Rhijans did his best to assess just how attentive the stormtroopers were, without actively rubber-necking...he moved his head minutely as they walked, trying to get views of the various groups of stormtroopers ahead of them or as they passed each group, looking primarily to see if they were following the standard practice of standing at attention or if they had a more casual (and more effective) posture that allowed them to look around and take stock of the surrounding situation.

While the helmet impeded his vision, it did have one benefit...no one could see the slow, mocking smile that played across his face as Haarmon told the other troopers about the supposed design flaw in their helmets.  Their reaction, while not visible, was enough for him to file the thought away for future reference...if they needed to get clear, that could be enough to buy them a split-second of reaction time.

Shard can almost feel the confidence oozing off Haarmon, now.  Keep it together, she silently urges him.  Don't get ahead of yourself.  It's working right now, so let's not trip over anything by running too fast. Part of her chides herself for the horribly mixed analogy.  But another part of her whispers remonstrations for a different reason.

It IS working; she should hang on to some of that confidence herself, and let him continue.

So the older woman does, despite a slight tremor in her hands and the incessant demands of body and mind for high-octane fuel. Keep it together yourself, Shard, she reminds herself.  The stress hasn't been this high since they were pulling the wool over the eyes of an entire Imperial base, while impersonating an elite Imperial headhunter.  And then?  Then, Shard herself had been too busy trying to keep to character to worry.

Now, she's not in the lead and the tension is agonizing; she fears not for what her friends might do, but for their pain - both physical and spiritual - if one of them trips up.

And ahead?  Too many troopers to easily count, but it doesn't matter - if they've made it this far, they're home-free in this area, assuming Nimadda herself doesn't jog in right now (or send another group - their time here is limited).  They've gotten past the gates, so they're now Part Of Security.  So to speak.

She moves through the area with the others, doing her best to act nervous (not difficult), occasionally snapping something to Juragga, and pausing at any potential environmental readout screens she sees on the way.  "Hope nobody left anything in their quarters," the woman mutters, loudly enough for the group around her to hear.  "Could get the abandon ship call."  Not something anyone would want to hear - rebels or imperials alike - but it's best to put the idea in people's heads...for future planning.

"This prisoner, he in shape to walk?" she inquires of one of the troopers they had picked up (she thinks - Shard considers using a marker to draw something on Rhijans' and Jalt's armors...possibly a happy face on the former).  "Or do we need my muscles to carry him?"

That said with a jerk of the thumb toward Juragga.

"The prisoner is our responsibility.  We have our orders."

And there it is.  Not exactly, "Mind your own business.", but close enough.  As long as Shard and Haarmon are examining readouts, and Juragga and the droids are behaving, the troopers seem content to follow along and not pay too close attention.

There are plenty of things to distract them, after all.  Not the least of which are the distant explosions echoing through the ship...

Juragga always behaves!

He just sometimes behaves badly... :D

Haarmon was getting more and more anxious. Maybe terrified was a better word. He walked in here all cocky and sure of himself but he was absolutely out of his depth and couldn't run this thing, whatever it was that this thing even was, all on his own without input. It was all fine for Rhijans and Shard and Juragga to wing it and expect everything to fall in place, they'd been to the wars. They were competent. They knew what they were doing.

Haarmon was drowning in responsibility here. He wished he had even a minute alone

Hoping that the others would follow his lead, he locked his gaze straight ahead, down the hall, most certainly NOT on the cell with the prisoner, and kept on walking to the maintenance access panel a couple of doors down.

"Okay. First work order. Coolant and fire suppression. Access loop 14G."

With that he popped it open and plugged his terminal into the neasrest access port. Motioned to Shard. "You want to start with the nodes?"

He looked back at the troopers. "Uh. You guys might want to take a step or two back. Out of
the blast radius. Just in case, like."

He tried to sound bored. But there was a tremble in his voice. He was starting to sweat. He hoped it wasn't noticeable. Or the shake in his hands.
This message was last updated by the player at 12:46, Thu 22 Sept 2016.

Rhijans watched the troopers around them, as best he could, and nodded to himself when Haarmon found some legitimate-sounding test to run.  He racked his brain for some idea...something that would either eliminate some of the troopers or give them a reason to evacuate...

The words of the other troopers, responding to Shard, caught in his mind..."...our responsibility.  We have our orders."  If there was some way to shuffle them around...eliminate those two, and have himself and Jalt post up as them...maybe...

"Uh..." he said, trying to gauge just how to make himself sound uncertain.  It was an unfamiliar gesture...which, in itself, lent a degree of uncertainty to his voice.  "There's no chance of anything exploding in here, is there?" he asked, looking around.  While it hopefully appeared as though he was looking for potential danger points, he was trying to assess whether there were troops further into the cell block than they'd come, or if they'd actually managed to get behind everyone and only had to immediately worry about the two escorts that had been assigned to them.  He was pretty certain that the Colonel, if he was here, was in the cell that had the extra troops assigned to the door.

He turned back to Haarmon, an idea dawning on him for a way to make sure the slicer knew it was his own man asking the question.  "You guys must really be under the gun...you should take a rag and wipe the sweat off your hands before you touch anything.  Just for safety."  The stress on the word was slight...but audible.

He just hoped it was picked up for what it was meant to be, by his team...and not noticed at all by the other troopers.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:10, Mon 26 Sept 2016.

Haarmon paused in his frantic search for an explodable canister of toxic coolant. He gave the 'trooper, the one was almost certain was one 'his' troopers. Shook his head in a nervous, anxious way, which he thought was the right call, given the most decidedly non-nonchalant nature of the circumstances.

"Under ideal conditions, I'd say low but nonzero. But with all that going on," he gestured as the big ship shuddered under some fresh attack, "We're into the big red section of the tech manual, you know? The extra credit section. The appendices."

He bit his tongue. Damn nerves.

"Which is why we're here in the first place."

Another look, some narrowed eyes at the next comment. So this was definitely Rhjijans, then. Jalt wouldn't know the slicer's nickname for the wookie. And probably wouldn't use it like that if he had.

What was the Big Man trying to say? Something about Juragga? Haarmon eyed the wookie up for a moment or two. He shook his head. Couldn't figure out what the guy was trying to tell him.

But at least he knew for sure (for pretty sure anyway) that this one was on his side.

He fixed the Rhijans-trooper with a solid stare. "So. Yeah. Something very well could explode. Any moment like. Sewage. Toxic coolant. Anything. So safety first."

And then went back to his terminal.

His head was hurting. Spy-stuff was hard.

"Yes, trooper.  Understood, trooper," Shard shoots back immediately.  Okay, so stay away from that area of discussion.  And help Haarmon.  So long as they don't need to fight their way out....

"Come on," she snaps to Juragga, motioning him over to where Haarmon is 'working'.  Diving into the tech case Juragga carries, she ensures the tray on top - hiding the weapons - is light, and snags the murder-stick.  Keeping it at her belt, her back toward the door (and the troopers' line of sight), she stays close to the younger man.

"Keep it together," she cautions.  "This is touchy work, so let's not make any mistakes.  But we've done this before - stay frosty, and everything will go smoothly."

Multiple meanings in that, and perfectly innocuous for anyone listening, so she doesn't bother whispering; that kind of thing would only attract attention.

"GROWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWRh," Juragga commented.

I have complete faith.

Juragga's faith in his team, and more specifically Haarmon, may be sadly misplaced.

There is a sudden high-pitched whistle, that builds in volume until it becomes an ear-shattering shriek, uncomfortable enough for the Humans, much worse for the Wookiee.

Thick white vapour, with a smell like blue milk that soured a couple of days ago, floods out of the panel Haarmon was working on.  In a second or two, vision in the corridor is severely hampered.  And it's cold... the vapour, whatever it is, is definitely cooler than the ship's ambient temperature.

Cries echo through the mist.  The officers at the security desk are evacuating the area, leaving only the stormtroopers, their vision impaired by the obscuring vapour, to deal with the emergency...

For a second Haarmon stood back from the panel, shocked at the intensity of the reaction of what he had just caused. He was expecting a nice, polite swish of something. Not this apocalyptic burst of noise and chaos.

Rhijans is gonna be so excited!

"Oh Sweet Hot Burning Void!" He yelled as he stepped away from the terminal and started pushing the members of his team toward the guarded cell. A thump on each back, a push, quick but insistent. And controlled. This was the careful push of someone giving a message, not the  panicked shove of someone actually afraid.

Although he was, in fact, plenty afraid.

And then he started running down the hall, back toward the main desk. Screaming at the top of his lungs.

"BREACH! BREACH! CLEAR THE HALLWAY! CLEAR THE HALLWAY! FOR THE LOVE OF THE EMPIRE CLEAR THE HALLWAY!"

Rhijans made certain to keep himself and Jalt between the trio of their teammates and the other stormtroopers.  "Breach?!!" he called out.  One hand dropped to his belt...slipping a grenade out.  "If the coolant's compromised, who knows what else could be at risk?"  He tried to put the appropriate amount of concern (not panic...not yet...) into his voice.

He turned sideways, as though to look behind them...and used his free hand to push the unarmored Haarmon and Shard past him, before flipping a grenade back toward, and past, the site of the 'breach', relying on the haze in the air to prevent anyone from realizing what, exactly, he was doing...and if they did, relying on the generic appearance of stormtroopers to prevent anyone from isolating him as the one responsible for what was about to happen...

Oh....

Words fail her, and Shard comes dangerously close to panic.  This stuff - whatever it is - could be toxic.  They might all die in the next few seconds (well, not Rhijans, Jalt, You-why, Oh-oh...perhaps it would be better to be more specific).  And now someone - Haarmon? - has pressed her further down the hallway toward the cell?

Back his play, Shard.  Whateverthevoid it is!

"Secondaries!" she shouts, slapping Juragga on the arm (flea-bite, no more...).  "Find the secondaries!"  And it's down the hallway, hunting for another panel, helped along by another push, this time from one of the troopers.  Rhijans?  Jalt?  Maybe, she can't tell, never having the chance to scrawl some kind of identifying marking on their armour.

Between the near-panic, the tension about to explode, the fear of Nimadda, and the frustration at being One Step Behind™, she's teetering on a dangerous edge...but maybe, just maybe, that's where Shard needs to be.  Caught between, she thinks as she moves.

Find the balance. 

Haarmon ignores both Rhijans' push and Shard's shouts (and, he imagined, since it wasn't visible, Juraggas' concern). All of this (whatever it is) was for naught of they had to walk back through that wall of pain on the way out.

So he was going to try and clear the room.

So he kept sprinting toward the main desk where the officer and the 40 Troopers were, screaming BREACH and CLEAR at the top of his lungs the entire way.

The others could handle things back there. He was good at letting the chaos loose, the rest of the team were the experts in riding it.

A dull thud, a blaze of white light, filtered through the clouded atmosphere, and a number of screams.  Followed by a swirling, billowing wave-front of vapour which pushes Jalt off his feet, unbalancing some of the others, and an odd ringing in everybody's ears.

A grenade in a confined area will do that...

The ear ringing takes on a new tone - an alarm is hooting somewhere nearby, although the sound is muffled by the ringing.

Haarmon adds his own brand of confusion into the mix.  Ahead of him, people start to move towards the exit.  Quickly.  Leaving the security post unmanned.  At least until somebody gets a moment to think...

Something unseen falls with a loud crash, somewhere towards the far end of the corridor - away from the desk - and a single blaster bolt comes out of the mist in that direction, hitting the ceiling above Rhijans.  Jalt, presumably, starts to get to his feet, grumbling, "Are all your parties this exciting?  Which way is the cell?"

Inside the helmet, Rhijans flashed a humorless grin.  "We don't usually have so many people at our parties," he replied, in a low growl.  He lunged past Haarmon and Shard, to the two stormtroopers that had been sent back with them.

"Someone's firing from the rear!" he stated in an urgent tone.  "We've got to set up a perimeter and cover the withdrawal!"

Either they'd refuse and clear out, or move back by Jalt and take position.  One would get them out of the way, the other would cut them off from the rest of the troops and make them easy targets for elimination, and possibly rid them of whoever had fired the stray bolt at the ceiling, as well.  Both options worked well, in Rhijans' mind...

Ears filled with that annoying buzz that just.  Won't.  Leave -

- void-cursed grenades! -

- Shard stumbles alongside the others as the press toward the cell.  But a blaster-bolt howling close-by is enough to shake the stupor from her mind.  Either someone has figured things out, or there's a seriously confused trooper back there; either way, that spells danger.

"Dak!" she screams, back toward the entrance where Haarmon vanished.  "Someone's shooting, get yourself back here!"  It's not an out-of-the-question reaction for a tech, with no details specified.  And they need him here, where he's safe.  Back there?  He could eat a blaster bolt, and that would be that.

He's not a kid, Shard; let him be, and focus on the work.

Even so, her guts knot.

The troopers move, one of them shaking his head and banging a hand against the side of his helmet.  The other is calling in a report as he levels his blaster.  "We've been boarded.  Detention Block 7.  We're taking fire."  And the two of them step into the mist, their white armour blending in to the white vapour...

Jalt stops in his tracks.  "I think we're about to have a lot more uninvited guests, just as soon as somebody realises who's being held down here."

Rhijans nodded, the gesture barely noticeable with the helmet on.  "Then there's no sense taking any more time than necessary, is there?"  He turned to look at the cell doorway...troopers behind him were shrouded in the mist, he couldn't see them so it was highly likely they couldn't see him...

How many troopers remained guarding the door would be the tricky part of this.  If the numbers were low enough...they could get into the cell and utilize some of the same trickery to camoflage the Colonel...if they could get enough time to get him into a suit of armor and if they could come up with a complete suit that wasn't fatally compromised in some way.

Jalt inclines his head in the direction of the cell.  "Let's do it.  The longer we wait, the more nervous the troopers'll get, and the more likely that reinforcements will arrive."

He stoops, rolls another grenade into the fog, and yells, "Grenade!"  There is a short-lived sound of unseen action, hurrying feet and warning shouts, followed by nothing.  Not even an explosion.  "Let's keep them nervous for a bit longer."

For all his apparent eagerness, the pilot advances cautiously down the corridor...

Rhijans didn't say anything in response to that...though, of the two, it was the reinforcements that he considered a bad thing.  Nervous troops were easier to goad into action, especially when they could be convinced they were taking fire from an unseen adversary.

"We really should find something to mark ourselves," he muttered aloud.  "Hard enough keeping track when there's two of us, and if we put the Boss in one of these, it will only get worse."  In the off chance that someone could hear what they were saying to each other, he didn't want to mention Kourene, not even by rank, and give anyone a clue that there was a specific target to be protected. Even as he spoke, his eyes were searching for indicators of just how many troops remained to get through, both to get into Kourene's cell, and to get out of the detention block.

Rhijans takes a step forward, and at that precise moment the cell block is plunged into total darkness.  Less than two seconds later it is filled with a dim red luminescence  as emergency lighting cuts in.  The new lighting doesn't make it any easier to see through the fog.

And somewhere, not too far away, there is an explosion that seems to make the deck buck underfoot.

Fortunately it's less than fifteen metres to the correct door, and there are no guards left standing near the cell.  Just one who is slumped to the floor, unmoving, in armour with blood oozing from a cracked chest piece.  That trooper's left arm seems to be bent in the wrong places too, and there is no sign of his weapon anywhere nearby.

The door is, of course, locked...

Shard eyes the dead trooper, wondering about the injuries.  They could be the result of the explosion.  On the other hand...  But there's no time for that kind of thing.  "We need to get this door open, and quick." Haarmon isn't exactly set up for such things at the moment, but fortunately she has a key.

Of sorts.

Out comes the murder-stick.  "Step back," Shard warns the group.  Depression of the button, and with a snap-hiss the blue-white energy ignites.  Slowly, carefully, Shard presses the tip into the metal, slowly heating it; if Kourene is in the cell and standing anywhere in front of the door, it wouldn't do for him to suddenly sprout a burn-hole.

Once the 'blade' is through, she begins the task of cutting the door open - rather, HALF the door.  Shorter time, and the colonel can edge his way out.

OOC - If someone wants to stop Shard when she's setting up for this, I can amend my post.  :)

Haarmon reached the front desk just as the lights went out and the siren started. He'd stopped planning out his days with this outfit some time ago and so, while he wasn't sure how he was expecting this all to go down, it wasn't like this.

That's not from me, that's from them.

Which was bad. Very bad. If the Imps had their number, then they were suddenly about to get a lot more busy.

Unless I do something.

So he stopped running and hit the ground. Which, he figured, was plenty in character for a scared techie. Once he was down there he did two things: he pulled out his blaster, and he started scanning his immediate area, looking for somewhere he could plug in.

He wasn't at all comfortable being out here on his own. He liked best when the smart people gave him orders. But this seemed pretty simple. He had to help contain this. Give the rest of the team time to get done what they had to do.

A terminal.... a terminal... my kingdom for a terminal...

Rhijans grimaced, inside his helmet, at the sight of the downed trooper...not out of any sympathy for the pain he might have suffered, but rather at the potential complications involved by someone or something that had done that behind them.

Shard produced her lightsaber, and Rhijans turned to Jalt.  "Time to be the loyal Imperial guard, and make sure nobody disturbs the work here..." he said, at the same time trying to think through a way to make sure they didn't get mistaken for some other stormtroopers.

A grim option came to mind...and he knelt down by the fallen stormtrooper, wiping two fingertips through the blood on the armor.  He reached up and used it to wipe two streaks across the front of the left shoulder piece, then repeated the mark on Jalt's shoulder.

Then he quickly dragged the fallen trooper a couple of feet away from the door.  If anyone walked up on them, explaining a tech with a lightsaber would be trouble enough.  A dead stormtrooper right at their feet would get awkward questions asked before anyone got a chance to see the lightsaber...