Impact!

Posted on Tue Mar 22nd, 2022 @ 3:56am by Lieutenant Kor' de'leia & Tessgia (Tess) Strilanf

Mission: Scoundrels, Cuttthroats and Rogues
Location: Reclaimation Station - Jaemus System
Timeline: Day 3 at 0000

Sensation returned in dull red bursts as Koree Lansend slowly opened her eyes. She didn't recognize the place. but it felt familiar. Granted she hadn't spent much time face down near the back of an imperial shuttle before...

She rolled herself over and laid there looking up at the cieling panels. That she had seen a few times before. She thought about what hurt, at the moment it seemed like everywhere, but nothing too much. It felt like her body had spent the day being throughly scrubbed and cleaned by droids with minimal intelligence chips. Koree pulled herself up to a seated position and tried to take stock of exactly where she was and what had happened.

It seemed clear enough she was on a shuttle. The fact that she was on the floor meant something bad had happened, wither to her or the shuttle. The flashing red lights seemed to imply it was the later of the two. Sparks sprayed out of several control panels further forward in the cockpit. Koree unsteadily pulled herself to her feet using one of the passenger chairs. Events were starting to come back to her mind.

This was an Academy shuttle. Had she been on a field trip? She made her way forward. The pilot was slumped over on the flight controls. But it wasn't a pilot.... Tessgia! What was Tess doing piloting a shuttle? Tess was just a student like her. One thing was for sure, when the Imperial instructors got here they were both in big trouble. Koree immediately began to think of reasons for how this would not be her fault. It was all Tess. Yeah, that would work. Her story would work best of course if Tess couldn't contradict it. Maybe she was dead. Koree reached out to touch Tess' shoulder. "Tessgia. Tess! Wake up!" she stated firmly shaking the young woman.

Tessgia Strilanf slowly began to regain consciousness, her head hurt like she'd gone several rounds with another student, and it smelt like something was on fire.

Tess heard the voice behind her and tried to turn around to see who it was, and winced, she guessed she'd broken some ribs in the crash landing of the shuttle. Someone was behind her she realized and half reached for a weapon, then remembered she was unarmed.

Tess succeeded in turning around to spot a familiar face there, another student from the academy "Koree, Koree Landsend, what are you doing here?" she asked.

She wasn't dead. Koree cursed her luck, but she would cross that bridge when the need arose. Right now staying alive herself seemed more important.

"I followed you." she admitted reluctantly. "You had mentioned trying to get out of the Academy. I watched you sneak into the hanger and I followed. You were so busy trying to get the flight systems running you didnt notice me slide into the luggage bin in the back."

The actual memories coming back of locking herself into a dark confined space were much more unpleasant than she related. What should have been a quick joyride, got really bumpy as their stolen shuttle took fire from somebody. Beyond the thrill of sneaking out of school, she had no idea what she had gotten herself into. "Where are we?" she inquired.

"A reclamation outpost, somewhere in the Jaemus System," Tess replied checking the barely functional navi-computer "We were under attack from TIE Fighters and a Star Destroyer and it was the first place I could find co-ordinates for on such short notice," she added.

Koree stood upright putting her hand on one hip as she listened to her classmate relate their situation. "Seriously. You took us to a scrap yard? Why would you do that? There are civilized worlds all over the core. And what did you do to get us shot at by a Star Destroyer?" she said exasperatedly, flipping a long black lock of hair out of her face.

"Let me think, its a stolen shuttle, and the Imps wanted to try and stop us," Tess replied.

"You know we are both in real trouble when we get back to the academy." Koree said shaking her head. But I guess we are stuck here in a garbage dump on the ass side of nowhere. Somebody here should be able to at least call the Empire and get us a ride."

Tess checked the systems "Well this shuttle is scrap, we'd best get off it before the fuel from the fuel lines that have ruptured reach the hot engines," she told Koree "From a scan i got from orbit before we crashed there are few if any sentients here, at a guess its automated," she added.

This day just kept getting worse. "Droids. Great. So they probably don't have a Shookies Eatery or anything. They had to at least build a transmitter into this place." Koree complained, the impact of her poor judgement in following Tess starting to kick in.

Tess jerked her thumb behind her "In that container is a lot of ration packs, grab as many as you can, when this shuttle goes boom, we won't be able to get anymore," she told Koree.

Tess grabbed as many ration packs as she could grab and then exited the wrecked shuttle, there was no immediate sign of a formal reaction to their sudden arrival "Let's go find that damn transmitter of yours, if you want to go back to the Empire feel free, I am not," she told Koree.

Following Tess over to the ration packs, Koree began to scoop up as many as she could and stuff them into her academy jumpsuit. "At least we won't starve for a couple days. Hopefully somebody can get us out of here. I'm sure the Academy will take you back, I mean stealing the shuttle was epic. Worse they would do is kick you out. You're not thinking of going rebel are you?" she asked with an eyeroll. of course turning in a traitor would certainly get her off the hook for being on a garbage scowl in the middle of nowhere.

"You studied tech stuff. Where are we supposed to find a transmitter?" Koree asked, looking for anything else useful to grab from the wreckage of the shuttle. Truth was there wasn't much of any value in there, not even a blaster. Korree considered it a little bit lucky to have Tess there. She knew machines. Koree had studied political theory and administration mostly. Not that practical, but it got you into the officer corp faster than just about any other area of study. Not much use in a dead shuttle in a back waters scrap heap.

Tess paused to contemplate Koree's question "There has to be some kind of a command centre, even if this place is reliant on droids my guess is there are some sentients here to make sure all runs smoothly," she told Koree.

Tess walked around the hanger until she found a terminal she pulled out her datapad and plugged it into the terminal, which was encrypted but the encryption was simple to crack "Way too easy," she commented to herself.

Tess scanned the layout of the station looking for any form of transmitter "I found a control centre, no mention of any kind of transmission unit, if there isn't one there, then there is a Lambda class shuttle on the far side of the station," she told Koree "Well now this is interesting, this place is being used to scrap Clone Wars era starfighters, Y-wings, V-19s, Alpha-3's, and ARC-170s," she added.

"Wow! This is a junk yard. My grandfather used to fly those fossils." Koree stated. "Let's hit up that Control Center. If there is anybody here, that's probably the best place to find them."

Walking over to the main gangplank which extended from the nose of the shuttle, Koree flipped the open circuit. Nothing happened. She flipped it again. Then again. "Stupid thing is busted! Can you slice in and override it?"

Tess returned to the shuttle and sliced into the controls opening the hatch "There is a hole in the side of the shuttle that is big enough to exit through," she told Koree.

Koree looked at the slowly lowering ramp and then at teh gaping scorched hole towards the back of the passenger compartment. "Huh." she said mainly to herself. It certainly explained how she might have been sucked out of the storage bin she had locked herself in.

Tess returned to the panel where she had been before and took another look around to see what she could find "Ok, I've got a schematic of this place, now all we need to do is follow what i am guessing is a logical path towards the control centre," she told Koree.

The hanger was still illuminated with emergency impact beacons as Koree walked down the main ramp. She took the sight in. It was mostly an empty hanger. No real evidence anyone had docked there in some time. The clack clack of her academy issue boots resounded on the floor of the hanger as she walked towards Tess, listening to the young woman's report on their whereabouts.

"Sounds pretty easy. Let's go." she stated.

Almost on cue, a service access door began to rise on the far end of the hanger. A series of lights from multiple sources shown towards the crashed shuttle.

"Unauthorized vehicle.... Impact alert.... Nullify threat.... Non lethal force sanctioned." came the combine voices of clearey non-sentient droid voices.

Tess cursed under her breath "I wonder if them droids know of service shafts," she commented searching the schematics for any sign of such shafts.

The droids began to filter into the hanger in three lines of five each. They made a directly line for the shuttle, paying no direct attention to the sentients.

"Here found them, access shafts run the length and breadth of the station, with any luck the droids don't know they are there, and can't see through the walls," Tess told Koree.

Tess led the way across the hanger to a wall and found the hidden access button and popped the hatch open "Quick inside before the droids arrive," she urged Koree.

Koree watched the parade of lights moving across the hanger as she followed Tess. "Shouldn't we just ask the droids to help? Arent they programed to serve?" she asked naively. All the same she followed her classmate to the service shaft. The squeeze was fairly tight, but manageable for standard based lifeforms. "Do you know where this goes? It smells weird."

Tess followed Koree inside the tunnel "Serve yes, serve us no, I doubt they'd help we're intruders here," she told Koree.

Tess pulled up the schematics for the station "This tunnel will take us to the droid control centre, as well as the command centre, and it smells bad because these tunnels aren't used all that often," she told Koree.

Koree began climging up the short ladder before her. "If you say so. Looks like they don't clean it much either." The vertical shaft soon turned to a horizontal pipe, apparently running through the cieling of the hanger.

A loud sreeching with a fairly quiet thump echoed through the pipe. "What's happening?" Korre asked nervously.

"Not sure, keep moving," Tess replied "I hope these pipes can handle us in here together, this place is old and who knows how safe these pipes are," she added.

Tess hoped the pipe would hold long enough for them to reach the other end, if not god only knew what was below them, and she hoped that the noise wasn't a droid breaking into the area.

Koree didn't like the notion of the pipes giving out, she began to crawl faster, making perhaps too much noise for traversing the pipe, but she wasnt gonna wait for the structure to collapse below them. "I'm moving. I'm moving." she replied back.

At last she crawled up to what appeared to be a bulkhead door. She depressed the switch meant to open the section. Nothing happened. "Figures. This one seems locked." she called back at Tess. "And this is starting to really hurt my knees. Are we crawling all the way to the control center?"

Tess looked at the map "No, we can get out here, it is listed as an auxiliary control centre," her knees were hurting also thus it might be wise to stop.

Tess sliced into the panel and a second or two later the door to the room popped open "Camera shows nothing inside, we can go in," she told Koree.

Koree was relieved to get back on her feet again. "Don't want to do that again." she said, rubbing her hands down over her knees.

Automatic lights came on as the heat signatures of the two sentients entered the room. It appeared to be a secondary assembly room with a pair of supply closets coming off the room. A variety of small table lay around the room. OF note were what appeared to be large scratch marks along one wall and across a table.

Tess took a few moments to get to her feet, as she let her knees stop shaking, it had been quite nasty in there, and the fear of the pipe collapsing was not pleasant.

When Tess got to her feet she walked around the room looking at anything and everything, trying hard to ignore the scratches along one wall and table.

"It looks like they work on machines in here, my guess would be they build and or repair the droids that dismantle the ships docked here," Tess told Koree.

"As long as its droids their ripping apart, its all good to me." Koree said similarly trying to ignore the marks on the wall. She leaned back against one table, staring at the main door of the room, knowing anything bad was likely to come through there.

Which apparently didn't take long. The main door hissed open.
"This is section is for authorized personnel only! State your identification and prepare to be processed." a mechanical voiced demanded of them. Into the doorway came a stout bipedal droid standing at about a meter and a half. The lights on the droid momentarily blinded Koree as it turned toward her. She froze, trying to figure what to do to get out of this situation.

"Cadet IC-17082, Imperial star academy. I am here by orders of the headmaster to prepare a dossier on your stations efficiency. I will need your designation number for a form JT-3405-C unless you want to find yourself process refuse again." Koree made up off the top of her head. Training as a political officer gave her a quick mind for bureaucratic minutia.

The droid paused. "Processing. Identity is not in station database. rerouting to command authority. Your visit was not expected. Please present assignment orders." the droid replied back, its photoreceptors now focused on Koree.

"I don't need to show you my identification. You are required to follow my orders according to maintenance protocol VT-121. Please escort me to your command center." she said with imperial haughtiness. In truth she was getting more terrified by the moment, but this was just a droid...

Tess watched on to see what the droid did next, hoping that it didn't need hacking to make it work in their favor, she wasn't as adept at slicing droids as she was computer systems.

The droid turned around on seeing Tess stood there "State your Identification," it demanded

"Cadet IC-17084, I'm with Cadet IC-17082," Tess replied "Now what of our requirement," Tess replied trying to sound rather impatient.

The droid's photo receptors shifted between the two young women. "...directive require steril... computing... follow me."

It stepped back and shifted its gaze toward the door entering the room. Koree felt relieved that the droid was complying with her maintenance codes she had lifted from the service droids at the academy. They had been useful for getting her dormitory room clean before inspections, or quickly sweeping away the remains of a cadet party, but she had no idea they were as universal as to direct droids somewhere out of the core worlds.
She followed the droids directions and headed toward the door.
"See, that wasn't too hard. she stated to Tess.

Tess followed suit "Let's hope there aren't any sentients here, maintenance codes won't work on them," Tess whispered to Koree "But well done on remembering the code," she added.

Tess paused just inside the door and grabbed a couple of droid restraining bolts, and slipped them into a pouch on her belt, as there might come a time when she needed to use them.

A line of security droids lined the hall as they exited. While not deactivated, they were able to pass in front of them without any outward sign of response. They still looked creepy, even standing still. Koree walked cautiously by, but started getting more comfortable until she reached the end of the phalanx and one rolled out in front of her.

"Identify." it parsed out at her.

"Cadet IC-17082." she said confidently. "Approval to transfer to central control was granted by your associate."

"Identity logged. Proceeding with protocol IP-23283. Prepare for sterilization." the droid commanded. As if on cue all of the droids in the hallway swiveled their photo receptors towards the two sentients.

"Uh... belay that. Protocol VT-121 is giving us access to the control center." Koree quickly stated, not liking the sound of sterilization.

Tess agreed sterilization did not sound like a good thing, as the standoff continued, Tess looked around for a central m=computer module, hoping she might be able to slice into the droids to make them comply without needing to argue with them all of the time.

Tess walked over to Koree and whispered "Keep it preoccupied, i might have a solution to this issue, i just need a few moments to try something."

Koree flashed Tess a desperate what the hell am I doing look, then turned back to the droid in front of her.

"Who authorized this sterilization? This is nor standard protocol?" she demanded of the unit.

The droid made whirling noises for a moment be for responding. "Methodical purge of invasive lifeforms initiated by Central Control Operator MS-4268. We are protecting the integrity of this facility."

tess walked over to a panel built into the wall, and sliced into it, careful not to trip any alarms concerning droid controls, and began to slice the protocols that the droids functioned on, half of the droids were basic models and easily reprogrammed. but there were more advanced ones and their programming was more complex. Just before something trying to trace the slicing caught her Tess withdrew from the terminal and hoped that her reprogramming worked, if not they were likely to have to rely on Koree's override codes and or restraining bolts

Koree did her best to stall the droid. "I need to speak with Operator MS-4268. Imperial protocols override local directives."

"Affirmative." the droid responded. "Under normal operating conditions that would be true. Unauthorized lifeforms have necessitated the purge of all living organisms in the facility. You must comply."

Koree looked over her shoulder at Tess. "I hope you got something. These droids are stubborn."

Tess was frustrated beyond measure "I'd duck for cover if i was you," she told Koree.

Tess pulled from her pack an oval shaped device, primed it and rolled it under the droid, before she dove for cover, hoping that Koree was wise enough to do so.

Koree didn't need to be told twice. She dove for the bulkhead of the cooridor, hoping to get some cover from whatever Tess had done.

A mere 6 seconds later the device detonated, rendering the droid immobilized.

"Grab its blaster and cover me, I'm gonna try to reprogram it," Tess told Koree.

"Damn, when did you invade the armory?" Koree shouted out as the droid sparked its way out of operation. Following Tess's instruction she reached down to the droids arm, to find... nothing, at least anything that could be picked up. The Droid had a built in stun weapon, that was attached to the arm. "Uh... no blaster to speak of." she called back, turning to look at the dozen other security droids now rolling out from where they had been parked against the wall.

"Intruders. Immobilize!" the units started repeating, their stun weapons starting to glow as they came online.

"Aw hell." Koree exclaimed. There was little she could do against a armed security droid, let alone a dozen.

Tess swore under her breath and pulled something designed to kill droids from her pack "Here, droid poppers, they'll disable the droids, permanently, throw one at them i'll throw another," Tess said tossing a small oval shaped ball to Koree.

Koree caught the popper Tess tossed to her and quickly surveyed the droids closing on them. "Sure. Let's see what happens." She threw the popper at the cluster of droids rolling towards them.

Tess tossed her droid popper down the corridor landing it at the feet of six droids at the rear of the dozen, moments later the droid popper went off and immobilized the droids they dropped dead where they stood.

"There wasn't a place at the Academy i didn't visit, whether it was on official business or unofficially, it pays to raid places for future benefits," Tess told Koree.

"And you can fit it all in that pack? Impressive." Koree replied back happy to have the droid emergency so efficiently neutralized. Imperial education at its best.

The line of security droids lay frozen clogging up the corridor behind them. Koree looked down the passageway leading further into the station. The lights down the corridor suddenly turned red. An alert klaxon sounding from the speakers built into the ceiling. Koree looked at the light and back at Tess. "Looks like we better get moving. Which way are we headed?" she asked.

Tess glanced at the map she had on her datapad "We need to go down to the next junction and turn left, then up two levels, and then break into the command centre," she replied.

Tess led the way down the cluttered corridor, pausing to grab an oval shaped object as she did "If you see these grab them, they are droid power cores," she told Koree "If push comes to shove they make an effective bomb," she added.

Koree looked at the oval device. It was interesting how many explosives got left lying around a recycling center. She was interested if the droids could be made to blow up too. "I will keep an eye out for any." she called back. This little foray into criminal trespass was giving Koree lots of ideas to use for her final report in her tactics and security class, which was a blessing, since that was probably her weakest class, but she had ideas that would blow the mind of her Imperial Instructors.

She followed along behind Tess as she led the way with her datapad. The red alert lights continued blinking and the Klaxon kept resounding every 30 feet or so. "Is there anything we can do to shut that thing off?" Koree asked holding her hands up to her ears.

Tess shook her head "Not from here no," she replied "I am not sure how it was triggered, we might find a means to shut it off where we're headed," she added.

Koree nodded. "Yeah, the sooner the better." wincing as the klaxon went off next to them again as they headed up the corridor.

Tess kept leading the way, when she reached the junction, their route was blocked by loader droids, but there weren't any signs of security droids "Hold up loader droids, looks like they are in the process of moving parts," she whispered to Koree.

Koree kept quiet but peered around Tess at the line of droids pushing large crates moved across the junction ahead of them. "Yeah. Think they will notice if we just leave them alone? Not that I want to get run over by one of those things, but maybe they just want to do what they are programed for." She began to move toward the line of droids to test if they would react. She made it a good three paces with no obvious signs of recognition. "I think we can get by."

Tess nodded "Good idea," she said to Koree and stepped out of her hiding spot "Let's hope we don't run into any more droids armed for battle, apart from these four cores, I'm out of tricks up my sleeve," she added.

Koree looked down the cooridor, nothing but maitenance droids scurrying about to do whatever task they had before them. Koree stepped around one and then another. Fairly simple as the worker droids moved as a slow but steady pace. Once clear she quickly headed down the cooridor.

Tess kept moving forward, bypassing the droids with ease, at the next junction they came to a junction with two corridors leading off, one straight on the other to the left. Tess looked at the map "We go left, there ought to be a turbolift at the end, we need to go up two levels," she said having triple checked the map.

"Ok, Up it is." Koree responded pulling to the left. At the end of the cooridor there was the clear tubular shape of a lift. She quickly sprinted down the darkened cooridor and found herslef at the lift. She pressed the panel to summon the car. Almost instantly the lights dimmed and flashed red. "Warning! Unauthorized incursion. Unidentified ship approaching." A string of curse words errupted from Koree as she caught her breathe. "Damn, I thought it was me. What do you think is happening?" she asked of Tess.

"Someone's approaching the station, someone who doesn't yet have access codes, we got lucky the shuttle did," Tess replied "Which cannot be good," she added.


Koree just shook her head. IT was bad enough they were stuck in the middle of this dilapidated junk pile illegally, now someone serious was showing up. This didn't sound goo.

Tess frantically tapped into the station sensors, but none of the data made any sense "Damn, this place is in serious need of a major upgrade to its sensors, all i am getting is a mysterious and unidentified vessel." she said cursing the lack of modern tech aboard.

Looking around helplessly Koree stated, "Last thing we need is pirates... or worse... We can always bounce a message over to the Empire, or the academy... They wont be happy with us, but if they catch a ship full of smugglers, we might get set forward as heroes! ...after sitting a few weeks in the brig. We need to get somewhere safe... preferably with blasters."

Tess didn't respond at first "If you want to do that feel free, but I have no desire to return to the Empire," she told Koree "I left the academy on purpose, you weren't supposed to be here, had I known you were aboard I'd have dropped you off elsewhere," she added.

Koree's face gave a sour expression at her classmate's treasonous talk of leaving the empire. "We can work that out later, I just dont want to end up floating in space with a pirate blaster burn through my stomach. Lets get in the lift and head to the command center."

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