- OOC:
- so here we go. v2
Infiltration
This was it. The one he’d been waiting for. The whole reason he’d joined Strill squadron. Today was the day he finally got to do his commando regime.
His target was a security mainframe, on a New Republic space station. It was meant to be simply enough: get in, get the data, get out. However, the fact that he wasn’t able to wear his Katarn armour annoyed him somewhat. In fact, he didn’t have anything of his that he’d have liked to take, save his trusty deece. The DC-17m was a wonderful piece of kit. The ability to switch between assault rifle and sniper rifle was invaluable to someone like Grent, who preferred the precision of a sniper rifle wherever possible, but knew that an assault rifle was more practical in most situations.
The reason Grent wasn’t allowed to take anything else, was down to the starfighter he was piloting towards the gargantuan station: a captured New Republic X-wing. His flight suit and helmet were similarly foreign. He hadn’t had much time to practise with the X-wing, but as all he had to do was fly in, and fly out, there wasn’t going to be much problem. The cockpit was actually, surprisingly, well laid out. All the instruments and buttons were in the same places as his TIE Interception back on the ship. He could move his arms around a bit more freely too.
The space station was situated in a key strategic location: one that NHC wanted control of. But before they could get anywhere near, they needed the security information. The
Adjudicator, which was Grent’s home away from home, had been ordered to send a one man team to get the data. The job had been given to Strill, and then to Grent. In fact, he had volunteered: he wanted to show off to his new squadron’s CO. He had been hurriedly given a crash course on the X-wing, as well as basic NR security protocols, all of which were meant to help him gain access to the mainframe terminal. He knew that he would have to steal a security card from someone to get anywhere near his target, but that wasn’t going to be too hard, hopefully. Grent had also been given a datacard to insert into the terminal. This datacard would do all the slicing for him, as he had very little slicing experience. He might have to learn later. He also had a signal jammer built into his helmet that was designed to cause static on the surrounding cameras.
So here he was: one hundred klicks or so between him and friendly forces, in the middle of space, with a gargantuan enemy space station looming in his viewport. Yup, he was in deep bantha poodoo.
The stationed commed him, and he requested permission to land, feigning that he was the sole survivor of an encounter with unknown Imperial forces. He quoted the squadron number that had been found on the pilot's ID. When asked about his mission, he simply replied, "That's classified." The ruse worked, and he was quickly given landing clearance, and was told to wait for the security team before leaving the hanger. With the easy part over, it was time for the actual work to begin.
Grent piloted the X-wing into the hanger, and set down in the designated area. A crew rushed to meet him, as he popped the cockpit, and climbed out. He glanced at the hull, especially where the droid should be, and inwardly smiled: they had done a brilliant job at making it look like it had been in an intense firefight. Scorch marks covered in, with paint scratched off. There was even some paint from a TIE on there, to make it seem as though he and collided with one. To top it all off, the engineers had put a fried R2 unit in the droid slot, the head unit blasted off. It was perfect. Even Grent was fooled when he first saw it.
“You alright?” said one of the flight mechanics, jogging over to him.
Grent put on a false accent, to cover his very Imperial accent, before responding, “Yeah. I’ll be fine. Same can’t be said for artoo though, eh?” he said with a sigh.
“Looks like you saw some action.” The man indicated the deece in Grent's hands.
“Aye. That I did. Came out of no where. And the deece is a souvenir from one of my previous missions. Took it from some arms dealers. I need to get to the station CO, and tell them about my engagement with Imperial forces. Got to warn them.”
“Right.” Panic flashed in the New Republic man’s eyes, as thoughts of the Civil War came flooding back, “Go to the turbolift, over there,” he pointed to the corner of the hanger, where there was a door, “You’ll want floor 28B. But control said to keep you here until the security team arrived.”
“No time.” Grent said, hurrying off, putting his deece’s strap over his head. He jogged to the doors, and into the turbolift. He then looked around at the multitude of buttons. Which one was the security terminal located on? Grent cursed, and pressed a random button, hoping it would lead him somewhere at the very least.
The doors opened, and a man stepped in, carrying an electrician’s toolbox. This was perfect. This man would surely know where it was.
“Thank goodness I finally found someone.” Grent blurted out, acting that he was anxious, “I’ve got classified intel I need put on the secure server. But,” he let out a nervous chuckle, “It’s my first time here, and I’m a bit lost.”
“Oh, no worries, mate,” said the other man, “I got lost too, the first few weeks. You want to go down a couple of levels. There’s a security checkpoint, and then it’s in the room beyond.”
“Thank you. That’s exactly what I wanted to know,” said Grent, suddenly reverting to his Imperial accent. An expression of shock appeared on the electrician’s face, as it dawned on him what he’d given away. Grent quickly grabbed him, and snapped his neck mercilessly: no loose ends. He couldn’t let the possibility that anyone would raise the alarm, and make his job ten times harder.
As the body dropped to the floor, Grent pressed the appropriate button, and readied his deece. The turbolift descended, and the doors opened, revealing the dead body. The New Republic trooper on duty next to the lift wasn’t prepared for that sort of thing, and rushed into the lift to see if he could help the man in anyway, thinking he had merely fainted. As soon as he entered, Grent dropped from the ceiling, where he had been hiding, and put one arm around the trooper’s next, grabbing the man’s blaster pistol, and shooting the two troopers at the end of the corridor before they knew what was happening. He spun his captive around, and punched him in the stomach with the blaster butt. The man keeled over, and Grent put the gun to his head.
“Tell me the security code for the door,” commanded Grent, in an authoritarian voice.
“They’ll court-martial me if I do.”
“I’ll kill you if you don’t.”
The trooper considered his options. Life in prison certainly seemed better than no life at all. He was new to the New Republic military, only out of the academy a couple of months. Perhaps he could raise the alarm ... “Two-four-five-seven. You’ll need the key card from the guards too.”
“Anything else?”
“No. Listen, I'm new. I want to live. If you let me go, I promise I wouldn't set off the alarms. So ... can I go?”
“Certainly.” Said Grent, as he shot the man in the head, killing him instantly.
He ran over to the door, after hiding the bodies in an adjacent storage compartment, picking up the aforementioned key card from one of the dead guards on the way, and punched in the numbers, before swiping the card in the slot. The metal door gave an audible ‘click’ as it unlocked, allowing the VE man to slip in undetected. Grent walked slowly to the room in front of him, bringing his deece up, ready for anymore enemy personnel. What Grent found, however, was a large room, filled with cables and giant servers. This was definitely the right place. The Mandalorian ran over to the terminal, and plugged his datacard in, letting it do it’s work.
The two minutes that the tech guys had promised Grent it would take to slice the system seemed more like two hours, as he lay prone on the ground, gun aimed towards the door, ready to shoot anyone, or anything, that might enter. No-one did. He was alone.
A solitary beep from the datacard interrupted Grent’s concentration, and he scrambled up to collect it, taking it out of the slot. He headed back down the corridor, back through the security door, and into the turbolift. He didn’t have anymore encounters with anyone until he reached the hanger again, where he found a squad of New Republic troopers interrogating the mechanic crew that had greeted him upon his arrival. One of them, the one Grent had talked to earlier, pointed in the direction of the turbolift. Grent swore under his breath, as he ducked through the doorway, and hid behind some maintenance equipment. The squad, they must have been the security detail, passed, and went into the turbolift. That was close.
But how to escape? Grent looked around at the ships lying about. He needed to find what would cause the least attention ... yes. A shuttle that Grent recognised. It probably had a hyperdrive in it. He waited until there was no-one around it, before creeping along the edge of the hanger, moving from cover to cover. Somehow, he managed to get past without being noticed, no easy feat in an orange flight suit.
He boarded via the loading ramp, and hit the close button on the inside, raising the ramp. A couple of the crew in the hanger looked over momentarily, before going back to what they were doing before. Grent slid into the pilot's seat, and looked at the controls. He wasn't a shuttle pilot. He would have to guess from the looks of things. Turning a few likely looking knobs, and pressing a couple of buttons, didn't get Grent very far. He cursed.
Suddenly, he heard voices outside.
"Who closed the loading ramp?"
"How on earth am I meant to know? I've been with you the whole time!"
"Somebody better get this open soon, or there will be consequences!"
Grent froze. He ran a few different scenarios in his head, none of them ended well for him. The only way he could get out of this, was to hide. They were bound to get the ramp down soon. Getting out of the pilot's chair, Grent quietly moved into the back again. There was a large amount of cargo around, tied down by a load of webbing. Thinking fast, Grent clambered into the middle, and drew his blaster pistol.
A loud hiss drew attention to the fact that the ramp was going down. The hiding pilot heard the dull thud on boots on metal, as two men walked in. They were the same two that had been speaking earlier. The men continued to talk amongst themselves, as they closed the ramp behind them, settled into the cockpit, and ran through their pre-flight checks. This was perfect for Grent: they would take off, and everything would be in order. Then, once they were far enough away, Grent would reveal himself, and force the pilots to take him where he needed to go. Simple, textbook, stuff.
The shuttle lurched as it left the hanger floor, and headed out of the bay, towards open space.
From the station flight control centre, the Duty Officer watched the shuttle leave on its pre planned flight path. Suddenly, it veered off. "What the...” He said, as the shuttle sped away, out of range of the tractor beams. "Where are they going?" cried the Duty Officer, as the shuttle disappeared into hyperspace. A flashing light on his desk alerted him to the fact that someone wanted to speak to him. He pressed the button.
“Sir, we’re missing a security detail.”
“What do you mean, ‘missing’?”
“The server room security team have disappeared, sir. Cameras started playing up, but the team sent to investigate found it abandoned.”
“Fra-…”
“One of the electricians has vanished as well, sir.”
This was turning out to be a brilliant day for the New Republic officer.
- OOC:
- Updated WC:2,150
