No turning back this time thought Renji as he started firing at various rebels. He noticed Lucky motioning to him for cover as she went to access a terminal. He unloaded into the ones going after her. After a couple of minutes she took her gun out so he was able to go back to focusing on the ones around him.

After a while the opposing forces started thinning out. He tried to focus on the last few but it was hard with blaster bolts nearly taking off a portion of his head off. Well, this isn't as bad as I imagined he thought as he took out a rebel.

Lucky followed the building schematics by the letter. The room where the Orb was kept was marked with a red marker. A large , green marker showed her their position. The orb was still seven levels below them.  She noted the security patterns of the building. Security was tight here. But strangely, there weren't a lot of guards from the fiftht to the seventh levels below.

A computer in her H.U.D. flashed a green X where there was a vent, this vent would take them nearer to their objective while giving them cover from the cameras , sensors and guards patrolling the floor.

She climbed up in the nearest vent, motioned to the rest of the squad to follow her and crawled forward in the vent. After about 50 yrds, the vent shaft suddenly dropped down. She skillfully lept down without making much noise, waited for the squad to join her and kept going.

Lucky led the group out of the vent system and followed the directions the map gave her.  She found a bank of turbo-lifts off to her right . She opened a channel to Alan.

"Alan, the bank of turbo-lifts. II don't think we should take them.  There may be a group of rebels waiting. Let's take the stairs."

" Good point, allright then let's take the "slow" way down."

She moved to where there was an access hatch that went down one level. There, they did not encounter any problems . However , when they moved towards the nect access hatch that would bring them down to the second level they did find a little resistance. A group of at least ten rebel soldiers was waiting for them in front of the bank of turbo-lifts as Lucky had suspected. They were now moving towards the squad .

"According to the map , we go left down another escape hatch and we'll be about five floors above the orb chamber." She walked for a distance of about six feet and found a closed hatch. She motioned for the squad to stay on their guard as she was going to open the hatch door.

The hatch opened witha hiss and lucky thrust the barrel of her Rifle in the opening, using the scope to check for any enemies. Seeing none so far , she nodded to Alan and stealthily made her way down, being careful not to alert anyone of their position or to be taken by a surpirse attack. She knew someone was watching them either through well-hidden cameras or heat and motion sensors.

Lucky had been going down the ladder when she heard a clattering sound. She did not like it and advised Alan of it. She debated going back up to the top level. But they had a mission to do. and this Orb could eliminate the whole star system if it wanted to.

So she kept on going down , until she reached the bottom of the shaft and moved out of the way to make room for everyone else.  Strangely, there were no Rebel soldiers on this flloor. They were probably on the floor below given that they were on the 4th sub-level floor and security was tight from the 5thh to the seventh level.  So she continued on, on the alert for anything and everything. The sound gradually got louder as she approached the hatch that would bring them down to Sub- level 5. She stopped a few feet away from it and waited for everyone else to join her.

Renji was following closely behind Alan and Lucky When they opened the hatch.

"Droidekas," was the only thing he heard Alan say.

Great, he thought It has to be Droidekas. How are those things still around I thought we had them all, Some how they slipped through.

He heard Alan say that he was going to throw A few grenades down th hatch. He watched as the grenades exploded. As soon as they went off the squad went down the hatch. He landed and quickly surveyed his surroundings. He saw one droid destroyed and at least three or four more intact. He rolled into a ball to minimize the target. He rolled behind some destroyed metal and took out his rifle.

Lucky was between Alan and Renji , and saw that they're position in the battle wasn't good at all. She looked over at Alan who kept on shooting and addressed herself to him and Renji.

"Sir, I have a few graneds. I'll try to disable their shileds while you guys keep firing."

Alan nodded and lucky turned her head towards Renji and told him to brrace himself. She threw two grenades and got more ready in case the Droids had not been touched by the blast.

A second later both grenades went off, making the ground ripple. But both Alan and Renji kept shooting. It turned out that two Droids shields were down and they were able to destroy them when there was still smoke in the air.

Lucky lobbed the two other ones she had in her hands further away towards the two remaining Droids , took her Blaster Rifle and kept shooting even thouh the bolts were bouncing off the shields. the grenades detonated , while they kept shooting and when the smoke  cleared once more you could see that the Droids had been damaged, even though they were still active.

Sparks were coming oput of certain points in their metal structure and their movements weren't coordinated. The squad took the opportunity to finish them oof, and a minute later. All that remained of the Battle Droids were useless parts and pieces of metal were randomly spotted around the metal carcasses.

The hatch hissed open and Alan was suddenly met with a sharp rush of cold air.  Oh what sweet hell is this thought Alan as he activated his heating elements to keep him from freezing.  Looking around the alcove he un-holstered his weapon and told the rest of the squad to be on the ready.  He knew the rebels were here, somewhere, but where.

Suddenly a blaster bolt shattered one of the railings close to Lucky.  Alan never needed to tell the squad to take cover as everyone dived for the deck.  Peering up they scanned the vicinity for where the blast had come from.

The rebels had been taken care of and now it was time.  Lucky opened up the hatch and Alan breathed deeply getting himself psyched for the battle that he knew would be imminent on their arrival.  He did not know what to expect but he knew it would not be good.

He jumped down first, followed by the rest of the squad.  When he landed he looked around.  His eyes widened in fear and horror at what lay before them.  He could see in the distance the Orb that they had come for but between them and the Orb were a dozen or so heavily armed rebels.  This didn't concern him, it was the other person that concerned him the most.

Between the rebels stood what looked like a robot standing 7 feet tall.  Alan knew though that it was no robot but a suit of armour in which someone was controlling from the inside.  In his both of his hands were assault cannons but Alan had seen cannons before and these seemed to be three times as big and Alan had to assume three times more powerful.  He knew that no ordinary man could lift such a weapon, but in these robotic hands then any weight was possible.

"So" boomed a metallic voice from the suit "you are the legendary Paladin squad."

Alan looked at the man, wondering who it was and how he knew about them

The voice continued "Oh yes, I have heard a lot about you.  You murderous pigs killed and slaughtered my cousin Bashan but now you will pay dearly for all that".

"Who are you?" queried Alan.

"I am Commander Sandros and your executioner"

Alan raised his weapon and fired a single shot right at the glass that surrounded the man's face.  The shot bounced off the armour plated glass.

Oh hell thought Alan as Sandros raised both weapons and fired.

The squad, upon seeing Alan's shot bounce off Sandros's armour and the fact that he raised up his weapons immediately hit the deck and sought out cover.  Sandros's weapons opened fire.  The walls surrounding the squad shredded as if they were confetti.  Shrapnel and parts of the wall flew around the room and landed on the squad.

"Grenades!" shouted Alan over the loud noise from the weapons.

Alan tossed three grenades at Sandros and several other troopers tossed their grenades also.  The rebel soldiers immediately dived for cover but Sandros just stood there.  The room shook violently as multiple grenades went off directly where Sandros stood.

"Yes!" exclaimed Alan as he shook his fist in jubilation.  All that remained was a raging fire.  Suddenly he could feel footsteps that shook the ground.  Alan looked and walking through the blazing inferno was Sandros.

"Son of a..." muttered Alan through his breath. 

How the hell are we going to kill this guy he thought as he fired on the rebel soldiers, his mind racing for a solution.

When Lucky had first jumped down the ladderr. She had only seen the soldier. Not the mountain of metal that called itself Commander Sandros.  when Alan fired a shot from his rifle, she knew that wasn't going to do much if any damage.

While everyone was firing at Sandros and the soldiers and launching grenades. She popped in a couple shots but concentrated on the Orb schematics. 

She looked at them very closely and asked the computer to point out its weaknesses. It was warmed up now, its temperature was supposed to be below freezing, but with the cooling tubes destroyed it was warming up, which made it weak.

The computer scanned it for it's best weakness and found one near the seam where cannons were supposed to come out. That weapons system was connected to the motors  that made the thing function.

While evryone else was firing at Sandros, she fired at shot that just went close to his head and hit the Orb in the right spot.

The deadly weapon whirred to life and started spinning toward Sandros. Using her computer, she was able to play wit the Orb's mechanism to steer it.

Before it could start turning its weapons online, it hit Sandros full force in the back. He went flying across the room and hit a barrel of fuel, which had been carelessly put there by one of the maintenance officers who had been working on the catwalk above.

The fluid leaked offhis suit , igniting some jetfuel that had run out of a tank. Apparently, his suit had a jetpack. he started in horror at them , before starting to scream. The Orb kept rolling, except it was aimed toward one more fuel barrel which was located right beside the stairs to the catwalk.

"Run for it!" Lucky shouted , before double timing it to the ladder.

The sqquad just had time to get on the floor above before they heard an explosion . the explosion rocked the whole compound , sending the squad flying through the air. Everyone landed near the hatch, and all scrambled to the upper floor. anxious to get out before the place blew up.

You heard a hissing sounf on Sub-Level 5. lucky made sure the filters in her helmet were functional before continuing her mad sprint to get out of the complex.

The kept on going up levels, on some floors finding a small barrage of metal and flames, on other walls of flame and on some, nothing at all. When they got to Sub-level1 , they met a small resisatnce. Fortunately for the sqaud, they only had five rebels to kill before they could continue their mad dash.

Lucky ran as fast as she could. She continued down the hallway until she reached a hallway two dorrways down from where they were.  She quickly brought up a map of the building. To her horroor, the hangars were outside.

She ran down the narrow hallway and made a right, ran down that hallwya then turned left then right again.

By now the building was very warm. She turned on the cooling mechanism in her armour and kept running.

She saw a pair of glass doors , which seemed to be leading outside.  She practically shattered the glass as she burst out the doors.

She quickly looked around her and aw a small building which should be the hangar a little ways away.

panting, her leg muscles burning under the stress of running for a very long time and lugging armour atound wit hher all the while. She couldn't wait to leave.

She opened a rusty door which creaked as it was being opened. oh hell, i hope the ships aren't like this door inside

She opened the door wide and ran inside. They could now hear small explosions coming from the complex . that's not good  the ships inside were practically brand-new.

She went to open the large metallic doors while Alan fired up the biggest ship. Once the doors were open , she quickly went up the ramp and sat in the co-pilot's seat beside Alan.

'Let's go! Go! Go!' she shouted as they lifted off.

As the ship rose into the air a loud explosion shook the ground and made the ship shake at the same time. The loud roar died down to a rumble, and they had the chance to look out the port windows at the inferno that was once a complex which held a deadly weapon.

OOC:

You guys can post a message about being on the ship and whatnot.

Lucky enetered some data into the onboard computer and sighed. finally going home

She looked at the squad who had fallen asleep except for her and Alan.  Boy where they gonna have fun telling this story to their friends back at headquarters.