Chapter 2: Forges of Ithyari

[Drake 53]

As the team neared the door leading to the stairway, they saw that the hallway split off to the left and right. Before answering Atuarre, Tak peeked around the corners. When he saw no one to either side, he said, "Even though the Imperials have, for some reason, not locked down the factory, I'd venture a guess that they would still confine the crews to their quarters or safe rooms."

Tak stepped forward to open the door. "Locked," he said when it failed to give way. "Good." Not seeing any kind of access pad or card scanner, he drew his blaster and began tapping the durasteel door randomly until the pitch of the strikes became higher, like there was something behind the metal. After tapping a couple more times to make sure, Tak took a step back and fired his blaster three times, into the place where he was tapping, until there remained only a crater of slag.

When he pushed the door, it slid open.

"Magnetic lock," Tak said. "Luckily it wasn't a dead bolt otherwise I would have just melted the lock in place."

[Rogue 4]

"Glad you think of these things before you shoot the lock." Layla said with a sigh and a small smirk of amusement as she slipped past him and into the room. She took the lead, treading carefully down the stairwell, the nose of her blaster rifle always moving ahead of her around corners.

"Looks clear, handsome." She said with a frown. "Something about thise seems just too weird. Why haven't we been attacked yet? It's not like we came in here stealthily, we blew apart their defenses, and rather loudly I might add."

[Drake 53]

"Nothing up here is terribly important," Tak said as they descended the stairs. "They'll most likely be guarding the entrances to the factory floor and ordnance bays with much more interest."

[Ender 8]

With some effort, Jaim managed to stand up and remove his flightsuit, changing into an extra pair of fatigues that were in his survival bag. Unfortunately, his blaster carbine and DL-44 had been in his X-wing, leaving him with only a holdout blaster, a knife, and two grenades to help his squadronmates.

After his inventory was complete, Jaim set out through the jungle towards the installation.

[Radioactive Isotope 29]

"So instead of a welcoming committee, we get an exiting committee." Atuarre chuffed quietly at her own joke.

[Mara 29]

"No, sir," Kaden answered. "Maybe shrapnel, maybe a stray shot. Artie may have caught something."

He quickly spoke to his droid, making sure he had still been actively recording from his place in the socket. Kaden hoped his dome had been facing the same direction as where Jaim's fighter had been hit. Otherwise, they may never know.

"Transferring all recordings from the last fifteen minutes..."

Edited March 25, 2008 by Mara

[Ender 8]

Jaim didn't have to go far to find the source of his current trouble. A few hundred yards from where he landed, Jaim came across a squad of stormtroopers, one of whom was holding a shoulder-mounted concussion missile launcher.

Swearing under his breath, Jaim pulled out one of his grenades and threw it into the group. With his other hand, he raised his blaster and shot the missile trooper in the side of the head. Then, he started running, ducking blaster bolts.

[Mara 29]

While he waited for the lieutenant to respond, Kaden banked his X-wing looking for anything that might have been the source of his wingmate's crash. With the jungle surrounding them on almost all sides with the buildings on the other, there wasn't much open space to look in.

He frowned and headed his ship back to the other two. But then he heard a muffled blast coming from the area to the starboard side, in the jungle. The fighters and anti-air weapons had been taken care of.

Only one place that could have come from...

"Lieutenant? Did you hear that?"

[Rogue 4]

Nat's eyes flicked in the direction of the noise. "I heard it, Eleven. That has to be . Ven tells me that he was hit by a concussion missile, probably shoulder mounted."

His lekku flicked in thought as he tried to figure out their next move. When they'd made these plans, they hadn't counted on a pilot going EV. "Eleven, I want you to pair up with Six and make another pass on the shields. Weaken them and bring down the generator. Ven says Twelve had enough time to go EV, so there's a good chance he's still down there. I'm going to take a closer look."

He split from the formation, making way for Kaden Staal to fill his spot as he veered towards Jaim's last known coordinates. Captain Fae could say whatever she wanted about him being cold, and uncaring, but Nat Riamor wasn't as cold as she thought him to be. As aloof as he may be most of the time, Jaim was his squadronmate, a man under his direct command. A comrade in arms. And right now he was grounded in an enemy warzone.

Nat was going to do whatever was in his power to fix that. "Ven, scan the surface for lifesigns. And set the secondary comm channel to Jaim's personal comm unit."

His astromech tootled in response, setting to work

----

Layla laughed quietly at her wingmate's humor, conti nuing to lead them forward down the stairs. As they reached the bottom they found a door like the one above. She sneaked a quick look before ducking back against the wall. "Looks like we've got a party to crash."

[Mara 29]

"Yes, sir." He moved his X-wing over by Aston's, and, once the young man was following him on his wing, made his way towards the ammunitions building, feeling relieved.

Jaim's departure had been a little too close for comfort and deja vu of the previous year. If the lieutenant hadn't stepped in, Kaden felt that he would have taken his fighter down in the jungle. He didn't need anything like that weighing over him again. He needed to be flying, not stuck on Coruscant on a base doing nothing.

He needed to focus on what he was doing.

"All right, Six, let's strafe... Artie hopes to have a lock on the generators in the next few seconds. We'll take those out on the second pass."

The two of them moved towards the building, lasers a'blazing at the shields. They all bounced off, but afterwards, the shields looked considerably weaker.

[Rogue 4]

Nat redirected his energy from lasers to bolster his shields as he flew low to the ground, broadcasting on Jaim's frequency as he went. He knew that if he stumbled upon a concussion launcher that would help save his X-wing from the blast.

"Twelve, this is Five, do you copy?" He spoke over the comm, scanning the ground for any sign of Jaim Adarra. Unfortunatly the tree-cover didn't give him much to go by. "Twelve, do you read me?" he repeated.

"Ven, see what you can do to boost the signal." the Twilek Lieutenant asked, concern in his voice. "Twelve, do you copy...?"

Edited March 26, 2008 by Rogue

[Mara 29]

Artie beeped short and loudly.

"All right, we've got a lock... Six, you keep on the shields, I'll go after the generator. Keep them occupied." Kaden quadded his lasers and turned away from his temporary wingmate off to the starboard side of the building and poured all the energy into a small bulbous-looking appendage. Didn't look like a shield generator but Artie had marked it as where the shields' energy was coming from.

Kaden targeted the area and let loose his lasers on it, hoping that Aston was keeping the outside of the building and shields busy. They would need both of their efforts to take down the shields without using torps.

[Bad furday 57]

Jya examined the small door for a few minutes. Taking a scanner out of her pack, she ran it over the surface of the door, checking the metal's thickness.

"It's not reinforced, like those loading doors, so..." Jya smirked at everyone " I'll do this as quietly as I can!"

The others snickered, as she dug through her pack. Not finding what she was looking for, Jya began searching her flightsuit's pockets.

Finally her hands emerged victorious, holding four charges that were little bigger than a credit chip.

"I'll put one at each corner. The explosion won't be strong enough to completely destroy the door, but it will be quiet.

Once the charges have gone off, the corners will be destroyed, but the middle of the door will still be there. A simple kick should cause

the remaining part to cave in."

The rest of the group stood back as Jya laid the explosives, set the timer, and joined them.

After a few seconds, the doorway was obscured with a flash and a muffled 'whump!' filled the air.

When the smoke cleared, the door was as Jya said it would be - a rectangle of warped durasteel weakly hanging from the plus shaped (+) remnants of the original door.

Jya shielded herself with the largest part and peeked around the door. The entryway was empty, and from what she could see and hear, no alarm had gone off.

"Looks clear!" she told the others, as she prepared to kick in the door.

[Ayingel 24]

Szen braced herself for a loud explosion, but was happy when it was very muffled. Looking through one of the bottom holes in the door, she didn't see any feet from guards or the like. She called out. "Do you see any cameras Jya?"

[Ender 8]

Jaim, running full on, barely heard Nat's message, what with the blasterfire and very large trees to dodge. He knew he couldn't keep this up much longer, so with a great leap he dove behind a fallen tree trunk and fired his blaster at his pursuers, hoping to make them duck down.

With the break, he pulled off his comm. "I'm a little busy, Lieutenant!" He threw aside the comm to shoot another stormtrooper trying to sneak up on him.

[Rogue 4]

Nat breathed an audible sound of relief when he heard Jaim's voice go over the comm. He was still alive. Looking quickly around, the Lieutenant soon found the source of his pilot's troubles in the form of blasterfire. "On it." he commed. Taking a second to figure out where Jaim was from the direction of the enemy blasterfire, Riamor came in, turrets blazing in an attempt to take out some of the troopers that had taken to swarm him.

[Bad furday 57]

"There's one cam where the entryway meets the main corridor. I think a blaster shot will take it out." replied Jya, looking around the other side of the ruined door.

Jya waited for the camera to begin panning towards the entryway. She aimed her blaster though one of the holes in the door and fired. The camera failed with a shower of sparks, and hung limply against the wall.

"NOW it's clear!"

[Mara 29]

After a second pass, the small generator exploded, and the shield winked out on Kaden's display.

"Shields down!" He took his X-wing back and around, followed by Aston Kendall, in order to have a straight shot at the ammunitions building. After arming his last proton torpedo, he sent Artie to scanning the building for further weak spots. Hopefully, two well-placed torps would collapse it just as well as the hangar. Especially if at least one penetrated deep enough inside to ignite the ammo.

Kaden scanned through Artie's findings as they came in, waiting for further instructions. If Jaim was anywhere in the surrounding jungle near the building, it might be a bad idea to detonate it. There was no telling how much ammo was inside.

[Rogue 4]

Suddenly Lieutenant Riamor's voice came over the comm unit. "I found Twelve. He's about a quarter mile from the target. What's you're status, Eleven, Six?"

[Mara 29]

"Sir, the shields are down. Waiting for our next move. Explosion radius could be large. You may need to get him out of there before we take down the target."

[edit: just removing extra quotation marks...]

Edited March 26, 2008 by Mara

[Rogue 4]

"Copy, Eleven." Nat responded as he poured laserfire into the enemies on the ground, a tree falling on top of some of the troopers. "Proceed with caution. Take out the communication towers before proceeding onto the main target."

Switching back over to secondary communications, he directed Jaim. "Twelve, there's about to be a big explosion coming in your direction! There's an armored transport just north of your position. You have about a minute. I'll provide cover fire."

[Drake 53]

Takeshi nodded and asked, "How big of party are we talking about?"

"I counted six, hun, but the hallway turns a bend." Layla said with a frown. "Could be any number around the corner."

Edited March 27, 2008 by Rogue

[Mara 29]

"Yes, sir."

He added the communications array to his targeting computer. "Six, you heard the Lt. Focus all firepower on the communications placements."

Kaden took his fighter in a roll towards the communications towers, requadding his lasers, with Aston Kendall following him.

[Ender 8]

"Copy, LT. Going now."

Expending the last of his blaster's power pack, Jaim leaped up and ran full out in the direction Nat directed. It wasn't particularly easy, since there were still a few stormtroopers left alive, and his leg hurt like all nine hells. He made it to the transport, but not without a new blaster graze on his left shoulder.

Luckily for him, the hatch was unlocked, and he was able to clamber in and start the vehicle.

"Five, I'm in and gunning for it. How much time do I have?"

[Rogue 4]

"We fire as soon as you're out of range." Nat told him, covering him from the air.