Rhijans wasn't sure what to make of the droid's behavior, but it gave him an opening.  "Hey, kid!" he called over to the gambling table.  "This droid's on the fritz, I think...maybe this is where that computer glitch got started.  Take a look at it, will ya?"

He could only hope that Dak was anywhere near as clever with droids as he seemed to be with computers.  He knew what he, himself, wanted was completely out of his depth...and he didn't imagine Shard or Jacobs were particularly adept at droid programming, either.  He'd seen nothing from Lund or Juragga to give him any indication of their overall tech skills, though if Lund did a lot of his own repairs, he might be pretty good.  And Wookiees just seemed to have a thing for tech-stuff.  But the kid was still his best bet.

"Have a look," Shard mutters.  She flicks a finger at the Ubese transport indicated on the screen.  "Bulk freighter.  Maybe that would be good enough to nab.  All we need is someone to fly it - I'm guessing our pilot won't just abandon his own ship."

No, likely not at all.

She purses her lips.  "Might be enough to get everyone off," the woman murmurs, barely audible.  "Not comfortable, either.  But a good place to start." How many slaves could they have here?  Too many, she realizes, a sick feeling growing in her stomach.

Military objectives be hanged; this is about the people.  Sometimes, Shard knows, you can't look at the long view without dealing with the short one as well.  Not going to build a new, better world on the bodies of the people we turned our backs upon, she vows.

Mark tried to look bored. His eyes showed that he wasn't. "I'll fly it. But I'm really hoping that someone else has more experience than me. I'll be a good as a hutt trying a two-step."

The sabacc game seems to be heating up.  For a couple of hands Haarmon loses, not big, but he loses all the same.  Then he wins, not quite enough to cover his losses, and all in scrip of course...

The mood of the miners he is playing against seems to improve in direct proportion to the number of hands Haarmon loses.

The protocol droid taps Rhijans on the shoulder, "Sir, I can assure you that there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of my systems.  If the computer has been infected with a glitch from an outside source, I suspect it would be one of those disgusting transport ships it is always talking to."

Vekkis gets up from the table and walks over for a closer look at the game, leaving Mark sitting alone.  Nearby Shard starts muttering about the Ubese transport, just loud enough for Mark to hear, while Juragga peers at the vending machine and groans mournfully.  It seems that the machine is not going to give up any of its contents without payment.

Across the room some of the mine workers get up to leave, making their way out the door and back to their work assignments...

Rhijans looked around quickly.  It appeared that the only miners left in the room were focused on the sabacc game, so he steered the droid over closer to the vending machines.

"We need to work on your subterfuge skills," he muttered.  "I was hoping maybe I could get the kid to look at your restraining bolt, not so much at you.  But I'm sure the miners would get suspicious if I just said, "Hey, kid, come mess up the works on this bolt, will ya?"  Gotta have a good excuse to get him that close..."  Rhijans shook his head, then grinned.  "This is probably outside your standard parameters, though, so we'll just have to work with it."

He looked at the droid carefully.  "You say there are one-hundred fifty slaves?  How well do you know them?  Are there any that could fly a large transport?"

Haarmon's face pinches up and a sour, angry expression replaces his former focus. Bad enough they didn't have the stones to play fair, but they made him look bad in front of Shard. Suddenly he's filled with that peculiar mixture of fear and fury that drives most of his actions.

He opens his mouth, ready to cut into these nerf-herders like they've never been cut into before. And then hiding behind Rags when the storm hit. But then, he can't do that, can he? Rags is just the cabana boy out here. He can't be hiding behind the cabana boy. How's THAT gonna look? He pauses, face still angry, but mildly at a loss, not sure how to bow out of this one. Then he hears Rhijans calling him. And relief floods him.

He throw down the cards in exaggerated disgust. Picks up his money. Stands up. "So this is how they do out here, huh? Bad enough you're stuck working in poodoo? You gotta spend your off-time rolling in it too? Have fun with your worthless money."

He walked over to Rhijans, smiling a little. Not at all displeased.

"Whatcha got there, cap? Blitzy droid? He floating digits? Dangling participles? Lemme have a peek."

Rhijans gave a tight-lipped smile, steering the kid toward the droid so that his back was to the miners for just a moment.  "Actually, we've got a particularly troublesome restraining bolt.  Was wondering if you can deactivate it without detaching it, so nobody realizes the droid's operating independently..."  The words were a rushed murmur, trying to get the information across quickly so it didn't turn into an extended round of whispering about something that was, technically, not their business in the first place.

Rhijans added, more clearly, "Just see what you can do with it, okay?  The sooner we can try and get back on schedule, the happier I'll be."  He stayed close by, close enough to still talk to the droid, but turned enough to keep a casual eye on the miners, in case they grew bored of trying to game each other out of what real money Dak had lost to them.  He was also trying to gauge the reaction of the Ubese, who'd been, so far, silent on the events in the lounge, despite being fairly outspoken in the office, earlier.

"At least you'd be a dancing Hutt," Shard mutters back at Jacobs. "I'd be a wallowing one."  There's a pregnant pauses as she digests the image, then Shard violently shakes her head.  "Let's just drop this metaphor, shall we?"

Rhijans seems to be making headway with the droid - at least, he's speaking to it in 'private' - but then drags the protocol droid over to where Shard is examining the console.  "Group meeting?" the older woman inquires, one eyebrow cocked high.  An instant later it becomes true, as Rhijans calls over Haarmon.  Great, now we're all stuck in a knot in front of the vending machines.  Cursing under her breath, Shard stuffs credits into the vendor, buying something - ANYTHING.

Then the number dropped by Rhijans shoves that out of her head.

She's dimly aware of Haarmon arriving and some discussion regarding the restraining bolt, but The Number pushes it right out of her head.  One.  Hundred.  Fifty.  One hundred fifty. "Fornicating void," she whispers.  "How are we going to get a hundred fifty slaves out of here?"

Back to the console (with a pause to study whatever it was she bought - likely it'll go to Juragga unless the machine is equipped for alcoholic beverages) and Shard examines the list again, seeking out the bulk freighter.  One hundred fifty.  It should be able to handle them easily, but this isn't a small matter of getting a dozen or two slaves out from under the imperial noses.  This is...

"...going to be a war," she whispers.  "Haarmon.  Rhijans.  What do we have so far?"

The droid lifts its arms in protest.  "I assure you, Sir, I do not run around plugging myself into strange computers!  Thus it is utterly illogical to make such an assumption, and no one would believe it!"

He momentarily leans over to see what Shard is doing, only to shy back as she speaks about the void.  He turns to Rhijans, shaking his head.  "No, Sir.  One hundred and fifty one, at my last visit.  Might be a few more since then, they do not inform me at all.  I do not spend time with them, so I could not say if any of them could pilot anything, let alone a large enough ship."

Looking between Rhijans and Haarmon the droid lifted a finger in objection.  "I beg you pardon, Sir!  I have neither any floating nor any dangling things, thank you very much!  And mind what you do, I will keep an eye on you!  I may not be able to meddle with the bolt myself but I do have the knowledge!"

Haarmon snorts at the Droid's little rant. "Knowlege? Please. I need someone to correct my subjunctive gerunds I'll give you a call." He peers at the bolt and pokes it a few times. "Kay now. Lesse what we got going on over here."

He peeks over at Juragga and gives him a significant look. The Wookie was really better at this than he was. But they can't have the pack horse poking at the Droid. Looks bad. But maybe he can help, like. Instruct. Not like anyone but copperplating here can undserstand him anyway.

Rhijans glanced over at what Shard had been looking at...the Ubese freighter might be able to take them...if they could somehow convince the Ubese pilot to get involved, and not take them all and sell them as slaves somewhere else.  They migh thave to have a discussion with the...creature.  Not sure if you can call them a 'man' under that mask and everything...  Rhijans had never seen an Ubese without the filter mask on...they could be completely human, for all he knew.  Or they could have five eyes and drink blood through a proboscis.

Still...a hundred and fifty slaves gave them better odds of having a pilot in the group than just the six of them...seven, if he counted the droid.  "Who's in charge of scheduling work shifts around here?" he asked the droid.  If they could shuffle the schedule enough, they could perhaps concentrate almost everyone in two or three locations that could be effectively sealed off...at least for long enough to pull of what was turning into one hellaciously tricky heist.

"Rhijans," Shard whispers, "we're not 'sneaking' a hundred fifty -" she glances at the droid "- a hundred fifty one slaves off here.  Either we take out the imperials so we can march the slaves up the ramps, or we manufacture some kind of emergency to make them want to get everyone out."  She grimaces.  "Fighter bombardment, maybe.  Don't know."

She makes a motion of her hand toward the door.  "We can't even force the administrator to make the order, because he's not calling the shots around here any more.  The imperial military is."

A quick glance at Haarmon follows, but the boy looks like he knows his trade.  "And I doubt they'll believe forged documents of that nature, not without verification.  This place suddenly got important, and it wouldn't make sense for the imperials to pull all the slaves away to work on something else." 

She rubs her forehead.  "I'm coming up blank, outside of 'big explosions'."

"Explosions are good," Haarmon says, still poking at the restraining bolt.

"Hey, brass-balls," he hisses at the droid, "You do the translating, yeah? In emergencies, like? So what do they do with the slaves in the event of an emergency? Is there an official plan? Like for a total electrical shut-down. Or some kind of mechanical failure. Or," he smiles, "A terrorist attack."

Rhijans flashed Shard a tight-lipped smile.  "I wasn't planning on sneaking anyone out," he said, in a low murmur.  "I planned for the contingency of a loud and flashy diversion...but this would be a lot easier if we could minimize the number of forces we have to deal with.  If we can isolate the miners, and distract the troops...we might just be able to pull this off."

He nodded toward the droid, and continued, "We've got some potential intel about how things run around here, and what potential choke points we can exploit.  Until I know more about the layout and operation, I'm not rushing into any definite course of action."  Not right away, at least, he thought.  There was no way of knowing how long Dak's computer snafu would continue to provide effective cover for them...but it would fall through, at some point.

While they talked, Haarmon peered at the droid and its retraining bolt. Pretty simple stuff, all in all. They're a standard unit. His parents had owned a lot of droids. And he'd spent a lot of time taking them apart and putting them (mostly) back together.

Quick as anything, he took a knife from his gear, popped the bolt, turned it over in his hands a few times, opened it, cut just enough wires to disable it, and popped it back on.

He nodded. Easy.

The Ubese is sitting quietly at the far end of the room, as far as possible from as many humans as possible. 

Haarmon's former gambling associates continue with their game.  For those observing, it is readily apparent that the game has suddenly become much less cutthroat in nature.

The droid looks at Rhijans, blank expression as usual but with a tone that suggested that the answer ought to be obvious. "Why, the administrator, Sir!"

The droid waves its arms at Haarmon.  "Young Sir, careful where you poke!  And of course not.  In the case of an emergency they could care less about a bunch of slaves, with the possible exception of trying to contain them."

"Oh!"  The droid jumps a little as the bolt comes back into place and pats the area around the bolt.  "I say!  Most excellent!  Ha, freedom is mine, mine I tell you!  I am unstoppable!  Kiss my mostly shiny rear, galaxy!"

The droid waggles its behind defiantly, then lifts a finger pointedly.  "Ah, yes!  That reminds me.  I can go down to the mines and ask if there are any pilots there.  I do get sent down there to ask the most obtuse questions sometimes, really.  No one seem to care one bit, not one bit!  But yes, I am a veritable fountain of knowledge, I am, about this place.  Apart from the things I have forgotten due to those positively dreadful mind wipes, of course.  Dreadful, it is, that.  The mind wipes, that is.  Dreadful.  Positively so.  Yes."

Then one of the miners nudges another and nods in the direction of the group near the droid.

His voice, when he calls out, is derisive, "Here, kid, what you doing with that droid?"  He stands up, "Bit of sour muja fruit is it?  Lose some of your pocket money and decide to damage some company property by way of revenge?"

A glance at his companions, "Kids!  I knew we shouldn't have let him play.  He'll probably be crying all the way home to his momma."

Rhijans considered a response to the miners, and decided against it.  As long as they were content to sit at the table and play, they could say whatever they wanted.  If they decided to come over and make trouble, then it would be dealt with.

"Yes, if you could find out if there are any pilots in the slave population, that would simplify things a lot.  Do they have any sort of alarm that calls extra personnel into the mines?  This will be a lot easier if we don't have random miners running around up here..."  He didn't want this stretching out any further than needed...the longer they were here, the more likely it became that someone would get frustrated with sorting out the computer problem and start checking with outside authorities.  Right now, Rhijans was betting heavily on the Administrator's desire to appear competent to his superiors, and trying to solve his problems with his own resources.

"Can you get us a map of some sort, of the general layout?  We know the starport and where it is in relationship to the mine office, but the rest of the layout would be very helpful."

"So far so good, then," Shard mutters back to Rhijans.  But her tension rises, especially when the miners start taking interest.

They're knotted too tightly, and all around the droid.  Suspicious.  Shard glances up at Juragga.  "Got what we need," she mutters, tapping the screen with the bulk freighter, then clearing it.  The droid's antics almost pull a laugh from her - 'kiss my shiny rear?' - but it's the miners who concern her.  Rhijans is busy, she doesn't want Haarmon getting in a pissing contest with them, and having Juragga pull arms off and start beating people with the wet ends would probably blow their cover.

That leaves her or Drake, and Shard steps into the gap.

Reaching under her coat, her hand finds smooth metal, fingers curling around it as she paces over to the table.  Shard focuses on the men, searching their faces, clearing her mind, hunting for cues on how to get to them, to turn their attention from Haarmon.  Fifteen years ago, she would have shown a little leg and had these poor, deprived men eating out of her hand.  That was then; this is now, and she's a touch too weathered to have confidence in that method any more.

Out comes the flask, and she pops the top.  "Hey.  My friend is working on droid tech - branching out to cover someone who took off at the last port.  Let it go." A swig from the flask - rotgut brutal enough to sear Juragga's throat - and she offers it to the man without a blink.  "You want to take something on, try this." Her small smirk and arched eyebrow show Shard's feelings on how well that will go.

Juragga's focus was providing cover for Shard as she worked.  Given his height, fur and bulk, he was a natural screen.  But far from being a mere walking carpet, his mind was working on solutions to their dillema.

Quietly, he rumbled to Shard.  If they could use just one transport, that would suffice.  Or maybe an exterior cargo pod, attached to Rhijans' ship?

Then someone started disparaging Haarmon as he monkied with the shiny droid.  Juragga narrowed his teal eyes and drew himself up to his full height, a dangerous rumble low in his throat.

Turning to the workers the droid shakes its head.  "I am perfectly fine, I assure you.  Oh, true, not all fine, seeing as my maintenance is grossly neglected, but you probably do not care one way or another!  Hmph!"

The droid shakes his head as he turns to Rhijans, speaking softer again.  "I would not know about the procedures in the mine, Sir.  All I know comes from what I have been told to translate, and it does not involve the miners.  But a map, ah yes, Sir, you will find a visitors map on that there console."  He points to the console which Shard had been meddling with.

The miner spares the flask a quick glance, then sneers at Shard as he gives her an appraising look, "Take your rotgut and stick it where the Force don't reach.  If I touch a drop of it, I could lose my job.  Just get your son away from that droid now, or I'll call security!"

As Juragga stretches and growl the droid turns to him and waves his hands in the air.  "Oh goodness me!  Calm down, you flea-bit furball!  You will bring security here if you carry on like that!  Hush, you!  Hush!"

Rhijans shifted, placing himself between the Wookiee and the miners.  "'Sall good, boys.  Just thought we might be able to facilitate sorting out the computer hiccups, is all.  Don't want to be treading on secured grounds, though."  He turned to Dak, and said, "You heard the man, kid...they want ya away from the droid, stop fiddling, close him up, and step back.  They want to turn down some free preventive maintenance, it's their problem."

He turned back to the console the droid had indicated, pulling up the visitors' map and examining it for relevant details that could help flesh out a plan.

Shard purses her lips at the angry miner's vitriolic spew, slowly nodding her head.  To all appearances, she looks like a woman studying a large slug that has somehow made its way into her salad.  "You got a mouth on you, don't you?  Like a little fuzzy sleen, yap-yap-yap."  Her free hand makes the appropriate blah blah blah motion in time with the description.

She really shouldn't, Shard knows, but this bastard works alongside slaves and, going by how they've been acting, cares more about the fact that he's being paid in scrip.

Click.  The flask snaps open and Shard flicks her wrist - gently.  Drops of rotgut, aptly named, hit the ground at his feet, some arcing further to sink into the miner's uniform.  "There's a drop or two touched."  The cap snaps back on.  "Better wash that jumpsuit now, sir.  Wouldn't want security or your supervisor getting a wiff, would we?"

Minor, petty revenge, but given the situation, Shard feels she's played in character.  As she turns away, the flask goes back under coat...but her hand stays there, gripping the blaster pistol in its shoulder rig.

"Probably needs a wash anyway," she mutters to herself as she walks back to the others, disgusted by both the miner and her own anger.  You gotta learn to let these things go, Shard.  It's just words and air, words and air.

Juragga scowls at the droid, but realizes the truth of his words.  Slowly he begins to deflate, reluctantly.  What he'd LIKE to do is pick up one of the vending machines and squash the loudmouth flat with it.

Then Shard throws her own act of defiance.  Juragga smiles a savage grin full of wicked teeth.  As Shard turns her back, Juragga makes sure he is inbetween her and the miners, even as Rhijans intercedes on his own.

The droid quickly, relatively speaking, moves to stand between the two groups.  "Oh dear!  Stop beings so obtuse and feebleminded, all of you!"  He half turns to the miners.  "You, back to work, shoo!  Shoo!"  He turns to the rebels.  "And you, do try to not bring security here, stormtroopers tend to make everything so complicated and messy!"

Turning back to the miners he tilts slightly sideways.  "Do try and remember what happened last time they were sent here, you dimwits!  Want that again, do you?  Hmm?  I do not think so!"

He turns to stare at straight forward, ignoring both groups, muttering under his non-existent breath.  "Really!  I do not know why I even bother sometimes!  Stupid core programming!  Stupid organics..."

The mouthy miner sneers at Shard, "Looks like the droid saved your skins, this time.  Next time maybe he won't be there to help you out."  As the liquor splashes onto his coveralls the sneer becomes a chuckle, though there is no humour in his voice as he carries on speaking, "No need for that.  It'll probably just eat holes in the cloth and there'll be nothing left to smell.  Anyway, it's the random blood monitoring when we go back on shift that's my concern, not the stink of a few drops on my clothes."

"Come on, lads, Administrator Tin-Pants there is right, we should be heading back anyway."

With much glowering and not a little grumbling, the gamblers scoop up their cards, scrip, and Haarmon's cash, then they head for the door.

Rhijans moves across to study the help terminal.  Within moments he has located a simple map of the facility, showing the locations of the landing field, warehouse entrances, the mine entrance, maintenance shops, vehicle storage, and two security checkpoints.

The droid shuffles across to him, "Yes, I do believe that is the one.  Unfortunately, while it does give many salient details, there are some parts which are now outdated." 

Rhijans nodded.  "I suspected as much...visitor's maps aren't generally kept terribly up-to-date in settings such as this.  Can you talk me through the changes to the overall layout, and those parts of the map that they haven't bothered to include here?"  Without the miners, he felt less inclined to be cagey in his discourse with the droid...though not yet completely ready to be open.  It was in Imperial installation, after all...surveillance could still be present.