Ithor Intruders, Part II

[Eice Frex]

(Continued from Part I)

Eice Frex sighed heavily, tilting her head back to look up at the ceiling again.

It had been a simple job, or so she had been led to believe. She and Daesh'afenn would fly to Ithor, meet up with the Twi'lek smuggler's contact, pick up a hefty cargo of rare and valuable healing herbs, and get off-world without the authorities finding out. It would be quick, profitable and easy, perfect for Eice's first real job.
It hadn't worked out like that.
Daesha's ship had been intercepted moments after exiting hyperspace by a Blackrow Hyperlogistics security patrol. As it turned out, Blackrow's presence around Ithor was even heavier than Eice had expected; quick thinking by Daesha had almost allowed them to slip by, but Eice had accidentally blown their cover, and so the ship and its crew had been brought in for a much more thorough search. That search, of course, had included a look into the ship's crew, and thus, Eice had wound up in a detention cell, awaiting her fate.

Eice had once worked for Blackrow, what now seemed a lifetime ago, though it had at most been a few weeks, she realized. She was the third generation of her family to work for the company; she had overseen freight sorting and loading at the Blackrow main hub above the planet Corellia, just as her parents had, and their parents before them. Blackrow had been her whole world; she worked there, lived in company housing, shopped in company stores, even watched company news and entertainment feeds. It wasn't as if she had never dreamed of anything more - quite the opposite - but she had long been conditioned to think that Blackrow was all there was for her.
That had lasted until the day a shuttle accident had sealed her in the belly of a drone barge traveling to the far reaches of the Galaxy, taking her away from everything she had ever known.
Unable to communicate with anyone during the trip, Eice had stumbled out onto an Outer Rim deep space station, and discovered that not only had she been accused of shirking her duties and stealing a shuttle - the latter being a crime she was wanted for by Corellian law enforcement - but Blackrow had terminated her employment for it.
Eice had subsequently fallen in with the Ossein, a spacefaring people she had only ever heard stories about. They had taken her in, and she had made closer friends among them than any she had made working for Blackrow.
And she had discovered the truth about her old employers, as well...

Eice had been found out fairly quickly by the Blackrow Risk Management officers who had interrogated her. Her infractions against the company were not treated lightly - Blackrow drilled loyalty into their employees almost from infancy, and going against the company carried a deep stigma - and she was tossed - literally - into a cell with little ceremony.
The little Tintinna wondered if the company would even bother sending her back to face Corellian justice, or if they would simply stick her in a "loyalty center" without telling anyone. In Blackrow custody, she would be worked to death, or perhaps sold off to some other fate...
She had spent the first hour or so in the cell sobbing about that, but she seemed to have worked that out of her system. Now she was starting to think.
Alright, Eice, you've survived this long, you can figure a way out of this, too.
Eice wasn't sure what had happened to Daesha, the two had been separated shortly after coming aboard the enormous Blackrow station. The little Tintinna would figure out how to help her friend as soon as she had freed herself...
She followed a seam on the ceiling to the cell door-frame. The cell was almost featureless white plastoid panels, with a molded, shelf-like protrusion jutting out of the back wall, meant to be used as a cot. There was a refresher station in the corner with a similarly molded sink and waste removal unit, and a video screen, presently dark.
There were cameras, Eice knew, but she couldn't see them. The little Tintinna bit her lip, drawing her knees up to her chest and curling her tail around herself, trying to look frightened for anyone watching.
There had to be a way out.

@Insalius @The Captain

 

[Daesha Keever]

Daesha just needed to think. After Eice had fallen out of that smuggling compartment in her ship, Blackrow Hyperlogistics impounded her vessel, taken her droid, stripped her of anything even remotely valuable or dangerous, and literally thrown her into a cell, where she now waited forwhatever fate Blackrow would give her. The Hyperlogistics company was known to be ruthless with any smugglers they caught in their airspace, so Daesha had no doubt a firing squad was being organized to take her out, the only reason they weren't here yet was most likely due to all the red tape Blackrow had to jump through to hide their murders. As for Eice, the little Tintinna that had gotten her into this mess, Daesha couldn't hate her for what happened, but she couldn't spare the mental power to be concerned about her right now. Eice was ex-Blackrow, meaning she was a lot further up kark-creek that Daesha was but that they were unlikely to just shoot her out an airlock and call it an industrial accident. She would be fine, for now, although the poor girl was probably in the midst of a panic attack at this point, or three. ​

​

But Daesha couldn't focus on that, she needed to stay objective, clinical, if she wanted to make it in this situation. Daesha had always prided herself on her survival skills, on being able to think under pressure, but trapped in this sterile room with the dull buzz of the lights overhead, and the arrhythmic thud of feet passing by her tiny cell, she found she was unable to concentrate. This might be the end of her journey, getting put down like a rabid dog in this stark white room, another nameless casualty of Blackrow Hyperlogistics, and that simple fact terrified her. She didn't want to die in here like this, and no amount of pacing around the room with a furrowed brow and a piercing stare was going to solve that. She just had to wait, to bide her time, and hopefully a solution would come to her. ​

 

[The Storyteller]

Eice's cell door suddenly opened with Dario's figure waiting on the other side. Flanking him were two Blackrow Risk Management officers, weapons at the read in stark contrast to the comfort and seeming laziness that the Lieutenant seemed to show in his body movements. "Come along now, Ms. Frex. Station Commander Ives wants to have a word with you personally. I'd really appreciate not having to be forceful, ma'am." He tipped his hat to her, hoping she'd just come along instead of being unruly. The guards with him would grab and drag her along if she decided to resist.

Station Commander Romero Ives summoned Eice into the main interrogation room, his uniform immaculate and his signature stun rod at his side. He was bobbing his head to the tune being played through some headphones he was wearing, though the opening and closing of the door as the guards brought in the prisoner did not go unnoticed. He sat there for a minute, letting the song play out, before turning around as if noticing the Tintinna for the first time. He chuckled as he took the headphones off, tossing them on the table standing between him and the prisoner so that it would land right in front of Eice. It was a company-sponsored musician, someone who had been a favorite of Eice's according to her old file from the company.

"He just came out with a new album, only available to Blackrow employees. Been a fan for a while, so I figured you'd like to hear some of what you've missed since you left." Running a gloved hand through his crimson hair, which promptly let a few strands stick out from his bangs, he grabbed the stun rod at his side as he started to tap the end against his left palm while holding it in his right. "You've missed a lot. Must have made you quite upset to be apart from your family and friends, hell, your entire life. I bet you lament your decisions something fierce right now, huh?" He glanced over at a picture of Daesha that had appeared on a screen on the wall, his gaze inscrutable. "And to find you in the company of a smuggler, my, what would your parents say. You know, we asked messaged them just after your last interrogation. Let me show you what they had to say."

He pointed the stun rod at a wall in a flippant way, alerting an observer to start up a monitor built into it. A video played from each one of Eice's surviving relatives, all of them expressing sorrow or anger that she could do anything to hurt the company that took care of all of them and gave them good lives. Her parents had disowned her, saying there would never be a place for her to return to for trying to harm their beloved Blackrow. No piece of footage was altered and the timestamps had been left in. Romero pantomimed a sorrowful look as they ended, as if mourning something for Eice.

"Such a sad thing to see. I don't know how you could have hurt us like this, Eice? We were ALWAYS there for you, and you had to go and throw it all away, and for what? Have you truly gained more than you've lost?" He shook his head, a friendly smile coming across his face as he shrugged lightly. "Now, though, you've managed to run across the RIGHT Station Commander in me, though. I'm a nice guy at heart, and these little interviews made me think of what you must feel like. So, I'll make you a deal. You tell us why you came to Ithor, all the details, and I'll see what I can do about trying to fix your little past mistakes. Maybe Mommy and Daddy can find it in their Blackrow-loving hearts to forgive their wayward child. We'll find out eventually, we're going through your friend's ship right now and believe me, nothing stays deleted from our scanners. So, clock's ticking on the offer. Are you willing to give up the chance to come back to those you love and to have a good life for a smuggler and a nomad?"

@AutoFox @The Captain

 

[Eice Frex]

Eice flinched when the door unexpectedly slid open, revealing the Blackrow officer who had boarded Daesha's ship. She blinked at him, but strangely, did not feel her fear returning. For someone who had pointed a blaster at her, Dario seemed a decent sort, so perhaps that had something to do with it.
She slid down from the cell's cot, glowering at the man, though it was hard to be intimidating at less than a meter tall.
"Just... take me there." She said, a quiet intensity in her voice.

Eice wore stun-cuffs on the trip to the station commander's office, walking at a quick pace between the two guards, who kept their hands on her shoulders, pushing her along; with her shorter legs it was hard to keep pace, but they made no allowance for it. As they walked, Eice took in the bland, grey-and-white wall panels and other decor of the station; it was almost identical to the station Eice had worked at back in the Corellian system.
Gods, this station is the same size! Why would they need something so big around Ithor?
As she walked, she caught sight of two figures trundling along, and almost stumbled as she turned her head to look at them.
"What the... HEY!"
The guards continued to pull Eice along, but she craned her neck to look, eyes wide.
"BUCKET!! JEEVES!!!"
Her outburst earned her a cuff to the head from one of the guards and a snarled "Eyes forward and shut up!", but Eice knew what she had seen. Before she had to look away, the two droids turned their photoreceptors toward her, Daesha's smaller astromech giving a mournful whistle and Eice's binary auto-servitor a short chatter. The motion looked like it took effort, and Eice caught a glimpse of the shiny new restraining bolts affixed to both machines before she was hauled away.

In the office, Eice was forced to sit down in a synthwood chair, from which she glowered at the Blackrow executive who sat across from her. When he turned to face her and tossed her the headphones, she briefly stared at them, but did not pick them up. She could hear the music even without putting them on, and though tinny an faint, it was a style she recognized, one which could not help but bring a few warm memories floating up out of the depths of her mind.
She was trying to hold her glare, but she was visibly trembling in her seat. She gritted her teeth, but the expression was softer than she had been intending.
"He just came out with a new album, only available to Blackrow employees. Been a fan for a while, so I figured you'd like to hear some of what you've missed since you left." Said the station commander, running a hand through his hair and tapping a stunner on the desk. "You've missed a lot. Must have made you quite upset to be apart from your family and friends, hell, your entire life. I bet you lament your decisions something fierce right now, huh?"
Eice's eyes widened, and she leaned forward in her seat, teeth clenching harder. Anger boiled up inside the young pilot, replacing her fear.
"My decisions?!" She replied, fighting the urge to pull at her stun-cuffs. "I was trapped on a Blackrow drone barge for almost a month, and when finally got out, I found out the company had taken my life away! You self-righteous-"
Romero cut her off, continuing to speak.
"And to find you in the company of a smuggler, my, what would your parents say. You know, we asked, messaged them just after your last interrogation. Let me show you what they had to say."
Eice opened her mouth to retort, but suddenly, a familiar voice came to her ear. It was one of her cousins, a fellow Blackrow employee.
"It's just incredible that anyone could even think of doing that!"
Eice turned her head to look at the video, mouth falling open as a look of horror spread across her face. Friends and family made their scathing depositions before her eyes, ending with the words of of her own mother. Each accusation hit Eice like a blow.
"If she would do such a thing to the people who gave us this house, then she is not welcome in it."
The video ended, and Eice slumped, tears welling at the corners of her eyes.
"Such a sad thing to see. I don't know how you could have hurt us like this, Eice? We were ALWAYS there for you, and you had to go and throw it all away, and for what? Have you truly gained more than you've lost?"
The Tintinna's ear twitched, and she looked up at the Blackrow executive, her expression clearing slightly.
"Now, though, you've managed to run across the RIGHT Station Commander in me. I'm a nice guy at heart, and these little interviews made me think of what you must feel like. So, I'll make you a deal. You tell us why you came to Ithor, all the details, and I'll see what I can do about trying to fix your little past mistakes. Maybe Mommy and Daddy can find it in their Blackrow-loving hearts to forgive their wayward child. We'll find out eventually, we're going through your friend's ship right now and believe me, nothing stays deleted from our scanners. So, clock's ticking on the offer. Are you willing to give up the chance to come back to those you love and to have a good life for a smuggler and a nomad?"
Eice's face screwed up in a mask of rage.
"ECHUTA!!"
The little Tintinna hurled the Huttese curse with all the venom she could muster, and made as if to lunge across the desk, incisors flashing. The stun-cuffs did their work, however, forcing Eice back into her seat with crackle, a squeal and a slight odor of singed fur. She growled at the Blackrow executive.
"You can take your offer and your whole karking company to the lowest of the nine hells!" She continued. "I'm not going back! Not ever! My family served you people for three generations, and you left me to die!! I'll bet you didn't know that, not one of you ever bothered to find out!!
The little Tintinna's eyes burned with rage, hot tears sliding down her cheeks.
"I'm not going back to that safe, shallow little world you built. Out here I've got everything it doesn't have!"

 

[The Storyteller]

Romero was quiet as he listened to what she had to say, tapping the tip of his stun rod against his palm as he made his way to stand at her side. The silence continued as her words sunk in, his face stoic but his anger at her disrespect of Blackrow increasing greatly with each passing second. Soon he couldn't take it anymore, swinging around and delivering a brutal strike from his stun rod across Eice's face. With all his strength poured into it, it would send the smaller being flying into the wall from the force alone. He walked over and grabbed her hair in one hand, pulling up her head as he looked at her in disgust.

"Honestly, I don't give a damn what you think about me, but I will NOT have you disrespecting Blackrow like that. We were willing to give you a chance to come back, to make amends for your crimes and work your way to rejoining us, but I suppose that's not enough for a greedy little schutta like you. Well, consider the offer rescinded." He let her drop, not caring if her face pounded into the floor. He looked at one of the guards in the room, pointing with his stun rod that had a bit of blood on it from the strike. "Take her back to her cell and bring the other one in here. Once their ship is done being mined of data, shoot her and dispose of her corpse along with her ship and droids. She's nothing and will always be nothing." The guards would roughly drag her back to her cell, uncaring for her safety or comfort as their final courtesy had just been expended. As for Dario, he was nowhere in sight. Perhaps he'd already gone to get Daesha for her turn with the Station Commander.

@AutoFox @The Captain

 

[Daesha Keever]

Daesha's mechanical pacing had yielded her no results, she hadn't even scuffed the floor with her aggressive stomping, something that aggravated her to no end. Even with all her wit and might, she couldn't even do so much as scratch Blackrow. But she reminded herself that she didn't need to scratch Blackrow, she needed to escape it, and fast, to get out from under their boot before they stepped down fully and crushed her. She needed an escape plan before she got 'accidentally shot out of an air lock-

The airlock.

Blackrow wouldn't record what was happening when they executed her, the cameras would most likely be off and even if they were online they would most likely save and sequester the information for later. And, of course, they wouldn't want footage of some random smuggler escaping her own extra-judicial execution to get out in the galaxy, so there was little chance of any footage they recorded coming back to bite her. Assuming they even recorded the execution. With the cameras down and less people on watch, Daesha could escape her bindings, free her droids, grab Eice, and get the fark off this station. Sure, the odds of that all happening were slim, but all Daesha needed was a chance to get out of here, and she would seize it.

Her door soon slid open, and the same bored-looking gunslinger Dario shambled into the room, apparently on orders from the station commander to bring her in for questioning. Whether that was a legitimate claim or just a euphemism for execution, it didn't matter, Daesha had a way out and no matter what came next, she was going to take it. She complied fully with the Lieutenant as he led her wherever they were going. Since Daesha was born and questionably raised on Nar Shadda for most of her life, both Republic and Blackrow sources would have little to nothing on her, and if Blackrow went with Hutt sources any investigation would be seen as tainted by the Republic government. Combined with the fact that she wiped her logs and charts before being captured, all Blackrow had on her was her smuggling compartments and Bucket's inconsistent, absent-minded, frequently edited memory. Legally speaking, she barely existed at all.

 

[The Storyteller]

Romero hadn't even cleaned up the blood before Daesha arrived, having her be sat down in the seat that Eice had been in just a short time ago. His stun baton was still smeared with the fluid from the Tintinna, now having dried, and he tapped the tip of it against his palm as he regarded the smuggler. "Look, my patience is running dry, so excuse me if I'm blunt. I'll give you once chance, here and now, to say why you're here and what you were planning to do on Ithor. I'll pull that information from your ship eventually, as even wiped data isn't truly lost unless you destroy the computer. There's fragments of data still hanging around that can be pieced back together, the only thing it takes is time to do so. I prefer to run an efficient operation here, so if you cut down the time it takes to find all this out, then I'm willing to work with your freedom. You get this one chance now, and I mean NOW. Yes or no?" He did not seem like he'd take anything either than those two options as an answer at the moment. He had a visibly annoyed look on his face, with anger smoldering just below the surface of his cobalt eyes.

~~

Dario was returning to his post from escorting Daesha to the interrogation room when he spotted Eice being dragged away by the guards. His jaw set with irritation, the latest one on top of others that Blackrow seemed to just pile up, his good ol' boy upbringing made him come to a decision that he had no way of knowing how it would affect him in the future. All he could think of right now was how a defenseless young woman had just been brutalized by the people he worked with. He gave a sharp whistle which drew the attention of the Blackrow Risk Management guards, as they were under his command, and in reflex they dropped their charge and turned around to salute at their leader. He walked up to them slowly, looking them over inch by inch as if making an impromptu inspection. Only he could see Eice where she lay, but he didn't seem to care about what she did. Instead he started to point out every little smudge and speck on the uniforms, taking as much time as he could to do so. He didn't have anywhere else to go at that time, and hopefully the young lady was in a position to take what was being offered to her. He hated seeing people hurt for no reason, it just wasn't proper for a gentleman to do.

@AutoFox @The Captain

 

[Eice Frex]

Eice staggered along between the two guards, the fur on part of her face matted with drying blood. Tintinna were never meant to physically stand up to beings larger and stronger than they were; the beating Eice had taken had left her half-insensate, so much so that when the guards had arrived to haul her back to her cell, she had barely reacted.
That Blackrow would go to such lengths to punish her was almost flattering, in some sick way. She had been brought up being told to hate anyone who left the company, but to be on the receiving end of that hatred was something else...
As these thoughts swam through her head, she felt the guards on either side of her abruptly release their grip, causing her to tumble to the floor. She gave a weak squeal, looking up at her captors in confusion as she tried to climb back to her feet without activating the stun-cuffs.
It was the Blackrow officer from earlier, Eice could see, giving the two guards a very long-winded dressing down. As she stood up, she looked up at the taller man, and briefly, their eyes met.
Something in Dario's told her just what was expected of her. The backs of the two guards were turned.
Summoning what strength she had left, Eice bolted.

The little Tintinna didn't have time to get very far, but it didn't take long for her to at least get out of sight. She rounded a bend in the corridor and saw an open door, into which she ducked. Jumping up, she mashed the door controls with her manacled hands, the abrupt movements causing the cuffs to give her a shock. She managed to suppress her whimper of pain until after the door had swished closed and locked, after which she sagged to the floor, panting from the exertion, her wounds aching.
Through watering eyes, she looked around at the room in which she found herself, and squeaked again in fright.
The place looked like a mechanical abattoir. Droid limbs dangled from racks, and half-disassembled machinery was everywhere. In one corner, a scrapper's furnace burned, the orange light casting the room in harsh shadows. Then something moved, and Eice squealed again. The outcry was answered by an electronic whistle.
An MR-series astromech rolled out from a corner, the sight of it causing Eice's eyes to go wide.
"Bucket?!"
There was a chatter, and something tall, gangling and metallic lurched out of the racks. Rather than fear, a wide grin spread on Eice's face.
"Jeeves!!"
The little Tintinna got carefully to her feet, and held up her stun-cuffed hands.
"You have no idea how good it is to see you guys! Quick, can one of you get these off of me?"

 

[Daesha Keever]

Entering the interrogation room, Daesha cursed her own observational skills as she surveyed the scene before her. Some pompous echuta was standing in the room wiping the blood and bits of fur from his truncheon and sneering at her with a stinging intensity. There was a blood splatter on the wall as well, with a few more clumps of fur stuck to it, and the chair was in similar condition. All of the fur matched Eice's soft brown tone, and the blood splatters were at the perfect height for the poor Tintinna's head. As the realization clicked together in her mind, Daesha made a mental note to shoot this farker in his non-existent balls before she left, as no one with any real testicular fortitude would ever lay a hand on someone like Eice, who's stomach turned at the thought of killing someone that would have gladly skinned her for boot leather. Taking her seat, Daesha listened to his spiel, his little corporate-mandated song and dance number, trying to bite back the urge to climb over the table and kick his skull in with her durasteel toed boots. She needed to remain calm if she wanted to get out of here, save Eice and get the sweet revenge they both deserved. But by all that was sacred this man was making it difficult.

"Are you done?" She asked after he finished his less-than-intimidating speech. "Let's cut to the chase, I'm not giving you anything. Even if you scrounge up every scrap of loose data in my computers you'll have, what, some parts of my fuel log? Part of a shipping invoice? Some hyperspace charts? Nothing you could incriminate me with. And since I wasn't born in the Republic I don't have records with them either, so legally speaking you've got Jack-kark. And Jack is looking for the exit."

--------------------

Bucket had been sulking with Jeeves ever since his chauffer, Daesh'afenn, and the lovely miss Frex had been spirited away by the Blackrow Hyperlogistics company. Ah, such a sweet young girl, if Bucket had been organic he might have tried his hand at wooing the darling creature, but alas, it was not meant to be. In fact it seemed that his long journey with Captain Daesh'afenn was going to come to a less-than-dramatic conclusion today in this, infernal den of corporate greed and excess. What a cruel, ironic fate it was for him, a machine that loved like an organic, to be subsumed by living beings that acted like cold machines. Jeeves shared his pain, missing his dear Eice awfully as they were jostled about by the rapscallions of Blackrow, who masqueraded as legitimate traders. If it was within his capacity, Bucket would have seen them all unseamed from skull to sternum, the rogues. But he was a lover, and a thinker, not a fighter, so he was resigned to whatever monstrous fate Blackrow concocted for him, left only with fond memories of his captain and her angelic passenger.

When the tiny figure shambled into the scrapper room, Bucket was sure one of those repugnant little Ugnaughts had come back for him, and had been prepared to fight to his last working circuit to repel the brutes. But it was not the beasts that had found him, but the beauty! Eice! He trundled from the darkness with a cheery whistle before he noticed the blood caked around her lovely features. The scoundrels! What dark and terrible force could compel them to lay violent hands upon such a vision? With haste Bucket removed the cuffs from her wrists using his interface socket. With those crude instruments of torture out of the way, Bucket was quick to address the young Tintinna.

"Ms. Frex, what happened to you? Are you alright? Who did this to you?"

 

[The Storyteller]

Romero couldn't have gotten any more mad, thankfully, but that just meant that Daesha was in the wrong place at the wrong time to be the punching bag for the Station Commander. He swung his baton once, then twice, aiming full-force blows for both of the Twi-lek's lekkus to cause as much pain and damage as he could. Unlike with Eice, he couldn't send her flying into the wall with his strikes, but he knew how to put pressure on right at the moment of impact increase the pain and damage. It would hurt just as much, if not more, because Daesha WOULDN'T be able to go flying away. Somewhat mollified, he motioned to the guards in the room to grab her, having them pause a few moments before she was taken from the room.

"You are right, no one in the Republic even knows you exist. That's why killing you and the traitor will cause us no problems at all. Once you've all been atomized, I'll pay a visit to your contact on the planet and put a stop to his operation. Then perhaps I'll move on from there, until everyone you and Eice have ever met have known my...displeasure with you two. I've already ordered her family to pay the price for her transgressions, I'll make sure yours also feel the weight of your actions. Take her to her ship, along with the Tintinna and droids, and destroy them all." With a negligent wave he turned around, content knowing that this would be the last time he would see her. The talk of the contact on the planet was an educated bluff, one that would be proven by her depending on her outrage or lack thereof. They'd taken all the data from the ship, now they just had to piece things together. It was time that this transient and whatever she called her people learned not to cross Blackrow Hyperlogistics.

@AutoFox @The Captain

 

[Eice Frex]

The stun-cuffs clattered to the floor, and Eice gave a sigh of relief, rubbing her wrists and wincing at the burns from where they had shocked her. She beamed at the astromech - who, indeed, was almost her own height - and looked around.
"Thanks Bucket, I'm alright... oh, hold still!"
Eice scurried over to a low workbench near the furnace, and returned with a force bar, which she held gingerly.
"Alright... I don't think this will hurt, but... here goes!"
The little Tintinna set to work with the prybar, and after a few moments, the restraining bolt marring Bucket's plastoid casing had popped off. Eice next called over Jeeves, having to pull over a crate and stand on tiptoes to get the proper leverage.
"Nnnnyeh... there! Whoop!"
Eice nearly toppled backward off the crate, but caught herself on the top of Bucket's head dome, lowering herself to the ground. She brought the force bar down on the discarded restraining bolts a few times before she straightened, satisfied.
"That takes care of that! Alright, you two, we have a job to do. These people still have Daesha, and the ship."
She made a fist with one hand and ground it into the palm of the other.
"We need to find them both, rescue them, and get the kriff out of here."

 

[Daesha Keever]

Daesha wasn't able to react before the heavy blows rained down on her head, slamming into her lekku and causing hot, searing pain to shoot up through her skull like a spike being hammered into her head. The lekku were incredibly sensitive, as they contained part of Daesha's brain and nervous system within them. Being struck in any way was equivalent to getting a live nerve pinched by a Wookiee. Her senses instantly blurred, her vision fogging and her ears ringing as she cried out with the pain that wracked her skull. She felt arms looping around her own and hauling her to her feet roughly as she was dragged to the doorway, her senses slowly returning. But before she was dragged out of the threshold, the thug stopped her and delivered a far more pointed warning. Now, Daesha didn't have many people that she cared about in this galaxy, even her parents were distant strangers, but if this echuta laid one hand, if he even looked at her friends wrong she would pull his insides out with her bare hands.

"...When I get out of here I'm going to kill you." It was the last thing she managed to say before the guards dragged her from the room and down the hallway. Daesha was going to make good on that promise, one way or another she was going to wring that commander's neck for what he did here today. He could count on that.

--------------------

After freeing Eice from her bonds, Bucket was relieved and pleased that she stopped to remove his restraining bolt as well, feeling the liberating sting of the device being pried from his chasis. The burn marks would be hard to buff out, but it didn't matter, Eice was free, Jeeves was free, and now he was free. All that was left to do was to get Daesha, locate their ship, and get out of this accursed station, and it seemed that Eice agreed. Her radiant confidence and righteous indignation stunned Bucket for a second, and as she wandered out of earshot, he softly beeped to himself.

"What a woman..."

 

[Eice Frex]

The corridor, when Eice peeked room she had been hiding in with the two droids, was empty. The little Tintinna had no illusions that it would stay that way, however; obviously her escape had been noted, and a cool, vaguely feminine synthesized voice was broadcasting over the PA system about an intruder alert. Amber lights were pulsing above most of the doors.
Brandishing her force bar, Eice took a look up and down the corridor, and then ducked back inside. She then turned to Bucket, nodding over toward a computer interface socket on the wall beneath the door controls.
"Okay, Bucket, I'm gonna need your help on this." She walked over to the low workbench, clicking on a work-light and clearing a space to work on its messy surface. "I need you to access the station's schematic database and get the layout of the place. This station looks pretty similar to where I used to work, but I never had a reason to go into the places we need to find."
She picked up a fusion cutter and sparked it, blinking at the brightness of the flare and cursing under her breath as she groped for a pair of anti-flash goggles.
"I need you to find the detention level; that's where they'll be keeping Daesha. After that, I need you to figure out where the tractor beam emitters are; if we don't take out those, we're not going very far."
Some part of Eice's mind called out the absurdity of the situation; by all rights, she should be terrified out of her mind right now. She was just a small-time freight overseer with apparent delusions of pilothood! How could she possibly handle any of this?
She took a deep breath, let it out, seized a nearby piece of machinery and ignited the fusion cutter.
I can panic later. I have a job to do now.

 

[Daesha Keever]

As the two guards were leading Daesha down to the hangar, her slowly settling mind was dreaming up possible ways to escape this scenario and rescue her friends. She needed and opening where no one was watching the monitors and she could slip free from these two half-wit rent-a-guards. This opportunity came, brilliantly she might add, when an intruder alert warning blared over the PA and the lights temporarily flicked off as amber warning lights flicked on over the doors throughout the hallway. With the guards temporarily distracted by this stroke of luck, Daesha sprung her escape attempt, first wheeling around to kick the first guard square between the legs, doubling him over in agony as her steel-toed boot collided with a very sensitive place. As the second guard turned to her at the sound of his associate dropping to the floor, Daesha gave a forward stomp into the side of his leg that dropped the man to one knee with a hard crunch. She kicked the man forward onto his gut and, with both Blackrow employees on the ground, she gave them both a good, swift kick in the head, knocking the guards out. She found between them the keys to her cuffs, a Security Guard level access card, a 4-C sidearm and three clips. Free from her shackles, Daesha took the the two guards and began to drag them along the floor, not wanting a patrol to find them.

Ducking into a side supply closet with the unconscious men, Daesha got her mental bearings. Someone else had tripped the intruder alert alarm, so there was a third party at play here on the station besides just her and Eice. But regardless of who, or what was here, Daesha wasn't much good to anyone without her droid, her ship, and her gear, the first and last of which would be down in the impound center on the detention level, where Eice would be. She needed to get down there first before anything else so, she needed to get down to detention without getting caught. The rattle of the large, industrial vent overhead gave Daesha her way out, and she began to work on the panel.

---------------------

"Of course Ms. Frex!" Bucket snapped to work, trundling over to the nearby access port and plugging in. Unforunately, without Blackrow access codes he was unable to pull up anything about the station beyond a help-desk registry, which in and of itself was useless to them at this point. "I'm sorry Ms. Frex, but I don't have the codes necessary to access the schematics of the base. I believe me and Mr. Jeeves passed by the detention block earlier, however, so I might be able to guide you there manually."

 

[Eice Frex]

Eice gave a muttered curse, pausing in her work. She reached up to rub her temples. "Gaaah of course... sorry, Bucket, I've never had to break out of one of these places before." The Tintinna twirled a tool in one hand, returning to her work. "Okay, you can lead us there if you think you know where it is. Oh, and Jeeves! Come over here and take this."
Eice stepped back from the workbench, wiping her forehead and pushing up her flash goggles. She adjusted her glasses, looking over what she had built with a nod of satisfaction.
The object Eice had made sat on the workbench, the fresh welds and cuts still radiating heat. It was based on an industrial pile-driver of the type found on some construction droids, but had crude hand-grips, controls and a bulky power supply welded onto it. It looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic holodrama, and likely weighed more than Bucket did.
Jeeves, chattering an affirmative to Eice's instructions, trundled over and took up the device, the hulking droid brandishing it experimentally.
"We can use that to get through locked doors... I think." Eice said, adjusting her glasses again, turning toward the door, then hesitating. She grabbing up the fusion cutter and the force bar, slipping the former into a pocket of her flight suit and hefting the latter.
"Let's go!"

 

[Daesha Keever]

The great advantage of these massive, constructed space stations was that the ventilations systems were built right into the frame, meaning that they weren't the tiny, thin, unprotected, tenuously hanging vents found in most facilities. They were well situated, spacious, and most importantly, thick enough to muffle the sound of Daesha sneaking around in the scanner-free confines of the ventilation system. Armed with a mentally drawn map of the facility and a few vents to peer out to in order to get her bearings, Daesha crawled her way through the tunnels on her hands and knees, making her way slowly but surely down toward the detention level. Even if a patrol found the unconscious guards back in the supply closet, and guessed that she had fled into the ventilation system, there was no way they would find her in the labyrinthine tunnels of the system, at least not before she got her gear and located her friends.

--------------------

"Absolutely Ms. Frex!" As Bucket prepared to lead Eice and Jeeves down to the detention block, he noticed the makeshift piledriver Eice was able to so expertly craft in such a short amount of time, giving it to Jeeves. Apparently she intended to use the device to break down doors, and most likely a few Blackrow guards as well, if their luck held up. In any event, Bucket poked his head out from the scrap room and, finding no guards in sight, trundled out into the hallway with his two companions in tow.

 

[Eice Frex]

Eice followed Bucket out into the hall, carrying her force bar like a broadsword and looking around anxiously. She gritted her teeth, looking around for guards and security cameras. Blackrow was notoriously cheap about installing the latter, and there were only a few, which Eice helped the droids evade, or in one case, disable with a quick snap of the improvised pile-bunker.
The trio made their way through the station, twice ducking into vacant meeting rooms and supply closets to avoid roaming squads of guards. The little Tintinna had no illusions that - even armed with their improvised weapons - a pint-sized pilot and two droids would be any match for blaster-armed Blackrow Risk Management guards. It would not pay to get caught, and certainly not to sacrifice the element of surprise.
The amber lights continued to pulse, and the synthesized voice on the PA had taken to reminding those listening that quarterly performance reviews would be taking place in only a few weeks time. Eice could not help but grin at the announcement.
I bet the boss must be fuming about this!
Eice looked around, and noticed that the walls had changed from grey-and-white plastoid panels to mostly black. The Tintinna moved more cautiously; Risk Management used this color scheme, they were in their part of the station now.
"Bucket, we're close, right?"

 

[Daesha Keever]

As Daesha drew closer to Risk Management, she began to realize that something was off. When she did poke her head up to a vent to see what was going on in the hallways, most of the guards were headed away from Risk Management, moving in small groups and hustling from point to point. This made no sense, as the guards should be sweeping room to room in large groups, patrolling the hallways and searching for intruders. But in this formation Blackrow's guards wouldn't be able to catch the common cold, it made no logical sense. At first, Daesha assumed that Blackrow was trying to spring a trap for her and Eice as they escaped, giving them an excuse to shoot them, but even that fell through given the chaotic nature of the Blackrow agents' movements. This wasn't organized, it was just a mad scramble of troops rushing slowly further and further from Risk Management. Someone was deliberately messing with Blackrow's patrol pattern, but who? That question could be saved for a later date, as Daesha was nearing the Risk Management block and her gear.

--------------------

"Yes ma'am, we should be close." It was astounding how few guards the trio had found on their trip into the Risk Management section. The trip had been strangely, almost suspiciously uneventful, but Bucket was more focused on rescuing his captain than analyzing the tactics of Blackrow. They were close to Risk Management's holding cells, but regardless of what was going on with these thugs, they wouldn't leave the cells unguarded.

 

[Eice Frex]

Eice, Bucket and Jeeves stalked through the Risk Management section, avoiding nothing more than the small squads of guards that were sweeping the halls. The ease of it all was beginning to make the hackles on Eice's back stand on end, her ears splayed back in caution.
"Good... stay sharp, both of you. I don't like this."
That small, terrified part of Eice's brain which the Tintinna had managed to suppress for the moment interjected by wondering just what part of her whole situation Eice was supposed to like, but she ignored it.
Eice was no tactician, but Blackrow's response to her escape made no sense. She had seen holos; even guards in those knew to systematically sweep rooms and flush out their quarry. Two droids and a rodentoid should not be able to evade a station's worth of guards who were looking for them.
Either they're smarter than I hope they are, and we're all walking into a trap, or someone is messing with them. Why did that one guy help me, anyway?
It was then that Eice looked up at a sign above a door, and raised her eyebrows.
"Well kriff, that's lucky..."
The sign above the door read "contraband impound," and Eice knew what that had to mean. She tapped the door control, but it was apparently locked.
"Jeeves, your implement if you please."
Jeeves clattered forward on heavy treads, hefting the improvised pile-bunker. He had raised it to the door, when Eice held up a hand.
"Wait!"
The Tintinna's ears twitched, and she lifted her gaze toward the ceiling, eyes and ears fixing on a grate above her head.
"There's something moving up there..."

 

[Daesha Keever]

As Daesha made her way through the vents, she overheard a familiar deep chittering and squeaky treads, belonging to Eice's favorite over-sized labor droid Jeeves. Peering down through a grated vent, she saw Jeeves, his master, and her droid all standing beneath her facing one of the doors, chatting amongst themselves. How, in this great galaxy, had that goofy trio managed to escape? Eice was still suffering from a head wound and the other two were...well, Bucket and Jeeves. Neither of the droids had ever shown any great capacity for strategy or combat, so how they had gotten loose, let alone gotten this far, was beyond her. However they accomplished this, Daesha didn't care, as it saved her a lot of time, effort, and stress of having to track them down one by one. Kicking out the vent covering, which landed between the group, Daesha dropped down to the floor and the chirping greetings of Bucket.

"I'm not even gonna ask how you all got out, I'm just glad to see you all."