Extra Armaments:
Ion Grenades (4)
Stun Grenades (4)
ICE Breakers (4)
The RTL navy had been informed of the presence of the still space worthy, buried
Warship. But Nathan had requested a chance to take them quietly before resorting to an assault team.
Given that he and Kinea had successfully subdued the secondary camp without any loss of life, his request was granted and he and Padawan Lewellyn were soon journeying through the wreckage of countless ships.
"I'm gonna need a fethin' tetanus shot after crawling through this..." Kinea complained.
"Likewise." Nathan replied quietly.
"Oh, so you
do have a sense of humor." she muttered.
"No. Provided we survive, we should both take one as a precaution."
Kinea sighed in annoyance. "I give up."
The Bridge Tower of the ancient Centurion was soon spotted through the dust cloud. Nathan hand signalled her to move to a piece of wrecked assault shuttle nearby. Kinea got out her thermal scope equipped rifle, signalling silently which personnel were where on the perimeter of the excavation site. Two guards on the Eastern end had rocket and grenade launchers, another four manning a repeater nest.
Nathan studied the terrain. The guards were well armed, and equipped with thermal vision, but there was only so much of the perimeter they could protect. Lots of large gaps. Lots of dead mynocks. Infested.
"Same plan as before..." he said after her crept over to her. "We sneak
inside first, take out everyone there,
then deal with the perimeter guard.
Kinea nodded. "May the Force be with us..."
Nathan didn't reply to this. He simply started creeping into the perimeter, expecting her to follow. She did, and they stuck to almost liquid hills of sand and debris of crashed ships. They stopped, letting a group go past them.
(That Captain from the Modern Warfare flashback: Let them pass)
They crawled across the ground, until they came across an excavated docking entrance, under heavy guard by not just slavers in scavenged heavy armor, but B2 Battle Droids. The inside of the ship beyond beckoned, but there was seemingly no way to get past them.
"Grab on to me." Nathan ordered in an icy tone.
Kinea did, and Nathan took a few deep puffs of breath and focused straining.
It was like the ground fell out from under her. Her surroundings warped until she was on the inside of the docking entrance.
Nathan seemed very weak and almost lost his balance, but she managed to catch him silently enough that the guards outside didn't hear it. Just then a guard rounded the Corner and Kinea reacted, conjuring a minor illusion that she was just a battle Droid on patrol.
He grunted. "Stupid Droids..." he muttered before wandering off.
Nathan managed to recover from the exertion but he was still weak. He moved slower as they both ducked into what looked to be old, rusted out barracks, with a faint, flickering computer console.
"Get into their systems. Just use the ICE Breaker, insert it into that slot..." Nathan whispered. "Get us camera access."
Kinea went over to the terminal and plugged the breaker in.
The network was easily penetrated on a basic level. She typed in her own slicing commands to better conceal their intrusion.
Most of the camera systems had degraded in quality or just plain didn't work. But they did get an idea of some of the layout and guard patrols.
Kinea accessed the turrets and disabled their ability to fire, though not their ability to swivel as though they still worked properly. She also figured out where they controlled their security from. As expected, they were somewhere defensible--engineering. All corridors tightly controlled. Lots of Combat Droids. Lots of Engineering Droids that could be USED as Combat Droids.
And Hostages around the massive central reactor, all with bomb collars.
"You were right. They have hostages. Over
fifty Kitonak..." Kinea whispered. "We'll never be able to sneak through as is."
"Then we create opportunities where we can." Nathan replied. "I have an idea for dealing with the Engineering Droids. Toxic gas leak on Multiple deck. We overload a lot of the power conduits also. This will cause fires to spread. It's an old ship, and they're understaffed. Failures like this are bound to occur. They won't question it."
"What about the Combat Droids?"
"Those will require alternate methods. Once we divert the Engineering Droids, we'll report a mass infestation of mynocks on the perimeter. Unusually aggressive."
"How will we do that without drawing suspicion?"
"We're in a ship graveyard, Kinea. Mynocks
love this crap. I bet you half the work in this place has been clearing out mynocks. Remember the corpses of them we saw?"
"Yeah...they probably wouldn't question it." Kinea hissed. "But what about the bomb collars?"
"That will require directly going into Engineering and creating an electromagnetic disruption. But once that occurs, we'll have to use as many of the Stun Grenades as possible, and lock down the Reactor room."
Nathan frowned. "There can be no mistakes. One misstep, and those hostages could be impossible to reach. And these distractions will work only ten, maybe less than ten minutes."
Kinea nodded. She began inputting the slicing commands, monitoring the camera in Engineering. She heard a power conduit explode in the distance.
The Slavers started to look angry, than worried, then ordered the Droids to be immediately dispatched to false problem sites.
Kinea made sure to cause door malfunctions occasionally to slow down the Droids, then waited about 4 minutes before filing the emergency report in the computer systems about life forms infesting the outer hull in large numbers, feeding false info from ship sensors. She saw the Slavers get noticably more agitated, saw one visibly complaining before typing in commands on their own end, ordering all the Combat Droids outside.
"Let's move..." Nathan said, still weakened.
The pair creator through the darkened passages and was forced to use a mind trick to make a guard move out of the way. They ducked into an abandoned med bay as the first group of Battle Droids moved by them for the docking entrance.
They waited until the first group and second group had passed than moved more quickly, Nathan dulling the perceptions of the one they passed by, fortunately they had only sparse security without the droids to back them up, but there were plenty of close calls, of hiding behind crates and debris, more combat Droids passing by them.
Finally they reached the reactor entrance, Kinea making an illusion that they were Engineering Droids returned from their repairs for the entrance guards. They hid behind a support Pylon and Nathan stared, taking the stun grenades, teleporting to an engineering console on a level above, and Force Stunned a Slaver nearby, putting him in a sleeper hold, then plugging the second Breaker into it. It sliced the local system, and he quietly typed in slicing commands, first locking down Engineering, then inducing electromagnetic fluctuations in the reactor's power flow, while Kinea distracted the guards closest to them with small mind tricks. There was a rumble of the reactor and the lights in the bomb collars of the hostages grouped close to it began fluctuating before shutting off. Along with many of the electronics.
"Oh c'mon. Davar, I told you not to mess with anything until the Droids got back! We barely got this working! Davar?" The Head Slaver called out, a yellow skinned Twi'lek man in camo pattern light armor.
His answer was a stun grenade that appeared from above , dropping at his feet, and going off l. The stun blast took out not just him, but the four next to him. The remaining grenades appeared over other clusters of guards, with Kinea taking that as a signal to start firing stun bolts from her rifle while Nathan teleported behind the stragglers suddenly focused on her firing to knock them out one by one, teleporting behind each, a whack or jab of the Force Pike, a tactical use of Force Stun to let Kinea get a shot in, a well placed kick or punch.
Soon no slaver was left standing in Engineering. The pair moved quickly to disarm them then restrained them with whatever they could find.
"Holy chit, we actually did it! No one's dead!" Kinea said out loud.
"Let's keep it that way..." Nathan replied, pulling off his other weapons, glad he no longer had to carry them. He kept the stun pistol and Force Pike though, and pulled out his Lightsaber. It's dark blue blade hissed out.
"You stay behind..." Nathan said. "We don't want them doubling back and retaking the reactor. The hostages will be defenseless without at least one of us protecting them. Or worse, one of these scumbags waking up and getting free somehow...and see if you can't disable those combat and Engineering Droids entirely." He tossed her one of his last ice breakers.
Kinea nodded, catching it. "Good luck Nathan. I didn't think we'd be able to get this far without at least one of them dying."
Nathan shrugged. "I don't need luck with trash like this, but thanks. Don't get shot." he said, leaving the reactor room.
He immediately came under fire from one of the stragglers, and he reflexively started using Soresu, to deflect the shots, before inevitably closing the distance, his saber on non lethal settings, knocking out the slaver.
More Slavers rushed in, firing blaster rifles. Nathan pushed himself, switching to Form Six for a change, using Soresu's blast deflection heavily still, but more aggressive in his relentless plod forward, he pushed his feelings out of it, sinking into one of the few quiet places in his mind left, remembered an afternoon where he watched his wife practice the same deflecting techniques with a sensor ball.
Nathan worked Force Stuns into his blade attacks, found he was getting better at using them on demand, since he had learned on the job.
He would be patient. He would take his time. These creeps didn't have anything he hadn't seen before, and now that their one serious leverage was vanished, there was no need to be silent. And there were so few slavers in actuality, most of whom were caught by surprise, and even those who weren't were often alone.
Nathan felt only relief there was no longer a need to play it quiet. After he cleared out the straggler slavers blocking his way to the docking entrance, he pulled out his Force Pike, as a heavy sandstorm and a plasma blade did
not mix, even on stun..
Twenty minutes later...
Nathan and Kinea watched as the Trade League assault shuttles landed, soldiers filing out to secure the perimeter.
No casualties. No serious injury. All hostages recovered. All slavers captured. Nathan hadn't stuck around after debriefing on site, and the Endurance transmitted to
Veino Garn
that a space worthy warship had been captured by two Wild Knights, along with rescued hostages. Nathan just began walking through the lonely ship graves, looking for more out posts of Slavers to fight. He had nothing better to do, not even slightly uplifted by his accomplishment. But the thought of not taking down as many slavers as he could while he had the energy disgusted him.
He went still, feeling Kinea run up to him.
"Yes, Lewellyn?" Nathan asked.
"Going off to kick more slaver ass? I'm in..." she said. "Besides...you look like you could use the company..."
Nathan thought a moment, then gave a wordless shrug and gestured for her to follow...
Azure Rose
| Open
