Rhijans' voice was as expressionless as the faceplate of the helmet.  "I've never flown anything larger than a small transport, so we better hope several of then know something about large transport operations if we actually intend for them to survive their own rescue."

He turned slightly, just enough to be able to see the group out if 5he corner of one eye (which was actually a significant turn, with the limited peripheral vision in the helmet.  "I'm still waiting for an idea that results in a Wookiee evacuation, instead of just sealing that part of the base and abandoning them to their fates."  It was unclear whether he meant he was waiting for a moment of inspiration, or for a suggestion from someone else.  Quite probably, it was both...
This message was last edited by the player at 22:41, Wed 28 Oct 2020.

Haarmon put on his thinking face. His foot tapped the ground quickly, rhythmically, unconsciously. Rhijans was right, of course. This was all as sketchy as all get out. But this was important. It was important to his best friend and it was important to him. Void knows Rags has pulled his sorry backside from the fire enough times. He owed him this much and a whole lot more. So if they were going to walk away from this, so be it, but Haarmon was going to run it to the ground first.

"So, two step plan? Maybe? Step one, we lock the Wookie barracks down. Rebel Spy is maybe the easiest way to do that. It's worked before." He smiled a little. "We could even say that the famous, infamous, dangerous operative Juragga is there. He's already wanted for blowing up a whole Star Destroyer and springing the Colonal, yeah? And that would be the kind of thing as ISB agent might take an interest in. That shouldn't be too too hard. And I think I can knock out communications so no one can double-check our story."

A pause.

"So we get on site. Lock it down. Nothing or no one in or out. At which point we might have to improvise some depending on variables."

Another pause. Longer this time. Haarmon hated this part. He wasn't any good at it and he hated writing cheques the others were going to have to cash.

"Once we're locked down, we can find out who knows about ships. We'll be able to interrogate whoever we want because of the cover story. We find someone. SomeONES, plural, hopefully, and then we trace a path from there to whatever ship they can run that we can find here at the yards."

He didn't make eye contact with anyone. He was increasingly afraid this was stupid and dumb but he wanted to get it all out before they started laughing at him. So at least he'd get laughed at for the whole plan and not part of it.

"And that means we'll need someone at the yards to take stock and mess with stuff as needed. That will probably have to be me and Hedine. Rags and Shard and Rhijans are all going to be needed to run the Rebel-Wookie=Bluff."

"But once we have that match, we're already in lockdown, so if someone blows something up, or there's a crisis, or some idea that the Rebel scum are trying to kill Juragga the Star Destroyer Destroyer, that gives plausible deniability to quick-march them all down to the yards."

He shook his head.

"Plus or minus actually finding the guy we came looking for. Plus or minus how far it is from Wookie to ship. Plus or minus extra curious gatekeepers. Plus or minus I have to be in two places at once. Plus or minus a million other things I haven't thought of."

A took a breath. That was a lot.

He looked up.

"Whatcha think?"

Shard wracks her brain for an answer to Rhijans.  It's true that her plan might unfold along unpleasant paths rather than how she hopes, but that's an issue with any plan.  The Empire's care for their slaves is questionable, but thousands killed?  Less likely.  Less likely, she admits, but not completely out of the question.

"We're not just going to fight and die, Juragga," she whispers.  "I get where you're coming from, but we've managed some crazy rescues in the past." The Hutt's.  The ice planet.  Why not here?

"But we've also got to find Hedine's brother."

Haarmon's plan spills out in a rush, and begins to turn over and over again in Shard's head.  If she squints at it carefully enough, it's workable.  "Well, there's a solid reason not to just kill them all," she offers.  "We just need to get the story straight, THEN have the timing good.  And at the same time, find Hedine's brother." Her eyes narrow.  "Hm.  Maybe we don't need to find him; rather, maybe we don't need to find him.  Maybe your brother, Hedine, is working with the Star Destroyer Destroyer Juragga, and we need him alive.  And someone can find him for us."

Another giant con job; this, Shard considers, seems to be becoming the void-cursed norm for this group.

Karra smiles brightly.  The plan is coming together.  Reaching past Haarmon she taps at the console.  "The Wookiees look to be working in three different construction docks."  She laughs, a short, sharp bark.  "This one here... they're building a star destroyer.  Nowhere near finished yet, but might be a good target for a known saboteur like the Infamous Juragga."

Other considerations come into play.  "Najdo specialises in droids and computers, if that helps with an excuse to ask for him."

Rhijans nodded minutely.  "Gives us a way to isolate the Wookiees, certainly.  We have reason to suspect a known saboteur in their midst...for that story to fly, we need to know if any Wookiees have arrived since the incident with rescuing the Colonel.  Can't very well claim the saboteur is Juragga if he was somewhere else after the last shipment of Wookiees arrived.  We can claim it's an associate of Juragga, though, which makes interrogating them more plausible...if it's him we're looking for, someone's going to ask why we need ALL the Wookiees instead of just the ones who arrived recently.  Request them all being sequestered somewhere close to a dock with an adequate transport, so we don't have to take the saboteur far when we've found him.  Minimal guards, because we don't want a troop buildup to hint to any Rebel agents where he's being held...in fact, we can advise that troops be expanded throughout the rest of the base to suppress any rescue attempts or attempts at exploiting his capture to start a riot or carry out massive sabotage while everyone's looking at the Wookiees.  THEIR best course of action is to carry on as much like normal as possible, so any support personnel working with the saboteur aren't alerted that anything has changed...that keeps us from having a big mass of troopers to fight through, if the time comes."  There needed to be a way to get them onto the transport and depart without starting a firefight, because they wouldn't stand a chance of escaping all the picket ships around the shipyard...but he had faith they could work that out.

" Seems like a pretty simple story to sell, after having impersonated Nimadda..."

Juragga was a walking carpet of crackling static electricity.

He nodded when asked if Wookiees were pilots.  Some were, certainly.  Of all the prisoners, he was sure they'd have enough.

Talks of ruses began, which made his head spin a bit.  He wasn't good at tracking subterfuge; he wasn't even good at lying.  Wookiee honor and all that.

To the Jedi, he said, "GrrRRAaawurrrrrrrhhHHHHaaaggh."  We cannot leave any to slavery.  We must at least let them have the choice of dying in combat.

Haarmon winced. "Hey, Rags, I know you're a romantic at heart, but let's run down all the plans where everyone lives fighting before we start up with the dying fighting."

Inside, he was getting pretty excited. They were really going to do this. But he was also getting pretty terrified. Because they were really going to do this.

Romantic?  Juragga was tired.  He was weary in his soul.  He had only the barest sliver of hope left in him, and it was all that kept him going.  This turn of luck, this finding of the Wookiees... he would not have believed it.  And now he couldn't think of anything else but freeing them, one way or the other, from a fate worse than death: slavery.

"WAAAAAuuurrrrrGGGH," he commented, with a slight forced smirk.  You talk about plans where everyone lives, and you call ME a romantic?

Haarmon shook his head.

"That's not being romantic, that's being optimistic. Possibly delusional."

Rhijans had a fleeting ghost of a smirk, inside the helmet.  "If we do this right, we can take the fighting out of the equation, which improves the chances of everyone living considerably."  ISB was something out of a horror story for most Imperials, unknown figures with shadowy histories and unsavory methodologies.  Unless there was a high-ranking ISB official already on station...which was entirely possible...odds were good the one ID would be all they'd need to buy a lot of leeway.

A little persuasion, here and there, should take care of the rest...the kind of persuasion they had a proven track record of delivering.  But first things first...

"Let's not set ourselves working on too many plans at the same time.  Right now, getting the Wookiees off station, intact, is the plan.  When and if that plan starts falling apart, we can worry about staging a slave uprising and giving everyone the chance to die fighting.  Fastest way to make sure we lose a lot of people is to try and do too many different things at once."  He gave a minute shrug and added, "It's really hard to hit a target fifty meters in front of you if you're busy thinking about dodging the target thirty meters to your left."

His voice was modulated by the helmet, so it was hard to interpret the emotion behind his words as he finished, "Besides, we have to get out of here alive.  The only way this mission succeeds is if we get back to base and Hedine's brother fixes You-Why.  If we die here, he dies there.  So let's not talk about dying fighting until we know that's the only option left to us."

"What they're saying, Juragga."  Shard nods, agreeing.  "We've got a void-cursed fantastic track record with the Bantha crap - think about everything we've done.  Bluffing, getting things finished without big explosions, lying our way into places where we CAN have big explosions...it's what we do best.  The fighting?  Last resort."

She prods him once with a finger - surreptitiously, of course.  "I want to start with a plan where we try to get everyone off this rock.  AFTER that we start thinking about going down in a reactor meltdown."

Her lips purse.  "I'd rather get everyone off - all the void-cursed slaves.  But...I'm not sure how.  This plan, aiming for the Wookies, it's probably workable.  Better that than trying a failing to get the lot.  We know where this place is - a Rebel strikeforce might be able to hit it once we let everyone in on what's here."

A shrug follows that idea; something for another time.  "For now, let's run with the tried and  true ISB ID and lies.  Worst case, I can drop a name or two - I figure you know which one.  Not to BE that person, but for a link with them.  Verisimilitude, right?" Her thin smile disappears like morning mist. "So then...small rebel group here.  Juragga is one of them.  Another - Hedine?  Maybe more, which dovetails nicely with Rhijans idea of having the troopers move out to secure other areas.  So we locate Hedine, or have THEM locate him and bring him to us.  Why?  Because we know what he looks like.  But we need...um...Juragga here - OUR Juragga, not the Star-Destroyer-Destroyer - to identify the Juragga we're looking for.  So we need all of them in one area, locked down, close to transport.  Rhijans plan, essentially."

She squints, surveying the plan from different angles in her head.  "I admit, this is a big one," Shard confesses. "I'm hoping it's big and bold, but not big and overcomplicated, because those always fall apart.  More input?"

Rhijans spoke up.  "Might be better to NOT have anyone identify Juragga...the fake Juragga, that is.  Just identify known associates of his.  Rely on the Imperial disdain for non-humanoid species...they likely wouldn't recognize much difference between Wookiees beyond broad strokes like hair color and height.  That can give us an excuse to take a LOT of them off the station, right away...they're Juragga's associates, they can give us information on how to find him, what his habits and weaknesses are...but they need to be interrogated and we don't have the appropriate facilities here.  We could take a few more along on the premise that they MIGHT be Juragga but we don't know...so they DEFINITELY need to be interrogated."

He gave another shrug and a slight turn of his head.  "We might be able to get the whole contingent shipped out if we can convince them that we suspect there are a few others who are also Rebel agents...and clan members related to them.  Leaving no stone unturned, as it were, or taking them all to use as bait, to lure the rogue Wookiee Rebels into a trap.  Someone's going to complain about losing the labor force...but the Empire sees them as expendable assets.  If we present a firm argument that we NEED them all for specific operations...whether interrogation or bait or to reprogram and seed as counter-agents...I'm pretty sure the reputation of the ISB will do most of our work for us."

He gave a nod.  "I'd also be careful about saying anything about Hedine actually working with anyone Alliance.  If they think he's actually an agent, there's suddenly a long list of little quirks he may have that suddenly stop being a reason to give him a shove and become a reason to shoot him.  But if we say he knew Juragga before coming here, can identify him...well, then, he's not only not a threat, but he's an asset to be protected."  The devil was always in the details on something like this...and with the stakes being as high as they were, those details had to be consistent and working for them as much as possible.

While the team discusses the plan, Karra Hedine starts playing with the console, calling up maps, charts and diagrams.  The rest are the experts on this sort of thing, after all, so she leaves them to it, listening with half an ear while she scans through screens of information, faster and faster, searching for anything interesting.

She stops and flicks back a few pages, her attention suddenly attracted by an oddity that she almost missed.

Cocking her head to one side, she looks at the oddity, lips pursed.  Behind her the discussion continues.

Finally she raises her hand slowly.  "Excuse me... the Wookiees... a lot of them have been assigned to a project that has no designation.  They're all named, or numbered, but not this one."

Haarmon squinted at the screen. "You're right. Wow. That's.... disconcerting. But someone's gotta be calling it something. Hang on. Lemme see what I can see in here."

And so saying, he leaned forward and started typing. Within moments he was passed the utilitarian user interfaces and into the root directories. He rummaged around, and at the same time ran searches with various combinations of terms, trying to see if anyone, anywhere, referred to the project even obliquely.

"A secret project could be good for us," he muttered, not looking away from the screen. "If it's all hush hush, maybe we can get away with something."

OOC: Rolled a 23 on my Investigation roll.

Rhijans nodded.  "A secret project would be perfect for us.  We don't need anything directly connected to it...but the threat of Rebel saboteurs infiltrating it?  That gives us something to bludgeon recalcitrant command personnel with...also gives us a way to add extra credibility to our cover story, if we know about their secret project when most of the station doesn't."

He thought for a moment longer, then mused aloud, "I'm sure the Empire has hundreds of secret projects...but it would be really convenient if this one was connected with the one we messed up for them."

Haarmon starts looking through files.  Ther are a lot of them, and the first thing he discovers is that Hedine is correct - the project uses a lot of Wookiees, and doesn't have an official designation, beyond a work section identifier - WS-373.

Juragga nodded as Shard agreed with the others.  He drew himself resolute.  Then he folded his arms and forced his impatience aside as the others typed and planned and plotted.

He would be ready.

"Better and better," Shard agrees, "but worse and worse.  Because now we need to figure out what the Void that 'secret project' happens to be." Nervously, she chews on a nail, then snatches it away from her mouth; ISB officers don't go in for that sort of thing.  "Knowing the Empire, it's a tad more likely to be 'New Secret Weapon of Mass Destruction' than 'Better Agricultural System." 

Her voice is flat, toneless; if it's a joke, she doesn't find it funny.

"More leverage, more risk," she mutters, turning away.  "That...seems to be our motto.  We should get it airbrushed on the side of the Bantha, or something."

Rhijans gave a minute grunt, that might have been an amused snort if he ever did that sort of thing.  "We're in a shipyard that makes combat vessels and weapon systems.  I think we can safely assume it's not a project intended for any kind of peaceful, benevolent activity."

His tone shifted slightly.  "We don't need to know what it is.  It would be helpful, perhaps, for them to THINK we know what it is, but we're not here to oversee the project.  We're looking for a Rebel sabotage ring.  The nature of the project they might be sabotaging is secondary."  There was the slightest hint of dark humor in his voice as he continued, "Of course, if it IS some kind of weapon system, actually sabotaging it might create the kind of chaos we wanted to get out of here."  In his normal, clinical tone, he added, "If we start our 'interrogations', we may be able to find out what it is, if Juragga can convince anyone we're talking with that we should be trusted. I wouldn't blame them if nobody said a thing."

Haarmon looks up from the display.  "Nothing much about it here.  They're getting massive shipments of heavy equipment and tibanna gas, but that's about all I can find."

"And it looks to be associated with an older project, also secret, that was designated either Stardust or DS-1, depending on the report.  The old one was apparently overseen by one of the Moffs.  The new one's overseer isn't specified, but looks to be somebody even further up the food chain than a Moff."

"Tight security could be a problem."

Rhijans' scowl could be heard in his voice.  "Tibanna gas?  It's some sort of weapons system, then, most likely.  They use that in blasters, primarily, but a few other weapon-types, as well.  If they're bringing in huge quantities of it, it's either a really big weapon, or lots and lots of smaller ones."  There was a minute grunt.

"Being Kuat, it could go either way.  If they were going to make some kind of massive weapon system, this is the place best suited for constructing it...or, at least, for making the components to make it.  They might do assembly somewhere else.  But they could also be developing some kind of weapon system upgrade for their warships..."

He lapsed into silence for a moment, then gave a shrug.  "Either way, it's prime for sabotage.  Knowing about the gas coming in, along with the name of the project, should be enough for us to bluff our way through any questions...but, yeah, if it comes right down to it, anyone asks us what it is and all we have to say is we aren't authorized to know that information, we're just here looking for infiltrating saboteurs."

Haarmon nodded, "And everyone knows no one does infiltration like a Wookie."

He shook his head.

"I really should be able to dig up who's in charge of this sort of thing. Secret projects are notoriously hard to keep overseers' names out of. So much has to be handled manually. Who's above a Moff?"

No one good, that's for sure.

Another shrug from Rhijans.  "Grand Moffs...and the Emperor.  Probably a few others, few and far enough between that they don't necessarily have any unifying title.  Basically, anyone the Emperor likes and trusts."  A moment of thought, and he added, "For something like this, could also be a particularly high-ranking Admiral or General.  They don't have to channel this through standard governmental channels."

Hedine clears her throat, "Najdo isn't listed as working in that area, but he's a specialist, so maybe they had him in there recently, if the project required it?  Then again, even if it didn't, he's a computer expert, he might know a way to get more information."

"Tibanna is a coolant that they use in heavy weapons - turbolasers, and the like.  If they're shipping it in to this area, then I'd say that's what they're working on there, and the Wookiees being used there might point to a lot of heavy construction.  Maybe it's a new class of star destroyer or something."

"Top ISB agents might be..." Shard wiggles her hand.  "Something a Moff wants to step lightly around.  They're somewhat outside the chain of command, and it's all about to whom you report.  If you happen to be Ghea Nimadda, well...a Moff and her would likely circle each other like uncertain predators."  She ponders the revelation regarding the potential weapon system. "We heard...rumors, if you remember.  About some kind of superweapon developed recently that the Rebellion managed to destroy.  Maybe they're working on another one - not the same kind, but the Empire doesn't do anything by halves.  Remember Osmur?"

A grim frown twists her lips. "If the Empire made one, you can bet they like have one, maybe more variants they're working on.  Because if one is good, three or four is even better.  So if we can throw a spanner in the works here at the same time as we get everyone out, it might slow down whatever they're planning...enough that the Rebellion can actually mount an attack on this place."

Now the smile returns.  "But if it's this important, any mention of saboteurs will send them into a tizzy.  We might just luck out with it - whoever is in charge will NOT want that kind of thing on their watch, and if our credentials hold up will probably give us the run of the place...or move stars and void to give us a hand finding the terrible Star Destroyer Destroyer Juragga.  Stakes are high, which is our best chance of pulling off a Big Lie.  So let's figure out where to start - plan is, we're looking for the Evil Juragga and his associates, one of whom happens to be Najdo, right?  And we need Najdo alive, because he's one of the only ones who can ID Juragga.  All this sound good?" Her lips purse. "Problem will be if he does something unwise when he sees you, Hedine."