Corellia: Breakout Performance

[Eluna Thals]

http://i.imgur.com/FPsC453.jpg

Yendi Kostannis had been waiting all day. Nearly twelve hours, and nothing to show for her efforts. No one at the Solek District detention center would answer her questions. She'd been instructed to fill out an information request, but she knew full well what the Empire did with the proper channels. They'd thank her for her query, and it would all but be thrown in the garbage.

So she sat in the lobby, useless and aimless. She'd talked to anyone who would spare a minute to listen. She was looking for a man named Jamo Jakatta, who she'd heard on the scanners had been picked up by Imperial Security. He'd grown up in the neighborhood with her. They'd gone to school together. They'd...been something together, once. Years ago. He'd left Corellia, and she knew it would be for good the way he went. He left everything behind, including her.

Now, he was back from who-knows-where, and almost as soon as she'd found out from friends on the block, she'd heard the detention APB go out. Coronet City was already full of Imperial beat patrols, so it was hard to see the force escalation on top of what was already a crush of stormtroopers on every street corner.

What happened to him? What was going to happen?

Yendi slumped forward on the bench she'd occupied for half a day, wiping away the streak of tears on her face. New footsteps around the corner caught her attention, and a stormtrooper entered the lobby.

"TX-4491?" she asked. He'd been the last one through, and while he hadn't done anything to help, he'd at least listened to her go through it all again.

"I'm his relief, ma'am. TK-9942."

Yendi sat up with a sniff. Every stormtrooper in the galaxy looked alike, and the Empire erased their names with an alphanumeric string. It was all on purpose - to remove the humanity from the man. To prevent someone like Yendi from doing what she was desperately trying to do.

"Can you help me? Please?"

She clutched at the bundle of flimsis in her lap, hopeful that he'd give them the time of day.

"I'm looking for a friend of mine, I heard he got picked up."

The stormtrooper peered back at her like a statue, his vox clicking on harshly to let the antiseptic timbre of his voice through.

"You'll want to file form CDT-42. The attendant can h-"

"I've filed it already. I filed three. I'm..."

"You'll have to wait for the proper channel to respond, ma'am. Visitations for family or legal counsel are -"

"I'm neither of those, I'm just..." Yendi buried her head in her hands, letting them slide up through her hair as she endured the frustration. "...we're close, you know? Don't you?"

She looked up again at TK-9942. Somewhere in there, there had to be a real person.

If there was, that person was being completely silent. Yendi tried to keep a composed face, but the grief and the terror were eroding her control. Hot moisture welled beneath her eyes as she bit on her lower lip.

"I don't need to see him...I'd like to if I can but...I just want to know if he's here or there or if he's been taken off world..."

The Corellian girl's eyes tightened closed as she thumbed away a resurgent tear. Her shoulders shook as the signs of crying she tried so valiantly to keep from becoming sound.

"Please...I just want peace of mind. What would you do if you were me? If it were someone you loved?"

Exhausted, Yendi began to hang her head once again. Now her crying became sound - sharp gasps punctuated between her heaving shoulders as her brunette hair spilled over the contents of her lap.

The next sound she heard was the hollow sound of plastoid armor moving. She looked up to see TK-9942 moving to sit on the bench next to her. She looked into his dark oculars, her eyes red and puffed. She held onto a hope.

"Is that him?" the vox-filtered voice sounded almost interested as the stormtrooper gestured to one of the flimsies she carried. Yendi took a few sniffs, afraid to say anything that might frighten away this rare moment of empathy.

She nodded.

TK-9942 carefully reached over with a black-gloved hand, picking the flimsi from her lap. He took a few moments to inspect it, then looked up and around, settling briefly on the clerk's window at the front of the lobby before turning back to the distraught woman.

"I'll see what I can do."

[Jamo Jakatta]

The holding cell was supposed to hold four, but Jamo had been shoved inside with a dozen others. It was a temporary thing, the officer on duty had taken the time to tell him, but it was clear from the state of the cell and it's occupants that the Imperial definition of 'temporary' was malleable. It probably didn't help that he'd tried to headbutt a Stormtrooper on the way in. A rational part of him knew all that he'd gained with that stunt was a massive bruise on his own head, but that rational part of Jamo was buried so far deep beneath the surface now that the logic hadn't registered. He'd nutted a bucket-head for bad-mouthing the Alliance. That'd teach him! Or her, or it. It was impossible to know whether he'd ever encountered that same plastoid-clad zombie again, for all the personality they had when they came calling at the cell.

They visited for one of three reasons.

One: meal time. In spite of having a feckless regard for the amount of space that a sentient being needed to live and sleep in, you couldn't fault the punctuality of the Empire. Morning and night, they brought two square meals for Jamo and the dozen with. It was a square meal in so much that it was literally square, a cube of something pale and chewy. The cubes had become a form of currency for the cell's occupants, as they awaited their promised transfer to an individual cell. They used it to buy favors or promises. Give me your cubes and I'll come back for you when they let me out, or I'll see that your family is done right by.

Two: arrivals and departures. It looked like a one-in one-out policy was in operation, because a body only got hauled out of the cell when another one was coming to replace it. No one ever explained who was coming and if people were going, where to. The bucket-heads would swing open the door, make the switch and then march off. Jamo eyed each new arrival expectantly at first, figuring he was bound to see a familiar face eventually, but Corellia was a big place.

Three: brawls. It was inevitable. The thirteen of them were all like molecules rattling about inside the four walls, and it was only a matter of time before one or more of them collided. The catalyst could be anything. Someone looked at you the wrong way, or maybe they rolled onto you in your sleep. There were plenty of punches thrown in defense of Corellia's honour, in spite of the fact that just about all of them were Corellia born and bred. Jamo had kept out of it... for about an hour. Gunning for a fight was what had gotten him into the cell in the first place, but that hadn't stopped him.

He sat on the floor, not having the desire or the number of food cubes necessary to buy his way onto one of the narrow, hard wall-mounted beds that the cell had been fitted with. His lip was bleeding and he was making it worse by chewing at the raw split in his skin. His fingertips itched and twitched. He needed to get out, needed to get back behind the controls of a starfighter - of any ship - and blow something up.

[Eluna Thals]

After what seemed to be another eternity of waiting, a stormtrooper returned to the lobby. Yendi immediately craned her head at his approach, knowing that there was no way for her to tell if it was TX-4491, TK-9942, or any of the other dozens of troopers at this post. He didn't pause at a guard stance, or move in a directionless cadence of a man on patrol. He walked directly to her.

"Look, ma'am. I can't confirm or deny anything. It's against regulations, and it could be a reprimand."

Yendi's shoulders slumped, and she mouthed in defeated monotone "I understand".

TK-9942 didn't leave her, though. He had more to say.

"I lost my brother in the Coronet attack. In all the chaos that came after everything, it took two weeks for someone to tell me. It hurt to hear the news, but it was hell to not know anything."

The Corellian hung on to his words with a flickering hope. This wasn't a dismissal. Not yet. TK-9942 straightened his posture, giving a half glance back before returning to her.

"Believe me when I say that if I could help, I would. The best I can tell you is that I saw someone in passing that looked like he might be your guy."

He'd turned the volume on his vox down, Yendi noticed. That had to be intentional.

"I didn't get a good look. Could have been anyone, if they asked me."

A surprisingly consoling hand reached out to rest on Yendi's shoulder, and the trooper gave a slow nod.

"Are we clear on that?"

Yendi looked breathless, trying to reign in her emotions that might betray them both. She knew he was taking a risk to even imply. She wanted to hug him. Tell him thank you. All she managed was to put a hand over his hand, and nod.

TK-9942 withdrew his hand, but not before using it to ease Yendi to her feet. When he spoke again, his vox volume returned to normal.

"Now, you need to leave."

As Yendi slowly backed away toward the entrance, the marionette continued to play her part. Inside of her head, the Girl dreamed. The emotions were real, and all the tumult and anguish Yendi felt were shared. They were her emotions, given someone else's form, substance, and context. She breathed life into the fiction that was Yendi Kostannis, giving the alias the nearest thing to a soul as she would have.

Behind the Girl, the Machine Dragon awoke, his great green form stirring in the digispace of Eluna Thals' mind.

Jamo Jakatta located.

Engaging Protocol Seventeen.

[Protocol 17]

The Girl was placed in her cage deep within the digispace, cut off from the world beyond. As she left, the mask fell from Yendi Kostannis's expression as the woman passed through the door of the prison into the security cordon. The faint streaks of old tears remained on her face, but that face no longer contained any trace of emotional resonance. It was a blank. A placeholder for an unused and unecessary program no longer required to emote.

As she descended down the steps into the outer yard, Eluna dropped the collection of flimsis on the ground just as casually as she'd dropped Yendi Kostannis. The pictures scattered on the duracrete, a few incidentally trod over as she walked towards a parked Imperial police gunship in the yard. Her head moved in precise directions, allowing her eyes the most efficient means to quickly canvas the area around her. Data was drawn in and arranged for tactical use.

North guard tower - 90 meters: two stormtroopers detected.
West guard tower - 156 meters: two stormtroopers detected.
Taim and Bak antipersonnel automated defense turret - sixty eight meters.
Sixteen stormtroopers in staggered patrol.
Gunship pilot and mechanic - eleven meters.

Begin combat improvisation. Acquire weaponry.

Eluna continued to walk in a casual but direct gait towards the police gunship. The mechanic paused what he was doing, raising a hand in caution.

"Hey, this is a no civilian area, you need to --"

Eluna seized the man by the wrist, and calmly snapped the bones clean as she pulled him closer.

"Agh! Someone --"

His sentence went unfinished as Eluna's other hand seized him at the throat, crushing his windpipe before a slight twist of her wrist broke his neck. Already, the pilot had turned around, his hand already pulling the blaster pistol at his holster to clear it. Eluna dropped the mechanic's corpse, swiftly punching the pilot's gun hand into his own weapon to break the bones. He could barely scream as her other hand seized him by a handful of hair, smashing his face into the parked gunship with enough force to break open his head and dent the thin durasteel hull.

"We're under attack! Open fire!"

The distant observations of a stormtrooper went unheeded by the human replica droid as her brown eyes fixed upon an object affixed to the open side bay of the transport vessel.

Weapon located. Z-6 rotary blaster cannon. Aquire and deploy.

Eluna wrenched the heavy gunner weapon off it's fixed swivel mount, durasteel screeching as she tore it away. By now, blaster fire was incoming. Three shots fired wide, but began to track closer. A shot pocked into her right shoulder, burning away the jacket in a small cauterized pucker as the synthetic garment melted against damaged synthetic flesh.

The assassin turned about, holding the immense minigun at her hip. She gave each of the six stormtroopers approaching her position an aloof, bird-like glance before settling her attention on the Taim and Bak defense turret which was already quickly tracking to her position.

Priority target. Destroy.

The minigun cut to life in a stream of death-dealing, focused fire finding the gap in the armor between the turret's base and it's weapon head, arresting it's rotating movement before the entire thing cooked off in an explosion.

More stormtrooper fire came in, a shot grazing her leg and another shot vaporized her left ear, leaving a residual stub of bloodied flesh.

Targets in the open. Eliminating.

The weapon didn't hesitate in the slightest, sawing three stormtroopers nearly in half before the other three dove screaming behind the flaming wreck of the turret. Eluna calmly kept their heads down with suppressing hellfire before turning back to precisely level her weapon at the north guard tower. Keeping her stream of fire unnaturally steady, the human replica droid destroyed the guard position in a flash, sending a flaming stormtrooper screaming to the ground far below.

[Jamo Jakatta]

The walls were thick, but they weren't that thick.

Everything in the cell started to slow to a halt. Being able to hear the world outside wasn't a strange thing. Some people strained to hear every sound and lay awake at night, wondering what each creak or buzz signified. Jamo had spent most of his adult life bunking either aboard ship's that groaned like old houses or in rooms with other pilots. The noise didn't bother him, but this?

"Some serious fire-power," someone observed, to grunts of acknowledgement, appreciation and one or two of snorting derision. Regardless, the air felt tense all of a sudden. Not the kind of tension that came when two of the inmates squared-off, but something... sharper. Something that, by however small degrees, was starting to drain the bravado out of them all.

Jamo pulled himself up to his feet, a wary eye on the cell door.

[Protocol 17]

Sniper fire rained down from the west guard tower, hitting Eluna squarely in the back. The shot blew a three inch hole in the droid's jacket, cremating tissue to expose something dull and grey just below the surface.

Damage sustained to chassis composite armor.

She was already reacting, turning tightly on a heel as the minigun again cut loose, destroying the sniper's nest as quickly as the first.

HRROOA! HRROOA!

Eluna's head pivoted sharply towards the front door as the alarm tripped within the prison. The door itself was disappearing behind the four heavy panes of durasteel blast door that sealed the entryway in the event of an emergency.

Insufficient firepower to breach. Begin manual override entry.

The harried trio of stormtroopers behind the dead turret were again taking pot shots from cover. Eluna unleashed a torrent at their position to keep their heads down as she quickly circumnavigated the structure. With inhuman foot speed and the ability to focus accurate fire even at full sprint, the safety of their cover became their graves. Eluna easily flanked the trio, tearing them apart even as she adjusted her sprint to the front gate. She probed the integrity of the heavy blast door with a bare-knuckled punch hard enough to dent the facade, but the Machine already knew that kinetic entry would not be an option.

Eluna's head pivoted in a sharp, bird-like motion to catch sight of the entry pad.

Biometric access terminal. Bypass.

Unable to replicate the prints or voice of an Imperial officer required to open the door, Eluna punched through the scanner housing, wrenching the mechanism free to reveal a manual bypass keypad for auxilliary access. The key would be a six digit code that Eluna did not possess. With fingers moving at a speed beyond the naked eye's comprehension, the human replica droid began to bypass the keypad via brute force attrition.

Estimated time to clearance one minute seventeen seconds.

Two more troopers rounded the corner to open fire on her. Without pausing her code-breaking attempts, Eluna swiftly locked on to targets, destroying them with the minigun in her off hand.




* * *


HRROOA!! HRROOA!! HRROOAA!!

The staccato clap of stormtrooper boots against slick tile rang through the prisoner block as two squads rallied from the barracks, heading up to shore the defenses.

"We're under attack!" one voice shouted as the group ran through the prison thoroughfare.

"The Resistance scum! How many this time?"

"No idea. We lost contact with perimeter security just now."

[Jamo Jakatta]

The cell is a room divided into three camps. The first huddles back against the walls farthest from the cell door, eager to distance themselves from the commotion outside. The second doesn't move, lacking sufficient quantity of fucks to do much more than slouch in their usual spots. Jamo is part of this group, watching as the final third of the split crowds against the cell door, desperately trying to catch glimpses and snatches of the disturbance beyond. They jostle for prime position, but one word still rings clear above the squabbling: Resistance. Jamo licks his dry lips and looks down, looks at the bruises and scabs on his knuckles. Something tells him he might need to use them very soon.

[Protocol 17]

The key code attempts continued at a breakneck speed. With the constraints of the code length, there were nearly a million possibilities, but each incorrect entry increased the odds of a successful attempt albeit by a miniscule degree. The time allowed Eluna to examine her weapon's power pack level (2,484 shots remaining) as well as make note of possible exit routes and entry points for Imperial reinforcement.

Eventually, one key code attempt finally achieved response, and the blast doors began to hiss open. The human replica droid stepped toward the aperture, readying her minigun with both hands as a diamond-shaped opening began to form between the retreating durasteel plates.

Fire for suppression.

A green stream of energy rained continuously from the rotary barrel as Eluna stepped through the threshold, tearing apart the entire rear half of the lobby.

1,781 shots remaining.

The brutalist edges of marble facade and durasteel accent were chewed apart, raining debris across the room as Eluna switched from suppressing fire to destroying targets of opportunity.

1,299 shots remaining.

The initial four stormtroopers who had posted behind the cover of load-bearing columns were practically decapitated the moment they peeked around a corner to line up a shot.

812 shots remaining.

The lobby's fixed defensive points activated in unison, tracking their target. Four shots hit Eluna at once, peppering her in the chest and the back. She sorted each target into a priority stack, bringing the minigun about to deliver concentrated firepower to defeat the hardened defense points.

268 shots remaining.

Double doors hissed open at the far end of the lobby, disgorging a full squad of stormtroopers into the kill zone. Eluna didn't flinch as she depressed the trigger.

128 shots remaining.
54 shots remaining.
5 shots remaining.

Counting her rounds with ruthless efficiency, the droid released the trigger the moment the minigun reached zero, turning her heavy weapon into a deadly missile as she threw the gun with full force into the squad, hitting two troopers in the face and sending them lifeless to the ground.

Acquire new weaponry.

By now, the lobby was a butcher house, with no fewer than ten dead bodies heaped on the ground amid the rubble and thickening smoke. A nimble foot kick underneath an E-11 blaster rifle sent the weapon straight up to a waiting hand, where it adjusted aim by minute degrees to murder the remaining holdouts from the reinforcing squad.

Momentarily silent save for the braying siren, the lobby offered no further resistance to her. Eluna rolled a fallen stormtrooper onto his back, relieving him of his concussion grenades, power packs, and his rifle. The body moved of it's own volition, writhing in pain as gloved hands pulled at armor to try and assess the wounds beneath. Eluna's placid face broke it's emotive silence. She raised an eyebrow at the aurrebesh identifier on the wounded man's armor.

"TK-9942."

A gurgle behind the vox could be heard as TK-9942's trembling hands gave up on his wounds, instead struggling to pull his helmet free. From beneath the homogenous white cover, the face of a confused and scared young man appeared. The bright red bubbles at the corners of his mouth contrasted the pallid tone of his skin.

"P....please..."

The Girl inside used to dream. Now? Sleep was dark and silent.

Exterminate all Imperial presence.

With a precision of plus or minus six microns, Eluna's single shot hit dead between TK-9942's eyes.

[Protocol 17]

A closed fist punched into the pane of blaster-proof ballistic transplast separating the lobby from the security booth. Eluna's punch perforated the reinforced window; her piercing strike the focal point around which a spiderweb of fractures appeared. The entire window bowed inwards as inner shards were held together superficially by the outer laminate. As the ISB officer within shrieked and fell from his chair at the control computer, Eluna reached her hand through the opening, using the leverage on the other side to wrench the entire window free.

"Intruder breach in outer contro-" -the sheet of ballistic glass slammed into the officer before he could say another word. Eluna calmly stepped through the aperture, lining up a shot to destroy the camera in the control room.

Dazed but alive, the ISB lieutenant crawled out from under the heavy crumpled pane as Eluna casually stepped closer. From beneath the glass, he pulled his personal pistol free, squaring off a quick shot at the inhuman woman's head. Ballistic prediction algorithms quickly ascertained the danger of the aim path. Eluna only avoided taking a shot to the face by bringing up an open palm, which lit up in a spray of energy as the blaster bolt cremated the synthetic flesh. The second shot was wide, only because Eluna had by then closed the distance to pull the barrel off trajectory. She easily wrenched the gun from the Lieutenant's hand, looking down at the weapon dispassionately as the dull grey fingers of her composite endoskeleton curled around the grip.

Eluna's green eyes tracked back to the ISB officer as she shook her head. Then with extreme force, she slammed the weapon against the reinforced wall, shattering it apart. This only served to demoralize the officer further, who blanched as his attacker repeatedly demonstrated the impossible.

"Please...I surrender! I have a family! Don't...don't..."

Eluna pulled the man up to his feet by the neck, but did not kill him. Far from ignoring the man's pleas, the Machine was listening to them quite intently.

Analyzing speech patterns. Mapping vocal inflections and tonal thresholds.

She tossed aside her E-11 rifle, using her free hand to relieve the officer of the code cylinder on his uniform. The Imperial officer wrapped both hands around her wrist in futile attempt to loose her hold on him.

"I have money. Eighty thousand credits...it's my life savings. Please...just let me go, and it's yours."




* * *

Detention facility inner control station - thirty-nine seconds later.


"Lieutenant Fyyar, repeat last message. We've lost visual and there appears to be interference."

Captain Kepps strained to listen through the uneven audio feed from the outer control station. For a moment, it sounded like the station had been compromised by the intruder. He'd already dispatched another three squads to repel the attack, but he needed the best information possible and he needed it yesterday.

The snow on the audio feed died away again, and Lieutenant Fyyar's voice returned.

"Repeat again, focus squads on access points along grids three and four. Intruder has entered the ventilation shaft. They may be attempting to bypass the lockdown.

Captain Kepps turned sharply, nodding to a stormtrooper sergeant who was already leaving the control room to adjust the facility defense.



* * *


Eluna listened to the audio feed from Captain Kepps, the Machine once again taking particular interest.

"I'm on my way to liaise with the reinforcing squads now," she spoke, her voice a pitch-perfect replication of Lieutenant Fyyar's Corulag accent. The ISB Lieutenant was now permanently indisposed, his dead body twitching against the wall. Fyyar's corpse was held in place by Eluna's left index finger, driven through his right eye socket down to the inner knuckle.

"Don't worry about me, Captain. If the resistance guerrilla doubles back the way she came, we'll have her. I assure you of that."

[Jamo Jakatta]

The chaos is contagious.

The three camps were divided a matter of minutes ago and now they're frothing at the edges, bleeding into one another. The cell's a ship with a hull full of rats, rapidly sinking into merciless seas. Jamo keeps his back to a wall. Not to feel any safer. He's not that stupid. It's to feel the vibrations reverberated through durasteel and stone, the rhythm of the indisputable carnage unfolding outside pulsing through the masonry and metalwork with a palpable shudder.

The in-mates voices are rising into one snarl.

“What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck-”

“Hey! He-----y! Someone tell us what the frell is going on out there!”

“As soon as that wall comes down, I'm gone. Any of you assholes tries to follow me, I'll throw you to whatever's out there.”

[Protocol 17]

"Send triple squads to grid three and grid four, move it, hurry!"

Eluna ducked behind a bulkhead as a crush of bootheels signaled the surge of stormtroopers moving to shore up defenses at the wrong area. Once they had passed, Eluna followed the clear corridor to the control center. The double doors leading within were open, as another squad finished filing out to deal with the threat. Eluna rounded a corner, accelerating in an unnaturally-fast sprint. The army officer manning the door quickly pressed the button to seal it under lockdown.

Not soon enough.

Eluna hooked a shoulder and a hand in between the closing doors. The human replica droid strained against hydraulics, shrugging the mechanism open as a pair of officers opened fire on her. Blaster fire stitched her in the side as she threw the doors wide. She delivered a right cross into the face of the officer manning the door, caving in his skull. Another shot zipped into her back, burning a hole in the fabric of her jacket. Eluna barely glanced behind as she snapped her weapon hand up to deliver killing shots.

All that remained was Captain Kepps. He feebly aimed his pistol at the droid. Eluna closed her grip on his gun hand, pivoting the weapon away from her while breaking his bones in her grasp. Kepps screamed, slumping to his knees in agony. Eluna glanced down with a dispassionate, blank expression.

"Open all cell block doors."

Kepps hyperventilated against the pain shooting down his arm. Eluna accepted no further stalling, and pressed the barrel of her blaster against his forehead.



* * *


Throughout the detention facility, a klaxon of a different tone than the general alert began to sound. One by one, each cell pod's door clicked open, hissing away with pneumatic release. It didn't take the prisoners long to get the hint, and a hurried stampede for the exit began in earnest.

Eluna exited the command hub, leaving Captain Kepps with a smoking hole in his head as thanks for his cooperation. She moved down the very same corridor that quickly began to fill with a crush of escaping convicts.

[Jamo Jakatta]

There's a split-second of indecision. Stay or go.

The roar of the facility is like thunder. People falling over themselves and each other to get out. Gunfire in the distance. His back still to the wall, Jamo's fingertips are rigid like iron.

“Frell it.”

He pushes off the wall and sprints into the throng, shouldered barged and bruised within seconds as he gets swept down stream.

[Protocol 17]

Rather than shifting and pivoting against the crush of humanity in the path of least resistance, Eluna's approach was a directly straight line. The initial few dozen convicts simply passed to her right or left, but as the crowd began to thicken, a few of them ran into her. Those who did were spun about roughly by unexpected resistance the human replica droid provided. Eluna glanced dispassionately to each face that headed in her direction. One prisoner was hemmed in by the people to either side, with nowhere to go but through the strange woman. Eluna barely paused as she brusquely shoved him into three other escaping prisoners. The four men collapsed in a heap against the far wall, leaving Eluna to pass uninterrupted once more.

As faces continued to pass by, Eluna quickly fixated upon one in particular. She only got a passing glance as another prisoner passed in front, but he reappeared once more.

Primary objective sighted_

Initiate contact_

"Jamo Jakatta."

[Jamo Jakatta]

The fact that they’re all flooding in the same direction does little to help it all go smoothly. Bodies collide. Panic and a primal need to flee robs them all of their senses. At the controls of a starfigther, Jamo would react on instinct, give himself over to reflex, but a press of bodies isn’t like a string of asteroids and debris. The endless shifting buffets him back and forward and back until -

His name somehow cuts through the noise, spoken with dispassionate clarity.

A woman. He stares at her, dumbstruck by the strangeness of it.

Someone blindly runs into the back of him and he pitches forward, a foot short of crashing into the woman.

[Protocol 17]

Analyzing_

Facial structure 99.81% match_

Primary Objective identity confirmed_

The surge pressed behind Jamo, threatening to bowl him over. Preservation programming kicked in, and the human replica droid pulled the pilot away from the threat as she caught the convict behind him with a hand to the face. She held him there for a beat, then threw him backwards with enough force to cause him to skid across the floor, but not before taking two more escapees with him. With the threat mitigated, she pivoted her head sharply back to Jamo.

"Come with me if you want to live."

[Jamo Jakatta]

One firm hand holds him in place, while the other tosses an unlucky convict through the crowd like all the gravity has been sucked out of the hallway. There’s a huff of breath and then gasps of pain as careless feet trample over the casually discarded body.

"Where are you taking me?" he asks, forcing his focus back to her face, so devoid of emotion.

[Protocol 17]

"This conversation is irrelevant." She meets his eyes with an eerily cool demeanor, but does not immediately pull him along by the arm. He is easier to rescue if he is compliant.

"I am rescuing you. Your alternatives are to remain a prisoner or be shot by the Imperials. Unless you want either of those, follow me and do as I say."
The illusion of choice properly explained, the droid resumed her pace. If he didn't want to be dragged, he'd have to keep up.

[Jamo Jakatta]

The mob parts before her, whether it wants to or not, and Jamo is merely pulled along in her wake.

“Not that I’m ungrateful for the help,” he says, a step behind her. “I just…”

But she seems to barely hear him. The chaos flows around them, a river rushing over pebbles. In the scrum, no one seems to notice them.

[Protocol 17]

Her eyes continue scanning as they move against the flow of the crowd.

"This prison break will divert attention and provide an opportunity to escape. I am going to release you know. Follow me."

The droid did as she said, unhanding Jamo as they approached the previously-ruined security checkpost. She pushed Lieutenant Fyyar's corpse off of the security console, activating the comms.

"Captain Kepps," she spoke in a perfect mimic of a male coreward accent, "There's been a breakout. Lock down this entire wing except on my voice command only."

"We read you, Fyyar. We're sending a squad to deal with the prisoners."

Eluna clicked off the comm line, turning her head sharply back to Jamo.

"We are headed to the motorpool."

[Jamo Jakatta]

There’s no protest from Jamo. In a matter of minutes, he’s seen enough of this woman to know that it’s better to move with her instead of against her. Inside the relative calm of the checkpoint, he pauses only long enough to rifle through the Lieutenant’s belongings, hoping to find a code cylinder, a weapon, anything that might be useful.

“You got a name, sister?”

[Protocol 17]

The droid's eyes unfocused for a moment, considering the most appropriate designation to give to Jamo. Not Yendi Kostannis, which was an alias generated by her neural net and meant nothing to Jamo. Equally not Eluna Thals, as the protocol two designation wasn't used on clandestine missions.

"P-One-Seven."

She canted her head, observing Jamo as he tidily policed the deceased Imperial's belongings. He had a quick hand to his work, which spoke of experience.

"Your file indicates you are rated for military groundspeeders. There are six ITT armored personnel carriers in the motorpool. We will steal one and destroy the rest."

[Jamo Jakatta]

Through some twist of fate, the Imperial's jacket is a close enough cut that Jamo can shrug into it. He pats the breast pocket and feels the gratifying presence of the code cylinder, then checks the blaster. Realising it's still charged, he grins as his eyes lift to meet the blank expression of the woman beside him.

"Roger that, Seven."

It's barely a moment after that and she's turning away, marching with that unstoppable momentum. Jamo has a rough idea of the layout of the place but there's no need to contemplate it, not with Seven cutting a scalpel clean path through the place. He keeps the blaster to hand, eyes sharp and trigger finger ready as they turn corners, the pervasive sound of the prison riot echoing along the halls after them.

[Protocol 17]

The human replica droid rounded a corner, and brought her E-11 blaster to bear single-handed with a crisp economy of movement as she gunned down a waiting transport driver and his gunner, exposed in the open as they stood outside their parked transport. Nearby, a second transport rumbled to life, spilling light through the motorpool from its bank of headlamps as the antipersonnel turret began to traverse towards them.

"Get in!" she snapped a command to Jamo, standing her ground against the enemy transport. Red energy burped in a sweep as the turret moved to bear, pocking the duracrete floor and the wall behind. Eluna fired a pair of shots, determined that her E-11 was insufficient to breach the armor, but still positioned herself between the guns and Jamo anyway to show herself as the most immediate threat.