uncertain_dume | An Empire Outpost in the Bryx Sector, A Galaxy Far, Far Away, Thursday Evening

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An Empire Outpost in the Bryx Sector, A Galaxy Far, Far Away, Thursday Evening

It was supposed to be a milk run. In and out, no problem. Hera's sources had tipped her in on the location of a large shipment of bacta and other assorted medical supplies, which they were to come in, pick up, and then drop off on Wobani for a group of escapees from one of the Empire's labor camps. Hera would drop Kanan off, he'd make his way in on foot to secure the payload, and within an hour or two, the cargo would be on the ship, on the way to a group of people who could make far better use of it than the Imps could.

In theory. And Kanan had even managed to make it most of the way in, taking out a small trooper patrol and then helping himself to some of their gear. It was much easier to get in and out of an Empire's loading area when you were dressed for success, after all.

He... hadn't been banking on there being only one crate of cargo in the warehouse.

He extra hadn't been banking on it being accompanied by a half-dozen Rodians wearing shock collars, also awaiting transport to somewhere most certainly unpleasant.

After a quick, hushed conversation with the nervous captives, Kanan sighed and reached for his comm.

"Hey, Hera? How many people can we comfortably fit on the Ghost, anyway?"

[OOC: For she what is piloting the getaway vehicle!]

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"I'll do my best," Hera drawled, amused. "Don't get caught up on anything, though; we might have to tear out of here pretty fast."

She noted the ships in orbit, plotted a course to come up behind one, then switched her transponder to a more or less local personnel shuttle.

"I think I can handle getting from here to the other side of the outpost," Kanan snorted, opening the last set of restraints on the prisoners' wrists, and then nodding toward the cargo. They nodded, and then set to work procuring a hover-lift and getting the crate up onto it. "I've seen plenty of idiots manage it, by comparison it should be easy."

"Those idiots have clearance and armor," Hera pointed out. "Unless you can find enough armor for everyone."

She slid in behind the Imp cruiser at a distance that hopefully wouldn't set off proximity alarms and switched to their frequency. "Hello?" she said nervously. "Um, I mean, this is the Splendor hailing Imperial ship..." She paused a moment as if only now reading it from the display. "Impediment." She rolled her eyes and managed not to laugh at the name. "Our navcomp is out. I think?"

She cued Chopper, who waited for them to open the channel to tell her what an idiot she was being, then slipped in to get the schematics.

Kanan, meanwhile, was doing a once-over of the cargo as it was loaded up, then nodding his approval before putting his borrowed helmet back on and nodding toward the loading bay door he'd entered through.

"If any of you have any reservations about heading out there with me, the time to speak up is now. We'll have our escape route any minute now, and I'm not waiting around once we do."

Nobody spoke a word. Okay, good.

It didn't go perfectly, but fortunately the Imps were much more focused on tearing a new, young pilot a new one than in seeing if she were up to anything else. Chopper burbled and whirred, and after a few more exchanges, she managed to cut comms and head away.

"I've got the schematics," she told Kanan, "taking a look now."

"Good," Kanan replied. "Give me some more good news, then. We're ready to go as soon as we have a direction."

It would have been one thing, hauling medical supplies around on his own. The prisoners added another layer of difficulty, but they were a worthy distraction from the mission at hand if ever he'd seen one.

Hera scrolled through while heading in the general direction of the spaceport. "Back out the same entrance to the loading area, then left and the first right - should be a smaller maintenance hall, comes out about fifty meters from the entrance you came in."

She shifted course and dropped lower, checking the time. "How fast can you get there?"

"Hover-lifts only go so fast," Kanan noted. "Then accounting for any patrols... give us five minutes. If we aren't out in ten, something happened and we'll probably need the best distraction you can muster."

He nodded to the Rodians, who stepped into neat rows, the way they'd been brought in. Good. They were keen on doing this right, too.

Hera nodded. "See you in five." She calculated the time it'd take to get there, grimaced, and checked the location of the Imp ships again.

"Looks like we'd better line up for landing," she told Chopper. "We can't head to pick them up yet, and we can switch transponders and cut out from there more easily than out here. Let's hope they're as backed up as most planets."

Kanan pulled in one more deep breath, and then drew the blaster rifle he'd picked up along with the trooper's armor. Somewhere out there, there was a stormtrooper with a very cold ass and not a single weapon to be found. And hopefully he'd stay unconscious for the next six minutes, so that Kanan could get out of here in five.

He gave the signal to the Rodian with the lift, who nodded back, gave him a thumbs-up, and then started to steer the cargo back out the way they'd come in. Another nod, and the five remaining prisoners all started to walk. To trudge, really, their heads down and their hands holding their shackles in place, so that at a glance they still looked to be restrained.

Hera commed ground control and was put in line for landing, then carefully maneuvered toward the edge of her assigned lane, keeping an eye on the clock.

Meanwhile, Kanan led the troops, so to speak. Or, more accurately, he marched them along from behind, occasionally bumping the end of the rifle into the nearest Rodian's back whenever an Imperial wandered by, to sell the whole thing. By some miracle, nobody stopped to question why he was marching the prisoners along. Hopefully that would remain the case until they got out of there.

"Hey!"

Or not.

Hera marked the time. "Brace yourself, Chop."

She dropped out of line and switched over the transponder, shooting low over the landscape toward the facility where Kanan was.

And then got angrily commed by someone demanding to know where she'd come from and where she was going.

"Damn it. Incoming, Kanan; you'd better be ready! Chopper, let me know how close they are."

"Look, I have orders to get these criminals to the loading area," Kanan was explaining. "The sooner we don't have them collecting dust in the--"

Hera's voice came through on the comm, Kanan gave his head a shake, and he simply raised his blaster rifle and shot the officer who was questioning them.

"Okay, the field trip is over, guys. There's a freighter incoming and anyone who isn't on it gets left behind! Move."

Hera gunned it, slipped over the closest hill, and brought the Ghost down onto the landing pad. "Ready when you are! Chopper, how close are those patrols?"

The Rodians were running. Kanan was running. The hover-lift was... not going as quickly as anybody would like, because it was a hover-lift. It was made for heft, not speed.

"Sithspit," Kanan was muttering as he waved the five he'd been marching toward the Ghost, turning and making a break for the lift. "You. Off. Run."

The Rodian who had been driving the thing didn't need to be told twice. He was down and running for the ship as well, and Kanan was up and onto the lift in his place, driving toward the Ghost at as close to a breakneck speed as he could manage. Not far off, the sound of armored bootfalls hitting the landing pad could be heard, and a moment later, blaster fire.

... It seemed to be giving Kanan a fairly wide berth, all things considered. He was going to chalk that one up to the unparalleled training that the Empire's troops recieved with their guns.

Hera opened the cargo hatch and lowered the ramp. "Everybody on and brace yourselves," she called back through the intercom, keeping an eye on the converging patrols.

From atop his... painfully slow hover-lift, Kanan was taking shots at the incoming troopers, now. Picking them off one-by-one where he could. Starting to wonder why the hell they weren't shooting at him.

He had a feeling he wasn't going to like the answer.

"Hera! How long can you hold out? These damn lifts are not made for speed."

"We've got about a minute if I stretch it," she warned. "If it'll take longer, leave the bacta."

They had another cargo to worry about now, and Kanan himself was more important, too.

Kanan grit his teeth a little, considered the cargo he was hauling, and shook his head, no.

"I don't think it's bacta," he muttered to himself. "Give me forty seconds. If I'm not on the ship by then, I'll leave the cargo, but we're firing on it before we go."

The blaster fire continued, all pointed toward the Ghost in hopes of incapacitating her.

"What?" Hera asked. Then she scowled at the shots. "Don't you fire on my ship." She brought up the rear gun and swiveled it around to fire back. She didn't have much of a view from here, but she could offer a bit of distraction and deterrent.

And really, a distraction was the best thing Hera could have given him, because there was no way that loader was going to go any faster than it was doing without a little bit of cheating.

Not that he was using the Force in any sort of overt, obvious way. Holding up one hand and giving the whole haul a boost could just as easily mean that people lost track of time in the heat of the crossfire. Either way, Kanan was aboard well within that minute, and hanging out the loading bay door, taking a few more shots with his stolen blaster rifle for good measure.

"Hera, go. And go fast."

"Best speed there is." She closed the ramp and lifted just above the tops of the buildings before gunning it into a straight shot away from the installation. She marked the locations of the patrol ships and banked into one sharp turn, then shot up at a steep angle before bringing it around again.

Kanan was already pointing at their living cargo as he started running into the ship.

"You three, secure whatever the hell is in that crate! This is going to be a rough flight. You, can you shoot? Good, you take the left turret, I'm grabbing the right. Whatever we just made off with, I have a feeling the Imperials are going to want it back."

He skipped to the side to avoid Chopper as he leapt into the turret, not so much as bothering with the rungs of the ladder on the way.

"How quickly can we get into hyperspace, Hera? I have a feeling we're going to want to."

"Just as soon as we -" She was about to say 'leave the atmosphere' when the system alerted her to something big. "Just as soon as we get out of the range of that star destroyer!"

This was not good.

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