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Darth Vader     ABOVE RODIA, IN A GALAXY FAR FAR AWAY...

In their previous encounter with Imperial forces, a team assembled by Juno Eclipse had successfully raided a backwater imperial garrison on Tatooine. It was a token thing, placed there solely to facilitate the ongoing "deals" between the Empire and the Hutt cartels. There they had discovered the route of a future shipment full of "protection money" extorted from the Hutts by the Empire. Irony at its finest. The target is a lightly escorted variant of the Arquitens light cruiser, refitted to act as a vault ship and accompanied by a number of picket ships armed with TIE Fighters.

The precise means by which to divest the Empire of its cargo is a subject worthy of discussion. The cruiser is small and quick, but still larger by far than the light freighters to which our heroes are accustomed. The vault is bigger than their ships. So the question is, how to make away with the loot once they've gotten to it. Not that /getting/ to it is the easiest task.

Its longest intended stop before Coruscant is above Rodia, where the vessel is scheduled to arrange for /another/ shipment pick-up before heading on to its final destination. That's the only opportunity to strike at it before it's too far within the core worlds to be a feasible target.

But there is a complication.

Lord Vader had been present on Tatooine when the strike had occurred which lead to this information being leaked. Though he was off on other business, he was appraised of what had happened in the aftermath... and he had no cause to act with undue swiftness. Whomever these Rebels and sympathizers are, he knows where they will almost certainly be next.

That is the hidden danger of this heist.

USE THE FORCE CHECK: Uncertaintly has draped itself upon Rodia and its surroundings. It is not cold, it is not foreboding in itself. But either Rodia stands at a great confluence, or the Dark Side of the Force has so heavily clouded this place as to mask even its own creeping rot.

    MISSION OBJECTIVES
    * Board or crack the enemy vessel.
    * Raid the vault.
    * Escape alive.
    * (BONUS) ???
    * (BONUS) ???
Juno Eclipse   After successfully breaking into the Imperial data vault on Tatooine, Juno Eclipse has spent her time trying to formulate a strategy around a strike mission. Aside from the financial windfall of capturing a ship like this, succeeding in this venture would continue sending a positive message to the Rebel Alliance, which still distrust her.

  Rightfully so, Juno reflects gloomily. How many of their number had been killed by her own hand, or Galen's?

  Today, the Rogue Shadow has dropped out of hyperspace, but not in orbit of Rodia. Instead, its pilot had elected to find a place out of the way to drop hyperspace, to allow her to activate the cloaking device and slip in without being noticed.

  It meant a longer ride for her passengers, but it was worth it. Anybody complaining about the long trip would have been met with sarcasm and snark, which Juno happens to be pretty good at.

  Sarcasm is also a good way for her to hide her nerves.

  As the ship creeps into Imperial orbit, cloaking device fully engaged, the change in Juno's demeanour is almost visible. She's gone silent for the past hour, now, strain showing on her face as she guides the Rogue Shadow through Rodian orbit. It isn't just Imperial pickets that she's trying to avoid, but any and all starship traffic in the area. The Rogue Shadow is a difficult ship to spot -- but it wouldn't do to collide with something else, and in the right lighting, its black hull could still be seen.

  By an hour and a half of this, she flicks on the ship's internal speakers, letting her voice crackle to life in the cargo hold where her passengers are -- PROXY occupies the co-pilot's seat, helping her keep a handle on air traffic.

    [We're in position over Rodia. The Imperial ship is an Arquitens-class light cruiser, but it looks like it's been modified somehow, probably internally.]

  Licking dry lips, Juno glances at the pilot's console and continues.

    [I'm going to bring the Rogue Shadow in to board. I'll be dropping the lot of you off, and then I'm taking my ship out from the line of fire. Those TIEs are going to swarm the moment they know something's wrong.]

    [This is going to be delicate; we're going to have to weigh raiding this ship quickly against dealing with their escort. I can't fight those TIE fighters myself. The faster we can do this, the better. We can sabotage the engines, hold the pilots hostage or knock them out, or... something else; I don't know.]

    [The main point is that we do this quickly. Even if the Arquitens doesn't call for help, their escort may. We can't silence that many ships at once. We want to hit this ship hard, hit it fast, and then get out of here before they have a chance to drum up Imperial reinforcements.]

  Juno hesitates for a moment, before setting her hands to the controls, guiding the Rogue Shadow towards the Arquitens-class cruiser.

    [All right. If you're all ready, I'm taking you in.]
Kyra Hyral Kyra Hyral would know a thing or two about trust.

    As Rabbit, she would definitely be regarded with wariness. It was difficult to make the connection to why a Galandia-originating saboteur would take such interest in the activities of the Rebellion. She never really made her intentions clear, either, and her involvement with Juno would make her even more suspect. Oddly enough, Kyra seems okay with this. It's as if she's used to not really having the backup for endeavors-or very little backup.

    Sitting in one of the seats of the Rogue Shadow, Rabbit has been silent for the majority of the flight. Likely because, when she talks, she speaks with a very obvious computerized voice, created via some kind of text to speech program. It contains all of the quirks therein, including odd-sounding pronounciations. A blaster lies across her chest, secured via a strap over the shoulder.

    "I am ready." she intones, "Take us in, Blackout."
Toph Beifong     This won't be the first time Juno has gotten help from a blind girl. And if they're going to nab some stuff, then hey... why not tag along? If her metalbending can be of use, then Toph won't hesitate to bust up some more ships while sticking it to the Man. As in the big bad Empire.

    Even so, the girl isn't exactly the most comfortable when it comes to flight. Even less when they're far away from ground of any sort. So the other people on board the Rogue Shadow might be a bit surprised at Toph being quiet for most of the trip where she sits for herself in the corner of the cargo hold, her eyes closed as she works on bending a piece of durasteel into various shapes. At least it helps her focus and not stress out while waiting for them to arrive.

    The moment Juno speaks up over the speakers however, the blind girl opens her eyes and listens intently. So speed will be of the essence. That makes sense... getting caught or something is not something that sounds enticing at all, considering the Empire's track record. And Juno should know it better than the rest of them just what they're capable of.

    "I'm ready and itching to tear open some metal," Toph says over the radio, getting to her feet as she cracks her knuckles. After a long while of silence, it's time to get loud and break some stuff!
Kyle Katarn     "Ready." Kyle nods, even if he's listening to Juno via radio. He feels a chill of discomfort, not at the trip, but at the sort of feeling of nothing to sense. It's that effect one gets when there's too much effort being put into things not being detected, and Kyle is aware that's never a good sign.

    The lack of danger can sometimes be more suspicious than the feeling of any at all, in his experience. There's nothing he can do about his nerves other than steel them, and he does so with a brief swig from a flask of liquid courage, just enough of a nip to get him to focus more on the task itself.

    He's been careful to change his wardrobe, donning a mechanic's jumpsuit with the accompanying tools borrowed from Jan's personal collection, as well as a welder's mask for good measure. He gives Rabbit and Toph both a nod, confident they can do their job.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa did not bring the bluenose today, it wasn't right for this sort of job. Kotone had even altered her face mking use of her cybernetic nature to wear a face other than the one she wore normally. IT wasn't the hugest of changes but still it would help mess up trying to ID her as quickly if she was even exposed. She wore a half helmet which covered her face and was direcly linked into her body, adding addtional processing power and sensor systems. Given the nature of this raid? She was not holding back on any resoueces that she had on hand. She'd also brushed a bit moer on the lcoal coding and the like. For all the good it might do she was as ready as she was going to be, and as ever? She was wearing her stealth suit. She'd also brought a lot less lethal weapons as well to deal with things like catching the pilots and the like.

"I'll be a Spectre hopefully."
Kushiko On approach to Rodia, the Tenno contemplated. Weapons, which of her frames to use. It prompted her to select an elegant-looking bow to compliment a far more louder sidearm that resembled a lever action rifle minus the lengthy barrel along with her Nikana as her eyes flickered over the information being provided by the Rogue Shadow's pilot.

Cursory scans were necessary; the Tenno favored infiltrating ships through means that were generally not expected but the nature of ships that hailed from this universe may not provide the means to board by their typical means. The Liset stalked through the spaceways, cautious not to draw too close even with it's cloaking and sensor obfuscation of it's Voidmasking to keep it from being spotted with ease.

She did not have the means to necessarily carry a great deal of cargo herself directly but the Liset might be able to haul away the vault itself altogether depending on it's size. The Tenno, and the Lotus were collecting and scanning data remotely to see what could be used as a way to come aboard that ship: directly or indirectly by the fact it was loading up at Rodia.

Over secured comms, she disguises her voice, leaving it bereft of gender inflections as she speaks: <<"Even once we're boarded, we need to keep it from leaving. How big is the vault, would it be viable to steal the cruiser altogether, before abandoning it later?">> There's a lot of possible options, plans forming but it depends on what vectors are available for entry.

<<"TIE fighters,">> Kushiko points out. <<"Preparing Archwing. I'll be ready to go as soon as you let them off, Blackout.">> she finishes, cutting comms as the Liset banks and prepares to decloak once Juno brings the Rogue Shadow in on the vault ship. Based on where those TIE fighters go with the picket ships, she may not require her Archwing and simply board the cruiser once she's confident enough of exterior security.

The Tenno are no Force users, yet the sense of uncertainty regarding the mission itself does not escape the user of the Warframe. It is not something that she can associate to any one cause, leaving Kushiko in a far more anticipatory mindset than she normally would be in.
Darth Vader The approach and docking goes off without a hitch which, perhaps, is suspicious in itself. But the Rogue Shadow was designed by Vader's own hand, and if it could not fool the least of the Empire's vessels, then what good would come of it? Docking with the Cruiser is a little awkward however, as it has no typical hangar. The only place to dock is a forward port at the "nose" of the cruiser. On a star destroyer this position would come to a point, but here it divides in two, and this is where ships must interface with the vessel.

The Rogue Shadow attaches quietly. There is no response from the vault ship, or anything in the surroundings. Physically, this places the window of the Rogue Shadow's cockpit so that it looks upon the length of the cruiser, all the way up to its bridge. Eventually /someone/ is bound to notice that a docking has occurred if it stays here long.

What is going on on the underside and sides of the cruiser, however, is a blind spot.

As there is no expected boarding, and nothing is really going on, there isn't anyone watching the hatch. For the moment the ship can be entered freely and without issue, but that doubtless will not last for long. But things are not as they appear to be, and how could it be otherwise?

In this moment, it would be customary to hear the ominous gasp of a respirator hissing through the corridors. The smell of ozone, followed by a brilliant gleam of bloody red light. But this is not so, and it is because Darth Vader knows who is coming. He knows their aim, he knows their technology, and he knows their /presence/. His clouding of the surroundings is an impediment to the others here, but it is no impediment to him... and Juno Eclipse shines in his mind's eye like an approaching star.

The Sith Lord does not linger in the ships corridor's. Neither does he reside nearby in a ship of his own, though it is true that there is a vessel awaiting his call. No, he is standing in the shadows of the underbelly of the cruiser, magnetic boots clamping him firm to the hull. With a long stride, Vader steps forward to the place where the "dock" splits the ship. He kneels down and places an unobtrusive, circular device on the blind underbelly of the Rogue Shadow.

Then he straightens up, turns, and marches away towards the opposite end of the cruiser.

EARTHBENDER CHECK: The hull and interior of the ship is murky and bizarre, like a piece of meteor iron stretched on into infinity. Trying to peel it open isn't going to work-- it's not "earthy" enough to get that good of a grip on it.

There's a big mass of something that is a lot less /refined/ (though still about as bad as gold or platinum) in the middle, but whatever it is has been pounded into hard currency, and such metals tend not to have the sheer fortitude required to inflict damage on the armored plating the vault and surrounding ship are no doubt made of. On the upside, you definitely know /where/ it is. Naturally, it's damn near the center of the ship.
Kyle Katarn     Kyle's been on these ships before, and he knows them well enough to take the lead as the ship lands and everybody disembarks. Keeping his blaster and lightsaber concealed within his bag, Kyle motions for Toph, Kotone, and 'Rabbit' to follow him as he gets up from his seat and exits the vessel. "C'mon, I'll know where to go." He says, climbing into the cruiser once he helps the girls. They're gonna need the assist given their builds, unlike the more stocky and taller ex-Stormtrooper turned merc turned Jedi spy asskicker. "Minimal noise, minimal casualties, I don't want to make too much of a mess here." He reminds, climbing up when the ladies have gone.
Toph Beifong     The earthbender is quick to follow Kyle, and as he knows these types of ships then he should be able to lead them easily enough. Any help he offers her is declined though, and Toph is quick to make her way out of the ship and down the ramp as they exit the Rogue Shadow. However, the moment her feet touch the deck of the cruiser she comes to an abrupt halt. For several seconds she stands still, clearly concentrating before she couches down and places her hand on the metal there. "I don't know what they made this ship of, but... I can't get a clear look at it," she responds without bothering to hide the irritation in her voice. This was not according to plan, and it makes things a bit harder.

    Though she did see /something/ though, and she raises a hand, pointing towards the centre of the ship. "There's something different from the rest of the ship in that direction though... square in the middle." Just their luck, huh? Not that she expected a vault to be easily accessible from the docking bay, of course.

    "Just a heads up... I can't bend all of the materials in here, so cutting the vault out is not gonna happen anytime soon," she admits and warns the others, just so they know.
Kyra Hyral Unfortunately, Kyra is not force sensitive-not unless actually using a scan spell, which might yield some information. But right now, Kyra cannot cast /any/ spells. That is the price of her suit and the price required from her for stealth and a disguise. She is very aware that her own magical signature is very large and very unique-and the only way to hide it was to use a Silencer. Fortunately, there are models for such things available that are not the crueler ones used by law enforcement on her world.

    It is also half the reason she speaks in that computerized voice.

    "Copy." She intones curtly, leaving her chair and sliding into the cruiser, boarding and remaining alert as she scans the area. So far so good, but that has her a little worried. It's a bit of a disappointment that the vault cannot be removed: "We will have to extract as much as we can. Please, lead the way, Outcast."
Kushiko As much as there may be scans and other means of sensory investigation going out, there's nothing that beats a good old fashioned 'look out the window', most of the time. Granted such an option works only if there /are/ windows to be used: the lack of such measures coupled with the obfuscation present means that the presence of the figure clad in black is not something that is picked up on by the Tenno's Liset.

It's painfully quiet, Kushiko finds.

The Liset took up a brief blindspot of it's own, phasing out of cloak long enough for the underside of the vessel to spin, revealing first the Nova Prime frame, the figure pushing away from the ship as the Itzal Archwing was similarly released from the Liset. The Warframe was temporarily adrift as engines ignited on the Archwing, unfolding into wings as it banked and attached to Nova Prime, linking its life support systems to the Warframe.

The Fluctus, a heavy energy caster was pushed into the Warframe's hands, taking advantage of the low gravity environment to wield a weapon as big as the rest of her.

Once she was secured in the harness of the Archwing system, she cloaked again and repositioned, keeping on eye on the picket ships for activity and deploying of their TIE fighters as the Liset shimmered with the cloaking energy of the Void as well. If the group aboard managed to avoid detection, she was prepared to board the ship after the others were secure.
Darth Vader     INSIDE THE SHIP...

Although this is a cruiser, ships of this specific type are typically relatively undermanned. There is a bridge crew, there might be a handful of stormtroopers and droids, but on the whole they aren't fortresses. It depends a little on what is being carried and what precisely their mission is of course, but in this specific case the detail is fairly typical. The dock itself is unguarded because no one has a single good reason to be there, and the intrusion simply hasn't been detected. The ship is also quite linear, although as it has been modified it's difficulty to say exactly where the Vault might be located.

Normally, these ships are simply a series of straight lines with a turbolift that goes up to the bridge at the rear. Presumably, there must be a turbolift that heads towards the vault, but it remains to be seen where that might /be/. The corridors are not quite clear at the moment, and in the distance Toph can feel the occasional droid rattling about. Apart from the construction of the ship being alien, there's also some interference from the fact that much of the ship's /standard/ cargo is in metal containers.

The droids roaming around near them might as well be wearing camo to her senses, save when their feet fall or their wheels move.

There is one droid in particular that is /definitely/ moving in the direction of the group. But it has an odd walk to it, as if it cannot bend its knees properly. Very stiff, as well. It most likely /isn't/ a combatant. No one else is approaching.

    OUTSIDE THE SHIP...

The picket ships remain in a holding pattern, two above and two below the cruiser. They still do not appear aware of the intrusion at the moment, but it's almost certainly a matter of time unless things are truly squirrely here. On each of the ships, a TIE Fighter hangs from its bottom, connected by a thin tube. It would be possible to start popping them pre-emptively, but it would definitely get them scrambled in short order.

Vader halts near the rear of the ship, and remains still.
Kushiko It would be insanely easy to start popping those TIE fighters and going after the picket ships as well. But Kushiko is patient, and she knows better. It's a matter of time before conflict blooms, so she chooses to spend her time assessing the ships that she /can/ see. Cloaked as she is, she markets the positions and distances in meters.

But the options between hijacking the ship or simply grabbing what they could do and running remained fluid, so too did Kushiko. At least for the time being, the escort seemed unaware. Worse came to worse, she could very rapidly use her weaponry to fight on even terms--even terms being relative due to the power being wielded in a small package. More like uneven terms.

This left Kushiko and the Lotus monitoring the ongoing conditions on the inside of the ship itself. Kushiko scanned for an alternate point of intrustion along the topside of the ship in case her presence was necessary to assist the strike group on the inside.
Kyle Katarn     Kyle keeps his blaster hidden but easily drawn in the case of combat. There's a small amount of actual crewmen posted aboard this vessel, like most ships of this type. He does spy a droid here and there, but otherwise nothing worth mentioning as he leads the girls.

    He'll be going to search for the vault, choosing to go towards the center of the ship like his memory suggests. If he spies any threats ahead of the group, he'll call them out before taking cover.

    Otherwise, he remains unaware of Vader's presence...for now, anyways.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa stealths and moves to follow after Kyle they got a job to do irght and she's to shadow them anfd act as support as best she can here. Still she wonders just what are they biting off at the moment? She's not even sure just what will be in here, because with the Empire? You never really know. She moves slowly enough to not cause any obvious ripples, she knows it won't be forever until she's spotted but she cna hopefully go long enough. She'd already set she's tracking the power signaturs hopefully of the droids as she mvoes she keeps on alert, she's ready with her gear to disable the living crew. The droids? Whelp they might be in for a bit worse of a time but this is Kotone she's never needlessly crul it's just not in her nature really. She'll keep with Kyle out of sight however moving slowly and only the most perceptive person might notice the faint ripples from her movment.
Toph Beifong     The earthbender stays close to Kyle, letting him take the lead for now while also being ready to point out anything her feet notices that they might not see themselves. "They really haven't made it easy to navigate this place, have they...?" she mutters to Kyle and Kyra, doing her best to keep an 'eye' on their surroundings. Most of the droids just wander around doing their various tasks it appears, though she looks hesitant for a moment. "I... think there's a droid heading our way. And it's moving kinda weird and stiffly..." she warns them. It might be better to avoid it. Who knows, it might alert the crew that they are there. And then they will have even less time to nab whatever's in the vault. Either way, she gets ready, assuming a bending stance while Kyle and Kyra decide. Perhaps if they head down one of the other corridors...? "Outcast...?" she asks Kyle directly. Man, all of these codenames...
Kyra Hyral Meanwhile, as Kyra follows after Kyle, she activates a hidden camera on the helmet of her suit, which runs on non-Galiandan tech because Kyra currently has no MP to spare to power it. The connection to her magic particles has been temporarily severed by the silencing device. She does hear the rolling wheels and odd clicks associated with droid movement, something she's not wholly unfamiliar with, and carefully readies the blaster. But the idea of getting in as far as they could without alerting the whole ship or making a mess was one that Rabbit was keen on sticking close to.

    The hidden camera starts to record the corridors, guided by the ways that Kyra turns her head.
Darth Vader     INSIDE THE SHIP...

Expectations continue to be defied. What appears in the hallway before Kyle and company is not a battle droid, or even a clerical droid as is commonly the case on these older cruisers. It is a golden protocol droid with a single silver arm, that comes to an abrupt halt as it comes into sight of them. It raises both of its arms -- which do not move readily, as they are permanently bent into an awkward angle -- and proclaims, "I surrender!"

C-3P0 has had better days. This droid is very clearly /not/ a threat. It couldn't hold a blaster, let alone fire one. And even if it could, it would do so at the most awkward angles imaginable. As is, in fact, the case with simply raising it arms. It hasn't the capacity to raise them all the way at all.

The bustle of the ship doesn't seem to be too prominent in this corridor at the moment. If they hurry along, they can get where they're going and out fairly quickly. But they definitely need to do /some/thing with this dumb-looking droid. This is also the droid that Toph sensed coming.

The structural design of it is, at this close range, barely better than that of a three-legged table. Who the hell built this thing so funny?
Juno Eclipse   Hunching in the pilot's chair, Juno watches her allies disembark through security cameras in the Rogue Shadow. Once the last one leaves, she closes the hatch door, neatly retracts the boarding ramp, and flexes her fingers around the control yoke.

  Time to get away from the ship without alerting its pilots; she had docked close enough to form an airtight crossing from ship to ship... but this is why she's a master pilot. Delicate operations like this aren't beyond her skill level.

    [I'm withdrawing the Rogue Shadow from the Arquitens. I'll be attempting to slice into its security systems so I can keep an eye on the infiltration team, and avoiding combat unless I'm spotted.]

  Inching the ship away to avoid disturbing the Arquitens with the thrusters' backwash, she keeps a light hand on the controls, eyes flicking from the console to the sensor readouts.

    [Affirmative, Tenno. Keep the ship from retreating if the infiltration team fails to deal with the pilots.]

  She touches through a series of other commands.
    [Tenno, infiltration team is dispatched. Deploy the Archwing when ready. Imperial escort has not yet discovered the Rogue Shadow's position.]
Kyle Katarn     THat's C3PO, standing there in front of the group on this ship. "C-3PO? What are you doing here?" Kyle asks despite himself, confused beyond a doubt as he lowers his pistol.

    He's met the goldenrod on his world a few times on Luke's academy, annoying as hell but pretty genial and harmless all the same. Protocol droids usually act that way, generally. "...how did you get here, anyways?" He looks confused, shrugging when the others inevitably give the same questions as he keeps a distance from the droid.

    Something about this doesn't add up, but it's hard to figure out why.
Kyra Hyral "Outcast..." The eletronic voice of Rabbit croaks, "You know this droid?" Kyra lowers her weapon, watching it, clearly recognizing it as a noncombatant unit. Seriously, just /look/ at it, all shiny and gold. Nobody makes a combat droid out of gold plating. That's like making armor out of gold. Useless. "...are you with the Empire?" she asks cautiously, also growing a little suspicious about this.
Toph Beifong     The sudden exclamation from the droid makes the earthbender blink in confusion, and then she lowers her arms slightly. Yeah, not a threat, even she can see that. With that Toph sighs and points ahead. "If we hurry we can make it there without being found by more walking trash cans," she asides to the others. They can't just leave this robot here, otherwise it might alert the others.

    Though when Kyle seems to know the droid, Toph arches an eyebrow. "Wait... you /know/ this guy?" Okay, let them sort this out as long as it doesn't take too long.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa keeps stealthed she doesn't know the droid at all she starts to scan it passively looking for anything tht might be out of place. She knows the old trick on her world of modding civilian androids to bedisgused or even one model of combat unit that's a mobile humanoid landmine. She's on edge and she's agoing to keep an eye on this thing she doesn't trust it at all, she can think of a dozen way this droid could be a threat.
Darth Vader     ON THE ROGUE SHADOW...

Juno Eclipse attempts to slice into the security monitoring systems of the cruiser. This is accomplished with alarming speed and the /reason/ someone might want her to see what's going on in the ship flickers on screen shortly afterwards. A series of feeds split the screen several ways, but it is the feed in the lower righthand side that most clearly draws her attention. It is a picture of the ship's vault from a position just above the entryway. It is, indeed, filled sufficiently to constitute a hilarious swimming pool full of credits.

But the credits are not all that is there.

Stacks and stacks of deactivated droids flood the top of the hilarious swimming pool of money, and positioned at their center in front of the door is a man.

It is not Darth Vader.

Inquisitor Starkiller prowls the vault nervously. He is not wearing his helmet at the moment, but he /is/ wearing the sealed suit that accompanies it. There is doubtless a purpose for this, but at the moment the helm is tucked beneath his elbow. In his opposite hand he carries his lightsaber, but of all things he appears uncomfortable. With what, exactly, is difficult to say. There is no audio feed, but he does seem to be talking to somebody.

The mirror image of PROXY lingers among the presently inactive battle droids, and this PROXY speaks back.

At casual glance it would be easy to dismiss the man as a clone with no memories, no heart, no soul. Just pain and suffering. But he's not. It's plain as day that this copy, this clone, is no mere pale imitation that carries the power of Galen Marek, but that he is in fact Galen Marek in truth.

He is awkward, he prowls like some predatory beast while carrying on at his dysfunctional droid, and he fidgets with his equipment when he's uncomfortable.

Inquisitor Starkiller doesn't recognize that he's being watched. He is full of power, this much is true, but his /perceptions/ are lacking by far. She can see him heave an exasperated sigh, and put his helmet on at last. PROXY flickers between programs at his back.
Kushiko <<"Acknowledged.">> is the only word of note from Kushiko. It's masked severely enough that it's anyone's guess as to who exactly it was, and for good reason.

Within the cloaking field Itzal provides, she waited and watched, having deployed and stayung in close proximity to the ship until she felt the familiar twinge of imminent combat.

Then and only then would Nova Prime act.
Darth Vader     INSIDE THE SHIP...

"Oh, sir, it was just /dreadful/! Artoo insisted that it was our responsibility to liberate the treasures of this ship when it left Tatooine, but now I don't know where he's gone off to, and the Imperials have fitted me with a restraining bolt!" C-3P0 answers Kyle and the others, keeping its arms raised. It looks around at them all, "Thank the maker that you're here. Master Luke and Princess Leia must be /so/ worried. I would be most grateful if you would remove this restraining bolt and help me find R2."

To Kyra's questioning of their familiarity, and the others, the gold-and-silver droid turns and lowers a single hand to offer a handshake, "I am C-3P0, human-cyborg relations. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, though I'm terribly sorry to be such an imposition. I'm afraid that I'm quite useless in circumstances such as these."
Kyle Katarn     "Bad idea. What were you two thinking?" Kyle decides to humor the droid for the moment, shrugging. "He's been working for some friends of mine, normally he's been following Luke around from what I remember back home, but this isn't a good time to elaborate anything." He says to the girls, shrugging a shoulder.

    "Where is Artoo right now? What happened to Leia and Luke?" What about Han and Chewie? Or Lando? Kyle doesn't want to dig too deep just yet.
Kyra Hyral "Call me Rabbit. I cannot offer my real name for security purposes." Kyra intones through the text-to-speech module. At the offered hand, her own extends to grasp and shake his. "A pleasure, though I wish it were under different circumstances." She'll shake with her left hand and keep her right resting on her blaster. Toph had mentioned /multiple/ droids earlier and she's definitely going to assume that not all of them are friendly refugees.
Toph Beifong     "A restraining bolt?" Toph inquires, then steps forward. It does appear that this droid is friendly and familiar with Kyle. Removing the restraining bolt can't be too hard... but still, they /are/ on a tight schedule. Their goal is right down this corridor, towards the vault...

    While 3PO extends his hand to shake hands, Toph keeps her arms crossed where she stands, not even offering the poor droid a single glance even! Nor an introduction or even a silly alias. Instead she turns to head on down the hallway. "I don't think we have time to exchange too many stories in our busy schedule. Come on!"
Juno Eclipse   All business by this point, Juno's hands veritably fly over the controls, juggling the art of slicing into the security cameras along with actual piloting, careful to avoid any sort of orbital traffic. Her ship is hidden from the naked eye, but the ruse won't hold up if she actually collides with anything, to say nothing of catastrophic damage.

  The Rogue Shadow's systems overpower the Arquitens' security mainframe far too quickly. Frowning, she narrows her eyes. It's true that her ship has advanced systems, but it should have taken her more time. Even the most basic defenses should have slowed her down more than that. Could they really have left the system so unguarded?

  When the image resolves itself, Juno finds herself sucking in a breath through her teeth as her blood runs cold.

    [Blackout to infiltration team. Something's wrong. There's...]

  Juno tries to explain to them that there's a potential trap in the vault, because she knows for a fact that Galen is actually in his meditation chamber on her own ship, but the words stick in her throat.

  Quick as though, she keys in a series of commands, bringing up a second image, this time the Rogue Shadow's own security cameras. There he is, seated cross-legged in the middle of the meditation chamber. She'd told him he wasn't needed for this operation; that she would be piloting and away from the dangerous parts. Well, the more dangerous parts. She flips back to the feed of the Arquitens' security cameras.

  There's no mistaking that that man is Galen Marek, and there's no mistaking that he's not one of the failed clones. Those are barely people; failed husks powered by the negative aspects of the psyche brought out by the accelerated growth and memory flashes used to mature them.

  This is not one of those.

  Juno's jaw works, and she tries to say something into the headset she's wearing, but the words won't come. They're going to fight him if they get into that vault, and even though reason tells her that the Galen that she knows is safely aboard the ship, it doesn't stop the ice from twisting in her guts.

    [I...]

  Leaning back in her chair for a fleeting instant, Juno rips the tactical headset off, gulping air.

  "Captain Eclipse, are you alright?" PROXY turns, fixing her with his yellow photoreceptors, but even he seems to pause when he catches sight of the security feed. "How strange. I have no recollection of my master boarding that ship."

  "That's--that's because he didn't," she finally manages to croak. "That's a clone. But they're..."

    [I'm in the cameras. Something's wrong at the vault. Vader's--Vader's got a guard on it. Proceed with caution.]

  Her voice sounds very not okay.

    [Hurry up. We--we need to finish, and then we need to get out of here.]
Darth Vader     INSIDE THE SHIP...

"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Rabbit!"

It turns out that this protocol droid /is/ fishy as hell for a good reason. As Kyra takes its hand she will rapidly note three things. Firstly, it sounded far too happy to greet her. Secondly, it's moist. The golden covering on it is fresh, not fresh enough to drip, but fresh enough to wipe off on contact. Thirdly, as they shake hands, the droid's hand becomes /lethally electrified/ and she'll have to figure out a way to cope with that.

A series of whirring beeps and boops issues down the corridor as another droid appears. An astromech, barreling down the hallway on all three wheels as quick as it can go. Not that quick, truthfully, but at a fair clip. It, too, looks incredibly harmless.

All of its panels open up and guns come out. Of every single port. This thing has more guns than the entire assembled team, and some things that don't /look/ like guns at all. For instance, the thing that it fires at Kyle Katarn is an /ion rifle/ of all things. This will do relatively little to him /directly/, but it sure as hell won't play nice with those important things on his person.

Like, for instance, his lightsaber and blaster.

    OUTSIDE THE SHIP...

The alarm seems to have been raised. TIE Fighters begin to break off from the picket ships, but they don't seem to have /found/ the Rogue Shadow. They are simply forming into active patrols that begin sweeping the area in pairs of two. They fire into empty space, more than obviously looking for a cloaked ship.

    INSIDE THE VAULT...

Inquisitor Starkiller notices that he is being watched at last. He looks up at the camera, ignites his lightsaber, and exits the vault. The seal on his suit hisses shut, and it switches to internal life support. This is definitely about to turn into a running battle no matter what way it's cut. Somebody is going to have to distract all of these enemies, fill some bags full of cash, and book it.
Kyle Katarn     Turns out this was much easier than it should've been for a very good reason after all. Kyle swears loudly as he realizes too late just what 'C-3PO' is there for, and he realizes another droid is on the way as well, firing an ion blaster at him.

    Kyle draws his blaster pistol before he fires off a couple of shots, reaching out with his other hand to send a wave of Force energy to send the astro-assassin off its 'feet' while he scrambles to fire upon '3PO'. "I really hope that's not supposed to be Artoo!" he calls out, before his blaster clicks instead of firing.

    Oh shit, lucky droid took his gun out in the excitement. But he's not entirely unarmed, thankfully.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa has smiliar systems in her body to do tht but not to a lethal level generally, at least tghts how the upgrade was sold to her by Rory. Howrver the moment things go down with the dorid tries to kill Kyra and she now acts without even a beat. She pulls her knife and moves in, the cermanic blade is then moved swifly as she moves to drive the thing strait into the droids head and she'll twist hte hilt with such force if she connects she may take the droid with the force. If not she's going to attempt to start physically assailing it with the blade and at this point she could be made out but it's clear? Kotone is going to rip this thing apart.
Kyra Hyral The glove on Kyra's left hand makes squeaky noises against the 'protocol droid', one due to the material the suit is made out of and two because it's an unusually slippery grip...due to wet paint. That doesn't seem right.

    Lethal electricity also does not seem right.

    Even caught off guard by this, Kyra is not wholly defenseless. Prior engagements with Murasame security forces in the city of Ramuh have taught Kyra that she needed to make sure her armoring was very rubberized. Electricity of all stripes, especially in the case of trying to capture a fleeing criminal, was widely used within Ramuh and Souji's flunkies were no different. Too many times she found herself on the receiving end of high-powered stunner equipment, which demanded she adapt herself for future confrontations with KIRIN. This meant devising a good deal of insulation and opportunities for grounding in her 'disguise'. It's woven into the flexible, form-fitting material of the armor, from helmet to boots, gloves included. But while it can fend off nonlethal stunner blasts, it can only reduce what is meant to be a lethal blast of electricity to the point where it becomes stunner-quality to her. It makes it extremely difficult to break the circuit as her entire arm goes numb, but she manages to do so, jolting backwards in the air from the power involved. The rest of her crumples to the ground, twitching. Awkwardly, she tries to manuver her blaster around with her right hand to at least /aim/ it at the not-C-3PO.
Kushiko It wasn't until they began shooting blindly that Kushiko found reason to react.

If it had been simply patrol sweeps, she would have prepared to move and ensure she would not be stumbled upon. The red hot bolts of laser cannon fire scything through space was another matter that demanded a response.

Only a scant few moments to confirm whether or not to blow her cover was all Kushiko needed. From the cloaking field she turned not towards any of the TIEs actually nearest to the Rogue Shadow, but in fact fired at the ones furthest from it. Waves of lilac-purple plasma energy expanded out with every squeeze of the trigger, hurtling towards a pair of TIE fighters as they conducted their search. Easily avoidable if the pilots spotted them in time.

Which was what Kushiko was counting on, if they did: she engaged her Archwing's engines and emerged from her cloaking field, blitzing towards the TIEs she had opened fire on with the Fluctus. The ranged weapon was collapsed as she reached for the sword-shield combination of the Centaur to tear into the struts of the flying eyeballs if they managed to evade the salvo she had sent out.
Toph Beifong     The moment when Kyra gets a shocking realization, it takes a moment for Toph to understand just what is going on. "... Rabbit?" Okay, this is not good at all. Especially not with Juno's comments. Within seconds the hallway has become a battlefield with lasers and blaster shots going back and forth, making the blind girl let out a startled sound before she pulls back, doing her best to bend some cover with parts of the walls that are made of metal that she /can/ bend. This situation is way out of hand, and now the evil clone is coming towards them.

    Trusting that the others are able to handle the situation here, Toph rushes off towards the vault and making sure to head down the route that the evil clone isn't heading towards on them on. Hopefully she can make it past him without being noticed! This is less than ideal, though she grits her teeth together as she stays close to the wall and hurries as quickly as she can while still focusing on being quiet. Then again, sneaking out of the Beifong estate when she was a kid was never /this/ risky!
Darth Vader     INSIDE...

The screeching binary answer to Kyle Katarn is a string of threatening obscenities and not much else. This droid has some parts of Artoo down, but it certainly couldn't /pass/ for him. BT goes skidding down the hallway with a screech of alarm, mini-thrusters emerging from the sides of its legs to keep it upright. It lands at the end of the hall, and then begins to move forward again, laying down a positively bewildering array of suppressing fire even as it continues to roll forward.

000 is an assassin droid, not a protocol /or/ combat droid. Nevertheless, it isn't actually all as fragile as it might appear to be. It raises its free hand to intercept Kotone's attack-- though this is still enough to shear through its palm. Unfortunately, Kotone is a /machine/, and it has far fewer ways to kill machines than other humans.

000 turns to one side so that Kotone doesn't have as much access to the bulk of its body, and each stab shears away more and more of its arm. One of them makes contact with its torso, sending up a great shower of sparks and causing the droid to jerk terribly.

"Oh, dear! I hadn't expected you to survive that. Well, no matter, I am sure that you will die appropriately once I have drained you of all your blood. Beetee, if you please--" Awkward as its body is, and especially while under attack, 000 can't actually do anything about Kyra on the floor. She gets her chance to aim. She'll get her chance to shoot.

Toph flees through the fray towards the Vault. Talking an alternate route from the one that Starkiller is taking isn't terribly difficult, it's just an immediate right followed by a long corridor and capped with a couple of lefts. More importantly, when she arrives, there /is/ something that she can bend there. It's processed, but not obsessively purified to the point that no tiny imperfections can be found. Perhaps it's gold, or some relative thereof.

Regardless, the credit chits that fill the vault are the easy part.

The battle droids that activate and begin pointing arm-mounted weapons at her are the hard part. Not too hard, however. These are made of common metals and alloys, and perfectly susceptible to her shenanigans. They have a rather skeletal look to them, though a skeleton of /what/ one can't say. Some alien, perhaps.

    OUTSIDE...

The TIE Fighters find themselves under attack. As predicted the obvious projectile is evaded deftly by the initial wave chosen for destruction. They didn't expect somebody to come at them immediately afterwards with a bloody great sword... /thing/? They're not even sure what it is that's being used to attack them, though if they had survived their TIE Fighters breaking apart, surely they would describe the weapon as some sort of anti-ship sword.

There was a purpose to splitting up however, and Kushiko rapidly finds herself under fire from another angle. There are about fourteen fighters remaining, and they're not clustering up neatly at all. Some of them remain locked to their pattern -- about half -- while others break off to set themselves up for attack runs on the Archwing.

A pair of twin linked cannons flash fiercely as the first pair line up and open fire.
Kyle Katarn     "Yeah, thought not!" Kyle answers the droid, somehow understanding its loud and profane retort that even R2-D2 would blush at. If the little guy could blush, anyways. He draws his lightsaber, still running like hell while he blocks bolt after bolt after bolt with the blue blade while he closes the gap between himself and BeeTee.

    Once he's in range, he slashes at the astrodroid with his lightsaber, assuming he isn't overwhelmed with blaster bolts along the way, or BT has other tricks up its sleeve to deal with close-quarters combat. Either way, he doesn't have time to waste dealing with this crafty little bastard.
Kyra Hyral Suddenly Kyra is pretty glad that 'protocol droids' were so poorly designed. Though maybe that restraint they never removed is helping them here? Who knows what would have happened if they'd removed /that/! "How is it that you believe I have any blood for you to drain?" Kyra questions quite potently in her voice that somehow sounds a lot less human than 000 right now. "Perhaps I am an android as you are."

    At least her mouth seems to be working. The numbness is fading and Kyra can at least flop around enough to get 000 in the sights of her blaster. It takes a lot more effort to depress the trigger on the weapon to fire the red-hued blast.

    After firing, she awkwardly jabs a fist into one of her own ribs, grunting as she does so. The impact activates one of the embedded needles in the suit, which faces inward, and injects a liquid Remedy into her, which helps to clear the effects of being stunned much faster. Without access to her magic, after all, she had to take alternate precautionsn with her mixtures. It isn't long before Kyra is back up on her feet and firing even more judiciously at her would-be assassin.
Toph Beifong     The rush down to the vault goes well enough with no homicidal clone discovering her just yet, and Toph lets out a slight breath of relief as she stops outside the vault. Only to blink when she hears the sound of something activating. Wait, didn't Juno say there was /a/ guard? Are there more?! Crud...! As the droids behind pointing their weaponry towards her the metalbender has already raised her hands, quickly doing a few gestures towards them. Or rather, the metal in their arms, bending and twisting the common metal to the point of uselessness.

    With some luck she does manage to avoid being shot at, and she doesn't seem to feel too sorry for her actions when she extends both her palms, then closes them into fists and crushes the heads of the droids. "Sorry guys, but I'm going to need you..." Considering her relatively small size compared to other humans, Toph knows she can't carry all that much. Which means that she needs to improvise... Luckily it will only take her a few seconds as she grabs onto the droid remains and begins connecting them together with her bending, flattening them out as best as she can.

    And once she's happy with her makeshift little metal barge, she begins tossing as much credits on it that she possibly can.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa does her best to take down the droid, she knew something had been wrong with it and thankfully she was able to act in time. She doesn't stop however with her attack before she pulls away. The thing could explode however she does note.

"A disposable assassin."

She'll move to pull back to let others get their shots in. She however is getting nervous with the droid getting fragged things are going to heat up really fast. Oh so very fast she does her best to do some more damage though but it's time to get moving the moment kyra can move. However she does pull her own blasters now the knife is no longer in play and opens fire on the droid as well to make sure it goes down.

"We got to move it now Rabbit!"
Kushiko This is an unfortunate set of circumstances: the TIE pilots are actually catching on pretty quickly to her presence, and spreading out. That could make things difficult, but the TIEs were focused on Kushiko's frame as opposed to discovery of the Rogue Shadow.

That was one objective down. Partly, at least.

She twisted as twinlinked laser cannon fire glanced and flashfired across her shields, draining them rather sharply as she sped up to an impossibly fast speed. The winged battleframe expands the shield aspect of the anti-ship weapon, deflecting further impacts and ablating further harm they would cause.

And then she lines herself up upon the first TIE fighter, rolling left and janking right as she accelerates to terminal velocity right for the TIE fighter's forward canopy, bringing up that Centaur shield to unfold the twin-pronged blade to shove herself /through/ the eyeball cockpit.

Such an act should leave her terribly vulnerable regardless of success or failure but as soon as she strikes, a trail of energy spirals away from Nova Prime's position as she disappears due to the Itzal's ability to blink. A short-range teleport that can disrupt targeting locks temporarily, the energy involved means she could be found again, but the movement is far more instantaneous and is sending her at a completely different angle from the one she was traveling in.

This is when she expands a wave of energy outwards, releasing a set of eight combat drones from her Itzal's wings, four of them staying close as the cross-shaped drones fly forward and fire their lasers much like a fighter screen would as she sizes up her opposition.

She didn't get all of their attention, apparently. That would not do.
Juno Eclipse   With stealth systems fully active, the Rogue Shadow continues to thread its way through air traffic. It now has the added problem of having to evade the blisteringly fast manoeuvres of over a dozen TIE fighters. It's enough to have even Juno Eclipse sweating in her seat, but her hands are iron-steady over the controls of the ship. She manages to avoid several close shaves, rolling away from the encroaching TIE fighters before they can collide or see the warp of the cloaking field.

  It's taking every iota of concentration to stay abreast of the situation. Juno swallows, tossing her head to clear her hair from her face, eyes locked on the pilot's console. "PROXY, you handle the infiltration team. I've got to concentrate."

  "Of course, Captain Eclipse." The gangly droid reaches out to tap a few commands into his own console, and the lit displays of the security cameras wink out at Juno's console and light up on his.

    [Hello, infiltration team! This is PROXY, a holodroid in service to Captain Blackout. I'll be advising you through the rest of your infiltration, as Captain Blackout is quite occupied with avoiding TIE fighters.]

  His photoreceptors brighten and dim in time to his speech, and his skeletal, metallic fingers tap out commands as he goes.

    [It would appear that the droids you are fighting appear to be heavy modifications on an astromech and a protocol droid, but I'm afraid I have no idea what they're doing on an Arquitens-class freighter.]

  Juno wrenches the ship into a breathtakingly hard turn, gritting her teeth and narrowly avoiding the crackling, sizzling passage of blaster fire.

  PROXY doesn't seem affected at all, carrying on as though he did this all the time. His tone is almost aggravatingly polite and upbeat, in a droid-y sort of way.

    [I recommend finishing your objectives as soon as possible. We have only one escort against the TIE fighters, and it will be only a matter of time until the Rogue Shadow is discovered.]
Darth Vader     INSIDE...

Kyle charges down the hallway and leaps at Beetee. The little droid switches weapons, but not quick enough to stop the charge. It looks at first like Kyle might have to endure the effects of a flamethrower for his trouble, but as his blade descends it appears at first that he will cleave the murderous astromech in two. This is not, as it happens, what occurs. There is a great JERK as Beetee is pulled back and away, causing what might have been a killer stroke to drive a great divot in the astromech's dome, and then scrape the front of him relatively harmlessly from there.

Inquisitor Starkiller stands at the end of the hall, a hand outstretched. He had used his telekinesis to drag Beetee out of the way, which is very uncharacteristic of the wickedness that Darth Vader taught him. Indeed, the Galen Marek of /those/ times would fling droids as weapons as readily as save them. Whatever Vader has done with Inquisitor, it is not what he did with the original Galen.

Why?

But not all is different, and Inquisitor Starkiller is not lacking in any of the raw power of his counterpart. He raises both hands over the top of the little astromech droid, saber in one hand and the other merely clad in a clawed gauntlet, and /pours/ a great stream of Force Lightning down the hallway towards Kyle.

No finesse, no technique, but Starkiller's sheer OOMPH is a thing to be admired.

"Well then, we'll just have to /see/ if you have any bloody le--" Kyra opens fire and blows off 000's arm. Then she opens fire /again/, and gets the other one, alongside blasting a hole in its stomach. This seems to convince it to begin its retreat, shuffling away from Kyra and the others down a side corridor.

    IN THE VAULT...

Toph has no trouble bending the arms of the droids, though they do get a couple of shots off at her anyway. One of them demands, "What's going on-- ?!" In an obnoxious, high-pitched voice before being crunched into a makeshift barge.

This material's pretty bendable though. Toph could probably make herself some armor out of /money/ if she wanted. Now she just has to get it /out/, at any rate.

    OUTSIDE

A TIE pilot assumes that Kushiko is playing chicken with him and just keeps shooting at her when she charges him. On one hand, she plans to ram through him so she's probably going to get marked up for her effort (unless that shield holds quite persistently, at least). On the other, she... rams right through him, because he assumed she was playing chicken and not just executing a charging attack.

Another goes down as she deploys her drone escorts.

The two turbolaser turrets on the cruiser activate abruptly, adjusting their angle and opening fire on her and her escorts.

Worse yet, now the TIEs /do/ get the idea to keep spreading the hell out, and begin to actually keep their distance properly now instead of basically 'jousting' with lasers and anti-ship swords. A couple of the TIEs remaining on patrol break off together in pursuit of Kushiko, leaving only five still searching for the Rogue Shadow.

    UNDERNEATH THE CRUISER...

Darth Vader moves for the first time in some while. It is because the Rogue Shadow is maneuvering around quite a lot to evade the TIE patrols and the surrounding traffic, and by sheer coincidence passes by him while Getting The Hell Out Of The Way. Briefly, for a moment, Juno Eclipse is separated from the ghoulish visage of Darth Vader only by a stealth field and the transparisteel of her cockpit.

The dark red lenses of his mask follow her quite directly, despite the stealth field making him quite blind to her physical presence.

I see you, he says to her, without uttering a word.

I always saw you.
Kyle Katarn     Just as Kyle is about to bifurcate BT, a NEW CHALLENGER APPEARS.

    "Guess there's no way I can't convince you to turn to the light, huh?" he says without missing a beat, regarding Starkiller with a furrowed brow while he sizes up the Inquisitor. There's none of the light of Galen Marek in this clone, just all the malice and killer rage that the clone gives off. It's crazy. He's heard of clones of the Emperor, and also the shenanigans with C'boath Luke and Mara told him about, but he's never seen a cloned Force sensitive face to face before.

    Hell, he had no idea it was even possible before he was told about the topic, but that can't be thought further as Kyle feels himself sent flying with a gust of Force Lightning covering him in pain. Lightning is a hell of a thing, and every nerve on Kyle's body sears on fire as though entire decades are shorn from his life. He braces himself, but Kyle can only protect from the torrent for so long, and so he puts as much muscle as he can into a single Force push towards Starkiller, ripping the hallway apart as he unleashes the gust of telekinesis.

    "RUN!" He utters to Kotone and Kyra, loud as he can. There's no time to argue, the gang needs to get out of here NOW.
Kyra Hyral Not being the exceptionally vengeful type, Kyra does not pursue the now-wounded droid, literally disarmed as he was. Not only that, chasing after it would Split The Party even further which is a very, very bad idea. Taking up the blaster in both hands, instead she runs after Kyle, knowing that he too had a psycho droid to handle, which apparently slightly resembled the 'Arto' character the assassin droid had mentioned earlier. As she comes up behind Kyle, she arrives just in time to see the Galen clone force pull the other droid backwards, then follow up with an obscene amount of force lightning.

    It was unsettling to see their 'space wizard' friend doing this, albiet reassuring to see that it's just a clone.


tKyle's adequately able to protect her from being shot with any Force Lightning, for which she is thankful. His words are heeded immediately and she immediately runs in the direction they just came from.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa decloaks at this point and puts her blasters away, as she pulls out another strange device it's a matter maniplator ahd she's going to put it to use she'll start trying oo grab credits or any other valuables she can find in here. She knows shes' not got long and is going to grab what she can form here befor eit's time to get the heck out of here. She's just finishing up as Kyle give sthe call to run, she halts stops hoovering up loot and turns about to start running for the evac point at top speed, which is more what you'd expect out force user or a alient of some sort.

"Let's go then! Nothing in there is worth dying for!"

Kotone now and it's a good shing she is givne what's on their heels now.
Toph Beifong     The barge gets filled to the brim with as much cash as it can hold, and well... Toph is hardly a stranger to bending herself some armour. And it's seldom /this/ shiny and expensive, save for that one time she bended rare gemstone off a wandering beast's back. The girl extends her arms, and the money shifts, moving to wrap itself around her and making her mass quite larger and heavier, covering her from top to bottom save for her mouth. "Okay, time to get going..." she tells herself, overhearing the radio chatter. It's too risky to stay any longer. So let's see how much cash she can bring with her...!

    The others might just wonder what's taking Toph so long. Usually she's not one to be slow, right? She was one of those who kept reminding the others about time being of the essence.

    What is that rumbling?

    The clatter of metal echoes down the hallway as a /wave/ of money comes rushing! Because this is way easier than just moving her makeshift barge, even for Toph who is standing on the back of the repurposed droids, surfing down on the rush of coins as she keeps on swinging her arms back and forth to keep up the motion of the wave and ride it for as long as she can.
Juno Eclipse   Almost shivering at the strain, the blonde pilot can feel sweat trickling down the back of her neck, and she can feel the Rogue Shadow's engines straining under her. It's taking all her concentration to keep from smashing into one of the TIE fighters, or worse. She isn't sure how much longer she can keep this up. Focus is one thing, but this is ridiculous.

  For a brief instant, the Rogue Shadow careens past the Arquitens, and for a fleeting instant transparisteel and a few feet of vacuum are the only thing separating her from the Dark Lord. She doesn't look, because she doesn't know he's there; Juno's concentration is sunk entirely into avoiding the spinning evasion of another TIE fighter, while trying to avoid ramming into the one directly in front of the Rogue Shadow's nose.

  She can't explain the sudden, spasmic shudder that crawls up her spine, though, or the brief shadow of terror that passes over her. It's gone as quick as it's come, and she's got more important things to worry about -- like avoiding that other TIE fighter spinning at her from the side.

  Engines scream as she spins away from it, barely, the two ships almost passing close enough for the TIE's heat exhaust to scour a blistering line down one side of the Rogue Shadow's hull.

  She has just enough time to slam a fist down on the pilot's console before grabbing the yoke again. "Watch where you're flying, you damn Imperial...!" the pilot snarls.

  Then, before she has a chance to think about anything else, it's right back into threading the needle -- but her ship is the needle, and the starfighters screaming hither and yon around her are the warp and weft.

  PROXY continues tapping commands out on his console, unperturbed by the insane evasive manoeuvres Juno's putting the ship through.

    [An excellent decision, Mister Outcast. You'd best return to the docking area. Captain Blackout will be bringing the ship back momentarily, but she will not be able to stay for very long.]

  Juno jerks the yoke to one side, sending the Rogue Shadow spinning and yawing away from another TIE fighter.

    [You'd better make it fast. Once I've got everyone aboard, we're leaving.]

  True to her word, the Rogue Shadow threads its way past a trio of TIE fighters, narrowly avoiding the trailing third wingman. She brings it in with admirable smoothness to the Arquitens, easing it in and flicking toggle switches to deploy the boarding ramp and open the hatch.

    [Hurry, and /don't/ bring that clone with you!]
Kushiko An explosion rips through, surrounding the Tenno, the flash fire of brief oxidation marking it's proximity to the aura of life supporting personal atmosphere provided by the Archwing. Her shields hold, but only just.

The sight of the TIE fighters electing to spread out even more is going to make things difficult. Sure, she could blitz them using her Blink teleport, but that's going to drain her energy and leave her potentially exposed to incrementally worse counterattacks.

Especially when that turbolaser practically sends her end over end, biting past shielding and harming her directly, one of her drones crumbling in the wake of the cruiser's fire.

With such focus on her like it is, she immediately responds by Blinking again, but the energy trail that comes thanks to the teleportation in another direction just disappears as she activates her Penumbra cloaking field to shuck the active targeting sensors.

It is then that she switches to her Fluctus and unleashes wave after wave of destructive plasma waves: the first is a of waves towards the turbolaser battery. Alarmingly, the actual firing of the weapon does not seem to disrupt the Void cloaking field, but anyone can follow an origin point.

And then the energy waves are being fired from another location. And another location as Kushiko attempts to use the TIE pilots attempts to spread out against them. She fires from one location near a fighter towards another, before blinking again and filling space around the cruiser with wide, slicing waves of plasma. They're measured shots to both corral and attempt to catch the TIEs with little place to go than to get their wings sliced apart.

She has to be careful not to hit the cloaked Rogue Shadow, and energy waves that do not hit the cruiser or TIEs eventually burn out after about 475 meters of travel.
Darth Vader     INSIDE

In terms of experience, Kyle Katarn outstrips Inquisitor Starkiller and the original Galen Marek both. But he's trying to play a game of power versus power with the Inquisitor, and it doesn't work. A shockwave blasts through the corridor as the Force Lightning ceases and Starkiller counters the wave of telekinesis with his own. But he is not blown away by it as-intended. He tilts his head to one side at Katarn's words, lowering his hands for the time being.

"What makes you think you're any more qualified to talk about the Light side than I am?" Starkiller demands, without ferocity or conceit. Katarn has misjudged this fellow. Quite the opposite of being some great force of the Dark Side, this clone (as previously enumerated on) is near exactly like his predecessor. A little awkward in some ways, and definitely not used to people. Brimming with problems, true, but also possessed of a twinkling spark of the light.

Not unlike Katarn himself. And it is for this reason that he questions Katarn's motives.

But there is no more time for conversation. The Inquisitor senses the oncoming /money wave/ and reaches to the small of his back with his free hand. What he withdraws is an absurd-looking lightsaber mounted on a ring-style hilt. The absurdity of it, however, rapidly yields to the sheer practicality of its design. The blade ignites with a hiss and a gleam of red light, the same as Starkiller's own saber.

When it begins to /spin/, that is where the danger of it comes apparent. A normal lightsaber would take some time, but this one acts as a /saw/ and melts a hole into the hull. There is a great HOWL as the corridor they're in begins to depressurize, and emergency doors begin to fall closed.

                                      RUN                                      
Kyle Katarn     Kyle's clearly making checks his power can't cash in, as he and Starkiller stand off. "...I got no idea, kid. Sorry, that was spur of the moment." He admits sheepishly, shrugging before he gets back into the swing of things, drawing his lightsaber as he and Starkiller prepare to fight once more.

    Of course, that gets interrupted as Starkiller draws a frankly ridiculously designed lightsaber that begins to spin like some sort of buzz-saw. Kyle goes from questioning just who the hell would find that useful to realizing the practicality of it within moments, and then Toph arrives just in time.

    He doesn't bother with testing his strength against Starkiler, instead hopping onto the sled just as Toph streaks by. "GO, NOW!" He says with urgency, then holds on tight as he can while they escape. Reaching out to the doors ahead of them, Kyle pushes them open as they move past, keeping them that way as they escape. Straining, sweat running down his brow, Kyle's effort is herculean in scope, yet he keeps them open as long as he needs to.
Toph Beifong     As she rides the money wave it's a bit hard for Toph to see what's going on down the hallway. But the effects of the depressurization is felt when most of the money wave begins to move in ways that Toph explicitly didn't mean for it to do. A startled yelp leaves the girl, and she is forced to focus on just the money that's underneath the barge. And Juno's explanation does make things a bit clearer, as does the sound of the emergency doors slamming down to stabilise the situation.

    Gritting her teeth and forcing herself on, Toph focuses her bending on the barge and the nearby coins that she can still keep in place before they get ripped off into space. No, there's no way she'll be able to get all of the money wave safely to the Rogue Shadow now. Kyle hardly needs to tell her to hurry up, though she manages to keep herself from commenting that she would be able to move the barge quicker without him on it. This isn't the time for that, and he will probably have enough focusing on keeping the doors open until they can pass them.

    It's rough and taxing, so when the barge and the much smaller money wave makes it to the waiting Rogue Shadow, Toph gives the precious loot one last push in the form of a split palm attack, heaving for breath as she stumbles up the ramp... and then falls over, still wearing her expensive armour. "Man, now I am reminded why I freaking hate space...!"
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa is still running she uis running she heads a light saber blade and a rear camera feed shows her it's a freaking weed wacker light saber? What in the name of all that is sane in the multivese as little as there is of that. Spawned a weed wacker light saber? She just keep s running now and she'll make sure Toph isn't left behind either she gets on toe the shadow pops her Matter Maniplator again and moves to scoop up some of the money Toph couldn't get in.

"...That was ... impressive Toph and why I never ever, want to fight you or any other metal bender."
Darth Vader     OUTSIDE...

A ship appears beneath the cruiser. Somewhat larger than a typical light freighter, somewhat smaller than a frigate, the ARK ANGEL is something of an inbetween. A distinct TIE Advanced is docked with it, attached to its lower forward section. It comes in close beneath the vault ship, and Lord Vader disengages his magnetic boots and pushes off to make contact with it. He can be seen walking along its surface towards his ship as it breaks away and begins to depart, offering an illusion -- no doubt long since seen through -- that the battle is won with no strings attached.

The field obfuscating the whole of Rodia and its surroundings lifts slowly, and the cold of Vader's presence spreads through the heavens. He neither hides himself, or draws deliberate attention. Upon the vault ship, the presence of Inquisitor Starkiller comes apparent in the Force, not near so potent as Vader's, but dangerous nevertheless.

Starkiller is confused, more akin to a Force Adept who is exposed to both dark and light unevenly than a Jedi or Sith. He is simply better trained than most adepts happen to be. Trained enough, for that matter, that he begins to reach out. It is plain /who/ he is reaching out to, as distant whispers from the clone begin to echo into Juno's mind. Here, as in the physical world, his voice is the same.

Where are you going? It asks.

Lord Vader steps through the airlock, looking down at the woman who awaits him. She fawns, and rambles, as she usually does. He raises a hand to silence her, and moves to the cockpit. It doesn't shut her up for long, but he tunes her out, seating himself and pushing his consciousness out over that of the TIE pilots fighting for their lives.

It makes a world of difference. Where once a pair of them would shoot the others from the skies, now they move with precognitive grace and coordination.

Kushiko draws them to one another, they break off and draw together in a real, tight formation. She fires saturation weapons, they scatter up and down, left and right, then come back together smoothly. And then... then they simply position themselves too closely to the Rogue Shadow to be safely fired upon any further. Through it all, four more are lost to flame and trickery.

Then, the most odd thing begins to occur. Failing to obey any /reasonable/ physical limitations based on their specs, the TIEs begin to abruptly change course mid-flight and HURL THEMSELVES at the Rogue Shadow.

No, they can't actually do that. Darth Vader got tired of this tomfoolery and just started telekinetically throwing the damn things. Best make that a hasty escape.
Juno Eclipse   For a few vulnerable moments, the Rogue Shadow waits with docking clamps applied to the Imperial freighter. In the cockpit, Juno drums her fingers against the yoke and taps a boot restlessly on the deck plating underfoot, unable to sit still with the adrenaline crackling through her nerves. "Come on, come on..."

  "They are on their way in, Captain Eclipse," PROXY reports calmly next to her. "They should be here momentarily--ah. There they are."

  The tiny figures of the rebel host appear on the camera feed, making their way into the Rogue Shadow with all due haste. Before the last one's even fully aboard, she's keying the ramp retraction and the hatch closed, which almost clips whatever the last straggler is wearing. There's no apology about that, either. Every fiber of her being is screaming at her to get out of here, as fast as she can push her ship to go.

  No sooner has the hull sealed than the Rogue Shadow tears away from the Arquitens-class freighter, twisting to avoid one of the remaining TIE fighters and corkscrewing away. Kushiko will be on her own; she has her own ship to get her out of here, and Juno trusts her not to be an idiot about extracting now that the job is done.

  The ship falters. The controls jerk and the ship jigs briefly to one side, just a hair, but it's rough enough that her passengers will feel it.

  "Shut up," Juno grates between gritted teeth. "Shut up! You're not /him/...!"

  Pretty soon there's too much going on for her to concentrate on that voice teasing at the corners of her consciousness. Juno snarls, jerking the controls sideways to avoid one of the TIE fighters hurled by Vader. It grazes against the port wing, scraping and scoring its way along the fin with a scream of twisting durasteel.

  Juno's cursing a blue streak in the cockpit that would do the most hard-boiled Imperial navy grunt proud, and sweat trickles from her forehead as she wrenches the ship around, slewing sideways out of inertia from the near-crash.

  All she wants to do is drag her ship out of their thrown trajectory, and get it into hyperspace.

    [Prepare for light speed in five seconds.]

  Her voice is a whipcrack, all but crackling with anger.

    [Secure yourselves. We're getting out of here. Now.]

  And so, having announced that, she does. The Rogue Shadow stretches for a fleeting instant as the hyperdrive roars to life, and with a shudder and a jolt -- the ship is gone.
Kushiko Fighting these TIEs makes Kushiko wish she had brought her Imperator long rifle. Precision fastmoving firepower to deal with the TIE fighters. She sensed /something/ was off throughout the chaos, an instinctive feeling that there was something emboldening them. Sure, she managed to get some taken out, but it was a paltry number.

The appearence of the ARK ANGEL is another, very problematic concern for the spaceborne Warframe. It was time to extract--way past by the looks of things.

This was a trap, and the exact nature of it was something to be dwelt upon later. What few TIE fighters do not manage to get thrown telekinetically at the Rogue Shadow are treated to the last dying breath of Kushiko's own drone escort hurling themselves after as she ignites the engines of the Itzal Archwing to send herself away from the cruiser's firing arcs and pursuit of the remaining TIEs.

As she egresses past what she hopes to be beyond an easy targeting solution for either the ARK ANGEL or the Arquitens-class cruiser, the spade shape of the Liset melts into a visual spectrum just behind her, the Archwing detaching and folding back up as it tractors the Warframe back into the recess of the ship, folding her back inside while picking up the Archwing systems.

The Imperial presence here would probably not be able to miss the odd boarding action before the Tenno's ship peeled away in a similar fashion. Not hyperdrive, but it certainly accomplishes the job of getting the hell out of the combat zone.