-
"I was watching it from in here! I thought I left something in the bag!"
He came stalking into the cockpit with the bag in tow. He plopped down in the co-pilot's set and put on his crash webbing.
"She said everything in the bag right? I don't need the actual bag do I?"
While Silus was absolutely nailing his performance, the ship transitioned into realspace just over Telos IV.
-
Bette took a deep breath, focusing her mind on the task at hand. Switching quickly to sublights she piloted the freighter down toward the planet, following the trajectory Agent Kyris had supplied.
Before she hit the atmosphere Bette cut sublights and switched on repulsors, firing them in reverse to dump as much speed as possible. Air began to roar around the outside of the freighter, the two humans jostled in their seats as Silus pulled up the active sensor readings.
The freighter slid through the atmosphere as quietly as possible, Bette keeping the angle just right to avoid turning them into a giant fireball for entry.
“It’s coming up quick,” she said, the steering yoke fighting her as she kept the ship on target. “Looks like we’ve got low clouds.”
-
As they entered the atmosphere over Telos IV, Silus fished out a commlink from his belt. He switched it over to voice activation and set the channel to the one they'd used earlier before placing it in his ear. As the flight smoothed out he undid his crash webbing and put his helmet on. His ears popped slightly as the helmet pressurized and he had to work his jaw a bit to get back to normal. Once he had everything settled he stepped out of the cockpit and hit the button to seal off the entryway.
"Nel, Shooter, do you read me."
He nodded to himself as he received a confirmation from both of them. A minute later, Bette broke in over the commlink.
"Alright Nomad, we're almost there, ready up."
Silus opened the door without extending the ramp. The wind rushed in to meet him and he had to brace himself to keep from getting blown out of the ship to early.
"Roger that Shooter, waiting for the green light."
A few moments later the light when from red to green. Just before Silus jumped, he glanced through windows on the cockpit door and made eye contact with Bette.
"I'll be right back."
He winked and made a little finger gun gesture at her then leapt backward into the night sky.
-
Bette couldn’t help but grin as he winked, but she quickly returned her attention to the console as she pulled the freighter up and around pos-y-x.
”Reading you on sensors, Nomad, you’re right on target.”
She watched the little sensor dot that was Silus as it traveled toward the planet’s surface. There were no indications from the little Rebel base that they had any idea anything was going on. Hopefully most of them would be asleep, this far into the planet’s night cycle.
The Silus-dot slowed and connected with the line that was the planet on her HUD, and a few moments later the console pinged that it was picking up the signal from the data transmitter. There wasn’t anything being actively transmitted yet, but she reached over and locked in the signal, readying things on her end for the data dump.
-
As Silus fell through the night sky he kept his legs straight and his arms to his sides to avoid as much drag as he could. It was hard to make out any detail on the ground below due to the darkness, and he fought back a pang of panic at the idea of not being able to gauge his distance properly. Instead he relied on his HUD which was feeding him information on his altitude and velocity, among other things. He waited a little longer than he meant to on his jetpack and had to decelerate a little faster than he had planned, but years of piloting star fighters meant his body was well adjusted to the extra g-forces. For the last few meters of the drop he brought himself to almost a complete stop in midair and deactivated his jetpack, dropping the last three meters and landing in a crouch. He took a quick stock of his surroundings, looking for any indication that his arrival had been noticed. No news was good news though, so he moved on to more pressing business.
The first order of said business was to get the data transmitter setup. He was just outside the south wall of the building and there weren't any real indications that this would be a place where people would happen to walk by and notice an out of place transmitter. He found a good spot in some tall grass, activated it, and plopped it down. So far, so good.
The next order of business was to get inside the building. He eased past the south wall to the east wall, keeping himself in shadow the entire time. Based on the floor plan he'd studied, the best point of ingress was just up ahead. This was the part that always made him nervous. He removed a small device from his belt that was vaguely shaped like a code cylinder and inserted in into the security panel. If it worked, the door would open, if it failed, he was jetpacking for the nearest treeline. After a few seconds, the door swished open.
Once inside he quietly took in his surroundings. No activity, all quiet.
In the softest voice he could manage he whispered, "I'm in..."
-
“Copy that.”
Bette continued to circle, finally locating an area she could set the ship down, far enough away from the base that the noise shouldn’t carry to the occupants. She marked it in green on the HUD and aimed toward it, nestled up against the edge of a forest.
It would be a hike for Silus but Bette was already plotting where she could skim the ground and pick him up once he was on his way. Dragging her fingers across the sensor readout she marked his best route to her and sent the coordinates to his suit with a flick of her wrist.
-
Silus made his way slowly through the compound. Twice he had to hide to avoid patrolling guards, but so far it had not been an issue. His biggest problem was the coded access doors that he had to get through. He had a device to slice them but it took time, and there was always a risk that it could fail.
After going through two of them he noticed two things: First, these weren’t air tight blast doors, which meant they were only used to restrict personnel access. That meant cheaper doors with lower security. Second, these doors were only coded on entrance. That reminded him of something Kyris had taught him.
If a door was only coded on one side, that meant it was designed to keep people out, not in. Since the interior of the door wasn’t coded it meant that there was a sensor on that side that would open the door for anyone who was leaving.
Silus reached onto his belt for a small canister with a spray nozzle on the top. This was a vapor spray used to reveal laser motion sensors. He walked up to the security door and put the tip of the sprayer to the very top of the door and sprayed a small cloud of vapor through. Less than a second later the door slid open.
Using this trick got him through the compound much more quickly, and soon he found himself outside the server room. Much to his dismay, this was a real security door with a biometric lock.
“Nel, I’ve got a retina scanner here, and my door thing won’t fit anywhere on here. Do I need to knock out a guard?”
-
“No need to bash anyone over the head just yet. Look around and see if there’s a fire alarm.”
After a few moments Silus came back over the comm “Found one. Do you really want me to the pull this?”
Nelaa let a ting of urgency slip into her voice. “Don’t pull it, just look for a panel underneath.”
Silus came back “I see a lock on here, I think I can gizmo it.....yep, it’s open.”
“Good, there’s an emergency key in there that should get you in. Davis, we’re almost ready, make sure you’ve got a signal from the transmitter.”
-
“Still locked on to the signal,” Bette confirmed. “Ready to receive data.”
Her eyes tracked to the chrono. It felt like this was taking forever, but Silus was still on schedule.
She didn’t like him being in there by himself, but Kyris had planned the op and Bette knew the agent was good. She didn’t leave things to chance.
-
Silus opened the panel and found an oddly shaped key inside. He went back to the security door and sure enough there was a slot on there that matched up with it. He inserted the key and waited, but after a few seconds nothing happened.
"Nel, this isn't working. I put the key in and nothing's happening. Wait, there is a green button to the side of it, what happens if i I press that?"
Kyris dryly replied, "The door will open."
Silus pressed the button and yes, the door did open.
"Okay that worked. Just for the record, if I hadn't asked that button would have set off an alarm or killed me or something."
Silus went on inside and looked around the room. There were three large shelves full of server boxes. On the wall behind him was a green button just like the one he'd pressed outside. Before he could ask, Kyris chimed in.
"If you leave the emergency key in the door you can shut it behind you. No one can remove the key with the door shut, safety precaution."
Silus walked over and shut the door, silently mocking Kyris. Now alone inside the room, he went around to the farthest wall, putting three shelves between himself and the door.
Each server box had a connection that matched the gizmo he had to plug in. At first he was just going to plug it into the very first one he could get to but his keen strategic instincts kicked in, reminding him that there was a chance he'd have to leave this room and that it would be best to put the gizmo somewhere less easily noticed. He looked up and grinned. If Nel knew what he was about to do she would absolutely blow a gasket. In fact, nah, no need to torment her. Silus tapped on his wrist and closed his hands. His jetpack activated and in an eyeblink he was hanging on to the top of the server rack. He waited for a moment to see if he'd set off any alarms, but the only sound he heard was swearing in his commlink. Satisfied that this was the best idea ever, he happily plugged the gizmo in to one of the top row serves, then climbed onto the top of the shelf.
-
Bette raised an eyebrow at the sounds coming through the comm, but Nelaa Kyris didn’t hold back.
“Was that your fucking jetpack? Do you even know the meaning of the word stealth?”
Silus didn’t reply, but Bette grinned at his brashness. She looked at the signal from the transmitter and saw the data packets begin to stream through.
“Signal is still strong, and data is transmitting,” she said quietly. “Ship’s servers are green lights across the board.”
“Davis, I need you to check the data after it’s saved to the server. Just pick a random file or two and open it up.”
“Roger that.” Bette flipped through screens and found the server the data was streaming to, hundreds of files greyed out as they had not come through completely yet, but a few were bright and able to be opened. As she hesitated a moment before selecting one, more files downloaded.
The one she picked was a text file about the base on Telos IV, with personnel names. It wasn’t even encrypted.
”Seems to be working fine.”
“Is there anything with the word ‘starkiller’ on it.” Kyris sounded tense.
”No.. wait, yes. Looks like a big file, it’s downloading now,” replied Bette.
-
"That file is our target. Silus, guard the slicer drive until it's done downloading then get the hell out of there. We'll leave the equipment in place. Anything else it grabs will just be a bonus."
She pressed the knuckle of her index finger against her teeth as she waited. When she was young, she had a bad habit of biting her nails when she was nervous and sometimes in situations like this she would find herself regressing. It made sense that the transfer was taking a long time to download but it didn't make it any less maddening. The fate of the Galactic Empire was resting on this information, not to mention her career.
Silus was being mercifully quiet through this process, which was probably a good thing. Quiet meant he wasn't actively getting into trouble, but it could also mean that he was about to get into trouble. He had excellent instincts in the field, but he was prone to poor decisions if left idle for too long. It was one of the reasons he was drummed out of the Navy in the first place. The stunt with the jetpack had nearly given her a heart attack and her heart rate spiked just thinking about it. The only upside is that he probably did it to get a higher vantage point in the room. Now that the stupidity was out of the way he was probably in a better strategic position if things did go south.
Her thoughts strayed from Silus to Bette. Nelaa had put the two of them together on this mission because of the time they spent together in Shadow Squadron. On the surface it was a great decision. They worked well together with very little communication and had a good sense of what the other was going to do before they did it. What Nelaa didn't count on was a mutual attraction between them. In all the time that she had observed them together they'd never really shown much interest in each other in a romantic light. It was possible that the time they'd spent apart had changed their dynamic and she kicked herself mentally for not considering that. Even if she had considered it though, she couldn't think of anyone better for the job. Not only was Bette probably the best pilot Nelaa had ever seen, she was also hard working and attacked her mission objectives with an unrivaled tenacity.
She let that thought ease her nerves a little. She was just about to ask for a status report when Bette came through on the comm.
"It's done, transfer complete."
"Let's wrap it up. Silus, get out of there. Davis, try to keep the transmission going, but get in position to pick him up."
Almost home...
-
Silus was kicked back on top of the server rack thoroughly enjoying the mini freakout Kyris was having. It wasn't often that she would lose her composure, but the times she did were high quality entertainment. He contemplated hopping down and leaving early, but with his luck someone would come along and find the gizmo and ruin everything. When that didn't happen he almost felt a bit let down. Almost. But now, he needed to be literally let down, since in order to leave he had to hop down off the server rack that he was standing on.
He was tempted to use the jetpack again. He was getting pretty good with it was almost certain that he could launch from the server rack all the way to the door. He wanted to do it so bad. He was right on the edge of jumping when he stopped and decided to climb down like a good secret agent. If he were to pull that stunt twice, he was pretty sure that Kyris would literally kill him, and last he checked he wasn't quite ready to die.
With a sigh, he climbed a few feet down the server rack then dropped to the floor, glancing up one last time at the little gizmo before making his way toward the exit. As he started reaching for the button to open the door the entire room went red and and a blaring alarm nearly deafened him. He heard Kyris and Bette through his comm, but he couldn't understand what they were saying. Instead he drew his blaster, hit the button on the door and tore off out of the room in a full run.
The hallway was still clear of guards so he bolted toward the way he went. The alarm wasn't quite as deafening outside of the server room.
"What the fuck just happened, I didn't touch anything..."
-
The alarm rang through the comm, sending a shock down her spine. Bette fired up the repulsors, bringing the ship up and around, and turned back toward the base.
“I’m coming your way Nomad, just get yourself outside!”
Red circles popped up on the HUD, highlighting anti-aircraft weapons placements that hadn’t been active previously. Bette bit her lower lip as she tightened her hands on the yoke, trying to plot a course that wasn’t suicidal.
-
"I'm working on it."
The initial shock was starting to wear off and he was getting accustomed to the sound of the alarm. He adrenaline was pumping but combat training was edging in to help keep panic at bay. He came to the first security door and utter gloom set in when it wouldn't open. The panel was on the other side of the wall so he couldn't slice it. There had to be an override panel somewhere, or they would have to be pried open.
"Okay this may take longer than I expected. Shooter, the longer I'm here the more likely they are to start lookin up..."
He didn't finish his thought, but instead ran back toward the security room.
"That server room is climate controlled, I'm going to see what the ventilation system looks like..."
As he he turned the corner of the hallway there were two guards running into the server room.
"Okay, this might get ugly...."
-
"Silus those vents are going to be too small for a person to crawl in. You can check, but I'm almost positive I'm correct."
Nelaa was completely relaxed over the comm, but she was pacing like a caged animal.
"The one way doors will have an override, but it may be difficult to find. They can be pried open but I don't know what you could use."
From one end of the room to the other she went. She knew precious time was wasting but thankfully she hadn't heard blaster fire.
"Okay, here is what we do. Davis, get out of atmo, if you get shot down everything is lost. Silus, that server room isn't safe anymore, if you're in there and they pull that emergency key you're stuck. There's going to be more guards coming. Go the way they come and the doors they use will probably still be open. You're going to run into some heat though."
-
Bette pulled up on the yoke, pushing power to the repulsors as the ship strained for a higher altitude. Even as she followed orders, however, she found her mind still on Silus, trapped inside the base.
”I can get down to him,” she said, almost as if it were someone else saying it. “Let me get down there.”
-
Silus whispered into the comm.
"Shooter, you gotta keep that ship high. I'll let you know when I bust out of here."
He hung back until both guards had entered the server room. A few moments later he heard one calling in a status report.
"We're in in the server room now, no sign of the intruder. The door was open though."
He knew they would be coming his direction soon. Using his blaster right now was likely to bring even more guards so he holstered it and got low instead. As soon as the first guard entered his line of sight, Silus sprung, hitting him firmly in the temple before he could react. As the guard started to fall, Silus shoved him toward his partner and took advantage of the distraction to close the distance. The guard pushed his buddy to the side before Silus pounced on him, knocking the man's blaster away and tackling him to the ground. They were a mess of arms and legs for a few moments until Silus was able to get control. He grabbed the guard by the neck, holding him in place while putting pressure on the man's jugular vein. It took what seems like an eternity until the man finally passed out.
Silus immediately grabbed the comlink out of the man's ear and started rummaging their pockets. He found two code cylinders that he took as well.
"Nel, do you have a schematic on the building, where I could I go to cut the power?"
She answered quickly "I'm looking."
-
Bette pulled the freighter in a tight circle, still climbing higher.
“I have weapons on this thing, I can just blow a hole in the building.” Her voice was tight as she leveled out the ship.
-
Everything went quiet for a moment before Silus spoke up.
"Nel, would that work?"
She thought for a few moments.
"It...actually, I think it might. Davis, can you get close enough to fire on the south wall?"
She didn't want to risk Bette getting any closer to that building, but if any pilot could pull it off..