"Hmmm, maybe we should have cut the rope. Or brought grenades," Anders muses idly as he jogs along the path.
"Also, fun fact: they're bad guys." Anders draws his assault blaster rifle as a precaution against pursuers.
"We've got a pretty good lead, and those hills can help us break line of sight. Want to try and lose them? Or we could wait until we reach the ruined city and shake them there."
"I am with Tarros on this one. Keep your gun out in case we need to slow them down but getting out of here is our first priority. We can shake them latter in the hill or the city. Maybe even set up our own ambush if we are feeling like it."
After around two hours of a steady jog into the mountains, a number of blaster bolts start pinging off the rock in front of you. Four figures step out of the rocky ridges bordering the path and level blasters at you. They each fire three shots through the group of you, in quick order. A glance behind shows a full dozen men, each dropping to the ground with a single blaster burn in the center of their foreheads. The blasters are again leveled at you, and two of the figures stride behind you, warily watching you, but focusing their main attention back down the path.
'HALT! What is your purpose here?' The lead figure demands of you in a female voice. 'You are surrounded. We have four snipers training their weapons on you at this moment, in addition to us.'
Tarros's eyes widen, and he makes sure his hands are far away from his weapons.
"We won't move, see hands away from my guns. We are adventures seeking a droid named HK 55 and its connecting to this planet. We are not here to cause any trouble, proven by the fact that we were trying to avoid combat with those guys. Thanks by the way. They just started shooting the moment they saw us, jerks. My name is Vyr and to whom am I speaking too?"
Axel looks around for the possible snipers' locations.
No snipers are visible in the scrub surrounding the path.
The female lowers her blaster imperceptibly, firing a single shot into the dirt at Vyr's feet. She makes a motion with her hand, and four expertly camouflaged figures with large blasters rise out of the brush, and secure your hands behind your backs with plasteel binders. Your weapons are left in place, or slung over your shoulders.
The female speaks again, in response to the obvious disapproval on your faces. 'Just a precaution. You will be blinded. Our destination is classified. You will follow.'
Blindfolds are placed, covering your eyes, and you are led off into the hills.
"Okay, then but it is kinda hard to follow you when we can't see but we will do our best." Vyr just keeps walking with he rest of the group. 'When a women puts a blindfold on you it always means terrible things.'
You are led for several minutes into the hills, where you are loaded onto a bench, and transported via speeder to distant location. When you land, your blinders are removed, and you are led, hands still bound, into a control center. A guard then removes the bindings, freeing your hands.
The same female figure from before approaches you, and removes her helmet. 'Welcome to Bugtown, idiots. Why are you here? We are currently in conflict with large numbers of bandits.'
She walks to Vyr, and places her pistol barrel against your forehead. 'Again, why are you here? Why are you claiming to be looking for a long-defunct droid unit. That line was decommissioned four millenia ago. And, it was never manufactured here. NOW! TELL ME WHY YOU ARE HERE!' Her finger begins tightening on the trigger, as she pauses for you to speak.
Vyr remains claim on the outside while freaking out on the inside.
"I am not lying to you. We are here looking for the or an HK 55. We found a man in an old cryo tube back on Mandalore and he said that he had links to something called Outlander. No, someone called Outlander. We were told to go investigate this planet and it's possible connection to that droid. You know we are actually good at killing so maybe we can help you out. Maybe we can help you out with the bandits and you can help us out with finding this droid. We are just low ranking troops send on a wild hunt by the higher ups. Also thanks for welcoming us to Bugtown." Vyr just smiles. Years as a slave made him good at hiding his inner thoughts or in this case fears.
She backhands you across the face before moving on to Tarros, where she places her pistol barrel against his head, and repeats the question.
"Whoa, whoa!" Tarros's eyes grow large, but he does not flinch. "He's telling the truth! We're just here to look for an old droid who get left here thousands of years ago. We found a guy in a stasis chamber and he told us to go here and find it. We don't want any trouble, and those bandits obviously weren't any friends of ours."
She seems satisfied with Tarros' answer, having correlated with Vyr's, though she still grabs Tarros by the collar of his shirt, lifts him off the ground with surprising strength, and tosses him to land on his backside on the crumbling permacrete floor.
She moves to Axel, looks at him, crinkles her nose, and knees him in the groin, without asking any questions.
Moving on to Anders, she stares at him for several moments, then signals someone behind him. A massive Houk materializes out of the shadows, and grabs Anders from behind. The female licks her lips, speaking, 'My, my, you're a cute one, aren't you? Now, how strongly do your loyalties lie to your gang? You're better looking than most of the rabble they recruit.' She runs her finger down his face, tracing the jawline as she reaches the chin. With a jerk, she slices a small cut into Anders' chin with her fingernail, drawing a small amount of blood. She licks this blood off her finger, and utters a low chuckle. 'Now lets say I believe the lies your companions told me. Why would I help you find a droid? Why indeed, when we could find this droid on our own, and use it to our advantage? A Hunter-Killer is always a good asset to a fighting force, even if it is 4000 years old. How do you know we haven't done that already?'
Anders blushes and stutters for a few seconds, trying to regain his composure.
"W-well, if you had found it we likely would have seen it by now. As you said, it's an asset." Anders shrugs slightly, restrained by the Houk. "I'm not sure you need to help us find him, as there's no telling if the droid is still on the planet. Four thousand years is a long kriffin' time, after all."
Anders falls silent, realizing that he's not exactly the most persuasive being in the group.
"Oww, f***! what the h***..." Axel grumbles. She did that just to spite me. I know i'm the best damn-lookin' fool in this group.
She snaps her fingers, and several more guards step forward to drag you by the shoulders to a small room, with 1 cot, and a dirty refresher unit in one corner. This time they remove your weapons, pat you down to search for any hidden items, and remove them from your person.
You are roughly shoved into the room, where the door is then closed, and locked from the outside. The room measures 4 meters on a side, and 2.5 meters high. The cot is worn and threadbare, with the bedsprings showing through the mattress. It sags almost to the floor if anyone puts their weight on it. The refresher does not flush, and smells terrible. The stench fills the entire room, and causes an assault on your senses. In the center of the room is a half-meter wide hole, which curves down to a tight tunnel several feet below ground.
"I don't feel so good..." Anders moans.
"Oh man, I'm gonna be sick..." Axel races over to the 'fresher, gets down and heaves. He then realizes the fresher is the source fo the stench. He heaves again. After he gets up he walks over to the cot and slumps to the floor with the rest. "Guys?.. Whatever you do... do NOT go look in the 'fresher..."
Vyr sees what is about to happen and hides his blaster pistol. Once the door closes and after he has emptied his stomach onto the floor he takes it out.
"Okay... that stinks. For the love of Mandalore if we get out of here these people need to die. I got a pistol does anyone have anything else? Taros please tell me you kept something. Axel into that hole. Find out if it leads away from here. We can come back latter and murder everyone another time."
"I dunno," Axel says with apprehension "why would they put us in a room that had an escape route? Something smells funny, and it isn't just the plumbing..." Axel scratches the back of his neck. "Hmm. Still, I guess there's only one way to find out." Axel dutifully gets down and squirms into the hole. "Looks tight. If I kick three times, pull me out."
"Tarros, please tell me you kept something."
"What? Um, no. I didn't want to get caught. They kinda could shoot us at any time here."
Tarros looks around the room. "This sucks."
"Tarros you didn't try to hide something?" Vyr looks like he is ready to shoot Tarros. "You stupid coward, it is taking all of my little restraint not to shoot you right now but we need to conserve ammo." Vyr breathes and then goes over to the hole where Axel is bravely going in head first. "Three kicks means pull out? I should remember that next time I am with a women. Bad jokes aside, Anders how are you, oh Mandalore..." Vyr start vomiting again, making sure it is not down the hole that Axel is currently in. "I don't even remember eating that. Anders, how you doing? If the hole leads to no where any other ideas?"
Axel doesn't hear Vyr's innuendo because his head is in the mud, but before he squirms all the way in he stops, and pulls his shoulders back out. Tying a cord around his waist he hands Vyr one end and says "Here, hold this. No telling how far this thing goes and if i get stuck part ways you'll need to pull me out." With that he gets back in the hole.
"Got it, good luck Axel."
--Down in the hole--
Axel squirms down into the small hole, which drops around 1.5 meters, before abruptly leveling off into a tunnel stretching off in one direction. Another foul stench permeates this tunnel, this one the sickly sweet smell of a corpse several weeks dead. Lo and behold, there is a large corpse of a humanoid man crammed into the tunnel, blocking it. What makes it creepier, is that the corpse is wiggling.
--Up in the room--
As Axel explores the hole, after several moments, you begin to hear noises outside the door. It sounds like the locks are being removed.
"And our jailer's come back. I want to murder these people so much. Tarros get Axel back out of that hole. Anders, let's see what these people want now."
Vyr pockets the pistol again and stands in the middle of the room. His hand are nicely folded behind his back and he stands proud with his back straight.
The door is flung open, and four guards stand outside. When they see the situation in the room, they burst into laughter at the sight of Axel's legs poking out of the ground. 'He'll need the hose.' One of them mutters, before they pull Vyr, Tarros, and Anders out of the room, and roughly yank Axel from the hole and escort him out as well.
They escort you to the main hall, where they separate you, and bring each of you to a different part of the base.
Anders scoffs at the Cathar. "I made my first fusion generator when I was eight. Check the tire pressures, indeed."
He coughs to cover mis muttering.
"We've already told you why we're here. I was born on Concord Dawn, and spent the last week on Mandalore. I'm not a ganger." Anders sighs in frustration.
"What pressure did you want these to read anyway? Because these things are WAY off." Anders frowns as he boggles at the varied readings.
Tarros takes a deep breath, both to steady his nerves and because he's gonna need the air. Once he starts talking he doesn't stop, answering the questions in rapid-fire fashion.
"Look, I dunno how to convince you. We represent ourselves, and sorta Clan Revik of Mandalore. We came from Mandalore. We only met last week. We're here because some old guy who froze himself for millenia said he left a droid here and if we find that droid we get into Clan Revik. We didn't know this was your land. We were under the impression that this place was just ruins. I don't know anything about any ship, unless you mean the one we arrived in. I dunno where they went, they had their own mission. There were two of them on board, both from Clan Revik. I don't know who or what the Rat is, and my only guess is it might be those gangers we ran away from. That's all the truth. You gotta believe me."
Tarros takes another long breath after he finishes but otherwise sits still, only his eyes flicking from monitor to monitor. "I don't even know who you guys are. We're not your enemies. Please, let us go."
Vyr just smiles for a sec before answering. He is very flustered and doesn't know what else to say so he just says everything that pops into his head. "Thanks for leaving me my pistol and letting us out of the smelly place. As for that deal, I would love to take it but I wasn't lying. I am part of no gang at least not one on this planet. I am trying to join the Mandalorians if that counts. Their base is on Mandalore and the Vong almost destroyed it so I would ask them. We were on that hill was because I made the choice not to attack the guys down at the bottom and figured we should try and sneak around. It was me who made the call to climb it. We are not from a rival gang and we were just dropped off on this planet. We are here to find a droid, I haven't lied about a thing. Look I messed up and got my team captured. Execute me but not them. Well, you could also kill Tarros but leave Axel and Anders out of this. Actually, that is mean and a terrible joke. I guess I am asking you to spare Tarros too but he is like at the bottom of the list please-don't-kill-list. You know I probably give him a hard time because I think he is actually a good person unlike me. Here I am joking about him dying. I... am a terrible person and he isn't. For some reason that makes me angry at him. Reminds me of something I wish I had, weird. Anyways, I am just rambling and kinda waiting for you to slap me again and say that I am lying. I am not lying but... you know my deal deal of helping you guys out still stand. It is about all I got to offer at this point and this empty pistol. But I kinda like this pistol now."
'So buddy, what do you call yourself? You have the look of a soldier about you. You can't hurt anyone with that blaster, but you can do some target shooting. Seen much action?'
Axel takes the offered weapon, and watches the woman get into position. He then decides it can't hurt to go along and gets down on the ground next to her, but keeping an arm's length between them. He looks down the sight and lines up a target. Whrrr-Fzzzt!
"Name's Axel," says Axel, and lines up another target. Whrrr-Fzzzt! "I did some time in the corps. Hutta, Bogetta, Malastare. Figured military life wasn't for me though. Whrrr-Fzzzt! Not enough action. Whrrr-Fzzzt! Joined a biker gang on Corellia. You probably never heard of them. Whrrr-Fzzzt! Got in a bit too deep. Came out here lookin' for some real work." Whrrr-Fzzz... Axel's shot goes wide and he curses under his breath, checking his gun.
'I've got some more questions for you, if you don't mind. What part of the galaxy you hail from? You don't look like someone who's spent time here? Plus, then you would have known not to intrude on the Sand Rat's territory, or ours, for that matter.'
"Hmph," Axel grunts putting the gun back to his shoulder, re-sighting his missed target. Whrrr-Fzzzt! "Not much to tell of home. Whrrr-Fzzzt! I grew up in the core. Whrrr-Fzzzt! Left home when I was old enough to enlist. Whrrr-Fzzzt! Can't say I've ever been on Balmorra b'fore. Whrrr-Fzzzt! My military days didn't last long. Those that did- Whrrr-Fzzzt! -are just a haze." Whrrr-Fzzzt!
'Ye'r companions said ye were lookin fer a droid of some sort? This planet hasn't produced droids for decades, why do ya come now?'
Whrrr-Fzzzt!"Bit of a long story that. Found some old fossil few days back. Whrrr-Fzzzt! Said he'd lost his droid, or that its parts were somewhere around here. Whrrr-Fzzzt! Seemed like a nice enough fellow, so we decided to chip in. No idea why. Whrrr-Fzzzt! I thought the HK droids were all decomissioned. Whrrr-Fzzzt! Anyways, boss says jump, you say 'how high,' Whrrr-Fzzzt! caprone? Whrrr-Fzzzt! I just want to get this mission done. Didn't think I'd end up back in a turf war. Galaxy's a weird place." Whrrr-Fzzzt!
After a few moments you are all escorted by your questioners back to the main control room, where you were first questioned. All except for Tarros.
For Tarros, the images of the men sneaking up on the group fizzle and disappear, being shown to be nothing more than computer trickery. You are then brought to your friends.
As a group, you are brought to another smaller room, this one much nicer than the first one you were put in. This room has four nice cots, no smell, and the refresher in a separate room at the back, and there is no hole in the ground. After you enter the room, however, the door is still closed, and locked.
Axel looks around at the other guys with a mild expression of amusement. He appears to have enjoyed himself, so he tries not to laugh at the somber expressions on everyone else's faces. "So what'd they have you guys doing? Lawn bowling?"
He walks over to a cot, kicks off his boots and lies down, arms folded behind his head. "Y'know, I think they kinda like me here. They got them military girls. Young and sprightly. Just my type. Too bad I'll have to break their hearts."
"They put me in a room with monitors. I was watching you guys. They made it look like you were gonna get jumped and killed, and told me to answer their questions. I told them the truth, and they put me back here."
Tarros stares off into nothing. "I wasn't sure they would listen to me. Turns out they couldn't have killed you, so I guess that's nice."
Axel chuckles to himself. "Heh, heh. Classic scare tactic. Heh, heh. I'm sorry Tarros. I figured they'd probably be up to something like that when they split us up. Needless to say I was relieved when all they had me do was shoot the breeze with one of their gunneys."
"Yeah, you looked like you were enjoying yourself." Tarros sighs gently, then stands up and looks around the new cell. "So I guess they believe us. You think they'll let us go? Or do you think they want us to help them out first?"
"Kriff if I know," Anders mutters quietly.
"I have no idea what their plan is. However, this place is actually kinda nice for a prison. All this for a droid. This droid had better be worth it."
"So what do we do then? Wait around for them to decide what to do with us?" Axel says, trying to get some discussion going. "Because as nice as they've been, they're gangers, and I don't trust them."
Tarros raises an eyebrow at the irony, but says nothing.
"That is good Axel. Just because the place looks nice doesn't mean that we should trust the guys that put us in here. A prison dressed up is still a prison. Maybe we can lock pit the door from this side. Anders, check it out. Take as much time as you need. Either we get out and have no plan or they come in and tell us their plan." Vyr starts wondering around the room. "ARRRRGGGGGGGG! I have no weapons, no plan and no droid. We could call in for help but we got nothing to show for it. I would rather not call for help but we might need to. So far my plan is to let this dance play out and find that blasted droid. Hopefully they ask for our help with this fight, we help them and maybe shoot them in the back of the head the first chance we get. Got any better ideas, anyone?"
"Can't do much without my kit, 'Vod." Anders shakes his head slowly. "They frisked us good. That woman was a bit grabby too. Eyed my shebs like a piece of meat."
"Good point Anders. If all else fails we have your sex-appeal to fall back on. Want to take one for the team and try to, hehe, warm... hehehe, her... I can't even finish. Why do I find this this funny." Vyr just starts laughing. "Maybe we need to relax a bit?"
"Just admit you liked it," Axel says snidely to poor, poor Anders' problem.
Anders blushes.
Several hours pass, until it is well after midnight. IF any of you remain awake, you suddenly hear several muffled explosions, immediately followed by a loud, wailing klaxon echoing across the base. These sirens are loud enough to instantly wake any sleeping person. This is shortly followed by more explosions, these close or powerful enough to shake the mountain. Over the next half hour, you can hear many troops running through the halls, and many explosions.
Suddenly, it calms down. The explosions stop, though the sirens continue to wail. After a few minutes, you hear someone undoing the locks and latches on the outside of the door to your room.
Anders bolts upright in his bed at the sound of the sirens. As he shouts, he flips his mattress off the cot, quickly crawling under it.
A few minutes later, snoring can be heard drifting out from under the overturned mattress.
Vyr just stares at Anders for a couple of seconds before he gets out of bed. He was having a nice dream. "Anders, do you want to talk about what ever that was latter? Sounds like our jailer's base is being attacked. So are they going to come and ask us for help or come and shoot us so we can't interfere? I am hopping the first one."
Tarros instantly wakes at the first explosion, fumbling for his missing backpack. He sighs as he remembers where he is, and sits alertly on his bed. When the door is unlocked, he is standing and ready for action.