Haarmon blushed at Shard's praise. He tried to busy himself with the minutiae of getting ready to hide it. With little success. After a few moments he made his way over Juragga. This whole thing was about to come to a head and he found himself grateful for the comforting proximity of his friend. No matter what happened, the Wookie would be there. It was just one of those things you could depend on.

"You down with this, Rags?" he asked, a tremor of anxiety creeping into his voice. "Ready to cut loose and bust some heads?"

Rhijans climbs aboard the skiff.  The controls are... half familiar.  He manages to power it up and starts it moving.  It all starts coming back to him, and before long he's skimming confidently across the compound.

It really isn't that hard.

And then the biggest explosion yet tears the entire roof off the warehouse, shatters the viewports on all the nearby buildings, and sends debris hurtling across the compound.  The skiff bucks as the icy surface beneath it seems to rise up to swat it... 

In the mine, it's time for a decision.  Haarmon has provided two routes out of the place.  One is a direct course to the refinery plant, the second a slightly more roundabout route which will take them to the refinery or the warehouse, depending on which way they choose to go when they reach the surface.

Either route gives the option to visit both locations, if they have time.

Logic would suggest that the warehouse will have the bigger stockpile of Nergon-15, but that might mean that security is better there.

And as they are discussing it, they are interrupted by a dull rumble and a vibration through the floor, as dust and gravel start falling from the ceiling.  And then it stops.

There are cries of alarm from some of the soon-to-be-rescued slaves, and UY-3PO looks about, leaning back to peer up at the ceiling, "My goodness!  That did not sound like a good thing."

The shockwave from the blast slammed into the skiff and Rhijans fought to counter the turbulent air sweeping past him and the bucking ground that wrought havoc on the repulsors.

What the double-suns...?!!! he thought, with that little corner of his mind that wasn't totally occupied by trying to prevent the skiff from going belly-up on him.  Not having any idea of what all might have been in the warehouse, there was no way to guess at what had just blown up...or if follow-up explosions might be forthcoming--and even worse.

With no word from Lund or Jacobs, he could only assume they were there, and needed help...so he kept fighting to bring the skiff back under control...
This message was last edited by the player at 01:24, Fri 02 Mar 2012.

"I don't think security is going to be as much of an issue any more," Shard snaps.  "In the meantime, let's just take the direct route - things are heating up, upstairs, and the others are going to need our help.  We can see what things look like when we get topside!"

If they come back without Nergon, they come back without Nergon.  The slaves...these were always the key for Shard, regardless of orders.  The General can damn well fire me, she silently considers.

"Everyone stick together," she calls out, waving the slaves over.  "Juragga, you got the Ubese...you do, good fellow."  Fantastic, actually.  "You-Why, if you can't keep up, let us know and we'll figure something out.  Haarmon, helmet on and you're on point - lead the way.  If anyone stops us, you've been ordered to get the slaves out, because administration figures they can help get the Nergon out, and you've conscripted us to help."

For a moment it looks like Rhijans will keep control of the skiff...  For another it looks like he won't...  A stabliser scrapes the ice, and ionisation traces patterns across the hull of the vehicle, and finally the man gets it back under control as the shockwave fades.  There's a horrible screeching from somewhere inside one of the repulsorlift modules, but the skiff limps on towards the ruined warehouse. 

The skiff comes to a halt outside the warehouse door where Rhijans had exited the building a long time ago.  There's nothing left of the door, just a gaping hole and some torn, twisted metal laying on the ice.  Through the opening, Rhijans can see smoke and flame...

The vibrations die down, and the debris stops falling from the ceiling.  The transport belt is still operating, having been constructed to stand up to rough treatment.  A decision is made by Shard, who seems to have assumed command - old familiar patterns coming to the forefront again, perhaps.

The direct route it is.

The slaves move towards the belt, or rather towards the narrow maintenance catwalk which runs alongside it as it rises gradually towards the ceiling near the far wall of the chamber and disappears into a narrow tunnel.

With Haarmon leading the way, they start their climb towards the refinery.

The tunnel is dimly lit by widely spaced emergency lights, and the noise from the currently empty belt is almost deafening. 

After several minutes of walking through the roaring darkness, brighter light appears ahead...

Knowing there was a good chance he was signing his own death sentence, Rhijans tried to make his way into the wreckage of the building, angling for the position where he'd left Lund and Jacobs.  His only hope was the notion that the armor, designed to provide thermal protection against the cold, was equally effective against the extreme heat that he was sure was filling the place, in the aftermath of whatever blast had rocked the place....likely the cargo they were originally supposed to retrieve, unfortunately.

Wonder if Command will be satisfied with the knowledge that the Empire won't be using the stuff against us, as a consolation notice when we get back without it...  The thought was fleeting...right now, his primary focus was on trying to locate the two members of the team he'd left behind here.  He thought he'd made it apparent that they were supposed to bide their time until he got things stirred up elsewhere in the compound, so there'd be less traffic at the warehouse.  Apparently, that plan, along with most others, hadn't been quite adequate to the realities of the situation.

It was hard to figure out just where they should be...the blast had levelled piles of crates, scattering debris around with frightening disregard for where anything had once been located.  He'd have to get to where they had been, and then start searching along the vector that the force of the blast would have thrown them.  Playing a long-shot, he picked up his normal commlink, not wanting this call going out on Imperial channels (even though the Imperial Comm Center was, itself, a smoking hull of a building by now).  "Jacobs...Lund...talk to me, boys.  Where are you?"

He prayed under his breath for some kind of response.  Looking around didn't make him very optimistic...

There was never any doubt that Juragga would follow Shard and Haarmon... into hell, if necessary.  Grinning a fanged grin, he shouldered the Urbese and trudged along.

But he winced in pain at the cacaphonous noise screeching from the belt.  "WAAAAUUUUUURRRRR," he complained, shaking his head and wishing he had a free paw to cover his ears.

After his victory in the transport and with the map (Shard said he was GREAT! She said it out loud!), Haarmon felt like he should be ready to chew star cruisers and spit blaster bolts. But there was the undeniable sensation of things coming to some kind of head, and more than anything he wished Juragga was wearing the white suit and he could hide in the back (behind the Jedi, maybe) with the datapad, calling out lefts and rights. There was a sinking feeling in his stomach and all his limbs were twitchy and shaky, making it harder and harder to manage the I'm-in-charge-here walk he was trying to lay down.

The idea of Juragga wearing stormtrooper armour, all mismatched, hair stuck out all over, made him snort out a chuckle. And then another. He took a breath and stifled them. Last thing he needed was to get the giggles.

Shard slips up beside Haarmon, checking her back to make sure Juragga is still there (he is, of course).  "How are we doing, Haarmon?  Getting closer?"  Squinting, she stares ahead into the bright light.  "That could be ominous, if I took it the wrong way," the woman mutters.

She winces once at Juragga's keening annoyance.  "Yeah, I agree," the older woman mutters.  She can't even imagine how bad the wookie has it, with his sensitive ears, but it's bad enough for her.  "Let's just sidle up to this entrance, really careful-like, and see if we can avoid a shooting war."

It sounds like there's enough of that going on already.

The light at the end of the tunnel... isn't.  That is, it is a light, but not at the end of the tunnel.  Instead the belt runs through an open chamber, illuminated by bright overhead glow panels and filled with what looks to be machinery for controlling ventilation in the mine.

The belt continues into a second, wider tunnel, which it shares with ducts which connect to the ventilation equipment.

More walking, and as they climb, so does the temperature in the tunnel.

Eventually there is light ahead again.  Not daylight, by the look of it, but a sullen red glow.  And there is a new layer of sound, dimly heard under the sound of the belt... a rhythmic clanging, and the occasional metallic screach.  And, every so often, something that might be the roar of some animal...

The storage bunker is split wide open, and its doors are missing, and there are a good number of white armoured bodies laying about.  The roof of the bunker has opened up like some sort of exotic blossom.  Any Nergon-14 that was in there is gone, annihilated in the blast, or scattered by it.

Somewhere in the smoke and flame which fills the warehouse, Rhijans can hear distant sporadic blaster fire.  It seems that somebody is still fighting.  The conditions make it impossible to tell who it is though.

Not without moving closer, and possibly into the line of fire.

"That you Rhijans?" Lund's voice sounds strained, "I'm nearly back at the ship.  Jacobs is... he's... he's dead."

In a display that would most likely mark him as very definitely NOT truly Imperial, were anyone to witness it, Rhijans spouted a series of obscene expletives.  He'd at least had the consideration to leave his commlink off until he calmed a bit.

Despite his better judgment, he'd let himself actually start to like Jacobs a bit, and hearing the man was dead put a bitter edge to his whole demeanor.  He brought his wayward tongue back in check, and took a deep breath.  "Copy that," he replied tersely.

"Shard...Dak...what's your location?  Things have gone sideways on us, it's time to get out."  He could hear the blaster fire, but he had no interest in picking a fight.  Had it been just him here, alone, dealing with having lost Jacobs (who, inexplicably, he felt some responsibility for...maybe, if he'd taken the other two along with him, they'd all still be alive...), he might have taken the time to go seek out the blaster battle and pick a fight.  But he had people to get off this rock, still, and there was no time to go indulging his own desire for a little vengeance.

Slowly, he forced his mind back to the cold, rational, calculating thought process that had become a survival instinct.  One man lost on their side.  The Nergon was also lost, but at least the Empire didn't have it anymore.  He glanced around...an incalculable number of Imperial personnel lost, as he didn't have a count of how many had perished in the comm center and hadn't been keeping track of how many went down with the E-webs, but their little Rebel raiding force was certainly giving a lot better than it got, thus far.  Add to that the Imperial materiel that had been destroyed or disabled, and they were on the up-side of the mission...and that was before the Headhunters came in to take out the mine.

He began to make his way back out, again...they might not need a secondary ship, after all, since their primary cargo had gone up in a fireball, so it would be a good time to fall back to the ship.  "Dak...Shard...talk to me.  Where are you?" he repeated into the commlink, pausing just inside what was left of the warehouse doors.  It would be difficult to explain to someone what he was doing with a non-standard-issue commlink in his hand when his helmet should have a perfectly functional one (that was, unfortunately, set on Imperial frequencies...)

They're out, finally - out of that cursed mine tunnel, into heat.  She'll take the latter over the former any damn day of the week.  Sweat springing to life on her forehead,

"C'mon.  We've got to get to the ships -" she starts, when her comlink warbles.

Fumble, curse, fumble, + Shard here!  Good to hear your cursed voice! +  And it is, the growing smile on her face surprising Shard.

Get out and call in an air strike.
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:35, Mon 12 Mar 2012.

Finally out of the tunnel, the group, along with the escaping slaves, find themselves in a large chamber, surrounded by heavy machinery, which accounts for most of the noises.  The animal-like roar is more mysterious though... until one of the machines blasts freezing vapour across a tray of red hot metal ingots.  Another machine shuffles the tray onto a belt which carries it away, and a fresh one takes its place...

The noise in the room is every bit as loud as in the tunnel, and the heat is almost unbearable.

The whole plant seems to mostly automated.  There are only a few workers visible in the dim red gloom.  And then Shard spots something, as she shouts into her comlink to make herself heard above the deafening noise...

About fifty metres away is what appears to be an office, and parked outside it is a cargo skiff, just like the one they had seen exiting the tunnel where the slaves had been mining Nergon-14...


It takes Rhijans a little while to get through to Shard, and when he does her voice is almost impossible to hear over the comlink - too much background noise, at her end apparently.  From what she says, she's in the ore processing plant, which is back through the gate and across the inner compound, close to where Rhijans had been hard at work a little while ago.

His comlink chirps again, but this time the voice that speaks to him is Vekkis: "I'm aboard the Gambit.  Our friends will be here in about... fifteen minutes."

Staggering along behind Shard, the massive Wookiee has both paws clamped over his shaggy ears, warbling in distress.  It was LOUD, and he couldn't even hear himself think.

"Haarmon!" Shard shouts over the ore processing cacaphony.  "Get everyone out, including Juragga!  Keep 'em safe!  I have to check out that skiff!" 

It's a gamble, and splitting up never did anyone any good, but if she's wrong she'll be right behind them, and if she's right she'll be right behind them...with a skiff full of Nergon.  Maybe it'll shut people up about 'remembering priorities'.

Shard knows her priorities, and they're staggering along behind Juragga right now, but it'll do her no good to get grounded by Rebellion brass for not following mission directives.

She'd love backup.  She'd adore backup.  But the sound is killing poor Juragga; she won't subject him to that any longer.  And the group needs someone who isn't in screaming agony right now to get them out the door, which means Haarmon, the man with the armor.

Fifty meters.  Not so far, and if she can get a skiff loaded with Nergon...

Getting greedy, Shard.  You know something's going to go wrong.

Even so.

Jacket undone, brow shining with perspiration, hands empty of weapons, Shard begins the jog toward the skiff.

Rhijans nodded, even though he was the only one there to see it.  "Copy that...time to pack up the party and get out of town..."  He signalled again, to Shard.

"Shard, did you copy that?  Lund says we've got fifteen minutes before the pyrotechnics REALLY start.  Hope you guys had better luck on your end...the firefight at the warehouse blew the stockpile we were after, so we're going home empty-handed."

He paused for a moment, pondering.  "Ummm...are we all gonna make it out of here the way we came in?  I don't know how many of you there are coming along...do we need to make some alternate arrangements?"  He could either take the skiff and try and give them what little bit of an armed escort they could muster, at this point, or he could fall back to the starport and see about getting another transport ready to go.  He wasn't a particularly good pilot, but he was a better pilot than driver and he'd been getting by.  He could probably get a transport into the sky safely...unless someone was blowing up the starport around him...

Now Juragga knew his hearing was going.  Shard couldn't seriously think he'd just leave her to go on alone, did she?  Warbling in protest, he shook his head from side to side almost comically.  But the intent was there.  He'd go with her.  He began unshouldering the Urbese.

Haarmon was more than happy to be given a direct order. Shard knew what she was doing. All he had to do was run the play. He turned around and called out to the slaves, trying to be heard over the deafening noise. "Everyone follow me! Look tired and ragged!" Not that there was much danger of them messing that last part up.

He waved his arms in a series of frantic come-hither motions. In case his voice didn't carry.

He looked over at Juragga. Waved to get his attention. Pointed toward the door.

And he turned and started out.

Endgame, he thought. Last time pays for all.

"They probably won't start delivering gifts until the Gambit is clear." Vekkis opines over the comlink, "They need her to get them home."  Then he adds, "But I wouldn't push it too hard.  If we're ready to move in fifteen, they might hold off a little longer, just to give us some room to manoeuver,"

Juragga puts down the Ubese, who seems to have recovered slightly during his rest.  At least he is able to stand, albeit a little unsteadily.  As the Wookiee turns to follow Shard, the Ubese grabs his arm and presses something into his hand, "Yayt, yikeeko." 

UY-3PO is busy a little way off, explaining to some of the slaves that they should follow Haarmon, who will lead them to safety.

Shard is already part way towards the skiff as Juragga hurries to catch up with her.  Up ahead, the vehicle's driver is nowhere to be seen.  Perhaps he's reporting in to the nearby office?

Lund's report didn't do anything to inspire patience in Rhijans.  He opened his mouth, about to call Shard again with a term he was sure she'd react to, based on past observations...but then he thought, for just a moment, about the potential repercussions if the Empire had any sort of comm-traffic monitoring going on, and heard a call on a commlink channel to a Jedi...

Things would be bad enough with the hit-and-run, the loss of the Nergon (and, presumably, a fair portion of anything else that had been stockpiled in the warehouse), and the impact on the mine operations.  If they got any sort of suspicion that a Jedi had been involved...even someone who was only claiming the role--since he still didn't fully believe, himself, that the Jedi were anything legitimate...they would have the sector crawling with agents trying to figure out who it was.

Nope...better think of something else to call her, he told himself.  What else would get her attention?

"Hey, LADY...you didn't answer me.  Do we need extra transport?  Or can we get out the way we got in?  Should I come get you, or go get another exit strategy in the works?"  He was pretty sure the sarcastic emphasis would get her attention.  Whether or not she'd actually respond to it, he had no idea.  But at least he'd know whether or not she was still alive, and he might just get some idea of which direction to go, instead of standing here next to a burning warehouse and struggling with his own indecision.

This was so much easier when I was working alone...

Her attention split between Rhijans, the skiff, and Juragga, Shard hesitates a moment too long before answering her teammate; at least, it's a moment too long for Rhijans.  'Lady'?  Eyes narrowed, Shard stares at Juragga for a moment, then nods agreement and continues her run for the skiff.  Tough guy.  Wanted to get him out of this noise, but he's having nothing of it.

Wookies can be stubborn.  It isn't a bad thing.

+ The lady, + she snaps back into the comm, + is a little busy juggling acquisitions.  We've got passengers, and quite a few, but we might be able to stuff 'em on the ship.  As for our packages... +  The acid smooths out of her voice as she jogs.  Rhijans probably just wanted her attention, and void knew she had wavered.  + I'm just checking for that right now.  We're coming out an alternate route, near processing. +

Potential disaster there, but if they couldn't coordinate, they'd be just as dead as if the imperials managed to get their heads together and set up an ambush.

Haarmon reaches the door and slaps the release.  The massive door starts to move open, admitting a blast of ice-cold air and more than a little blowing snow.  And a new problem immediately becomes apparent...  Very few of the slaves have clothing suitable for a long walk in the frigid conditions outside the processing plant.

Fortunately the solution also presents itself.  Somebody has, quite considerately, left a large number of vehicles parked all over the compound.  The nearest are only about fifty metres away, while there is a large crawler, which could probably take all the escapees, only a hundred metres from the door...

Shard and Juragga reach the skiff, still with no sign of the driver.  There is a hopper in the cargo section of the open-topped vehicle, filled to capacity with rocks which are laced with a luminescent greenish mineral.  The repulsorlift modules are still operating, holding the vehicle a metre above the floor...

Vekkis calls in again, "Rhijans?  Ship should be warmed up by the time you get here.  I'm running her through the checklist now."

A movement catches Rhijan's eye then.  Stormtroopers, at least four of them, coming through the smoke towards him...

Rhijans tucked the commlink away, and wished, for just a moment, that he'd taken the sergeant's armor, instead of Jacobs getting it.  Only a moment, however...he didn't dwell on missed opportunities.  Besides, he told himself, that would make me less anonymous...could have gotten me spotted earlier, would have been suspicious for the same sergeant to be running around in circles in the compound...

Striking his most military bearing, he moved around, as though searching the debris...looking for survivors, or the infiltrators that had caused all this chaos, he told himself, in case anyone challenged him.  Just act like you belong here, he told himself.

In his mind, he'd already started a kind of countdown, relying on his sense of time to keep him aware of just how quickly he needed to get back to the ship.  Hopefully, these guys would pass on by with a minimal amount of discussion and he'd be free to move out.

Lugging up behind Shard, his poncho flapping in the motion, and toting his bowcaster, the massive Wookiee came up short as they spotted the transport.  He'd been humming the Wookiee equivalent of "there's no place like home" to soothe through the noise, but now...

"GrrrUUUAAAHHHhhrrr!" he warbled.  Just what the doctor ordered.  Do you drive, or shall I? he'd asked her.

He was certainly capable of driving the thing, although nobody would mistake him for a pod-racer.  If the Jedi wanted to drive, though, he'd happily ride shotgun... or bowcaster, in his case.

Haarmon found he had two conflicting, voices inside his head. The first one was saying 'I've got a bad feeling about this.' But he could barely hear that voice, since another one was yelling 'Wooooooo!'  really loudly. He's watched enough holo-vids to know that, at this point in the story, whenever the all the problems are solved by one thing, something always goes disastrously wrong right after.

Male and female lead about to fall in true love? They have to have a stupid misunderstanding so they can fight, break up, and get back together. Ship right on time to save everyone? Engine breaks down. Someone finds an escape tunnel? It collapses. Find a contact with the exact information you need? He'll double-cross you.

And if you find an empty crawler a short walk from where you and a few dozen scant-clad slaves are standing? He didn't know. But he could imagine the possibilities.

But this isn't a holo-vid, right? He asked himself. This is, like, real life. It's like a balance, right? No busty slave-girls, but maybe the crawler won't explode? He paused a moment. But then no happy ending either...

I wish Rags were here. He'd know what to do.

"Hot void," he spat. But, really, what else was he going to do? Run them all out into the cold to die because he saw this show already? No. He waved them all forward. "Okay, kids, let's move. We need to get to that crawler so it can explode in time for the commercial break."

And he started off, gun at the ready.