Lights Out

[Toland Vult]

theme​

It was a dark and quiet night on Denon, and though the city was bustling with activity in the downtown areas of the city, the more industrial sectors were greatly diminished. Grav-trucks zoomed down the near-empty hyperlanes periodically, and the streets were dotted with overnight shift workers on break or carrying out their duties.

Toland strode down the street next to the designated security building that oversaw the feeds in a databank not too far from here. With his cloak drawn over and concealing his garb underneath, he casually glanced at the time. If this operation was to work, they needed to finish their job as quickly as possible. Luckily, they could afford to be a bit messy. Toland didn't envy the other group. Though he understood computer navigation well enough, hacking was on a whole different level.

Having reached their destination, Toland nodded to his companion. Time to begin.

Spoiler: OOC

Changed from Open/PvP to Ask 72 hours after all participants had posted.

@Vosrik​

 

[Devrim Wolfe]

It was time to begin indeed. Ensuring that he was fully armed beneath the black cloak that he had wrapped around himself, Devrim followed behind Toland as they neared their location. This security hub was owned by a company that designed and manufactured external shield generators that were primarily bought by the Empire. The Galactic Alliance certainly didn't have enough funds lying around to purchase one, and so the rebels had to resort to the more seedy option of breaking into their facilities and stealing the blueprints. That required two different strikes — one on the security hub, which is where Toland and Devrim were just about to break into. The dark-haired rebel would be joining Valerie Tagge later to sneak into the data center itself and download the schematics for the shield generator on a data chip. It would certainly be an eventful night for the rebels.

"They keep their main generator here, too," Devrim commented under his breath to Toland. With all the white noise from the city, it was easy to ensure that all the rebel's words were only heard by his companion walking nearby. "Let's make this quick — first the generator, then the control room. If we can make it look like a system failure, then even better." Devrim was well aware of the scrutiny that their Commander had for risky missions such as these. Disguise and misdirection were key for these operations. The less attention they brought to themselves, the better.

Reaching the back door of the security hub down a small alley, Devrim was not surprised to find that it was guarded by a solitary man who leaned casually against the side of the building, a smoke hanging out of his mouth. Motioning discreetly to Toland to block line of sight to the street, the rebel stepped toward the security guard. "Hey man, I hate to be that guy," he spoke aloud to the smoking guard. Hearing the words, his attention snapped up from the ground and he nearly dropped his cigarette. Devrim stopped a couple meters away and continued, "Do ya have an extra smoke on ya?" He reached out a hand in supplication. A smile grew on the guard's face. "Oh sure there bud, I got one right 'ere," he replied, reaching down to a pouch on his belt and fumbling with the strap.

Rushing forward as the security guard's attention was gone, Devrim wrapped an arm around the man's throat in a headlock and clenched hard. The cigarette dropped to the ground as they struggled — but the man was little match for the muscular rebel who'd been raised in the jungles of Dxun. Five, six seconds was all it took before the lack of bloodflow caused the man to go unconscious. Pulling the body to the side, Devrim motioned for Toland to get the door. They'd take the guard inside and toss him into a janitor's closet or something — it was best they didn't leave him out on the ground in the street.

@Shalken​

 

[Toland Vult]

The strategy was laid down — bust the generator, then shut down the control room. Now for the execution. Seeing his friend's gesture, Toland turned his back to the scene, facing the street and blocking line of sight to what was happening behind him. The street itself was empty, but it still didn't hurt to take precautions. Better safe than sorry.

Hearing the body slump to the ground, Toland left his post to join Devrim at the door. Finding the control, he was pleasantly surprised to find the security key already in the panel.♦ Off to a good start, Toland mused as he stepped inside. Finding a hallway, the ex-Imperial could hear the backup generator humming loudly from one end of the building. Pointing in the direction of the noise, he swiftly and silently glided down the hall, R5R drawn and at the ready, until he reached the door behind which the sound was loudest. Peeking through a small window at the top of the door, Toland was able to count out four guards in the room gathered around the control panel.♦ Extending four fingers to relay the information to Devrim, Toland unclipped a concussion grenade from his belt, priming it and punching the control panel to open the door before rolling it in. Unfortunately, the grenade ended up being a dud, and merely fizzed and sparked out instead of detonating as intended.♦ Not good, Toland thought alarmingly as he quickly shut the door and took cover behind the wall. So much for a quick, stealthy takedown.

@Vosrik​

 

[Devrim Wolfe]

Pleased to see that the security key was already inserted into the panel, it was clear that their first obstacle would be bypassed easily enough. Following his fellow rebel inside the building, Devrim kept his eyes and ears open for any guards or patrols they might encounter on their way to the generator room. He nodded to Toland, who pointed them in the direction they needed to go. Despite having been a former Imperial agent, the man had fit in with the Galactic Alliance better than Devrim had even hoped. Aldo would certainly be proud as well.

Devrim nodded again upon seeing the four fingers that his fellow rebel raised before pushing open the room to the generator. Though Toland may not have seen it, the dark-haired rebel gave a curt nod of acknowledgement. However well-planned their next move was, it came to naught as the concussion grenade failed to detonate and stun the four guards. Both rebels stepped back, awaiting the retaliation that was sure to come from the patrols. Sure enough, the door swung open again and Devrim acted immediately. Stepping in front of the guard, the helmeted rebel landed a fist squarely across the man's temple — so hard that he immediately crumpled backward into the next guard stepping through the doorway. ♦

Reaching for his Quickdraw pistol and removing it from its holster, Devrim raised it to fire at the second guard. However, despite the man being unbalanced from his companion's body falling on him, the patrol managed to twist his body and miraculously avoid the double-shot aimed straight at him. ♦ However, the rebel knew that the guard was still sandwiched between his unconscious comrade and the other two following him out the door. Simply readjusting his aim, Devrim squeezed the trigger once more at his target's chest and then, snapping his Quickdraw up to the next guard in line, felled him as well. ♦ Stepping over the bodies and into the room, the broad-shouldered rebel held his pistol up to the final guard they'd seen earlier — holding his own blaster in similar fashion toward Devrim. While the two were having a tense stand-off, it was clear the patrol had no idea Toland was also just around the corner.

@Shalken​

 

[Toland Vult]

Despite their bad luck with the misfired grenade, Devrim was able to capitalize on their current position extremely well, using the door as a bottleneck to take out the guards one by one. Landing a strong punch into the first man's temple with a meaty thud, the rebel leveled his Quickdraw on the remaining three, quickly dispatching the rest and leaving only one still standing in a tense face-off. While normally the winner of such a confrontation would be entirely up to chance, Wolfe had a trick up his sleeve — namely, his companion Toland. Having drawn his own Quickdraw in preparation for the ensuing fight, the ex-Imperial ducked into the room and put two smoking holes in the last guard's chest before he could react.

The room now clear, Toland holstered his weapons and moved towards the generator as it hummed away merrily. Powering the entire compound, it needed to be shut down completely in order to bring the security network fully offline while still make it look like a system failure. While normal blaster bolts would cause too much damage and be potentially extremely dangerous, Toland had an idea. Drawing his DH-7 and setting it to stun, he opened up the generator's heat shield, revealing its power matrix. Taking aim, he fired a single shot into the inner workings, overloading the electrical systems and frying the piece of hardware.♦ Slowing to a halt, the generator sparked as it shut down, several lights flashing angrily to indicate the malfunctioning hardware. The white-blue industrial lights suddenly flickered off, bathing the building in darkness. "Alright, this thing won't be working any time soon," Toland relayed in a low tone to his companion. Now they could move on to their next target: the security hub itself. Despite having shut off the main power, the computers themselves likely had backup batteries installed to ensure they would continue to run in the event of an outage — and now that the lights were out, the two rebels were likely going to have company investigating the problem very soon.

@Vosrik​

 

[Devrim Wolfe]

Watching in satisfaction as Toland came to his aid and dropped the final guard, Devrim looked at the bodies with doubt. "They'll know they got hit — we have to make this look like a competitor hired us as mercs," the rebel commented quietly. Upon second thought, he realized they might not even need to lay any incriminating evidence, as few would think a hit on an independent business like this would be the work of rebels fighting the Empire. Following his companion up to the generator, he also retrieved his DH-7 and set the blaster to its stun setting. "Just to make sure," he commented, blasting the power matrix once again for good measure. Devrim had no idea whether it did any good or not — power cores weren't exactly his specialty.

Approaching the door of the generator room, he pressed the control panel to open the door, which slid open quietly to open the way. A long, narrow corridor met the eyes of the two rebel invaders. Though normally the space would be well-lit, now that the main generator was kapoof only emergency lights illuminated their path. Off in the distance, they could hear muffled shouts and confused voices. Clearly, they were not expecting a power outage of this magnitude. Waving his companion onward, they continued down the hallway, coming to a T-junction. Pausing and craning his neck around the corners, looking left and right, Devrim found that the directions to the control room were marked clearly for them to follow. ♦ Continuing onward, he took a breath to prepare himself as he opened the door.

Surprisingly, upon entering the security room, the emergency lights revealed that there was only one guard inside. ♦ Still having his DH-7 at the ready, Devrim raised it and fired a shot at the single guard. Hitting him squarely in the head, the man flipped backward over his chair and into a heap on the floor, unconscious. ♦ No alarm had been sounded, and none knew that they had even entered the room. Moving to one side of the large control panel, Devrim scanned over the myriad of controls that managed the systems of the database center. "Time for a blackout," he commented to his companion.

@Shalken​

 

[Toland Vult]

Having made short work of shorting out the generator, they quickly moved from the breaker room out back into the hallway. While their presence had not been completely noticed, the power outage would certainly draw the rest of the security out to investigate. Toland and Devrim would have to move even faster to complete their mission before the facility went into total lockdown.

R5R pushed into his shoulder, Toland kept his head down and footsteps silent as he followed along behind Devrim, covering their rear. Though he heard several muffled voices in the distance, none of them entered the hallway that the two Rebels took. Luckily, the directions to the control room were openly displayed along the wall. How convenient. It seemed directions would be the least of their worries, however. Entering the designated room, a single guard could be seen stooped over one of the screens, trying in vain to get it to boot up. His struggle did not last much longer as Devrim quickly incapacitated him with his DH-7. Striding into the room, Toland headed for what looked like the primary console. An idea suddenly occurred to him before he continued his work, however. "Maybe we can glean important information from this end," the ex-imperial thought aloud as he plugged a drive in, running a query through its database to find anything of value. Luckily enough, he located a file titled 't5_shield_generator_print.doc'. "Bingo," he muttered, downloading the file. It likely wasn't as updated as the version they would be retrieving elsewhere, but perhaps if that operation fell through then they could use this as backup. However, because of his limited experience in computer navigation, this set off an alarm within the facility.♦ His eyes darted towards the door, as the thumping of heavy boots drew closer by the second. Quickly extracting the datachip, Toland stashed it in his belt before executing a system reset with a new password lockout. That would take them days to fix — plenty of time for the rebels to carry out the second part of their raid. Much to Toland's chagrin, a loading screen popped up on the monitor; and while it was filling quickly enough, it required a final manual activation, delaying him and Devrim for longer than he would have liked.♦

The pounding on the door had already begun while he was clacking away on the keyboard, and moments after he finished his work two♦ guards busted through. Despite his fiddling around with the console, Toland reaction time was excellent, and managed to land a stun bolt on each of their torsos.♦ However, they were not wholly unprepared for intruders, and while both of them flinched in pain from their spasming muscles, it would take more than that to completely knock them out of the fight.

 

[Devrim Wolfe]

"Good idea," Devrim commented, getting to work at the controls himself while Toland tapped away at the main console. The dark-haired rebel ran some basic commands, causing a fatal error in the electrical systems at the database center. Looking at the cameras that monitored the place, he saw them go dim as the vast majority of the lights powered out and were replaced by the ones powered by the emergency generators. Nodding in satisfaction, he pressed a few more buttons that caused the cameras to black out entirely. It was the best he could do from this end — the rest he would need to do in person. Devrim already had a companion in mind for the mission, seeing as Toland had other things to attend to in the meantime.

Hearing the muttered exclamation from his companion, Devrim strode over to Toland's side to observe what he had gleaned from the systems here at the control center. The rebel raised an eyebrow in extreme interest as he saw the file copied over to the datachip — this would make things much easier once he managed to get inside the database center itself. Unfortunately, his intrusion caused an alarm to blare out across the facility, drawing the attention of more guards toward their location. "Blast," Devrim cursed under his breath, drawing his DH-7 along with his companion and leveling it at the door as they burst through. Toland managed to fire off shots first, accurately impacting both of the men but failing to knock them completely unconscious. Devrim followed up with two of his own shots, which combined with being hit a second before and sent both of them to the ground. ♦ "Let's get out of here," the rebel stated, blasting the control panel for good measure.

Thankfully, both of them would find their exit far more smooth than their entrance. Escaping from the same way they came, both rebels disappeared into the night — with Devrim preparing himself to hit the database itself while it was still vulnerable. He already knew exactly who he would call upon for the mission — Ner'Giza, a Twi'lek who had proven herself an excellent companion in a fight back on Ryloth. Hopefully it would not be long before they acquired everything they needed for the shield generator to be completed on the Phaeda Moon Base.

Fin​

@Shalken​