Arabesque

[Enyo Typhos]

[member="Maris Fero"], [member="Amara Zarides"]


For a moment, Thuella wondered whether Maris was laughing at her. She was probably being overly sensitive. Then the ganger made a comment about iron stomachs. "I wish," the Dahomian grimaced. Fortunately, the nauesa was starting to fade. "Maybe I'll order one when I get back home," she laughed.


She glanced towards Amara. "Don't tell Enyo that. She'll send us to another storm-wracked ice ball just to toughen us up. Or mix things up by sending us on a Mustafar vacation. 'You complained about it being cold, so I sent you somewhere hot'," she said cynically, doing her best to make an Enyo impersonation. Anyhow, out they went into the freezing cold. To say that Thuella shivered was an understatement.


As far as the naked eye could see, there was naught but snow. Truth be told, there was very little Thuella could see, for the blizzard had done a number on visibility. Cold air hit her, snow crunched beneath her boots and the wind blew across the land. Cold and annoyed, she went to work on a snowspeeder.


Some time later Libertas showed up. This annoyed Thuella even more since the Sith Lady gave no indication of being bothered by the cold, aside from the fact that the snow slowed her gait. Naturally she had advice to offer. "If it bothers you so much, use the Force to warm yourself. If visualisation helps, imagine an inner flame burning inside you. Harness it. It's called tapas."

"That's a silly name. On Dahomey, tapas is a type of food," Thuella grumbled.

"What's in a name?" Libertas replied plagiaristically. Sith anarchists probably did not care about intellectual property law. She could have watched the minions, but instead made herself useful by helping prepare the speeders.

 

[Maris Fero]

It was all laughing and almost friendly smiles until Amara popped the hatch, releasing a gust of air cold enough to steal Maris next breath and the immediate drop in the temperature of the compartment. For a moment the Shrike was halted, the shock of the sudden change of atmosphere enough to drag her from any revery she might have still felt following the excitement of their rough landing.

Vorzyd was a temperate world, in truth, but no native of the Efavan Lower city truly understood the meaning of cold weather; The sheer size of the megastructures in the capital megacity retained ambient heat throughout the day and night, extreme levels of pollution in the smog layer that lay between the Lowcity and the Casino heights insulated the gloomy world beneath clouds, maintaining an environment that would be most often described between the levels of uncomfortably warm to unbreathably stifling. Cold, in Efavan was practically a summer sun for Hoth.

“Chit” she swore under her breath, flinching her head and hunching up as she felt the chill pass over the back of her neck and shoulders, “oh- oh -oh…”

The young woman shook her head sharply, in denial that weather so cold was even possible, perhaps even refusing to go out into that icy hell. It took a few moments for her to seal her cold weather gear tighter still before she was willing or able to take her first hesitant steps into the white wilderness of Hoth.

Amara needed help, the wind and the cold were making work hard going but the youth from Efavan's thoughts were far from aiding the blonde. She stood at the bottom of the ramp staring into the relentless alabaster blizzard that surrounded the ship, stealing all shape or definition from the landscape. The cold cut through the slender youth like a blade; Maris felt her teeth chattering, the fine hairs on her skin stood on end.

The snow, that crunched underfoot and fell in heavy flakes against her cheeks was new too, so cold it almost felt like burning at first.

“What is this place?” she managed finally, voice low but audible as she stood blinking at the sight before her, oblivious to Amara's "funny" play on words.

[member="Enyo Typhos"] [member="Amara Zarides"]

 

[Amara Zarides]

[member="Enyo Typhos"] [member="Maris Fero"]

Amara grunted. “If you’ve imagined hell as a burning pit you’re wrong. This is a frozen hell from which there is no escape,” she grumbled.
She was briefly warmed by imagining Libertas on fire. That would be a nice image.
“I could do with some tapas right now,” she muttered.

Finally the ship coverage was in place the speeders were heating up.
“I’ll go with Thuella,” she declared. That would leave Maris with Libertas. What a shame/coincidence! She didn’t mind the ganger, but anything which kept her away from the Sith was worth it.

Without waiting for permission she walked to the speeder and took station in the co-pilot chair. It had a large gun…which always helped.
“Come on, ‘Ella, let’s get going.”
The speeders were modified for the cold and so started up. Even so they’d take a couple of minutes before they were fully ready for flight.

 

[Enyo Typhos]

[member="Amara Zarides"], [member="Maris Fero"]

Sadly, the Twi'lek was quite resistant to fire. Phrik had a high melting point, though enough heat would probably mess with her cybernetics. Amara did not know it, but she had actually dodged a bullet. Enyo had almost sent her on a mission with her new associate Darth Destructus. Fortunately for the clone, her sister had tired of his emoness and processed him instead. He was now far less annoying, a lot more mechanical and no longer wore a Vader replica mask.

Unlike everyone else, Libertas did not seem fussed by the pervasive cold. Obviously the endless snow slowed her down and she was less agile in it, but she did not seem bothered by it. "I remember Dromund Kaas after the Mandalorians dropped a couple asteroids on it," she remarked. It had thrown the planet into an ice age. There had also been warlords, Mandalorians and Sithspawn monsters. Fun times for her. "This is almost pleasant compared to that. Come on, Maris. It's another hurdle to overcome. Another chain to break. I'll drive. You take the co-pilot chair."

Meanwhile, Thuella fell in line with her sister. "Here goes nothing," she muttered. She tried to start the speeder. The vehicle had been modified for the cold, but did not respond. "Oh, come on," she grumbled. Another attempt and some techno wizadry on her part later and the speeder was up and running. Meanwhile, Libertas had saddled up on hers and Maris' vehicle and they were off. As far as the naked eye could see, there was naught but snow and snow-covered mountains. A great wind blew across the land. Visiblity remained practically nonexistent. Maris' introduction to Hoth could not have gone better.

 

[Maris Fero]

Hell, Amara had called it; At once beautiful and terrifying, Maris had cause to argue the word but the truth of their isolation was inviolable. The shivering ganger had barely reacted to the news that she was being dumped on Libertas for the next stage of the journey; It wasn’t as if she had particular affection for Amara, but the blonde might have maybe been better company.

Settling into the sidecar of the speeder, Maris hunkered down as low as she could to keep back from the chill air. The Sith had suggested Tapas as some magical method to stay warm, despite focusing on an inner flame for a good five minutes now there was no obvious change to the better cold. In fact, by the time they were off Maris was already up to picturing a towering inferno engulfing both of them - almost wishing it the truth.

It was fair to say that the Shrike was frustrated. She glanced over to Libertas and then away again, hesitant to start any type of conversation at first. Eventually the silence was jarring.

“How long do we need to travel for?” she asked over the sound of the speeders propulsion, checking over the weapon in front of her - before the natural curiosity returned. “ - you called it a chain to break, were you a prisoner?”

[member="Amara Zarides"] [member="Enyo Typhos"]

 

[Amara Zarides]

[member="Maris Fero"] [member="Enyo Typhos"]

Amara was getting quite sick of Libertas playing one-up with her. ‘Anything I can say, you can claim better’, or similar.
“Sounds lovely, let’s go, ‘Ella.”

Once the speeder was in the air they fell into line behind Libertas, about half kilometre away. As the other snow speeder drifted in front of them Amara looked at the gun for the first time and swung the controls around. For a moment the target reticule hovered over the other speeder, and Amara wondered if she just squeezed the trigger….

“No!” she said aloud, jerking the gun aside and removing her hands from the firing grips. She felt guilty and ashamed for even having the thought, even if it had not been a conscious thought. Libertas had not done anything to deserve that, aside from being a boss Sith. Doubtless Thuella would be confused, so she looked for something else to focus on.

Fortunately her scanner did start beeping. “Uhh, Libertas, we’ve got some unidentified objects ahead. Drop speed to 200 and see if you can get a better reading.”
As they slowed and got closer the scans made out several metal objects at 7.5k ahead. They were moving.
“Probe droids…we can go around or fight through them. Going around will be much slower though as they’re blocking the most direct access.”

 

[Enyo Typhos]

[member="Amara Zarides"], [member="Maris Fero"]

Libertas had not sensed Amara's temporary temptation to attempt to assassinate her in the middle of enemy territory. Precognition was not one of her strengths. However, tanking and protection was. Her phrik limbs helped. In that regard, she was similar to Enyo, though her cybernetics were less extreme. For her part, the Twi'lek found the blonde girl a bit annoying, but also lost in a way. Someone she almost pitied.

Here she was, trying to prove to everyone in the world that she was not her sadistic template. Convinced that if she had a single bad thought, she'd fall to the dark side, get bad skin and red eyes. Her elder sibling was a Dark Sider and many in the family seemed more inclined to follow her than Amara.

The blonde clone disassociated herself from Enyo's more amoral ventures, but benefited from them all the same. By following her, she enabled the Cyborg, but then the alternative was fighting her creators on her own. Ironically, Libertas doubted that Amara would be happy in any of the Jedi orders.

Indeed, she was quite certain that she'd be frustrated by the same things that drove Libertas to reject them. The memory of Kaelin held her back, but it was also a safety blanket. She could tell herself that she was good and avoid examining her own moral code or what she wanted to achieve by simly insisting that she was not Kaelin. Ironically, in a weird sort of way Libertas would respect the girl more if she managed to become a Light Sider with an actual moral code of her own.

Libertas kept her eyes on the endless wastes while Maris spoke. "We all start as prisoners of something. Be it of the constraints society imposes on us, or those imposed by our own limitations," she spoke. Well, that was truly illuminating.

"Where I grew up, my people were at the mercy of raiders and slavers. They were naive enough to think that if they gave the raiders a few of their own at regular intervals without resistance, they would be spared. Foolish. They did not realise that every Nerf gets slaughtered the moment it stops giving milk. But I refused to be so craven. I fought back, and sought out power and freedom." Libertas was more talkative than Enyo. The Cyborg was at her most verbose during training.

Before she could respond to the other query, Amara yelled 'no'. "Do you want to alert others to our presence?" the Sith Lady stated disapprovingly.
"What's wrong, Ami?" Thuella asked in a concerned tone.
Then their scanners started beeping. The Sith's own scans had picked something up, so she slowed down. The unidentified objects were soon identified as probe droids. "Stop. Thuella and I will sneak forward and eliminate them without fuss. Time to put your mechu-deru to good use, girl. Maris, Amara, make sure there are no one gets the drop on us."

Meanwhile, Thuella had been a bit confused. She was no empath, though she had felt some of the emotions going through Amara's head. However, she did not get the chance to actually broach any of it since they were on the clock and the Sithling was ordering her around!

"Sure, I'll corrupt their programming so we don't get detected," she said confidently. This was something she understood. Battle not so much. Archangel would eventually notice something was off, but by then they ought to be in the base. If not, then it would not matter anyway. "Stop here and let me out," she told Amara. "Be right back."

 

[Maris Fero]

Exposure to the cold irritated what little bare flesh Maris had allowed to go uncovered, there was a novelty to the feeling of her teeth chattering that failed to amuse the ganger, and attempted tapas still seemed no closer to achieving some cosmic oneness with the cold.


It was surprising to hear Libertas speak as openly as she had. Not because the sith was particularly withdrawn of silent on other matters, but because Maris’ own boss chose to remain so aloof.

Maris had almost spoken out in protest when Libertas had stated that everyone was a prisoner at first, but a sense of correctness she felt from the concept halted any reply. Instead, she nodded in agreement, recalling the struggles she had underwent to reach the situation she now occupied. She was freer than she had ever been, and yet even now she wondered if Enyo would let her go - when the time came.

When the time came.

That was a new thought, she noted with a strange detachment.

Libertas story had gone on some way, something about milking and murder and power, honestly Maris had stopped really listening at ‘Where I grew up..’

Then the signals had arrived, the speeders had slowed and the party had split, with Thuella and Libertas electing to go interfere with some droids, leaving Amara and Maris to act as look-outs or something similar.

The ganger thumbed the comms device to transmit directly to Amara, murmuring a few words as she watched Libertas depart, “Well she’s a barrel of laughs… Are you coming to my speeder or me to yours?”

The Shrike was in no mood for patrolling the snow on foot.


[member="Enyo Typhos"] [member="Amara Zarides"]

 

[Amara Zarides]

[member="Maris Fero"]
[member="Enyo Typhos"]

Amara had settled the speeder down and popped the cockpit. “Take care of yourself, Ella,” she told her sister.

Soon Maris joined them. It was bitterly cold outside, and whilst it was warm inside the speeders they couldn’t go patrolling in them without being seen.

“Let’s go to the top of that hill. We can give better watchout from there than down here.”

She climbed out of the cockpit and immediately regretted it. It was freezing…literally.

“Sith aren’t known for their sense of humour…except if it’s to laugh cruelly at something they do. This one’s a bit different to the usual bluster brigade. I wonder what her angle is?”

It was a hard scramble up the crumbly snow, but it at least exerted her and got her blood pumping. Reaching down, she offered a hand for Maris to take as they finally reached the summit.

Down below they could see the mouth of the canyon and the two hovering dots. The Sith and the clone were nowhere to be seen, which was good in that if they didn’t see them, their enemy wouldn’t either.

“Keep an eye out.” Amara glanced at Maris. “A lot more open space than you’re used to, I bet?”

 

[Darth Libertas]

[member="Maris Fero"], [member="Amara Zarides"]

The cold was biting. There was naught but endless snow. Thuella's breath frosted in front of her. Snow crunched beneath her feet, despite her best efforts to move quietly. On the bright side, at least the snowfalls would make it difficult to spot them. Thuella wore her Ghostsuit to evade scanners. It would help a bit. Libertas wore her suit of armour. It slowed her down, but she seemed fluid enough in her movements. No words passed between them for a while.

"I can sense them. They're close," Thuella said quietly. Libertas nodded curtly. The duo found cover behind the wreckage of what had once been a speeder. Perhaps it had been blown up during one of the many battles that had been fought in this arctic wasteland. Thuella was inclined to think that whoever occupied this iceball was welcome to have it.

Probe droids hovered in the air, scanning the area. Perhaps they had picked up emissions from the speeders. Or were simply advancing because the blizzard made it difficult for them to detect things. The duo communicated through hand signals. Suddenly a bright flash of light emanated from Libertas' hands. For just a moment, the probes' visual observation systems was distorted. It would read as a simple malfunction, ideally. Thuella pulled at the tangled web of power that was the Force.

"Make haste," Libertas ordered her. Enyo had once called mechu-deru mentalism for machines, and Thuella had to admit that there was an overlap between what she was doing and a simplistic mind trick of the 'these aren't the intruders' you're looking for variety. Bottom line, it meant giving the droids a blind spot.
"Done," Thuella said after a few moments, breathing in. "We're in the clear - for now."
"No time to waste then. Come on." Without waiting for a response, Libertas got up. The walk back was no more pleasant than the first. Thuella followed in her wake, mindful of droids showing up. There were words burning on her tongue, but she tried to resist voicing them. Finally, she gave in. "You don't like my sister."
"She amuses me a good deal. I'm quite certain she detests me."
"Just leave her alone."
"My dear Thuella, your sister's biggest enemy, even more than the machines who hound you, is herself and the phantom she's running away from."
"I mean it. She's my sister and important to me. And to Enyo." The warning was unmistakeable.
"Girl, I have no interest in harming your sister over, what's the word, ideological disagreements, unless she forces my hand because she cannot think beyond her own ego." For just a moment, the Twi'lek's words were as frosty as Hoth. "Now perhaps you should focus on the task at hand instead of chasing phantoms."

 

[Maris Fero]

Apparently, guard duty required the raven-haired ganger to exit the relative comfort of the speeder and join her blonde companion in the bitter, relentless cold. Maris gave Amara her most dutiful and stoic smile as she climbed from the side compartment and silently cursed the cheery sister to a grim fate on the ice.

“Yeah, we’ll definitely have a better vantage point from up there, better overwatch.” She agreed in halting breaths as they started to trudge through the deep snows.

Up there, where its even colder, she thought to herself, Maybe I’ll die up there.

“She thinks she’s exceptional, she’s sure that she matters. And she’s sure the others are morally lesser beings - according to her own morality. So very humble.” she added sarcastically, shrugging under her warm layers of clothing as they struggled on the shifting slope of snow. “I don’t know what her angle is, I haven’t figured it out yet.”

Maris accepted the hand up to the summit of the rise, falling low so as not to make herself obvious against the skyline. She gazed out over the vista before her, breath caught in her throat as she drank in the landscape, endless and bleak and magnificent.

“More space than I could have imagined existed..” she admitted in hushed tones, grey-green eyes wide.

[member="Darth Libertas"] [member="Amara Zarides"]

 

[Amara Zarides]

[member="Darth Libertas"] [member="Maris Fero"]

“A Sith with a code of morals and ethics…what wonders we live with,” Amara said with a sigh. “My sister clearly keeps her around for a reason, though having such a wordy Sith next to her stoic leadership is a curious contrast. Presumably she’s good at fighting, or maybe that’s why so much of her is robotic!”
A bad joke, but Amara was a net exporter of bad jokes.

“Well, I’d offer to let you roam over the frozen wastes but I suspect you’d turn into a frozen statue before you got far. Wide open plains can be fun when they’re not ice, or sand, or lava….”
She saw Libertas and Thuella return below.

“Alright, now’s our chance, let’s go,” Amara said. She offered a last scan of the surroundings, and then slid back down the hill. They’d have to take their progress carefully and at low speed so that other sensors in the area didn’t pick them up as they passed through. It’d be pretty hair raising, but Amara was confident they could make it.

 

[Darth Libertas]

[member="Maris Fero"], [member="Amara Zarides"]

Darth Libertas had a very strong code of ethics and morals. It was all about self-actualisation, empowerment of the self and emancipation. Especially from morals. The fact that her idea of freedom and individual empowerment diverged quite radically from that of most people, let alone philosophers was besides the point. Regardless, the pair returned and then Amara and Maris got to climb down the hill again. What fun. At least going down was easier than going up. "I bought us a few minutes," Thuella reported. "No time to waste."

"We take the speeders as close to the base as we can, then dismount. You activate your stealth suits, and we find our way inside," Libertas spoke as they mounted their vehicles. The team had been equipped with Ghostsuits and Mirage cloaking devices. The former fooled scanners, the latter rendered the wearer invisible.

Regardless, Libertas steered the speeder she had been sharing with Maris past the droids. Owing to the need for stealth, she kept it on low speed. The bots had been given a blind spot, but she did not want to take any chances. Moreover, there might be other probes about. Thuella, meanwhile, had rejoined Amara.

Snow fell from the sky as they passed through the canyon. A harsh, cold wind blew across the land. The speeder's scanners had trouble picking up much of anything, so instead Libertas did not bother with machinery. Instead she relied on the Force to guide her. Soon they would be in vicinity of the base. It had been built inside an artificially extended cavern system.

 

[Maris Fero]

The girl considered Amara’s use of the word stoic. By coincidence, it was a term she had only recently come to comprehend. Though it would perhaps be a neat fit for the appearance of Enyo, Maris couldn’t help but wonder how true it actually was, beneath the skin, as it were.

“No more robotic than your sister, I suspect.” the youth commented quietly, glancing again at Amara and wondering once more about how human the blonde was at her core. “I wonder if the Boss has any choice but to be stoic. But then I also find myself wondering how much robot there is in you too.”

She regarded the wide snowy expanse again as Amara mentioned it but shook her head, indicating that she had no intention of staying out in the cold any longer than they required. “It’s beautiful, but I don’t belong here.”

Maris had also seen the return of the forward party and moved to tail Amara on the descent, scurrying and sliding in equal measure to control her movements, the snow making their descent unique in her experiences. In another place and time, one without murderbots before her and robo-sith watching her every move it might be fun to see how fast you could travel down a snowcovered slope.

By the time they reached the other’s the ever alabaster skin of the Shrike’s cheeks looked uncommonly rouge from the chill but the young woman had controlled the worst of her chill, Tapas or no tapas.

Soon enough they were travelling again, Maris had been looking forward to the next step, youthful urge to play with the new equipment notwithstanding getting to the cavern system was at least marginally more familiar territory to the Vorzydian human; though it had been rare for her to ever travel so low in the slumhives to see the roots of the megacity she had experienced that place before. Better that than the white desert.

A silence had come over them as the infiltration continued and for the first time Maris had regretted not sharing anything of the silent communication of hand signals and gestures common to the Shrike gang.

[member="Darth Libertas"] [member="Amara Zarides"]

 

[Amara Zarides]

[member="Maris Fero"] [member="Darth Libertas"]

Amara paused, frowning at the words Maris had said.
“No robot in me, 100% human. Well, 99%, I think I chipped a tooth and got it filled. I get what you mean, but my goals are…well in stages. Where I go after the next stage, who can tell?”

Passing through they activated stealth and passed into the caverns. Amara did not have an elaborate set of hand gestures to use. Instead she stayed with Maris whilst Thuella worked with Libertas.

By using her datapad and a HUD she was able to scan the area of electronic signatures and silently ping the group their destinations.
The first hitch was a blast door blocking their path. They could easily hack the door, but this might cause…comment. Perhaps their best move was make it seem like a malfunction and slip in. Libertas and Thuella could doubtless do this.

Meanwhile Amara and Maris watched the way they had come. They were out of the wind, but the cold was still biting.

 

[Darth Libertas]

[member="Maris Fero"], [member="Amara Zarides"]

Into the bitter cold they went. It was probably for the best that Thuella had not been raised on Dahomey, where the predominant terrain were tropical forests and savannah. Otherwise she would have hated the cold even more than she already did. Libertas did not seem particularly bothered by it, which gave the clone another reason to be annoyed. On the bright side, after they entered the cavern they no longer had to worry about snowstorms.

Every once in a while, Thuella would come to a halt and stretch out with her senses, trying to perceive droids or possible traps. To avoid discovery, they had to maintain radio silence beyond the occasional ping. However, soon they came across their first obstacle, a heavy blast door. While Libertas stayed behind, Thuella surreptitiously approached the access panel, crouching. Outright hacking the door might raise red flags, but there were other ways to open it. The cold was a good excuse. If the system believed that the cold was shrinking the metal so that the sensors did not line up properly, it would reopen.

So she placed the palm of her hand on the panel. Enyo had once called mechu-deru mentalism for droids and computers, and Thuella could see the analogy. Her physical surroundings seemed to fade from sight to her. Instead of snow and a metal door she perceived volumes of data. It was a matter of pressing her will upon the system and convincing it that it had noticed an oddity and was responding accordingly. After a while, the door controls noted frozen components.

Thuella backed away and gestured to the others. "C'mon. They'll be sending a patrol," she said quietly. Her breath frosted around her.
"On the bright side, a bout may warm you up again," Libertas quipped. Thuella did not appreciate the joke.

 

[Maris Fero]

One hundred percent human.

That seemed fairly unlikely in Maris’ mind, but then everyone was a liar at heart. The idea that Amara wasn’t a lifelong member of the Enyo Typhos fanclub intrigued her however. Would that be valuable information? Did Enyo already realise it? Would she let her sister go?

Once the silence had fallen between them Maris had plenty of time to ponder the facts she had been accumulating, watching and waiting as the tech savvy Thuella and Darth Legbraces to deal with the door ahead. She regarded the Sith again with some envy over her seeming disregard for the elements. Inside would be better, probably. Actually, what reason would the droids have to bother heating a facility… Damn.

As Thuella returned from having convinced the doors to open through some form of Dahomian mindmeld Maris eagerly prepared herself for the more active part of the infiltration to come, at least in her mind.

“Well then let’s get going, before someone hears Libertas knee joints squeaking.”

[member="Darth Libertas"] [member="Amara Zarides"]

 

[Maris Fero]

Amara Zarides Darth Libertas

 

[Amara Zarides]

Maris Fero Darth Libertas

Amara smirked at that comment. Maris was much more her style of person when it came to personality and sense of humour.

“Go in, I’ll cover you.”

There was a sensor inside the doors, but it was easily dealt with. Soon though there was movement. On the long metal plates which were the interior roadways came a skittering spider repair and observation drone. It was about three feet high and long and had numerous tools and probes attached to it for diagnostics and repairs. The metal plates which made the corridors were slightly heated so no ice formed on them, but it was the only thing above freezing in this section of the base.



Amara took cover and produced an ion blaster. The key was to knock the spider out instantly before it could transmit danger. Deep breath time, she thought as she readied herself. The others had presumably hidden too and it was all down to her. If she missed all the hells would be unleashed on them. No pressure.



Amara had a curious way of dealing with pressure and anxiety. Leading up to a mission or a moment like this she could be nervous, given to random chatter or tics to keep herself distracted. In the moment though survival kicked in and she could focus.



As the horrible machine spider passed her heading for the door she carefully took aim and…zap! The ion bolt hit it right in the ‘head’, and it crumpled like a pile of bricks.



In the aftermath Amara looked to the others. “Libertas, can you pull down some of the wall onto it and the sensor? Make it look like it caved in? It’ll distract them a bit longer. Maris…do you see anything ahead?” she whispered.



Hopefully there wouldn’t be any guards sent, only another maintenance bot. If it found the entrance damaged they’d not suspect intruders.

 

[Darth Libertas]

Amara Zarides , Maris Fero , Valiens Nantaris

"Or someone hears your grumbling. Now cut the chatter," the Sith ordered. "Unless you want droids to warm you up with blaster fire." The party entered the base. A spider repair and observation drone skittered by. Amara proved that she could do more than make bad quips by shooting it. Thus the droid was zapped. Calling the drone horrible was rather unkind though. It was simply a repair machine that was trying to diligently do its job. Speaking of the base, it was still cold inside. It was not as bad as outside, but the droids did not seem to consider heating to be a priority. Maybe it would when better elsewhere. Like where Archangel kept organic prisoners for the nefarious experiments it was no doubt conducting. Libertas gave a curt nod when the clone made her request. "Thuella, see if you can slice into the system and acquire a map," she ordered. There should be a panel somewhere.

"On it," the Dahomian clone affirmed quietly. While Thuella looked for a service panel, the Sith Lady pulled at the tangled web of power that was the Force. Her invisible grip wrapped around the wall. Rather than pull all of it down, she focused on a notable portion of it. With a loud wrench, it was plucked free and descended upon the poor spider drone. Its skull and a good portion of its torso were buried beneath it. Crucially, the impact messed up its sensors. By all outward appearances, it would look like part of the wall had become unstable and fallen. Meanwhile, Thuella had found a service panel. Rather than use technopathy, she retrieved some tools from her backpack and plugged a spike into the panel. After some slicing, she connected it to her datapad.