DUBRILLION - SOUTH POLE
ABANDONED IMPERIAL BLACK SITE
The base was slowly losing power. The turrets that flanked the landing pad must have been the first to go. Then the stealth field generator went next. That was how RICO had found it. But the doors were still magnetically sealed, and that meant Valerius and his party were left standing on the landing pad in the dead cold.
Valerius didn’t like to be left idle. As a matter of fact, the longer he watched their grimy technician - Lieutenant Geppert - fiddle around trying to open those doors, the less he liked it. Geppert unscrewed a nearby panel, connected his datapad, and started tap, tap, tapping away.
Personnel shortages meant that there was only a 50/50 chance Geppert knew what he was doing. Either way, this was taking too long, and Valerius eventually came to loom ominously behind him.
“How much longer?”
“Uhhh, security’s pretty tight. Sir. Proprietary stuff. It can be cracked, just, uh,” Geppert attempted to avoid looking directly at Valerius, “Could take a while.”
Valerius felt a pulse in his forehead, “Specify.”
Geppert fumbled, “Er… Thirty minutes. Maybe twenty.”
“Fine,” said Valerius, and he smashed his fist through the control panel.
The technician gave a little yelp and flinched away. Valerius gathered what he felt to be a fistful of wires and tore them out. There was a quick crack of sparks, then a steady discharge of smoke. Gears churned, and the doors slowly rumbled apart - perhaps for the first time in decades.
“Wh… How…?” Geppert warily got to his feet.
Valerius discarded the torn wires and, observing grime and bits of debris stuck on his gauntlet, wiped it clean on Geppert’s coat, then shoved him towards the waiting shuttle. “The Force. Get back on the ship.”
Geppert was - after all - also the pilot, so he obliged and went away.
A small storehouse waited for them inside: crates and storage containers were lined in neat rows along the walls. The interior was near totally dark, lit only by faint red emergency lights. More doors were faintly visible in the gloom.
Preliminary scans had shown how deep the facility ran… This would be a long probe, unless they could find the control room in good time.
Valerius half-turned to the remaining party: his two fellows and the spare from RICO. “Are we ready?”