metre-long shaft.  The other hand he holds out to display a group of small grey cubes, "Pardon.  I can uses these.  Has trainings with explosions from before I becomes slave.  Would has great joy in damages to mine."

Haarmon was sort of stuck. What does he do now? Four of them? Even if he could shoot them all before one of them hit the panic button, or whatever, could he? Murder four people in cold blood? Imps, sure, but these aren't bad guys in white armour. They're tech support, for the love of the Force. Mouthy tech support, sure, but not soldiers. No combatants. Still, he had to rid get of them somehow.

He raised his blaster rifle. "All of you, stand up!" he said in his best I-am-not-messing-around-here basdass Imperial voice. "Hands up! Step away from the terminals. Do it now!"
This message was lightly edited by the player at 14:56, Mon 23 Jan 2012.

The four workers don't waste any time arguing.  All four raise their hands and stand up, as directed, stepping away from their work positions.  Only then does one of them attempt to make himself look good...

"Well... all right.  But only because I'm due for a break anyway."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's the one standing furthest from Haarmon, with three other bodies between him and the blaster...

Juragga realized in alarm he'd lost track of Haarmon.  This was potentially akin to losing the pin on a grenade, and he felt like a mother duck who'd lost one of her chicks.  His teal eyes wide, he glanced around hopefully, looking for his friend.

Glancing to the Kethad, he hooted in distracted approval of her plans for mayhem, and then yodeled, "Just make sure we're out of the blast radius first."

With that, he trundled ahead, Urbese strapped to his back, looking for Dak...

Rhijans began jogging across the snow...he pointed in the direction of the warehouse, first, playing once again at his transmitter being out of commission, so it didn't look like he was running in panic.  They had to believe there was a reason for him running up to them, after all...otherwise, they might think he had nefarious designs on them...

"Something else just blew up down by the warehouse...not sure what the first blast was, but this one started something on fire..."  It was, he reasoned, entirely possible that the first blast had started the fire and this was just due to flames reaching something flammable.

Or, this was the very first in a series of bombs to fall from Headhunters in the sky.  Either way, the situation was getting more urgent.  He didn't know how nergon ore would react to heat.  He watched, carefully, hoping for a brief moment when all the helmets in the area turned away from him.

The thought dawned on him that he might want that crawler for something other than an obstacle...but he didn't really have time to go back and change plans.

"Hot void," Shard whispers when she realizes what Juragga's poleaxed expression means: they've lost Haarmon.  She's about to hurry off and search when the Kethad approaches with what appear to be...demo charges.  I just bet he knows how to use 'em.

"Keep 'em," she mutters, patting his forearm.  "Like the Wookie says, be judicious - make sure it won't bring the roof down on any of us.  Otherwise..." He showed initiative here, and still asked.  Shard can respect that.  Lots.  "...do what you think you can," she confirms, looking him in the eyes.  "Good man."

Juragga seems ready to begin the search - Shard can't blame him, her own stomach is in knots - and has the sorely wounded Ubese well in-hand.  "You-why, we're moving," Shard calls out to the protocol droid.  "Everyone else - do you know if there are more slaves here?  Ever get moved to different sections, or come from them, or do they just keep one group together for security?"

Now Haarmon was stuck. He had 'em. What was he gonna do with 'em? Rags would just bust their heads together in pairs, two busts and done. Shard would be all BZAAP lightsaber Jedi awesome and that would be that. Rhijans would probably have a nerve-gas grenade already hidden in the crawler and have it timed to go off right after he said something really badass.

But Haarmon had none of those things. But he did have a gun. And what was that over there? Storage lockers? Wonder how big they are inside?

One way to find out.

"There's a Rebel saboteur loose. Intelligence says he's one of ours. I've got orders to detain everyone on this level. So. You four. Into the lockers." He raised the rifle in what he hoped would be a threatening manner. "NOW."

Inside the makeshift control centre, the mouthy mine worker seems about to say something more, then decides that hiding in a closet is the better part of valour.  The four men each move towards one of the empty lockers, with some muttering about how the Rebel scum are ruining their day.  It's a tight fit for at least one of them, but soon they are each inside one of the lockers.  Which leaves two empty, in case anybody else feels like joining in.

Haarmon has command of the former transport...

Outside, UY-3PO starts translating Shard's instructions, and questions, into the languages of the various slaves, resulting in a certain degree of hooting and yelling in various languages.

"They say that, as far as they know, slaves are only used by the Imperials in this section of the mine.  The rest of the mine is run by the mining company, but this section is under direct Imperial control." he listens a little more, "I would say that the Imperials are only interested in obtaining the Nergon-14 for themselves."

The droid, and the slaves start to follow after the Jedi, while Juragga ranges ahead, hunting Haarmon...

Rhijans tries his best to direct the attention of the stormtroopers towards the warehouse, where the flames now seem to have taken a firm hold on the roof.  He is actually quite successful, and all of them at least spare the burning structure a brief glance...

The flames seem to have changed colour, developing a greenish tinge - perhaps a sign that the fire has spread to some of the more... interesting... materials stored inside the building...

The brief glance, he decided, would be as good as he was going to get.  He armed the detonator on the small bundle of detonite he'd prepared while behind the crawler and tossed it in the direction of the E-web, hoping both that nobody would notice and that it would land close enough to do some good.

"We need to get over there...NOW!" he called out, starting to jog again back in the direction of the gate...primarily to get away from the E-web...and got ready to hit the switch to blow both charges at the same time.

The mighty Wookiee would have been biting his lip if his facial structure allowed it.  As it was he was gritting his teeth as he ranged ahead, stooped a bit as he searched the floor for any tracks or sign of Haarmon's passage.  Of course, since Haarmon was wearing stormtrooper armor... all the damned footprints looked alike.

He wanted to call out, but knew a Wookiee roar at the wrong time could blow Haarmon's cover... or cause a panic... or just generally be a bad idea.  Hence the desire to lip-bite.

Glancing over his shoulder at Shard, he chuffed a light sound, hoping for more insight from the tired wise one...

Great.  Even Juragga has no idea.

With the prisoners filing in behind her, Shard considers the open space before her.  Skiffs driving back and forth, conveying ore elsewhere and coming back for more.  Many tunnels out of here.  A cargo crawler, surrounded by Don't Touch lights.

If I had to place a bet...

"The crawler," she mutters, keeping an eye on the skiffs.  Sure, for now they look like a bunch of slaves being lead somewhere else.  Amazing that the operators hadn't heard the massive firefight...

...she winces as the rumble from a nearby conveyer peaks.  Or not so amazing, after all.

The cargo crawler might make for a decent way out of here, if an obvious one.  It's a full klick back along the tunnel to the elevator, and these poor people aren't really in any condition to walk that far without the urging of a shock collar.  The thought makes her grit her teeth, but she jerks a finger at the former slaves.  "All of you stay right here - if you come out with us, sooner or later someone's going to figure out something is wrong.  You lot with the blasters, get in the middle of everyone else and don't wave them around."

The longer they avoid notice, the better.

"We're going to go grab some transport, and we'll be back so you can ride out of here in style." 

Haarmon was rather pleased with himself. He just totally commandeered a transport. All by himself. With nothing but a blaster rifle and some moxie. Commandeered it. Just Ra'an the Rancor Killer. He was so pleased with himself, in fact, that he spent about half a minute just standing in the control room, striking poses and muttering clever quips to himself, before he snapped to and remembered there was a whole Rebellion thing going on that he needed to get back to.

The look on their faces, he thought, when I pull up driving this bad boy... And then he stopped. Hot Void, man, I can't even drive this thing. What a dope!

But wait...

He went to the storage unit where he'd stashed Mr. Mouthy Pants and tapped on it once or twice with the barrel of his rifle. And he slowly opened the door. Leaned in all intimidating like.

"Hey," he said, "I didn't want to say anything before, but we're pretty sure the saboteur isn't you. We think it's that guy, actually." He pointed to one of the other lockers, at random. "So you're nominated for chauffeur duty. Hop in the hot-seat and get me down the mine, there. Or else back in the locker. Your pick."

A guy could really get to enjoy this...
This message was last edited by the player at 15:21, Fri 27 Jan 2012.

The miner grins at Haarmon, "You're new here, aren't you?  I'm not taking this thing anywhere."  He points towards the hatch into the driver's compartment. "You can try if you want.  There's a reason it's parked down here being used as an office, instead of carrying ore and supplies about.  It had to be towed here, and it hasn't been moved in about twenty years.  The motor still works, which is how they keep it warm in here and provide power for the terminals and lights, but the way I heard it the drive couplings are shot."

"So I guess it's back in the locker?"  Then his gaze goes to the door to the outside, "What the... ?"  Glancing in that direction, Haarmon sees Juragga and Shard peering in at him...

Rhijans starts to jog back away from the guard post.  Behind him the troopers seem a little hesitant to follow.  Perhaps they've been given clear orders to remain at their post, no matter what.  Or perhaps they're calling in to check what they should do - personal initiative is not always encouraged among the boys in white.

Rhijans was content that there was no immediate call for him to stop, or shout of alarm that would indicate someone had noticed the charge.  He ran on, as if under the assumption they were following him...toward the crawler...

And, halfway there, he hit the switch on the blasting caps for the detonite charges, safely (he hoped) far enough away from both of them to avoid getting slammed too hard by the shockwave.  Still...he hit the ground, just in case.