You Can't Hit What You Can't See [Stygium Raid]

[Ayden Cater]

Ayden brushed his coat off as he stepped out the door. Whistling a soft tune, he surreptitiously reactivated the lock with a slight crook of his fingers. No witnesses, no evidence. Satisfied that business was settled, Ayden made his way back to the ship. He arrived just in time to see the last member of their group walk up to the ship. He looked up at the Starfall and smiled with pride. It was a rather fine ship. Lot of high tech gear on it, lot of secret things. Of course, they would not get access to any of that. The labs were all sealed, as was the foundry. They'd be shown where to store their gear and where a couple of benches sat with all the necessary tools to clean or modify their weaponry. As an afterthought, Ayden gave them access to his stocks to use on the raid.

It was obvious that the armory was originally meant for a larger crew. He had repurposed most of the lockers to hold various guns while a half dozen mannequins displayed different types of armor whilst parts from a wide variety of other armors or droids could be seen strewn about on design tables and stacked in corners. Knick-knacks were equally strewn about, as well as gear from a multitude of corporate entities. It was clear that there were about a dozen different projects that were being tinkered on, though it was impossible to say at what stage or with what aim. The assembled crew had been forewarned that there was an AI aboard the ship that would be monitoring their activities. While they were certainly free to tinker and play with things that were out in the open, it was inadvisable to try and force access to any other part of the ship.

Ayden didn't bother with hanging out with the crew or idly chatting with them for most of the journey to Enigma Prime. They were, in theory, fully capable adult sentients who could look after themselves. They could manage to not get themselves into trouble until it was time for their job. Otherwise it would have been a long, cold walk back to an inhabitable planet.

When the ship reverted to realspace, Ayden assembled his crew in the ship's CIC and began to pre-op planning. "Alright. We're currently twelve hours outside of the target planet. We reverted behind a large planet here, so their sensors won't have picked up our reversion. We'll be heading in cold to keep off their sensors until the absolute last second." A table in the center of the room lit up with a wireframe of the planet. "Mostly there's just a handful of orbital communication buoys and sensor satellites dot the planet's orbit. It's mostly undeveloped save for the mines, so we've got virtually nothing to worry about. The remoteness of the system has prevented any major power from seizing it, and most pirates don't have a ship with the sort of firepower and capabilities that mine does so they're completely unawares."

He punched up sensor data from previous passes he had taken through the system. A rather large station was highlighted and enhanced. "This is present, but is not our primary target. It's large, slow, and filled with more wasted potential than valuables. If anything truly dangerous undocks from it, my ship will chase it off. Instead, we'll be heading to rendezvous with this mobile mining facility. It has a modest count of droids, but no battle droids. Some loader droids might have been given some sort of aftermarket programming modifications, but the resistance ought to be mostly mechanical in nature so pack ion weaponry if you got it. We're going in two teams; one will hit the mining facility's control room. From there, they'll lock down comms and shutdown the droids. Second team will locate the cargo hold with the stygium in it. Once found, they'll cut it open and start filling these duraplast cases with the stuff. We're aiming for a case apiece, but if we do our jobs right and keep the heat down low then we have the containers and means to walk away with a good deal more."

Taking a look around, Ayden already had a pretty good idea on who would be going where. One team would need technical expertise, speed, and precision. The other needed raw strength and stamina to load and move containers. "Once we get our share of the crystals, or the heat gets too much to bear, we'll be bugging out back to the ship and we'll punch out. Any questions?"

[member="Soon'tyr Wootton"] | [member="Elanor Wraith"] | [member="Michael Sardun"] | [member="Meeristali Peradun"] | [member="Razelle Breuner"]​

 

[Razelle Breuner]

Twelve hours. Plenty of time for a nap. Raz would need to get in some shuteye, since she damn sure wasn't going to be lighting up on this job. Considering her eyes were already baggy and her reactions sluggish, this meeting would likely be the last thing she did before sleep. She took in and processed every word. This man seemed...very confident in his ship's abilities to deal with any and every challenge thrown at them before they actually docked. Splitting up into two teams with five members to spare between them was going to be interesting, unless he was coming with them. More interesting was the implication that her employer's pet intern was going with them. It was relatively low-risk, all things considered, and might have actually been a good place to get her feet wet. So good on him, apparently.

When he was finally done speaking, Raz spoke up from her position, leaning against one of the support beams with a clear view of the rest of the crew and the holo display. "A few, actually. First, and I know this is a lot to ask of two Jedi and a wolfman, but is there anyone else here who knows how to hack a communication network and brute force firewalls on droid control matrices?" Incredulous eyebrow-raise. She already had a pretty damn good idea what the answer to that question was, and she was almost regretting it...because it was also the answer to her next question.

"Second, where's the 'Miss Lawson' going to be during all of this?" Razelle's affinity for physical slicing and hotwire, and her familiarity with digital slicing and low-end cyberwarfare, would probably give her enough of an edge to handle the comm array alone. She would have liked backup, sure, but it was optional, and she was extremely used to solo runs. If she did get backup, though, it was increasingly looking like she'd be stuck with the babysitting job. It was the less dangerous of the two, and there was a higher chance an academic young lady knew how to operate a comm relay than fire blasters and load heavy crates. "I assume you're educated, kiddo. I'm just hoping that it's in the right fields."

Most importantly of all, though... "And third," Raz said as her attention turned back to the man in the coat. "Are you joining us? Or are you going to hang out here and let the muscle handle the fun?"

[member="Ayden Cater"] | [member="Elanor Wraith"] | [member="Meeristali Peradun"] | [member="Michael Sardun"] | [member="Soon'tyr Wootton"]

 

[Ayden Cater]

Ayden was relatively unsurprised that the hard military-type woman was the first one to start ask questions. She was the sort who probably broke down a dozen different scenarios for killing random people ever second of every day, never letting her guard down or even considering a life without a couple different blaster rifles within arms reach at all times. He smiled then when her first question was a matter of who in the room knew how to handle slicing duties and network operations.

"Let me answer all of your questions at once. Roland?" He tilted his head to the side and called out for the AI. They had been informed of the AI's existence, but had not yet met him. A heartbeat later and the map of the planet was replaced by a holographic image of a man in his late twenties, hair practically shaved off and no facial hair to speak of, and wearing what looked to be engineering skivvies. "Who was it that designed you and oversaw your creation and production?"

"That would be you, sir," Roland answered seamlessly with a clipped, professional voice that just as effortlessly managed to convey a sense of humor. Again, the more astute members of the crew could probably easily tell that there was more to this AI than simple shackled responses. It would be clear to them that this AI was something else. "Quite the disparate group you've managed to assemble. Are you stealing stygium or crack the planet in half?" And now probably everyone else could figure that out now.

For his part, Ayden simply chuckled and snapped his fingers, breaking the AI's visage into a thousand tiny shards that melted back into a map of the planet and mobile mining stations. "Yes, yes, and yes. As I said before, Roland can handle all of the ship operations and will be more than adequate to providing us with any orbital support we might require. Miss Lawson can set up a connection between my ship and the mining platform. Once she's done that, unless they've got significantly more resources to spend than their operations would suggest, it will be no effort at all for Roland to shutdown the worker droids and keep comms scrambled."

He snapped his coat a little and tugged at his hat with a grin. "You didn't think I'd hire out help and then just sit back, did you? Clearly my reputation has faded some."

Soon'tyr Wootton | Elanor Wraith | Michael Sardun | Meeristali Peradun | Razelle Breuner​

 

[Hira Mitsae]

[member="Ayden Cater"] | [member="Elanor Wraith"] | [member="Meeristali Peradun"] | [member="Razelle Breuner"] | [member="Soon'tyr Wootton"]

Sardun, for all intents and purposes, wasn't asking questions - he didn't even seem to be paying attention. Instead he was leaning heavily into his seat, basically sleeping. At least, that's how it seemed, but considering they were all professionals here (some more than others) they would probably be the ones noticing that he was paying attention. In his own little ways. But naw, Michael didn't have any questions, he was a hammer and they just had to point him at something.

That was what they were paying for and that was what he'd deliver.

Hammer-time.

 

[Meeristali Peradun]

He had nothing to say, much as Sardun did, save that it was a little more obvious that he was paying attention, on account of his eyes being open. Vibrant orange, just short of glowing. He'd noticed the odd Jedi hesitate at seeing his eyes upon first meeting, before they noticed the tail. It would seem that most Jedi didn't have eyes in the warm-colour spectrum, because that tended to scream Sith. Orange eyes, though, tended to denote a Talith. He was neither - just a felinoid.

From what Cater said, it was easy to say which group he'd occupy. Though he'd be well-suited to either, a look at the rest of the group yielded the fact that the majority of raw muscle power was between him and the canid. Working with the obvious non-humanoid might not be an issue - he hadn't spent countless years besting some of the cards in the hand that nature dealt his species, to act like a dog was going to be a problem, insofar as he could control. Nature was a queen, at times.

[member="Ayden Cater"] | [member="Michael Sardun"] | [member="Elanor Wraith"] | [member="Razelle Breuner"] | [member="Soon'tyr Wootton"]​

 

[Elanor Wraith]

[member="Razelle Breuner"] [member="Ayden Cater"] [member="Michael Sardun"] [member="Meeristali Peradun"]

Elanor wasn't crazy about being singled out to have her proficiencies questioned, but then, they well deserved questioning. She wasn't an operative, or a soldier by any means - just a girl with a gun and an eccentric boss who had his own way of educating her. At the very least, he wasn't expecting her to go it alone or ordering her into the field without going there himself. That was somewhat admirable, right? There was surely a lesson in there about leading from the front, but with such a motley crew of dubious types, Ellie suspected that the lesson might be more about protecting your investment by being nearby to address problems as they cropped up. 'Miss Lawson' drew herself up straight and tried to affect confidence as the military woman questioned her role in all of this, and breathed an internal sigh of relief as her role in the proceedings was outlined and shown to be something she was fairly sure she could handle.

She knew a few things about computers and comms. No slicer, for sure, but she could get by.

"I won't be dead weight, miss." Ellie promised the militant woman with a small smile that was halfway trying to be a confident smirk. "I've spent hours pouring over the blueprints for facilities like this, so even if I lose my datapad I can at least help us get around quickly." It was something, at least. She was fairly sure that she could get from point A to B with more skill than she could shoot somebody, and if it came down to a gunfight... well, Elanor had never actually had to pull the trigger on another sentient herself, and she certainly didn't plan to start now. Unless it was her life or theirs, maybe, but the thought of actually following through on that made her a little sick to her stomach. Better not to worry about what might happen, or more optimistically, what might never happen. Ayden had hired gunfolk from every corner of the underworld, he wouldn't reasonably expect her to make similar use of her old blaster pistol, right?

 

[Ayden Cater]

With the only serious questions answered, Ayden looked around the room and made his decision. "Aurek Team, consisting of Sardun, Peradun, and Wootton, will work on securing the stygium. Besh Team will be myself, Miss Lawson, and Kara here. We'll disable any security that might be present, keep the droids out of the way, and make sure that the facility doesn't send out an alarm. Our approach will keep the planet between us and the station. No orbital satellites will have line of sight on us, so we'll remain undetected until either an alarm is triggered or until the planetary rotation brings us around into their line of sight, which should not occur for seven hours. I timed our approach to coincide with the rotation cycle like that. It will be night time when we hit the mining facility, so if you need any sight assist gear make sure you grab it. Otherwise, you've got eleven and a half hours. Prep, eat, sleep. You'll each get a call twenty minutes before we reach the planet's orbit."

----------​

Right on time, twenty minutes before the Starfall would reach low orbit over Enigma Prime, a general call went out for the rest of the group to assemble. When they made their way down to the secondary hanger junction, they'd find Ayden standing there without his usual coat and hat. Instead he word a dark navy-colored suit of armor similar to that worn by Protectorate soldiers. Strapped to his back was a long blaster rifle alongside a large jetpack. He finished withdrawing a long scomp link from a wall jack and turned to face the first folks to show up. "Aurek Team is in the left shuttle, Besh team in the right." Elanor would have her own personal shield projector waiting for her, an ArmaTech Paragon-class model. With that, she wouldn't even need any additional protection unless she really wanted it.

Once folks got sorted, Ayden keyed the launch doors and took the dropship out. Approaching the planet during night fall gave them some additional time before an alarm would be sent off. Their entry arc mirrored that of an asteroid entering the atmosphere. There was already little to no risk involved since the planet was largely uninhabited and the mining facility was crewed by all droids, but Ayden took nothing to chance. Already he had a countdown running on his HUD for his estimated time until an alarm was triggered. Without any inside indication of network defenses or the like, Ayden couldn't be sure of when or even if they'd be caught on sensors or raise an alarm.

Dropping low, the dropship ran scant meters above the planet's surface. This low to the ground, sensors would be unreliable at best; all the better to mask their approach. "Besh team on approach. Two minutes to contact." Switching over to the com system inside the dropship, Ayden started laying out their plan. "Kara, you and me will be running defense for Miss Lawson. She'll be handling network surveillance and defense with Roland. Any droid that moves funny, shoot it. In and out, shouldn't take us more than thirty minutes to do this job."

----------​

[member="Soon'tyr Wootton"] | [member="Elanor Wraith"] | [member="Michael Sardun"] | [member="Meeristali Peradun"] | [member="Razelle Breuner"]​

 

[Elanor Wraith]

[member="Ayden Cater"] [member="Razelle Breuner"]

Misgivings she might have about breaking the law, but even Elanor couldn't deny that having her own codename and tactical sweater felt really cool. One was Miss Lawson, the other was dark enough blue to be almost (but not quite) black, and the both of them combined had the effect of making her feel way more competent than she knew she was. Besides, nothing said 'I'm prepped for adventure' like khakis, everyone who'd taken an archaeology course knew that! And she absolutely had. What she lacked in skill, she could make up for in keeping her head down and her shield projector on her hip.

"I'm already probing the network, sir." Elanor reported smartly, allowing a sly grin to sneak onto her face. They were so coordinated and prepared! Why not be a little optimistic, and say professional-sounding things like 'probing the network'. Unable to keep sitting, she kept her tablet in hand - Hi, Roland! - and left her seat to roam about the cabin of the dropship. No real windows to look out of, but it was the motion that counted more than the action.

It gave her a chance to make sure she was ready, truly and verifiably. Once away from anyone she could hurt if they hit turbulence and it discharged, Elanor drew her blaster pistol and checked the charge on it. Nice and full. Safety on? For now. She looked down the sights to make sure that they... were able to looked down? Who knew why people did that, but seemed like a good thing to do. "Pew." Making a blaster sound from the corner of her mouth had also seemed like a fun idea, but once it was done, she felt like an idiot. This wasn't a toy, it might even end up being a murder weapon before the day was out.

She might be a murderer.

All of a sudden, Elanor felt the need to sit back down. So she did, considerably less excited than when she'd stood up, and feeling considerably heavier besides.

 

[Meeristali Peradun]

After prepartion, he assembled with the others, outfitted in armor available to Alliance military, though unmarked with such indicators. Magnetized to one thigh was the hilt of a lightsaber not of his own making - a problem set to be rectified in the near future - and a blaster pistol carried on the other, a slot sometimes taken up by a repeater. Normally he would carry a snipe on the back slot, but didn't feel it necessary for this purpose. The helm was in an underarm carry, for the moment.

Wordlessly, he boarded the indicated shuttle for his assigned task with Sardun and Wootton, and slotted himself into a seat that most definitely was not the pilot's, following the other two with citric eyes as they all settled into the shuttle before it lifted off. Aurek team, as he knew would be the case. Where Besh was going wasn't his forte outside of, perhaps, smashing the droids directly, barring the use of a pistol or rifle. No, one of the most called upon of his skills would be put to use, here. He'd thrown people with these arms, with the Force-borne enhancement, and without... fully armoured people, and they still didn't reach into the limitations of his power of strength. Indentations in ten-foot-thick durasteel.

Cases of stygium shouldn't present an issue.

[member="Michael Sardun"] | [member="Soon'tyr Wootton"]

 

[Razelle Breuner]

Razelle hated sleep. She'd spent ten of the last twelve hours asleep, catching up on a debt of days. Without stims to keep her active, it had been almost seconds before she lost consciousness entirely, curled up in an appropriated bunk. Her gear was within reach, but she'd forgotten to lock the door or even put on pants before she zonked out. Which, of course, led to a rather awkward and very half-dressed meeting with Miss Lawson upon awakening. After that nonsense was resolved, she tucked her way down to the mess and picked up a rack of high-protein somethingorother.

Armored boots clicked into Besh team's shuttle in file with everyone else, and Razelle found herself a seat in the shuttle, across from the girl who apparently thought iron sights were still a thing. Her bag of combat gear rested on the bench beside one armored thigh, and as the ship made its departure, she started to pull out a few things. Proper armor had magnetic weapon clips, but unfortunately this was not proper armor. She ran her scattergun's strap across one shoulder, making sure that it was facing to where she could pull it up and brace it with her shoulder at a few seconds' notice. Pistol in hip holster. Rifle could be carried. Grenades...well, she didn't pack ion, but whatever. Better to have them and not need them etc etc.

Whatever the girl was doing with that silly pistol was of zero interest to Raz. Obviously. She felt no protective reflexes at all for adorably derpy young women far over their head. She wasn't dating one and trying to teach her the lay of the land. Instead, the clone busied herself with her databracer, keying her helmet's comlink to the team's frequency and doing a last-minute diagnostic. She spoke as she played with electronics. "Ground rules, kiddo. Whatever the job that he told you you have on this run, your first and only job when you hear, see, or vaguely expect blaster fire is to find something sturdy to hide behind. Bossman's packing some hardware, so I assume he knows how to use it. I know how to use mine. Your peashooter won't help a damn bit."

She reached for her helmet and fastened it on. "We will not need your help. Don't offer it. Instead, focus on staying alive."

[member="Ayden Cater"] | [member="Elanor Wraith"] | [member="Meeristali Peradun"] | [member="Michael Sardun"] | [member="Soon'tyr Wootton"]