Haarmon was pretty freaked out. He was just about to say something that might nip this thing short and let them escape, something like a grunt with a pointing at a watch or whatever, but then Rhijans started with the secret spy-master stuff. No way anyone was going to swallow two peons back-talking whoever the hell Lady Nimdadda was supposed to be. So he was stuck.

And now? Now they're splitting up? He wanted to wave his arms and start yelling at the top of his lungs. If there was one thing that a life-time of holo-vids and net-gaming taught him, it was this;

Don't split the party!

But here they were, complicating things instead of simplifying, starting new things instead of wrapping up old ones. Getting further into this place rather than further out.

And all the while the little bomb he planted in their system was just sizzling and smoking away. Only a matter of time before it went off.

Heart hammering away in his chest, mouth dry, hands shaking, Haarmon fell into step with Rhijans.

This. Is. Going. To. Suck.

"Yes, Lady Nimadda.  All of the technicians working on this project have been vetted by both ISB and Imperial Intel.  Only those who have been cleared by both organisations are permitted to set foot in this facility." Alates explains, his confidence returning now that he has something definite to report.

Behind him, Rhijans, Reldan, and Haarmon start their inspection of the equipment.  Alates eyes do not deviate from Shard and Juragga...

"All personnel are under strict orders not to fraternise with the local population.  And their movements are monitored at all times."  He risks a smile.  A small one.  "In many ways they are living under tighter restrictions on their movements than many slaves,  But they are being paid for the inconvenience."

Rhijans smiled grimly as he noticed Alates' attention focused on Shard and Juragga.  It was a shame that thermal detonators weren't part of the standard load-out for a stormtrooper, because this would have been a great location for one.

Instead, as the captain continued to try and soothe the suspicions of 'Lady Nimadda', Rhijans took a couple of the grenades from his utility belt and propped them in what appeared to be vulnerable locations.  For good measure, he set a few of the extra power-packs for his blaster in the works, as well.

He'd save one grenade...they needed something to set the whole thing off, after all.  While he tried to work quietly, he was more focused on being efficient with his motions.  If the captain turned and noticed him...well...that meant he wouldn't be watching the Wookiee...Rhijans would just have to hope that Juragga would intercede before the Captain raised a weapon.  Or an alarm.

"A good start," Shard mutters, knowing it's good not to give absolutes with regards to compliments.  Always leave some room for criticism...or implied criticism.  She turns away for a moment, then whips back, almost face to face with the captain.  "Well paid, you say?  You monitor their movements.  Do you monitor their credits?"

Leaning back slightly, Shard rubs a finger against her jaw.  "Something to consider, captain.  A well-paid man might still be found with no money in his account.  Gambling, debts...these things might, might pass through the fingers of a background check, but they will be obvious to one who continues to observe the flow of money.  And a well-paid man with more money than he ought to have should be obvious as well.  'Well-paid' is not a panacea to treason.  When some people receive their just sum for difficult work, they only wish for more."

This is a horrible world to live in, Shard decides, full of paranoia and fear.

Of course, there's a reason for that.  The older woman doesn't look at the men working behind the captain.  Better not to draw his gaze.  Instead, she remains focused upon him, demanding his focus in turn.

Speaking of paranoia, now might be a good time.

"Captain Alates." She lets her voice drop to a more casual tone.  "I am curious.  You've been here some time, yes?"  Her eyes sharpen, but not with anger or irritation.  "Have you seen...anything...you'd like to report?  Even off the record?  Now would be a good time."

"We leave security checks on workers accounts to the experts, My Lady.  ISB handle that side of things, leaving us free to concentrate on the more... physical... aspects of surveillance.  We have equipment, manpower, and expertise in tracking movements."

Alates seems to be relaxing a little.  perhaps because he's deflected another of Lady Nimadda's questions back to her own people.

That all changes when she asks him if he has anything he'd like to report.  He starts to look less pleased with himself, and says nothing for  several seconds.  His eyes also refuse to meet Lady Nimadda's gaze.

Finally, and with much nervousness, "I... I'm not sure that the admiral is being entirely honest regarding this project, My Lady.  Occasionally, when giving updates to the senior officers, he will be asked about progress and expected completion dates for various aspects of the project.  In my opinion, the figures he gives are inaccurate."

"I believe he has overestimated the time until the station is operational by several months.  Perhaps as much as half a year."

There, he said it, "I cannot understand why the admiral would want to hide this fact."

Rhijans smirked inside his helmet.  He could think of a lot of reasons why the Admiral would be padding estimated times of completion, ranging from the unlikely option that he was appalled at the intended function of the final product to the extremely likely option that coming in well ahead of the estimated time of completion would make him look like a phenomenal manager and increase his chances of landing some other prime assignment.

He didn't say anything, however...the last thing he wanted to do was give Alates a reason to look over his shoulder.  He'd finally worked out a way to get this mess to detonate on command...sort of.  He paid out several feet of the safety line from the utility belt, and tied one end around the pin on one of the grenades, which he wedged into a position in the equipment where the pin could come loose to trigger the detonation without tumbling the rest of the grenade out of position.  He'd want to be the last man off the platform...and he'd be at a run when he left...but that would give him a few seconds to get far enough away from the center of the blast.  He could only hope that the casing for the generator would contain most of the force, for his own sake.  Plus, if all that energy was kept contained inside the framework, it would do that much more damage to anything inside.

Keep him talking...we're almost done...  He glanced over at Dak, wondering if there was some way the kid could set the generators on an overload cycle, just to further make a mess, but he couldn't think of a way to ask the question that wouldn't get Alates looking around.

And there was a frantic edge in Dak's eyes that made him think that asking for anything right now might be a bad idea.  The kid was holding it together...but it looked like he REALLY wanted to get out of here, now when he thought no one was looking.

Soon, kid.  We'll be on our way soon...

Haarmon edged up to Rhijans a little. Close enough to talk but hopefully not close enough to make anyone suspicious. "It's time we were leaving," he hissed, his voice shaky and intense, "All of us. Now." He didn't want to say why, not out loud. He knew only too well how easy it would be for someone to be watching them.

"Now," he said again, the plea naked in his face.

Rhijans blinked a couple of times in surprise.  While he wasn't surprised that Dak was uncomfortable with the situation, the utter lack of bravado in the plea underscored the urgency more strongly than any quip that the kid could have made.  He nodded curtly, glanced over to make sure Reldan was squared away, and positioned himself so that his body would be screening the shield generator from Captain Alates' view.

"I think we've seen everything we need to see, Lady Nimadda.  And we do have other destinations waiting..."  It was risky, but he'd have to chance the captain becoming suspicious.

Besides, there was still time for Captain Alates to have a tragic accident...

Juragga, close by 'Niimada's' side, knitted his shaggy brows and stood stock still, his gaze fixed solidly ahead.  But the muscles under his pelt tensed.  The kid didn't spook that easily, or at least, didn't let himself show it, especially in front of Shard, whom he was obviously sweet on.

"What you have," Shard corrects sharply, "is a position here, with constant observation of your people.  Do not forget that, Captain." 

But her brow furrows at his admission.  The Admiral is pushing back the timeline?  The station will be finished before its projected date?  Curious.  A few reasons for this jump into her mind, but the only ones that make sense involve either the Admiral planning something nefarious on his own, or this being a trap for rebel forces.  Leaked information...a fully-functional battlestation...

Not good, either way.

"I will investigate this matter, Captain Alates." Her eyebrow rises.  "I assure you, your name will only enter the investigation if something solid is uncovered...or nothing at all.  Until a time when the matter is settled one way or another, you will remain anonymous."  Something to keep him off balance, that, as they continue their -

And Rhijans speaks up.

Shard twitches slightly, shooting a glance over the captain's shoulder.  She's in the role too much now, ready to snap back at her 'subordinate', when common sense catches up.  Rhijans wouldn't do that...he and Haarmon, standing close...Juragga's tension, quite different from his looming of earlier...

"Of course," she mutters with a fingerwave of irritation. "The councillor." The older woman has no idea what that might mean to the captain, but even a mystery would keep him thinking in the wrong direction.  "Captain, I require your escort back to my shuttle immediately.  I hadn't expected this extensive a tour..." Her wintery smile holds no threat, for once.  "My fault, not yours.  Juggling bureaucratic appointments is not my forte.  You've done well here, today.  Well indeed."
This message was last edited by the player at 15:42, Mon 18 Mar 2013.

Alates' face shifts from relief, to concern, to confusion, to panic, and back to relief again.  The question about unreported problems and incidents had worried him, but Ghea Nimadda seems satisfied with his answer.  And now it appears that she wants to leave, and he had expected to be spending several more hours in her somewhat unsettling company.  He doesn't much care who she is going to be spending the rest of the day with, he just knows that it isn't him...

"Of course, Lady Nimadda, this way please."

He gestures for the ISB inspector to lead the way down the stairs to the lower level, and the exit from the tower.

And then, as Shard starts down the narrow stairs, he moves smoothly between her and the rest of the team, so that he can continue speaking to her as the descend.  "A pity you have to leave so soon, My Lady.  Perhaps we can hope to see you again in the future?"

Rhijans turned back to Dak, quickly...they didn't have much time, the Captain would doubtless notice if the rest of the entourage somehow vanished behind Juragga.

"How hard would it be to start these things up?  And if we blow one or two of them, would the feedback overload the others?  If it's gonna take more than a couple of seconds, let's just get moving."  He spoke softly, hoping the helmet's vocal processors didn't amplify his words too much.

"We've gotta catch up before this stuff starts cooking off, because I think we're gonna have to give the Captain a fast trip to the bottom of the tower to make it out of here without him accusing us.  Want to get there before he gets low enough to only get hurt by the fall."  Yeah, he knew, it was a callous approach to take...but he also figured it was, in some ways, a mercy killing.  If their plan succeeded and they got out of there with the shield generators going up in their wake, Captain Alates would have some very awkward questions to answer...and some very skeptical people asking them.

Shard laughs, a jagged-edged chuckle of genuine-sounding amusement.  "You're a better soldier than a liar, Captain Alates.  Don't worry about that; it's preferable to the alternative.  I know you're only too glad to get me out of your hair and far, far away." She's deep in the role, now, perhaps a touch too deep, for a pang of sorrow ripples through her.

"But that's how it is, captain.  Remember it, if you reach for something higher."  Her eyes narrow, staring out from the stairs toward a distant point.  "Nobody will understand or care about what you do, what you prevent, and have prevented."  Her jaw sets, putting the lie to any thought that she wallows in self-pity.  "And it's better that way.  The Empire must be strong, captain, and part of strength is the perception of such.  As such, those who work in the shadows to keep it strong must remain there."

She purses her lips, nodding slowly.  "Unasked-for lessons are the most annoying, captain...but you'd do well to remember that."  A shrug.  "If not?  Merely the norm."

As the captain turned his back to him, without any other reaction, Juragga fell in behind him and then, casually, almost relaxed, took his paws and swung them quick and wide, arcing in horizontally, meeting in the middle.  The only thing in the way was Alates' head...

21:04, Today: Juragga rolled 22 using 6 dice with the WEG Classic system with rolls of 2,2,4,5,4,{Wild}5. Head smash.

Too much. Too fast. Too much. Too fast. Too much. Too fast.

Haarmon was just trying to figure out how to answer Rhijans' question when he dropped the bit about dropping the Captain. That stopped him for a few seconds. And he was just wrapping his poor little noggin around that when Juragga decided discretion was not the better part of valour.

He looked around madly, eyes wide, hoping someone (ANYONE) would give him a clue as to what he was supposed to do next.

Alates is too busy trying to make sure that Ghea Nimadda remembers him for all the right reasons to notice that her stromtrooper escort, and the baby-faced technician, are not directly behind him as he starts down the stairs.  He's even too busy to notice that the Wookiee is directly on his heels...

He's not, however, too busy trying to make a good impression to notice as he clumsily staggers into the back of the Moff's personal killer, and falls face-down on the stairs, though by that time he's too busy being unconscious to notice much of anything.

Very unconscious.

While he's definitely still breathing, it looks as if he'll be out of commission for a while.

After which, depending on how things go in the next few minutes, he might very well be without a commission...

With all the other noise going on in the tower, Rhijans almost missed the sound of the crumpling body collapsing on the stairs.  He spared a moment to look (making sure he left plenty of slack on the trip-cord he'd trailed out from the triggering grenade in the generator), and noticed Alates was down, and Juragga was towering over him.

Well...that takes care of THAT particular risk...  He turned back to Haarmon, bringing his free hand up to grab the kid by the shoulder and give him a mild shake, then hold him face-to-face.

"Kid," he began, with a level tone.  With more insistence, his voice still low, he added, "Dak!"  He'd never called Haarmon by name before, never had a literal face-to-face conversation with him.  If he didn't have lingering concerns about instantly giving them all away by being seen on surveillance without a helmet on, he would have taken it off, to further clarify the point.  He shifted his grip from Dak's shoulder to his neck, fingers curled around the back of the kid's head to help hold his focus steady on the dispassionate stormtrooper mask in front of him.

"You're the closest thing to a technician we've got here, and you've made it clear that we need to leave.  Is there anything we can do in a few seconds here to maximize the damage all this stuff is going to do to the shield generators?  The more we can set them back, physically, the more time we buy for the Intel guys to uncover other related operations and maybe infiltrate them.  Can we flip some switches, bump some settings...anything?  Or are we best off just pulling the pin and running like hell?"

If this is going to become a standard practice for us, I REALLY need to learn more about proper demolitions, he told himself, filing that in a mental note on the list of a few dozen other skills that he felt himself lacking.

Thump.

Shard stumbles, turning around prepared to snap off Alates' head.  As it happens, someone has already been there first, and the captain goes down, hard, on the stairs at her feet.  She looks up - waaaaay up - and nods to Juragga.  "Nice."

If the Wookie felt it needed to be done, then far be her to disagree; not from fear, but from trust for Juragga's choices.

Haarmon, on the other hand, looks like he's about to hyperventilate. Fortunately Rhijans is already there, calming the young man down and hunting for an explanation.  Pulling the pin?  I should have known...Rhijans and his explosives.  This place is about to go up in flames.

"Grab the captain, Juragga," Shard quietly requests.  "We'll carry him out.  But once he's clear of the blast, drop him - not on his head - and we're gone."  She smiles; it's bleak, but without the razor-edge of 'Nimadda'.  "If the Imperials want to execute him, that's their business.  But I'm not going to blow up a helpless man if I can avoid it."

Reldan, still in disguise, interrupts Rhijans' instructions.  "The shuttle has lots of guns, and the tower isn't shielded.  Why don't we just take off and blast all this from the air.  Admitted it means that we still have to get out past the ships up above, but that's better than trying to get out past a bunch of panicking Impies down here and the ships."

"That way we can walk back, nice and casual.  You can still pack the equipment with grenades, just on the off-chance they'll blow and add to the damage.  And if they don't, then that gives our hosts something to worry about while they're tidying up."

Haarmon looked back and forth from Rhijans to Shard to Reldan to Juragga. He tried to calm down. Swallowed once hard and took a deep breath. Tried to focus on Rhijans' question. Eventually he shook his head. "No can do. I don't know the system. Or the generators. I could go in, poke around, but I'd be guessing. And it might not matter soon anyway. Which is why we gotta scoot."

Rhijans scowled inside his helmet...his weighing options was almost audible in his voice as he spoke.  "I'd rather try and get through a crowd of panicking people down here than try and fly through their pickets after they saw us fire on the generator array.  But we don't have time to sit around and talk it through, apparently..."  He'd take the time to ask Dak what he did after they were back aboard the shuttle.

And then he got an idea.  "C'mon," he said to the other two.  They moved down to where Alates lay on the stairs...it was far enough from the grenades, with the platform floor acting as a kind of blast shield...

"If we leave him here, and tie this off, when he wakes up and starts moving, he'll pull the pin for us.  Take about four seconds to rig..."  His raised eyebrow wasn't visible, but the unspoken question was in his voice...Do we have time to do this?

"RuuuUAAAAARRRR," Juragga complained.  The kid wanted them to skedaddle, he was all for skedaddling.  Thumping one Imperial had been fun, but they tended to swarm. Like Womp Rats.

"That has to be the single most ridiculous plan I've ever heard." Reldan says, "I love it.  It's so simple that none of the Impies will think of it.  They'll be scanning for mysterious transmissions and watching for squadrons of Y-wings coming in to bomb the place.  They won't think of looking for a length of line attached to a grenade."

"And even if he doesn't wake up by himself, somebody will come and move him eventually.  And with any luck, we'll be safely in hyperspace by the time that happens."

Rhijans allowed himself a grimly sly smile, even though nobody could see it.  He tied a simple hitch, fastening the cord to a belt loop on the back of the Captain's uniform and securing it with a basic knot, then flopped Alates on his back.

"Okay...let's get back to the shuttle before whatever Dak's worried about raises hell with our departure..."  He stood up, looking around at the group and then at Shard, with a slight gesture to proceed.

"After you, Lady Nimadda...I think we can safely claim to have found evidence of a hole in the security here that we need to go take care of, if anyone asks what the rush is..."

Shard slowly nods.  She's almost hyperventilating from the stress at this point - something has to go wrong, sooner or later, and the longer it takes the worse it'll be - but she's focusing and keeping it together.  Haarmon has something going, obviously, but won't say what, not yet.  Real flair for the dramatic, that kid.

"Works for me," she decides. "Set it up.  Sorry, Captain Alates."  With a shrug, she waves them on.  "Let's go.  If the place doesn't go boom on our way out - from grenades or Haarmon's surprise - we can always decide to fire on it as we lift.  Right now, this is a good start."

She starts to walk, not hastily but with purpose.  "But we're not in a hurry.  We act like there's a problem, we'll have a dozen administrators surrounding us in ten seconds flat looking to figure out what it is, what they can do to fix it, and who to blame it on.  It'll slow us down, even if 'Lady Nimadda' kills one of them as an example to the others."  She smiles grimly.  "They're just going to be glad to see us leave, quietly, and if anyone does ask, we have urgent business elsewhere."