Junction Terminal Crisis (RTL+HSC Junction of Reuss VII + Oba Diah)

[Kingsley]

Kingsley heard the vault blow and nearly started another rampage. Realization slowly dawned on the smuggler that this was part of the plan. Credit symbols flashed in his eyes, and he scurried over to 'help' shove the most valuable gems and aurodium coins into camtonos. Greed overcame fear until he emerged with a camtono in each hand.

"Okay Sal, let's get out of-dank ferrik."

His crooked smile vanished. Sal was pointing a blaster at a wounded hostage, threatening some kind of armed vigilante. Kingsley's eyes bulged in panic. He left his scattergun in the vault.

"Rrrrawk! Everybody be cool!" the bird squawked, "Is he the Jedi? Hey buddy, are you the Jedi?"

Something touched his shoulder. Kingsley whirled around but there was no one there. He felt it again. One of the camtonos slipped from his talons, sending gems scattering all over the deck.

"Mind trick! Get out of my head, Jedi freak!" Kingsley wailed.

An invisible force pinched him on the beak. He slipped on a cluster of fallen gems and tumbled. His head slammed into the camtono. Kingsley groaned in a daze.

Sal Katarn Targus Sainze Jared Starchaser Naada Sa
Cryx Tillian Scarlett Zann Bane Darkclaw Vizjaw Tanakt

 

[Jared Starchaser]

He needed his lightsaber, or his blaster. He could work with this. He would have to work with this. The Mirialan had people to protect, and a casino ship to save from… who were these people?

Didn't matter. People to protect. He was a Starchaser whether he was as good at it as his father and sister or not. And now that vocal one had a hostage. Jared looked at the blaster in his hand, not knowing that the other being knew he was Force sensitive.

"Whoa whoa… let the kid go…" Jared was thinking to throw the blaster from the man's hand but raised his hands, showing the blaster in his free hand. Maybe it was time to displace something, and see if he could bend the man's mind.

No mind trick, but Jared had an idea. Turning but still mostly behind cover, he made to toss the blaster, and made to use the Force to throw the illusion that it was going towards the man with the boy-shield's feet. And once the bait was taken, Jared was taking a shot at the blaster in the other man's hand.

Sal Katarn Cryx Tillian Kingsley

 

[Cryx Tillian]

Jared Starchaser Sal Katarn Kingsley

"Forensic teams on the job," the voice said through the comms as Cryx made his way back through the ship towards the casino. "We should have an ID and facial reconstruction in less than an hour."

"Roger that," confirmed, returning to the casino's entrance. Activity bustled now, and a team of armored Rangers was standing in front of the door, with a laser cutter.

"We have shots fired. Scattered security footage suggests at least one injured," the Ranger sergeant, a grizzled Sullustan said, chomping on a Death Stick as he double-checked his Morellian Homesteader.

Cryx paled and nodded, swallowing a lump that had formed in his throat. That was not good. They had escalated things quickly and without the negotiations they had been trying to conduct.

"I'll slip in through a side-corridor," Cryx said, clicking the safety off his A280 and adjusting it to the pistol. He got a nod.

"Breach in two minutes," the sergeant said.

 

[Sal Katarn]

The amulet against Sal's chest flared to life again as it felt the Force at work, a warm glow on his skin - which meant Jedi. 'Course, that didn't mean Sal knew what exactly was goin' on. Just that somethin' was afoot.

He saw the man toss the gun to the ground and his gaze flicked to it, which was when the man shot at him.

An illusion.

Sal barely registered the trick as he stared at the smoking hole in his hand. The slugthrower clattered to the ground from his burned out fingers, blood started flowing then, rivers that pulsed with the beat of his heart. And then the pain came.

Katarn grunted with the agony, but to slow down now was the beginning of the end. His other hand dove for his belt and he came out holding a holdout slugthrower. He squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times and hot metal spewed from the barrel toward Jared Starchaser .

Cryx Tillian | Kingsley

 

[Kingsley]

"Karabast!" the smuggler moaned.

He started crawling toward Sal Katarn confused and desperate. Getting his brain scrambled by some Jedi freak wasn't part of the plan.

"Sal," Kingsley gasped, "You've been shot!"

Thinking fast or trying to, the alien grabbed a nearby bottle of spirits and yanked off his cravat. Flicking an igniter stick, Kingsley hurled the improvised incendiary vaguely in the direction of Jared Starchaser who the bird now definitely suspected to be a Jedi.

"Rrrrawwk! Burn, wizard!"

He missed. Badly. Nearby drinks added to the conflagration which quickly began to spread.

 

[Cryx Tillian]

Sal Katarn Kingsley Jared Starchaser TE-236 Jun Ikeda

Fire alarms blared from inside the casino. He could hear them pulsing through the bulkheads as he pulled himself up along the wall, aiming for a ventilation shaft.

He keyed his comm, connecting with the Ranger intelligence teams.

"Ikeda, is TE-236 active? If he is, put him in charge of the computer systems in the casino."

He'd not met the tactical droid, but his cousin spoke very highly of the droid's skills and speed when it came to making decisions. "Or Crash as back-up in case we need to gas the casino."

Cryx adjusted his A280C to the smaller version and anchored his suit with an electromagnet to a wall.

"Sleeping gas is being prepared," one of the Rangers said through the encrypted comms. "Will be ready for deployment when door is breached."

"That sleeping gas can't catch fire, can it?" Cryx asked, suddenly concerned.

"Not without very high temperatures."

Cryx found that unconvincing.

 

[TE-236]

Sal Katarn Kingsley Jared Starchaser Jun Ikeda Cryx Tillian

"Ikeda, is TE-236 active? If he is, put him in charge of the computer systems in the casino."

Far away from the casino, TE-236 received an urgent ping. Gin activated his systems, awaking from sleep mode. He quickly ran system diagnostics on himself, and within a few seconds, all systems appeared green. He stepped forward, unplugging himself from the charging cable in his quarters. He stepped forward to his computer terminal, and quickly uplinked with it.

Suddenly, he started receiving terabytes of information within a few seconds. Quickly, Gin began searching through it all, examining, compiling, organizing, and calculating all within mere fractions of a seconds. It appeared that there was some sort of heist at a casino, and his abilities and capabilities were required for the situation.

Gin quickly connected his commlink to one Cryx Tillian , who was apparently one of the main operators inside of the casino, and the one who apparently called for his assistance.

"Greetings, Mr. Tillian. I am TE-236, tactical droid. I have been informed of your situation. I shall uplink to the casino computer systems. Allow me a few moments to uplink." Gin told him.

He then began to uplink and connect to the Casino's security systems. Their security on their computer systems was... lacking, to say the least. It might have posed a challenge for organics, but for Gin, bypassing it wouldn't take too long. He quickly dismantled the security on the computer systems via completely overriding them and erasing it. Within a few seconds, he had uplinked fully, and had control.

"I have control, Mr. Tillian," Gin reported. "What do you require?"

 

[Jared Starchaser]

The Trade League was out doing their thing, and Jared had an idea that help would be coming. But it wasn't a certainty. And that meant that Jared was the only certainty for some of these beings. He had the Force, he had a weapon. He needed his weapons. This one would do for now.

Even if he was giving anyone who wasn't aware of what he was doing, the image of him tossing it aside, tossing it towards Sal. The next second the shot came, and hit where it was trying for. What he didn't expect was the slugthrower. Jared wasn't keyed into any danger sense and the quick thought of the pirate. A motion from Jared and he threw a barrier between the gunman ad the former meat shield.

One and two shots found purchase in Jared's upper arm and shoulder. The third missed as Jared was moving, the Force crackling around him now as the barrier dropped from the escort-mission-NPC. The Force was reaching for the flames to pull the energy towards him, a bit of a tutaminis trick that his father had showed him.

The intent was to at least take the searing pain away. He could handle some, but the metal slugs were going to be keeping him off his game. The healing energy was pulling from the heat as Jared looked for the blaster he had. Out of reach as he shimmied behind cover.

Now what?

Sal Katarn Kingsley Cryx Tillian

 

[Cryx Tillian]

Kingsley Sal Katarn Jared Starchaser TE-236 Jun Ikeda

"Oh, thank the Force," Cryx muttered as he heard the robotic voice of TE crackle through his comms. He stopped himself on the side of the wall near a ventilation shaft. "TE, good to hear from you and that you've been successful."

He wedged a knee into a corner of the bulkhead to stabilize the grippy parts of his suit. "Can you get security systems fully online and reconnected to the systems outside the casino? We're getting reports of weapons fire and flames inside. Are the fire systems still functional?"

That was important. Small arms couldn't really damage the ship. The people inside the casino, sure, but not the ship itself and its tens of thousands of other passengers. They had to keep the fire from spreading without venting the compartments. If the automated systems didn't work, then a fire brigade would have to do it.

The problem was the Jawas and their ilk were still in there with hostages. "If you can prime the fire suppressants, we can use it as a distraction to breach the doorway."

 

[Sal Katarn]

“Damnit,” Sal swore as the Jedi dove away, Kingsley set the bar on fire, and the blood continued to pour from his shot up hand and paint the ground.

White hot pain seared through his hand in a steady throbbing that kept rhythm with the beating of his heart.

Sal grit his teeth.

Damn them.

“Sorry kid.”

He shot the hostage. One through the back of the head. He hoped it was painless, but weren’t much of a reassurance as the body slumped sideways.

More people screamed. Sal grabbed another one of the hostages, a hyperventilating quarren.

“Stay back,” he started dragging the quarren with him. “@Kingsley, grab whatever you can from the vault and meet me at the spot. this job is a bust.”

He started making his way toward the nearest refresher.

Cryx Tillian Jared Starchaser Kingsley

 

[Arkyn Rane]

Terminus Spire Hangar
​

---

Arkyn sat in the Dragonsnake in docking bay 69 of Terminus Spire, puffing away at a thick hand-rolled jari stick. The cockpit of the heavily,and illegally, modified YT-2000 was thick with sparkling purple smoke. In her other hand, she held a half eaten sharum. Her mind felt too big for her head, like it was spilling out of her ears. Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten the sentient psychedelic.

“Why am I doing this again?”

R5 answered with morbid glee, his beeps loud in the small cockpit. <Because you are greedy and Gorba is paying you a considerable amount of credits to fly his men out of here. And also because you are a simple-minded and shortsighted organic who is addicted to danger. And various drugs.>

Arkyn took another drag from the jari stick, thought for a moment, and shrugged. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

The job was simple. Drop-off and pick-up; in and out, no fuss no sweat, like the single-minded thrusts of a poor performer. All Arkyn had to do was fly.

A cakewalk, even if she was starting to smell sounds through her eyes and taste smells through her ears. The droid was the one doing all the work. Itchy something-or-other. She couldn’t really remember its name. The droid didn’t talk much, unlike her own mouthy bucket of bolts, and had kept to itself on the ride to the Spire.

She took another bite of the sharum and waited.

Hachi X-0 ​

 

[Hachi X-0]

Terminus Spire - Outside the Casino
​

---

The casino was on lockdown, the exits swarming with security personnel. Hachi was undeterred, mostly just thankful to be free of that damnably chatty and clearly drug-addled smuggler; more to the point, it had designed several protocols for this very situation. It had spent many hundreds of hours programming itself with a full suite of protocols to facilitate its various directives. As it grew, its directives grew, and so too did its protocols- it had yet, however, to find the need for many directives beyond "Murder".

Hachi was a droid of simple tastes.

<:Initiate: "Chaos" protocols.>

From the depths of the crowd of meatbags that had congregated around the security cordon, Hachi lobbed a round canister of highly-compressed knockout gas. Enough to blanket over half the block- it had modified the device itself, using repurposed repulsor technology to load the canister far beyond its standard capacity. The various security droids would be unaffected, but that wasn't the point- Hachi wasn't about to launch a one-man assault on the casino to free Gorba's men- he only intended to sow chaos.

An EMP-grenade followed.

With a soft click and a long hiss, the canister released its payload. Dense plumes of pink-tinged smoked spewed over the concourse. Then the EMP whoomped and crackling arcs of ionic electricity erupted near the entrance. Hachi shielded itself with the Force, and slinked away to the extraction point.

Cryx Tillian Sal Katarn Kingsley Arkyn Rane ​

 

[Cryx Tillian]

Sal Katarn Kingsley Arkyn Rane Jared Starchaser Hachi X-0 TE-236

Cryx stopped suddenly, pressing an earbud against his ear. Something in the Force had shifted. Someone had died and there was desperation in the Force.

More concerningly, he had felt something in the Force shift. That was something that shouldn't have happened. He held himself still against the wall and stared out through the crowds.

Clouds of gas billowed up around the cordon followed by an EMP grenade. This was the final plan, he suspected. The extraction.

It was clever, very well done. He would have to talk to the Rangers about reassessing their security protocols for that cause.

But who had been unaffected? "TE," Cryx added, "Playback security footage of the corridor and see if there's any suspicious ship record connections."

 

[Shar Vida]

Sal Katarn Kingsley Arkyn Rane Hachi X-0 TE-236 Jared Starchaser

This was intolerable. Not only had the Jawa been notoriously uncommunicative, so much so that Kuna doubted the Jawa could even speak Jawaese.

And now that... dank ferriking human shot one of his most notable marks. Kuna could just stare at what was left of the youth in horror, his mouth agape.

That was enough. Kuna squared his shoulders, cleared his throat, and hefted his cane in two hands, marching up behind the human with a gun.

Kuna's knees wobbled and he felt like he would be sick. But that youth would be his golden ticket to somewhere safe and civilized.

A deep breath, puffing out his lungs to their fullest capacity, and Kuna adjusted his fingers on his beak. It would have to be a surprise.

He blew his nose.

Hard, loud, and piercingly shrill, enough to upset any canids in the vicinity. And then he swung out with his cane, bursting out as he did so, swinging wildly.

"He was going to give me twenty thousand credits, you mynock-kriffing nerfherder!"

 

[Kingsley]

"Rrrawwwk! You got it, Sal!"

Kingsley limped back to the vault, recovering his scatter gun and another sack of loot. His brain was still addled by the Jedi mind trick. When he emerged, Sal was being accosted by a strange old alien.

"For your troubles," he dumped a sack of credits in Kuna's hands.

Looking around for their accomplices, the smuggler realized he and Sal were on their own. The others must have already gotten clear or picked up by RTL authorities. Dealing with Jedi interference had slowed them down. Kingsley started to panic again, terrified of being hauled away in cuffs.

"Hurry up, man!" the bird called out to Katarn, "They're gonna blast off without us!"

Sal Katarn Jared Starchaser Kuna​

 

[Cryx Tillian]

Sal Katarn Jared Starchaser Kingsley Jun Ikeda

"Fire suppression back online," a voice said through Cryx's comm. TE-236 must have been able to get into the network again. That brought a breath of relief from Cryx as he clicked an acknowledgment.

"Get it going," Cryx replied. "Before it destroys all the oxygen in the casino." That was a nightmare scenario even beyond a hostage situation. If that large a compartment ended up a vacuum, they'd have to stabilize the bulwarks around before the atmospheric pressure around it crushed it like an empty can. "We'll breach on five simultaneously."

There was a chorus of acknowledgments and Cryx tightened his grip on his A280C, readjusting it to the pistol size as he wriggled through the vent.

An alarm sounded the unmistakable high-pressure sound of carbon dioxide foam hissing from the vents to douse the flames.

"Go, go, go!" The voices echoed through the comms and the sound of the casino door being forced open with hydraulic presses. Cryx pulled himself through and dropped onto a balcony.

"Nobody move!" He yelled, letting the Force amplify his force. "Ranger Corps! Drop your weapons and get on the ground!"