Rise of the Rebellion
The Rebel Alliance => Alliance Intelligence => Topic started by: GM Craig on December 30, 2016, 10:22:19 AM
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The transport takes off, and in short order you are in hyperspace. It's a little over 4 days in transit, so you have some time to sort out a few things, and make some plans.
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It wasn't long after the transition to hyperspace when Trax was sitting in the common room, his mood well soured since their surprise, to him anyway, guest was announced and had boarded. Maris' presence was not only unwelcome in a personal sense, but it also posed a significant threat to Nim's safety.
"Let's just get this over with." He grumbled to himself before standing and walking over to a panel. He hit the comm to send a general broadcast throughout the ship.
"Time to start talking plans and tactics. In the common room." He said before hitting the panel again to turn the comm off and going back to his seat.
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A few moments later, Maris appears in the doorway. She glances around, and takes a seat a short distance from Trax on the opposite side of the table.
"Before she gets there, I want you to know I tried to talk her out of the whole 'me' business. She thinks I can help out, and I can. But you know better than her what we're going to come up against sooner or later. I don't want anyone taking the fall for me, so if anything like that happens, I'm going to make as much noise as I can and get their attention on me. You - your job is to get Nim someplace safe, salvage the operation or cut your losses, and get clear. That work for you?"
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Trax was a little stunned. It was a very selfless statement.
"I can work with that." he replied with a small nod. The man's tone was significantly less irritated than it was over the comm. In fact, his tone carried with it some of his surprise and even some measure of respect for the Jedi at having even made the offer.
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"Right. She promised no 'thrilling heroics' but you know how impulsive she can be."
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Trax couldn't help the small smile that crept across his face.
"Yeah, I know.
When things go sideways it'll be a fight to make her live up to that promise."
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Nim walked in and stopped abruptly, definitely not expecting the pair to be alone together. Her eyes flicked from one to the other suspiciously before sitting down. Now what would they have been talking about...
"Whatsup?"
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Trax looked at Nim as the woman stood in the door way. Thanks to her training he was able to read what she was thinking. His gaze followed her as she took a seat and he looked directly at her.
We were talking about you.
"Setting the whole 'we're a team' aside for now, we need to plan for what happens when the Empire catches up with us. Nim, you and I are likely to draw pretty standard attention, you said the public contracts had been rescinded but they'll have their own squads they'll use and they're likely to be pretty standard, a number of well trained troopers."
Trax turned to Maris.
"You on the other hand, I'm not sure. Obviously they've been sending hunters specifically trained to deal with Jedi, and they may very well continue to do that. But I'm guessing they've sent more than just hunters after you in the past?
But let's start with the hunters anyway, their primary weapon is unlikely to be a blaster unless it's a repeater. But they're very unwieldy in close quarters so even that's fairly unlikely.
Which means explosive type weapons, which is fairly limited if the goal is live capture, sonic weapons, flame projectors, anything that your saber can't deflect. So what have they used against you?"
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She shakes her head. "Repeaters yeah, set for burst fire. They'll use plasma flamethrowers, scatter blasters, scatterguns, grenades, and cluster bombs. I can block or catch blaster bolts pretty easily, but area effect weapons are a lot harder to counter. My only real option then is escape and evade. They will even be effective against me when I cloak. They'll try to set traps as much as possible - stun nets, mines, bombs - to knock me off guard before them come in. They know the more they can hurt me in advance, the less effective I am. The last few years before I went to ground, they were coming with teams specially trained and equipped, to keep the pressure up. Avoiding 5 cluster bombs is tough. Avoiding 20 from 4 directions is a whole other level of hard. All it takes is one to get through and tag me and I'm vulnerable for a few seconds until i can bring my defences back up."
[PM sent to Nim.]
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"I don't think it'll just be standard squads. Well, maybe for me, I'm a tech, which I'm fairly sure means live capture only. You though, they know you well now. Between the carnage you wrought on the mountaintop and the likely recorded escapades on the station I'm going to guess dead or alive. More than just standard troopers and probably internally hired indy and imperial hunters with a much more sizable bounty than you previously had."
"Also, flechettes. Extremely difficult to deflect with a saber due to how many can be launched at once. Nasty little things especially fired overhead."
She looked a bit apologetic to Maris. "Never used one, but it was a favorite for droid troops in the Clone Wars for close combat. Boring-as-kark military history class I tried skipping out on was good for something at least."
Ooc: Craig beat me to it :)
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"How big have the teams they sent been?"
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Maris frowns. "Biggest I've seen was ten. After that, they started sending inquisitors. Those are tough in a different way."
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The wheels in Trax's head were spinning.
Ten...could take a few out before they realized she isn't alone...then it gets tricky. But a few might be enough.
"The traps they set up, they try to force you where they want you to go...I wonder if we can equip Buzz with some tools to safely set them off ahead of you...any thoughts on how they do end up finding you?"
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"Not so much force me a certain way as they learn the ways I take and set traps on them. They can find me so many ways... DNA sniffers, spies, probe droids, pheromone tracers. I can't stay cloaked all the time, and even cloaked I leave traces. Inquisitors can sense me even if they don't know exactly where I am. I try to be unpredictable, but I need to eat and drink, which means interacting with folk at some point even if it is just to steal from them. I can be a ghost, but I'm a ghost that leaves footprints. I can sense danger, but not when I'm cloaked. Cloaking is a great defence ability, but it also makes me vulnerable because it takes intense concentration."
She pauses here, and holds up a hand. "Look, keep in mind that I have beaten every team sent against me but two. There's not many tricks they can use against me that I haven't already seen."
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"And I'm not discounting that fact, I'd be an idiot if I did. But we," Trax indicated Nim and himself.
"Need to be just as prepared as you seeing as we'll likely be in the line of fire as well." He paused, wondering if his choice of wording was enough that Maris understood he was sticking to their arrangement of his job was to make sure Nim was safe, while Nim would hear it as his intentions were to actually help the jedi. The only problem there was Nim's ability to read people.
"We'll get back to the how they found you in a bit, what's an inquisitor?"
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"They're a secret arm of Imperial Intelligence made up of force-sensitives. Force-sensitive children are taken and raised by the Empire. Or sometimes a captured Jedi falls and joins them. Some were force-sensitive mercenaries recruited by the Empire. That thing we fought on our way out of Horuz was an Inquisitor. They're not powerful enough to be a direct threat to the emperor, but strong enough to be useful hunting down Jedi renegades. And that is their job - hunting Jedi and renegade force-sensitives, Jedi and Sith relics, anything that has to do with the Force."
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"Thankfully that is one less to deal with. HQ believes they'd keep her at the station, guarding their asset. Assuming she wasn't spaced for letting the senators escape."
She turned to Maris. "Thank you for being so forthcoming. It must be very difficult to speak of this. But it will help us greatly in staying ahead and it may help the Alliance in the long run too. Manui Dat Cognitio Vires - Knowledge gives strength to the arm."
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Maris nods at you both. "I want to help."
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Trax's entire body tensed up when Maris mentioned that the inquisitors were force users. It took all he had not to grind his teeth and keep from letting out a growl. The man took a few, slow, deep breaths.
"Okay," he said slowly through clenched teeth before speaking normally.
"So we can use the same tactics against them that the hunters use against you. Just with looking to minimize the collatoral damage." Trax paused, still working on trying to relax himself.
"Any idea of how many of them there are or how powerful some of them might be?" He asked, unsure if he really wanted to know the answers but at the same time, he had to know.
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Maris gives a shrug. "Couple dozen maybe, at a guess? The numbers fluctuate a lot. But there's something else you should know. Inquisitors are all trained for combat, but when I got nabbed the last time, there was someone else with them. Different get-up. They were some sort of Force adept, but they were not a fighter. I don't know what they were, but it's something I've never seen before. Can't be too many of those around, but they'll be a factor."
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"HQ put their best guess at ten," she replied softly to Trax, lightly laying the tips of her fingers of one hand on his own. "Ten left, I mean. Galen I assume was no longer counted and we know of Sing and that Inquisitor."
At the mention of the 'other' she turned back to Maris, her pale sapphire eyes studying her intensely. "Can you describe this adept? Human, alien? Clothes? Did they seem powerful? Have authority?"
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She chews her lip for a moment, and you are both struck again at how young she can seem.
"It seemed like they were rivals - this guy and in inquisitors. I didn't get a good look at him - he had a cloak with the hood up, and I was fighting three inquisitors. But he had a metal leg, left side, and had a synthesized voice. Older guy. From their talk, I thought he was a tracker of some kind. They chased me down like they knew where I was going to be. During the fight, he did something. I don't even know what, but I went from holding my own to moving like I had sandbags tied to all my limbs. The inquisitors disarmed me, trussed me up, and put me in stasis. I woke up on the station in Horuz."
She has started speaking faster, and is pausing for breaths.
[PM sent to Nim.]
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Nim nodded and started pulling out a pack of cigarillos and tossed it on the table in front if Maris, after inviting herself to one, of course. She offered a light and turned to Trax with a very purposeful look. It was obvious she was changing gears for some reason and breaking up the intense questioning of the zabrak.
"I believe it's your turn, Trax. I worked for a lot of bounty hunters but not in this capacity. I just provided data on acquisitions so I don't really know the game. I don't know how they think. I managed to keep ahead of imps via tech and hiding in plain sight - ah the irony between us." She slightly smiled to Maris. "Granted, I was also 'small potatoes.' They wouldn't know the lengths that I took to kark with them. I pray to the Maker they still don't. The network is a thing of beauty."
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Maris reaches for the pack and draws one out. Trax and Nim can see her hands are shaking, and she fumbles her igniter trying to get the thing lit.
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When Maris chewed her lip it brought him back to the encounter on the way back from Horuz. This woman, she had at her will dangerous powers and Trax had been on the business end of what was most likely only a very small sampling of them. She was a monster.
Yet here, now, just as in the quarters two months ago he'd seen something else, a scared child. Trax's body lost all its tension, even the look on his face softened.
Very slowly he reached out with his hands.
"We're going to help, as much as we can, to make sure that doesn't happen again." He said softly, and surprisingly enough, a tone that actually carried some concern for the Jedi.
[OOC: Trax is looking to help her with the lighter but seeing as I don't know how she'd react to him reaching out I figured I'd let you post how that goes.]
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A breath caught in her chest. Was she really witnessing this? Nim dared not speak nor breathe, as if either would shatter the illusion of Trax actually showing concern for Maris. Had she not been able to read him so well she might have thought it was phony.
Was this actual progress? Those few seconds suddenly gave her much more hope than she had had before that the two of them could heal old wounds by working together.
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Maris struggles with the igniter a moment longer before Trax reaches out slowly.
"We're going to help, as much as we can, to make sure that doesn't happen again," he says in a soft voice full of sincerity.
Trax gently takes the igniter out of her fingers. Holding it steady, he activates it. Maris glances up at him, unsure what to make of the situation. Not seeing any mockery or satisfaction in his face, and with her hands still shaking, she leans forward and takes a shaky puff to light the cigarra. She sits back, closes her eyes and breathes deep, holding her breath a moment before releasing it and a cloud of smoke.
She glances sideways at Trax, her eyes downcast, possibly as a gesture of thanks. She then turns sideways to the two of you and begins to smoke the cigarra as if it were a mission, or as if someone was going to take it from her.
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Trax very gently put the igniter on the table before slowly leaning back into his chair. He watched the young woman, his brow furrowed with concern. Remaining quiet for a time, he let Maris almost finish the cigarra before speaking.
"I can't say I know what that was, but I think I've encountered something similar." he began, his voice still soft.
"A few months ago, the KDF hatched a plan to hijack an imperial prison ship. As it turned out, Ch'lana had managed to get on board as well.
Once we dealt with the troopers, we found an old jedi woman in a stasis cell. She asked us to help Ch'lana, he had gone to face what she called a Hand of the Emperor, and a number of his guards. Niil and Collan were quick to jump on board, and figuring they'd just get themselves killed without help, I went along.
When we were fighting, I swear I felt lighter on my feet, quicker, more accurate. It had to be her doing. And I would guess if that's what she could do, it makes sense there are jedi that could do the opposite."
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[taking a liberty or two.]
She takes a last drag on her cigarro and stubs it out on the metal table.
Speaking harshly she glares at the two of you and says, "Yeah, well look, can we, um, talk about something else for a while?" She she seems to catch herself. She lowers her eyes and looks away as she adds in a softer voice, "Please?" She then takes another cigarro from the pack. She barely has it between her lips when Trax holds out the lit igniter for her. She glances up at him in gratitude and lights it.
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"Sure," Trax began. "Sorry." He added, apologizing for continuing that topic of discussion.
"Can we talk about what role you'll be playing on this job?" He asked, looking back and forth between Maris and Nim.
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Maris waves a hand at Trax. "Whatever Nim needs. She knows what I can do. But Nim asked you a question."
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A mildly confused look crossed Trax's face as he turned to look at Nim.
Question, what question? he wondered, recalling the conversation thus far.
Oh, right. How to think like a hunter and evade.
"Hunting starts with, something you can appreciate," he said to Nim.
"A good network. A contract will tell you where the acquisition originates from, where they were last seen, known associates if that information is available and so on. We use paid infochants and informants to fill in any gaps or to try to expand those details. Usually by then you've established patterns of behavior, so you watch for the acquisition and once you've found them, verify the patterns match what you're seeing and select a time and place for the capture.
That's what makes evasion essentially a stalling tactic. You can move to the opposite side of the galaxy, change your appearance, your habits, cut off ties to known associates and throw a wrench in the hunt for a while, but if the hunter and his network are good enough, and seriously dedicated to finding you, you will be found."
Trax paused.
"For us," the man indicated Nim and himself, "working with the Alliance will make disappearing impossible. Especially if they continue to send us on these political missions. There's no way not to be exposed, especially to a network like the Imperials have. That's why it's important we use your network to keep an eye on how close their network is getting to us. It gives us a chance to let them find us on our terms so we can be ready to deal with them.
I'd like to suggest changing your patterns but it's your call." he said turning to Maris.
"Regardless, if Nim can keep an eye on how close they're getting to you it'll give us a better chance at dealing with whatever is coming. Whether that be fight, or run.
But if we fight, and that means if they come for any of us, we have to try to do it where we know we aren't being watched and we cannot leave any survivors. Survivors and watchers will be able to pass on information about any tactics we use and they can plan to counter them."
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Nim raised a brow. "Explain 'survivors and watchers.' I know you're not talking about a rebel or some civ that just happened to be nearby."
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"Of course not." Trax began, though he couldn't help but not be surprised that's how his words might have sounded.
"Survivors means anyone a part of the team that directly attacked us. Watchers means anyone a part of the team that's there just for support services and the like, not directly involved in the fight."
Like whatever that jedi was that Maris enoucntered.
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Maris looks at you both, but says nothing.
[PM sent to Nim.]
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Nim also looked between the pair. "Support makes easy prisoners that HQ can sort out. I'd like for that to be the goal unless they decide to be heroes."
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Trax opened his mouth to object, but closed it right away and turned to Maris. On the station Ch'lana had said jedi had an obligation to minimize the loss of life. He didn't like it, but...
"Alright," he agreed with a small sigh.
"Secondaries will be targeted for capture."
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"I've only really got one other thing for now." Trax turned to Maris.
"I'd like you to consider not using your cloak. I understand that it's powerful, but so are the draw backs. And right now, as I see it anyway, your ability to sense danger is more valuable to yourself and us.
You're not on your own anymore, you've got two more sets of eyes and ears watching your back. So I was hoping you'd be willing to try using mundane means to alter your appearance, and actually be visible, but be normal, unremarkable, forgettable. If it's cold, dress warm, if you touch something hot, drop it and scream in pain. Don't be a powerful jedi.
If some two hundred pound poodo-for-brains challenges you in public, back down. Go kick his ass in private if you feel the need, but in public, walk away. Dodge and evade if he attacks, you're small enough people will accept that you're quick and light on your feet. But don't go tossing him to the ground." Trax paused briefly.
"Now this, is good and bad. Part of me would like you to be with Nim as much as possible. Let her give you some official role that makes it legit. Hopefully this way at least one of us would always be able to be at her side. The major down side to that of course is you become much more visible.
Again just things I'd like you to consider, making changes to patterns of behavior the Imps will be looking for. Some of it might work, some of it might not. But it's up to you. In the end, it's primarily your neck on the line here so you need to do what you think is best."
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She nods. "I'll give it some thought."
With that, you all have a lot to think about, and the meeting breaks up.