"I'll just get him seated in the Snatcher and then I'll be back to take care of some last-minute things in here."
After re-restraining Dunamis and getting him strapped into a crasher, Davis heads back into the Morningstar, and looks for Jonnoperest. "Hey, I was told that you're the man to see when it comes to computers and hacking. Have you been told about what we're trying to accomplish out here?"
His rifle in one hand, Max uses his other to pull the pin on his remaining grenade.
"This is a bomb. Activate the gate to (insert somewhat non-hostile Gate location) this destination." barks the action scientist to the techs in the booth.
The two techs look at each other and turn back to the consoles.
*Stares at the Turai*
"Killing me will not please your masters. I doubt even one of your frisbees could even begin to repair the psychological damage they will inflict upon when they hear you killed a Homeworlder. Tell your men to stand down and clear a path...I'm not about to let you take me alive."
"You've fought this hard to stay alive, why so quick to throw it all away now?" shouts one of the Turai through the ragged hole blasted through the control room doors. "Trying to steel yourself for something foolish?"
The two Turai are fully outside the control room. They hold their beamers out in front of the hole, using their guncams to sweep the room.
They pass over Max without firing. Then Max realizes who they're looking for. There's two simultaneous whaps and a cry of pain. One of the techs is caught in the neck; his headless corpse spews gore as it spirals off onto the floor. The second tech's torso flash-fries and rib fragments vaporize as he slumps down in his seat and sizzles.
"Osadai (Imperial paramedics) are on their way, Homeworlder. If you detonate your explosive and even some small shred of life remains, they will piece you back together and your fate will be unimaginably horrifying. If you surrender, we will take you unharmed to the Rav-Whetu himself."
The golden-eyed Bashakran looks up at Davis from underneath one of the newly-installed crashers. He gets up before answering, "I think so. I've got some jammers and torcs for spoofing their drones, and you're remoting the freighter trying to hit the Needleship."
"That should be it!" calls Jonno's comrade from the engineering crawlspace. A brief flicker announces the Body Snatcher's drive powering up and all the crashers fold down and engage correctly. Davis' stomach turns as he's subjected to the ship's inertial field, then given back to Aikoro's gravity.
"They're all green!" Jonnoperest shouts back. "Clear the lines and get this thing ready to go!"
Music to Semo's ears. The big Samoan's been tirelessly working this entire time, both in herding the other men and leading by example. It doesn't take long to pronounce the Snatcher ready. It's cramped inside, with nearly every inch of cargo space given over to the rows of crashers. Deckplates have been mangled in order to install the extra cabling, and the group's gear sits piled inside the last real storage compartment.
The two Turai see the incoming grenade through their guncams but can't escape the pre-cooked explosive. The frag airbursts right outside the hole - Max doesn't bother looking back as he palms the maintenance hatch at the back of the control room and slips into a dark, cramped tunnel. Emergency lights flicker on as his presence is detected by the lighting modules. It's a hair tighter than a submarine corridor. Noise from the gateport/elevator complex's bowels rumbles through the walls. Pipes and conduits run the length of the corridor, exposed save for where they culminate here and there in large couplings or ducts.
Max can't hear anything other than the pervasive hum of machinery. He doesn't see any pursuers ahead of him, but there's no doubt someone will be through the control room in a few moments.
"Oh, not that, you've got that part all handled. I'm talking about the bigger plan, the reason why we left Narsai in the first place." He leans in closer. "We want to steal the information from the Repository of Benevolent Spirits." He leans back out and stands up. "Not just take it, obviously, but just copy it if we can. And since you're the information expert, I just wanted to get you started on thinking about this, what it might take to get it done. We'll have lots of time to plan after we get out of here."
The techies declare both ships ready for their appointed purposes, and Semo slumps gratefully into one of the crashers. The interior of the stolen ship looks like crap, but that hardly counts at a time like this.
"Angel, Mellish, take a load off. Time to get airborne."
Jonnoperest thinks for a moment as Davis lays out the objective. His gold optics are unreadable.
"Which information? What are you looking for? It's got to be either very old or very secure, yes? I mean, rumor has it the Repository has vaults of scrolls, etchings on deckplates from the Masters' time, all kinds of weird stuff."
---
Mellish slumps down next to Semo. "Sarge, I am ready to get the hell out of here."
"The physical items would be a bit hard to steal, but I'd have to guess that they've been scanned into the Cortex. At any rate, that's what we're after, the Cortex. We want the whole thing, plans for ships, top secret files, information on the gate network, all the intelligence that's on there. It'll be a huge public blow to the Imperium when we open up their secrets to the galaxy and it'll give us a leg up on making further strikes."
"The 1000$ question is, how do we get all that info out of the Repository in a reasonable timeframe? Cortex, portable storage, or are we way off on this one?"
"OK, so you're looking for the high-end secure stuff. Well, nobody knows exactly how much they have that's not accessible on the Cortex itself. If you get that close to it, I'd think you could fling the Cortex wide open. Just declassify everything and shunt it to everywhere. You don't need to copy anything - and if you did, you could have people off-planet waiting with First knows how many data modules, just waiting to archive your loot."
Davis nods. "I was thinking that we open up everything for reading, and at the same time have as many individual data modules ready as it takes to copy everything down before the Imperium has a chance to lock it all down again. We'll have to see what we can get that way and what we'll have to access directly, but the Cortex should contain almost everything we're after." Davis stands up. "I just wanted to let you know what we're after, give you a chance to think of what we might need to get it done. We'll go over a more detailed plan once we get off Aikoro, right Captain?"
After the conversation, Davis heads over to the Morningstar and up to the C&C. "Everything good to go up here?"
One-Ton and Luis look up at Davis' entry. "We're good to go on the remote pilotry. Luis has got some of your demo charges wired to the cruise engines as well as one of the General's decoy drones. We gonna run 'er up to the black first or pull out in the Snatcher, both, what?"
"I don't know what the official plan is yet, but it's probably not a good idea to have anyone in the Morningstar when she lifts off. With our luck, she might get spotted just off the ground before she even gets out of the atmosphere. I'll take this to Captain Verrill, but as of right now, I think that the best move is to take the Morningstar up on remote, and then take off after it a few minutes later, claiming to have spooked them and be giving chase. We follow the ship out until they either tell us to get lost or we're as close as we need to be in order to pull off the run on the needleship, and once that's done, we head back down to the planet. Any problems with that plan?"
"Nothin' I can see, 'cept if we're givin' chase you don't wanna be too close in case this plan actually works. That Needleship goes up, it'll dump a ton of shrapnel into orbit, shred anything within a few thousand klicks. Hell, some of it might actually make landfall but I doubt it."
Luis shakes his head, "Yeah, but those drones aren't really to make it blow up, just to get them pissed off enough to shoot to kill instead of to capture. You know, so it looks reasonable when we blow the charges onboard."
"Yeah, but we can dream, can't we?" Davis says. "If you're all set up, let's sweep and clear the ship one last time, let you, the kid and Swims-the-Black say goodbye, and give the Morningstar a proper sendoff. Ready, One-Ton?"
punkey
