Sunburns & Hyperdrive Troubles

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

It wasn't going to be instant. Even with a souped up handy dandy prototype data spike. It would make it easier, yes, but there was no guarantee that Kaile would find any codes in the shuttle.

I mean, what sort of idiot leave top secret clone commanding codes that easily available? It makes more sense to be in a vault or the base commander’s quarters. Honestly, it was likely that they wernt even here. That the codes have long since been lost, perhaps even during the plague.

Now that made more sense.

She kept those thoughts to herself, and as she ran diagnostics and entered code to get her inside, the more Kaile became convinced that she would have to attempt the force on the blast door.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

Kurt stripped down to his skivvy's surprisingly quickly, donning the uniform in a matter of a few moments, or at least the pants anyway. The jacket was kept open and unbuttoned, if only because the things were so damn uncomfortable when they were actually close. He stretched slightly, uncomfortable in the all too familiar feeling of a uniform. The last time he had worn one of these it had been during a court martial, one that had entirely changed the course of his life.

Of course, back then the rank bars had been quite a bit lower.

He smiled slightly as he glanced down at the small medals that were pinned to the jacket, amused by what they represented. Slowly he wandered back up to the cockpit and towards Kaile, leaning over the chair behind her with his jacket still hanging open. "How's it going?"

Kurt asked quietly.

"Remember, we don't need the master codes." Kurt said slowly. "Just enough to get us through."

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

“Yeah, but we don’t even know if there are any much the less --” Kaile’s voice trailed off when she had spared a glance over to Kurt. Her jaw fell a bit, and she had to remember to close her mouth. Her teeth gave a slight click when she did so, but it was the appreciation on her face that told a completely other tale.

“Wow.” her fingers rose, hovering slightly above the keyboard. For a second, Kaile forgot about the pressing issue of trying to save themselves from an army of clones. Instead, she caught the faint sparkle in Kurt’s eyes, the way that the uniform clung to his cut figure. It might have been from the Empire of the Hand, but well, he looked good.

Reall good.

Naturally, Kaile couldn’t help the perk in her eyes. Clearly, her uniform fetish was still a thing.

“Umm… looks good.” she told him, managing to tear her eyes away and go back to the console. She was still working on gathering what she could.

“We’ll see if this works."

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

"If it doesn't." Kurt began. "I get shot."

He shrugged, seemingly oblivious to Kaile's ogling. "So no pressure."

Kurt had every confidence that they would be able to find the codes, or at least something. All they really needed was one simple identification tag, one simple number that would get them through the door. Even if they only found that on the shuttle they could use it to get past the troopers and get back into the Bunker, once in the Bunker they could do what Kaile suggested and head towards the officers quarters. There Kurt knew they would find something of use.

He was confident of that.

This plan was really their only option. If they opened the door and flew out they would get shot down, if they let them tear down the barricade they would get shot, if they tried to hold out they would eventually get over powered and then shot. There weren't really a lot of options for them at this point, and at least this way they had a chance.

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

"Well.. you ain't gettin' shot." she would state with a terseness in her voice. Up ahead, the datascreen seemed to be going far too slow for her own taste. A half cluck of her tongue and she uttered a faint curse. "Gorram it."

Suddenly, her right hand rose, moving by her right ear. This was likely to be a bit weird for Kurt, but well.. now that he willingly decided to work with her and was aware of what her real job entailed, he was going to get more little surprises. The motion would make it seem as if the young woman was simply going to tuck in the strands of hair behind her ear. However, that wasn't the case.

Kaile, by all intents and purposes, had several cybernetic enhancements. They would aid her in her slicing as well as in speeding up the process for searching what she required. She had a wireless adapter for the iBorg enhancements, but there was also a hardline hook up.

So it might seem rather odd to see Kaile snatch a small cable from her bag, take one of the ends, and hook it up to a dataport right behind her ear, just past the hairline, cleverly hidden away. The link up was fast, the data transfer and ability to sweep through the information, even faster. Her eyes suddenly took up a slight glow, tiny little HUD like images sweeping over their surface.

​

"One way or another."

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

Kurt watched Kaile for a moment, though in truth nearly everything that was happening was entirely out of his breath of understanding. It wasn't that he was dumb, it was just...well slicing and computers had never really been his point of study. He didn't like slicing, it was one of the reasons that The Messa's systems were all unnetworked. If someone got into his ship through the communications system they would quickly find that they were stuck there, similarly if they plugged into navigation then they couldn't really go anywhere else.

It was a counter-measure.

It made things more difficult because the systems couldn't communicate...but in the end it would pay off, or so Kurt thought.

Eventually he grew bored of watching Kaile, or rather, the anxious part of him over took Kurt and slowly he found a compulsion to wander out of the shuttle. He made his way over towards the Hangar's exit, where he had blocked the door with the rubble from the blast doors. It took him some time to reach it, his meandering having no real purpose.

He could heard them on the other side, the sound of plasma counters and rubble being moved.

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

Kaile didn't know how long Kurt had wandered off for. Her focus was completely in gathering and combing through information as quickly as possible. The first time she used the cybernetics, it certainly felt weird. As if something was tickling her brain, a wealth of information passing through it with vibrant clarity. At the time, it had been overwhelming, but after a while, she became used to it. Now it was a matter of partitioning her brain, letting things move along with a thought.

The cybernetics themselves didn't replace Kaile's skills. They simply enhanced and added to her list of tools available to her. The only problem was, is when she was deep in this sort of zen like state of slicing, it left her vulnerable. It could also be a bit draining if she did it for long period of times. That is why she always had a bottle of pain pills for the migraines she had. One would wonder if perhaps this was the reason why she had trouble sleeping. It could very well be the cause of her insomnia.

Dark pupils jittered from left to right. Left to right. Until finally, she froze. A slight frown crept over her forehead. Wait a minute, she mused. What was this? She caught a hidden file. With a mental twitch, she used the combination of her cybernetics plus the prototype computer spike. What she found had her catching her breath.

"KURT!" she yelled out, calling out to the pilot.

"I think i found something!"

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

Kurt half turned as he heard Kaile call him, her voice echoing in the hangar. Something stopped him however, a noise, a small clank of metal and then a sudden stop to everything else. The plasma cutters ceased, the clattering of tools and everything else seemed to stop. For a moment, all of the activity on the other side of that wall died. He frowned for a moment, turning back towards the debris.

At first he did not notice it.

Then there it was.

A small gap, a hole within the broken and warped durasteel, on the other side of it the form of a helmet. It was a stormtrooper of course, a single man standing there, watching. Those black eyes seemed fixated on him, pointed as though they were searching for something. Kurt froze, watching it, watching him. He tried to think, tried to say something, tried to do anything. His lips thinned, his expression grew sterns, and then suddenly he moved.

He remembered the way he had been treated, he remembered the way the officers carried themselves. His back stiffened and his arm swung wide, his finger reaching out to point at the wall. His expression gave a silent command, an order that had to be followed. The stormtrooper watched him, lingered for a moment, then disappeared from view.

Kurt turned on his heel, heading towards Kaile.

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

A tap of keys, then a slide swipe of the display. Kaile transferred the details up to the main data console, revealing a singular file that appeared to be promising.

At least I hope it is promising, she mused to herself, nibbling on her chapped lower lip. A hiss of breath would escape, blowing errant strands of dark hair away from her face. When footsteps came to a halt beside her, Kaile's right hand drew up, beckoning the pilot to her side.

"Here, I found this in a hidden folder," she told him, bringing up the sequence she was in the middle of decrypting.

"Might be what we are looking for," or at least, here is hoping it is. Her chest rose as she took a deep breath, and off to the left hand side, Aurebesh sigils slowly ticked into existence.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

He mused for a second, his eyes leveling on the screen just as the symbols began to flow across it. His lips thinned for a moment, his eyes following every line of text and every number that quickly began to scroll down in bright green. A small smile perked on his lips."Well."

Kurt began before the list finished.

"This is helpful." It wasn't exactly what they were looking for, it wasn't perfect, but it would do. Instead of a list of command codes, instead of direct means of taking over that Clone Army below they had stumbled upon a listing of the Command Structure of the Empire of Hand, the group that created this bunker. There were names, ranks, and most importantly identification numbers. Those numbers were the key to getting into the facility, or rather, back into it. The Troopers would recognize those numbers, and with them Kurt and Kaile would be able to bluff their way into the Bunker and get to the Officers quarters. It wasn't perfect, but it would do. "So."

Kurt smiled, looking down at Kaile. "Special Operative Delilah Ariff."

His finger pressed against the screen, pointing to one of the names. "How's your acting?"

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

Kaile suddenly shot brown eyes up to him. Her jaw fell only to close again.

How is my acting? How is my acting? It felt so weird to be asked that, considering her entire skillset was to pretend to be anyone the Alliance required her to be. A few blinks and then Kaile numbly gave two quick up and down motions of her head, indicating that she was more than up to the task of acting. That wasn't the issue.

The issue is if Special Operative Delilah Ariff had any specific qualities that she would be required to display. Then again, these were clones who have been in stasis for who knows how long. Special Operative Ariff was long dead. And maybe, just maybe, none of the clones had any flash training on who Deliliah had been.

"I can be Special Operative Deliliah Ariff," that was easy. "But...improv can only get me so far... I ain't got a clue how their typical officers work." Kaile was a mimic, she went off by copying another's mannerisms and personalities. A lick of her lips and she mulled this over.

"... but if all we gotta do is order 'em to stand down..."

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

"You won't be talking much anyway, I think." His eyes focused on some of the other names, specifically those of the four Grand Admirals that were listed under these ranks. He hoped that this would work, mostly because he wasn't sure that anything else would. His lips thinned slightly, a sigh escaping them as he righted himself and stretched slightly.

"The officers quarters." Kurt reminded her. "I think that's where we'll find the clone equivalent of shut down codes. Something that will make them go back in the tubes, like this is all a false alarm."

He frowned for a moment. "We just have to pretend to be their superiors to actually get there."

The plan was a bit...cartoonish, but at the very least it had a chance of working. They had the uniforms, the identification codes, and the relative knowledge of the Bunker that would allow them to get to where they needed to go. In all honesty it should work, the Clones were not fully formed beings after all, but near blank slates. He expected that none of them had ever received full training or even seen combat. That would help them, as long as they gave off the right impression.

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

“... so be are basically dependin’ on their flash trainin’?” Kaile had never had much contact with any sort of flash clones or their kind. Mainly, because the Rebellion nor the Pyre ever were the sort to tangle with such things. Honestly, while she didn’t hold much prejudice to them, there was just something off about it. Not that they weren’t considered to be living and breathing folk, they are - it weren’t no fault of their own how they were artificially conceived and created.

But it just seemed like such a sad existence to Kaile. I may be an orphan, but at least I know I came from my ma and pa… there is a legacy there. A bloodline.

These clones had no such thing at all.

“Alright.” she took a nod, then shot and upward glance at Kurt.

“Got a spare set of those duds?” for the first time in the chaos, Kaile gave a crooked smile, reaching over to poke at Kurt’s side.

“My leg might make me hobble a bit tho’,” reminding him after about her cut. The pain killers were helping, but even with that and the bacta patch, she wouldn’t be walking normally.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

"They'll be blanks." Kurt explained as he helped Kaile from her chair and lead her to the back of the ship, twitching slightly as she poked his side. The uniforms were arranged in smaller closet's, and Kaile would be best suited by wearing one of the normal drab gray officers uniforms instead of the bright white of the Grand Admiral's coats.

"Most of them won't even have personalities." He went on as he pulled one of the uniforms from the closet. "Their minds will have basically been grown and then written with flash training and mild programming. They're not really much more than droids...more like blank slates."

It was a sad idea, but there was truth to it.

Kurt knew that the Republic had once relied on similar soldiers, and in fact in recent years had contacted Spaarti to create even more. Kurt had no respect for men like those, or rather, initially. They could grow into themselves, become something more, but at the start...they were little better than automatons. He knew that, he'd seen them fly and he'd seen them shoot. They weren't...they weren't human. It was odd to say, perhaps wrong, but it was also true.

They were shells.

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

While Kurt spoke, Kaile got to work with changing her clothes. There were a few grimaces here and there, the reason for them evident as she would pull the shirt over her head. Bruises littered her ribs and a rather promnenat one was a purple blossom over her shoulder. This wasn't taking into account her knee.

"Okay," the Lorrdian female would say, giving a slight nod as her strawberry blonde hair fell out of it's tie and onto her shoulders. Fingers dove into the copper locks, pushing them away from her face.

"Reckon we'll just have to walk and talk the part. Hope for the best." it was really the only way they would be able to do it. A wiggle out of the blood splattered shorts came a second later. Opening the closet, she was met with the stale scent of old clothing. Her nose crinkled. With a grimace, she began to slip on the pants, trying her best to not topple over.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

There really wasn't much else too the plan.

It was neither elaborate, nor fancy, but that was probably for the better. They still had the better part of half an hour or so before the barrier would come down, when Kurt had been outside he'd seen their progress. The troopers worked quickly, but it still took quite a bit of time to clear away so much rubble.

That meant they had time to prepare.

"I'll probably do most of the talking." Kurt said quietly, thinking out loud more then anything else. "Though I think it will be best if we keep talking to a minimum in general."

That was usually what Officers did anyway, silent but judgmental. "Say our identification codes, rank, then yell a bit and get to the Officers quarters."

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

"Okay." Kaile told him, her muffled voice floating over to the courier as she carefully slipped on the blouse and the jacket. When the stale scent of the uniform hit her nose, she couldn't help but sneeze.

"Ahh-choo!" her face crinkled and she couldn't help but wince at the tension against her ribs. The pain may be dulled, but the tenderness was still there.

"I'll follow your lead." That was what she was good at. Mimicking.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

He smiled. Maybe they would make it out alive after all.

The courier let out a deep breath, sighing and wandering around the edge of the acceleration couch so that he could throw himself against the plush velvet. He wondered briefly what it would have been like to actually be an officer for this Empire of Hand, what their goals were, how they had operated. He didn't often feel nostalgia for his time in the military, hardly ever in fact, but he did miss certain aspects. There had been a brotherhood among him and his squadron, a friendship that was unmatched.

That was what he missed.

He didn't miss the orders. He didn't miss the flying, and he certainly didn't miss the killing.

He missed his friends.

"Do you think they were bad guys?" Kurt asked Kaile as he closed his eyes. Their use of stormtroopers was a good indication, but just because someone used clone soldiers didn't necessarily mean that they were entirely evil.

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

Playing a role came pretty easy to Kaile. As a natural mimic, all she had to do was study a control subject and she’d be able to not only mirror their body language, but also their voice and accent. It was actually pretty disconcerting for some people to hear her be able to perfect many languages and accents, even those from non near humans. If Kaile had at least a day to be able to study Chenuh, she was pretty sure she could nail the accent down enough to fool a passerby.

The longer she was able to study and take notes, the better she became. Which is why she was trying to recall as much as she could from the tiny bits and pieces of information she managed to unearth during her scans earlier.

At this question, Kaile quietly would glance over her shoulder at the courier. He had draped himself upon the acceleration couch, likely not the best idea as he was subject to wrinkle the uniform. However, his question gave her pause.

Slowly, the Lorrdian took a hair tie in hand. Mulling his question, she wandered over to the galley. A second later, her voice went drifting over to him.

“I don’t know.” she told him honestly, as she gathered some water from a bottle to smooth down her hair. A small quick side part would split it in half, and with her moist fingers she began the process of reining in her rebellious hair into a bun.

“I won’t know much until we go to the archives and find out…” however, “But reckon folk who use clones ain’t the sort to be pleasant.”

Not if they were willing to breed people to be their fodder.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

"The Jedi used them." Kurt said quietly. "During the Clone Wars."

It wasn't something that most people would expect Kurt to know, and in truth he really only knew it because of the stories that his father had told him of that time. The courier was hardly a student of history, he'd never paid much attention in school and looking into it himself had never really appealed to him. Bedtime stories though, that was something he vividly remembered. His father had always been rather prideful of being a good story teller, and according to Papa Meyer history made for the best stories.

Perhaps he was right.

"Can't be all bad, right?" The question was esoteric in nature, philosophical. Really the determination would be brought by each person alone, not by some overarching decision that others could make. For Kurt of course it all depended on perspective. These clones, the ones that they faced were barely human, they were more...imitations. That itself was a cruel thought, but it was an important distinction between himself and these clones.

He didn't think he was better than them, certainly not.

But he was different.