A/N: I took artistic license in a couple places here, and made a reference to another much-loved game. Shouldn't be too hard to catch. Reccommended listening is "Infiltrating ShinRa Headquarters" for the first part of the base, then "Who Am I?" for the garage level. Both are from the FF7 soundtrack.
Kagi was the first out of the elevator, sweeping the small corridor the elevator had released them on with the barrel of his blaster rifle. Nothing moved. Aside from them, the only things in the room with them were a series of crates, or perhaps sealed air ventilators, lined up along either side of the central pathway.
Nodding back into the elevator, the commando crept forward quietly, quickly joined by his comrades. They gathered at the doorway into the base proper; thankfully, it wasn't equipped with an infrared sensor, the way that the ones in the sewer had been. This door had a keypad mechanism more similar to that of the Endar Spire.
Kagi pushed away thoughts of the warship as he keyed open the door, glancing out into the hallway beyond. Nothing moved beyond the doorway. Across from him was another door. Just to his right, paired with an identical copy across the hall, was another door. Another pair of doors beyond them, and then a curve in the corridor.
"So what are we looking for again?" Mission asked in a whisper.
"Prototype swoop accelerator that the Vulkars stole from the Beks," Carth answered, likewise whispering. "We need to get that back and win a swoop race so we can win our commander's freedom."
"Oh."
Putting his comrades' banter out of his mind, the commando stepped out into the hall. As he did, a blaster bolt shot past his head, spraying sparks from the nearby wall. He jumped back into the storage room, catching sight of a combat droid marching toward him as he did so.
Letting out an inarticulate battle roar, Zaalbar rushed around the corner, and more blaster fire was heard. Kagi leaned out to cover their furry companion, but the sound of metal shrieking and bending reached his ears, just before he saw the battle droid collapse to the ground, its head and blaster arm forcibly removed by the Wookie's monstrous strength.
Nodding appreciably, Kagi stepped out into the hallway, looking at their choice of doors. The others joined him.
"Hmm, five doors, four of us," Mission mused. "Split up?"
"Bad idea," Carth replied, shaking his head. "They could isolate us and take us out one at a time that way. Best if we stick together."
"Also makes it easier for us to find what we're looking for," Kagi said, looking from one door to the other. "Okay, I'm going to call one totally at random here." He pointed to the far left door. "That looks like a good place to start. Let's go."
In near-silence, the quartet crept up to the door in question. No more threats presented themselves, and aside from the sounds of their movement, there was no other sound in the base. It almost seemed like it was deserted.
At the door, Kagi tapped the access panel, causing it to hiss open. Before him, a Duros was hunched over a counter, knife in hand, and appeared to be chopping some sort of vegetable. A cook, obviously.
The Duros reacted quickly to their presence, turning and spotting them. The alien took half a second to realize that they weren't friendly, and drew back his arm, hurling his knife at Kagi's head.
Instinctively, the soldier leapt to the right, his right hand drawing his vibroblade from its boot sheath and throwing it right back toward the alien. Unlike the cook's, his thrown weapon had been on the mark; it imbedded itself in the Duros' chest with a wet thud.
Kagi ran forward, clapping his left hand over the Duros' mouth to silence him, even as he pulled the vibroblade out and slid it quickly across his throat. Letting the dead alien sag to the floor, the commando stood up, taking a rag off the counter. He used it to wipe the blood off his weapon before returning it to his boot sheath, then tossed the rag onto the counter again.
Mission walked up, stepping gingerly over the dead alien, her face paled considerably. "Did you have to kill him?" she asked.
"He attacked first," Kagi replied. "And we had to keep him quiet, so the rest of the base wouldn't be alerted." At the expression on her face, he laid his gloved right hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry to get you involved in all this, Mission, but this sneaking around is a business that I'm very familiar with. It involves a lot of killing in cold blood, and it's something we have to do."
The Twi'lek girl nodded dully, looking at the blaster in her hands.
Straightening up, the commando gestured Zaalbar over. When the Wookie approached, Kagi leaned up to whisper into his ear, "Keep your eye on her, would you? And next time you want to rip something apart, do it with less volume. Remember, stealth ninja action."
Zaalbar quietly grumbled his assent, then placed a big furred hand on Mission's shoulder.
Carth walked up beside Kagi, and the two soldiers looked at the two doors out of the galley. "Right or straight?" Carth asked.
"Asteroid, shield, laser?" the commando returned.
"Loser chooses," Carth said.
"Done," Kagi replied, lifting his left fist into the air. Carth did likewise, and the two of them shook their fists in the air once, twice, three times, and on the fourth repetition, Kagi extended the first finger of his hand, while Carth kept his hand in a fist.
"Asteroid," the pilot remarked. "You lose."
"Flyboys would pick asteroid," the commando muttered, then pointed to the door on the right.
Nodding, Carth keyed the access panel and the door slid open, revealing a spacious inner area with a pillar-like structure in the center of the area. Three Vulkar gang members were in the area, one wandering around aimlessly while the other two stood guard at the structure.
Stepping back into the shelter of the doorway, Kagi leveled his blaster rifle and fired, pitching over the meandering Vulkar in a hail of blaster fire. The other two immediately drew weapons and returned fire, their bolts hitting the doorframe or passing the commando to strike the inner wall of the galley.
His three comrades took cover where they could and opened fire, their bolts haranguing the two guards near the pillar. As the first guard exploded in a storm of sparks, Kagi revised his knowledge on the situation; the other guard was probably a droid as well.
A stray blaster bolt cut past Kagi's leg, not directly striking him, but burning through his pants leg and slicing across the skin beneath it. Hissing, the commando stepped back and pressed his hand to his leg. It came back bloody, so he tore a strip of fabric from his sleeve and wrapped it over the minor wound to staunch the bleeding.
As he turned his attention back to the firefight, the last Vulkar guard, which indeed had been a droid, exploded in a similar cascade of sparks. Moving out, blasters ready, Kagi and Carth swept the main area, keeping their eyes open for any sudden attacks.
For her part, Mission ran to the door the droids had been guarding and began slicing into its security systems. After a few moments, the door yielded to her experience, and the group quickly realized they had stumbled upon an armory; two footlockers, a metal box, a work desk with droid parts on its surface, and a pile of droid parts in the corner were testament of this.
"Jackpot," the young girl muttered, kneeling down in front of the footlocker at the far end. "What've we got here? Vibration cell, mesh underlay, heavy combat suit, military suit, a disruptor, and a frag mine." Without preamble, she handed the mine back to Kagi, who slipped the device into his utility pouch.
"Unless any of you want the disruptor, I say we leave it," Kagi said, turning the vibration cell over in his hands. After a moment, he tossed it back into the footlocker.
"Not me," Carth replied, patting his blaster pistols.
Zaalbar growled a negative, and Mission shook her head. The weapon stayed.
"Get one of those armors for yourself, Mission," Kagi said. "It'll give you some protection against blasterfire."
Mission nodded once, then tested the weight of the armors. Surprisingly, the 'heavy' combat suit turned out to be lighter, and it was into that one she slipped. Unfortunately, the armor was a tad bulky for her; even tightening its straps as much as they could be didn't stop it from bouncing around on her when she moved, eliciting an irritated grumble.
The commando shrugged. "Your choice, Mission. Keep it or leave it."
She pondered for a moment, then unstrapped her belt from her pants. Before any of them could question her actions, she pulled the armor suit down as low as it could go on her form. Catching on, Kagi and Carth both assisted her by holding the armor in place while she secured her belt around it. The setup looked ridiculous, but at least it was staying in place.
"Alright, next box," Kagi said, nudging open the footlocker with his boot. Shouldering his rifle, he leaned down, reached into the box, and produced an armful of weaponry. "Got a heavy blaster, an ion blaster, and an ion rifle. Don't know about you guys, but I'm keeping that rifle just in case we run into any more droids. Any takers for the rest of it?"
Without preamble, Mission reached forward and plucked the heavy blaster pistol, tossing her lighter model into the box. Shrugging, Carth reached forward and took the ion blaster, holstering it in one of his currently-empty holsters.
Kagi leaned his blaster rifle against his leg, then reached back with both hands and slid the ion rifle into the special slot along the bottom of his utility pouch, designed specifically for holding spare rifles.
While he was doing that, Zaalbar busied himself by reaching into the metal box, coming out with his hands full of spherical objects. "Grenades," he rumbled in his native language. Two concussion, two frag, and two ion. He slipped one of each into his bandolier, then handed the rest to Kagi, who distributed them among the others.
"Guess we're done here," the commando said. "Ready to roll?"
The others nodded their assent, and he turned to exit the armory. As he did so, he caught sight of the security panel across the hall from them. "Well, well," he said. "Just what we needed. Mission, get in there and see what you can do."
"You got it," the Twi'lek replied, pulling out her pouch of slicing tools and setting them on the panel. She went to work. After a moment, she called over her shoulder, "Okay, I've got us a map of the whole base downloaded. Doesn't look like they have any place they'd store the accelerator on this level, except for the armory. Which, we already know, doesn't have it. There is an elevator down to their swoop garage, back the way we came. The accelerator might be down there."
"Good work, Mission," Kagi said, carefully watching the surrounding area. "See what else you can do for us."
"On it." There was another pause, more sounds of computer interaction, then a series of hydraulic hisses and rumblings from various points in the base. "Okay, I've just locked open all the security doors in this level. Let me slice into the security cams to see what I can find. Oh. Hey, I see us." In a moment of silliness, she turned and waved to the corner near them. "Okay, serious now…"
Kagi stared at the corner she had been waving at, and just barely made out the holocam hidden in a recessed port.
"Hrm, barracks… Wow, that's a lot of ugly."
"What is it?" Carth asked, looking over her shoulder.
"Eight Vulkars in the barracks," she replied. "Let's see what I can do to… Ahh, here we go." She manipulated several keystrokes, and then the sound of a massive electrical discharge reached them, the static from the sudden outburst causing Zaalbar's fur to stand on end, and the Wookie to groan irritably.
"That… didn't sound very healthy," Kagi noted.
"I overloaded a power conduit on them," Mission said. "Missed one of them, though. Moving on… Recreation room, got a bug-eye and a no-nose in there…"
The commando smirked at her colorful descriptors for Rodians and Duros.
"What the frak?" she said suddenly. "They've got a pool here?"
"Are you serious?" Carth asked, chuckling. He leaned over her shoulder again to look at the holoimage she was studying, then laughed aloud. "By the Force, they do have a pool."
Kagi turned back to them, smirking. "Hey, even the scum's gotta relax every now and again."
"They're not going to be doing any relaxing anytime soon," the Twi'lek replied. "No water in the pool, and it's stuffed with a bunch of crates of noxious chemicals. Ah well, their loss." She went back to her work. "Ah, here's the elevator to the garage." She winced. "Ew, but there are three heavy turrets guarding it. Small room, too, so there's no place to hide."
"So much for rushing them," Kagi muttered. "Anything you can do?"
"Gimme a sec," she replied, her brow furrowing as she hacked and sliced into the system. After a moment, it beeped at her. "Good, there. Security systems shut down. We can go in whenever we want."
"Good, let's go now. You said it was back the way we came?"
She nodded, exiting out of the system and returning her tools to her utility belt. "Around that corner we didn't take."
"Alright, let's go."
The quartet shoved off from wherever they had come to rest, and started back in the direction they had come. But as soon as they passed into the galley area, a droid in the adjacent eating area, now opened through the security doors that Mission had unlocked, turned and opened fire.
Jumping back out of the line of fire, Kagi laid his blaster rifle down, pulling out the ion rifle he had just picked up. As Zaalbar leaned out to fire at the droid, Kagi dropped to a knee, leaning out past the Wookie and aiming at the droid's head. He fired, and an ionized energy bolt shot out of the barrel, impacting on the droid's head and bursting like a sunbeam. Energy crawled up the droid's frame, then its head simply exploded and it pitched over, dead.
Beyond it, a human woman cowered near a bench, hiding from the blaster fight. Kagi signaled his comrades not to fire, then approached her. "Miss? You alright?"
"Please don't hurt me!" she cried, hiding her head behind her hands. "I just serve the food here, that's all! I'm not like the others, I'm not even a Black Vulkar! Please don't kill me!"
"Calm down," Kagi said, holding his left hand out placatingly. "I'm not going to hurt you. We just came to get something that was stolen from us. So I'm going to let you go. Can you find your own way out?"
She nodded hesitantly. "Now that you've killed the guards who were supposed to watch me, I think I could find my way out of here."
He nodded and gave her a warm smile. "You do that, then. Quickly, before the Vulkars see you."
"I… I don't know how I can ever repay you!" she uttered, joy blossoming on her features. "Thank you!"
As she turned and ran, the quartet moved the other way, pausing to let Kagi retrieve his blaster rifle. At the junction back to the corridor they had initially been in, Kagi paused, looking out to see if there were any security units waiting.
Seeing none, he waved his comrades forward, then stepped out into the corridor, turning left, away from the elevator that had brought them there. Almost immediately, the corridor turned right again, and he could see the elevator foyer that would lead down to the garage.
Just before entering the foyer, he waved his comrades to a halt, then cautiously edged into it. The turrets ignored him. Painfully slowly, he crept forward, right up to the elevator. Still no reaction. Keeping his eye on the turrets, he reached out and pressed the button to call the elevator. Nothing.
Satisfied that Mission's slicing skills were as good as she claimed, he turned back and whistled sharply. Within a moment, the three of them had returned to his side, and the elevator doors slid open. They entered, and Carth, nearest the panel, pressed the down button.
The elevator lurched once, and down they went. After a few moments, the elevator lurched to a halt, and Kagi stepped out first, his blaster rifle leading.
No threats immediately presented themselves, so he waved his comrades forward. He paused once they were all out, and took stock of their surroundings. Two swoop bikes were on the repair racks, and for a brief moment, Kagi considered sabotaging them. Then he shook his head and decided against it. It wouldn't be very sportsmanlike, even though he knew that none of the Vulkars would hesitate to sabotage a Beks bike. Besides, something told him those bikes wouldn't be raced anyway.
Aside from that, there were a pair of broken droids collecting rust, one next to the elevator, one a few meters in front of it. Across the ceiling, two grappling claws, likely used to move swoop bikes, slid back and forth aimlessly in their racks. He figured they were broken.
As he stood there, taking in his surroundings, he suddenly saw a Vulkar tech come around a corner ahead of them. Acting on instinct, his right hand reached down to draw his vibroblade, which he threw across the intervening distance with a practiced ease. With a grunt, the Vulkar went down, the blade imbedded in the alien's throat.
Moving to retrieve his weapon, Kagi pulled out the datapad onto which Mission had downloaded the base schematics, turning it in his hand until the layout on the map was identically-aligned to his current position within the base.
Kneeling down next to the dead Vulkar, Kagi pulled his vibroblade out of the corpse's throat, wiped the blood off on its uniform, then sheathed the weapon again and picked up the datapad. The path to the right went further, but to the left, seemed to go deeper into the base.
Deeper usually meant more important stuff.
Gesturing with the datapad in hand, Kagi turned left. Mission and Zaalbar followed close behind him, with Carth taking up the rear.
"Anybody get the feeling that we're walking into a trap?" Carth asked.
"You always feel like we're walking into a trap," Kagi replied. "Still, it is pretty spooky in here, all by ourselves." Glancing over his shoulder at Mission, the commando grinned and lowered his voice considerably before continuing, "Kinda makes you wonder if they weren't secretly working on some sort of regenerative serum that they completely screwed up on, causing people to turn into zombies and walk the planet in a never-ending search for fresh meat."
The young Twi'lek girl shuddered violently as she followed him around the corner. "Stop it!" she hissed, staring at the walls around her. "This place is creepy. The sooner we get out of here the better."
Snickering, Kagi led the group down to another intersection, where he paused long enough to disable a gas mine in the floor. Checking the datapad again, he turned to the left, creeping along the wall as quietly as he could. He passed the first door and stopped outside the second one. Checking the datapad one last time, he nodded to his comrades, then put the datapad away.
Carth and Mission ran across the door, taking up positions on the far side. Kagi crouched down, keeping his left hand on the access panel. Zaalbar towered over him, his bowcaster humming with charged energy. All his comrades nodded their readiness.
Kagi triggered the access panel.
Nothing happened.
Exchanging glances with the others, the commando stood up, glaring at the uncooperative panel. He swore. "Needs a security card."
Mission frowned. "We didn't pick one up."
The commando calmly reached into his pouch, pulling out the frag mine they'd picked up in the armory. "Yes we did," he replied smoothly. "Stand back."
He began setting the mine on the door lock, adding a blast cap over it to funnel all the destructive energy in. The others cleared back behind him, hoping that Kagi knew as much about setting demolitions charges as he knew about retrieving them. Finally, the SpecForces commando rigged a remote detonator, and returned to his place next to the door frame.
With a meaningful glance toward his comrades, he pressed his left thumb down on the trigger button, and the blast echoed throughout the seemingly-empty sublevel. Returning the trigger to his utility pouch, Kagi calmly strode into the room.
Inside, two Twi'leks, one male and one female, were waiting, along with several thugs.
"Looks like we have visitors," the male said in his own language. "Lackeys conned by Gadon Thek into trying to steal Brejik's swoop engine accelerator, I bet!"
"Brejik stole that engine from Gadon," Mission retorted in Basic. "It was never yours to begin with!"
"Well I didn't go through all the trouble of acquiring this prototype so you could steal it back for that old fool!" the male Twi'lek snapped back.
"Would you like me to dispose of these Bek spies, Kandon?" the female purred.
"No," the male replied, holding out a hand to steady her. "I see you aren't wearing the Hidden Bek colors, so I'm guessing you aren't part of that feeble old man's gang. You must be a freelance mercenary."
"How about you hand over that engine so I don't blast you?" Kagi replied menacingly, holding his blaster rifle level.
The Twi'lek didn't seem phased by the threat. "Instead of stealing the prototype for the Beks, why don't you come work for us? The Black Vulkars could use someone like you."
"I guess you didn't hear me when I said it before," Kagi said, bringing his rifle to bear on the Twi'lek. "If you don't give me that accelerator, your friends back there will be scraping your lekku off the walls."
"Be smart!" the Twi'lek said, panic rising in his voice. "Gadon is old news! He's a blind fool in more ways than one! Brejik is a visionary; soon he'll control the entire Lower City! Don't shackle yourself to a losing team."
"Basic, di'kut!" Kagi shouted. "Do you speak it?"
The Twi'lek sighed, unimpressed by his antics. "I can see there's not much chance of convincing you to come join–"
Kagi gestured with his left hand in midsentence, and all four of them opened fire on the loud-mouthed Twi'lek, cutting off his words in midsentence. As the female Twi'lek and the two Vulkar aliens stared in shock, Mission produced a plasma grenade that she had taken from one of the Vulkars they'd killed, armed it, and threw it at the female Twi'lek.
The grenade stuck to her chest and hissed menacingly, only seconds from exploding. Zaalbar, seeing the glowing grenade, quickly reached over Kagi's head, picking up a heavy crate filled with Force-knew-what and throwing it at the female Twi'lek.
The crate caught her full in the chest, its weight knocking her back to fall down in between the two Vulkar aliens. Half a second later, the plasma grenade exploded violently, killing all three of them. The shockwave lifted the male Twi'lek's body in the air, folding him halfway over the desk in front of Kagi.
Carth, never having seen a plasma grenade in action before, merely blinked at the tiny weapon's raw power. "Wow," he said. "You know, plasma grenades are illegal in the Republic."
"Yeah, and now you know why," Kagi replied, stepping over the bodies and turning the near corner. He took only a moment to disable, rather than recover, the mine in his path, then reached out with his left hand and picked up the accelerator.
Or at least, he tried to. He managed to get it up a few inches before the heavy object fell out of his grasp and clanged against the floor. Frowning, he handed his blaster rifle to Mission, then crouched down and scooped it up in both arms. The accelerator was the length of his blaster rifle, but massed easily four times as much.
"Well, we got what we came for," Carth said. "We'd better get it back to the Beks and hope we still have enough time."
Nodding, Kagi allowed someone else to lead the way as they progressed toward the Lower City…
---
"You have returned. Do you have… Ah, I see that you do."
A jolt ran through Gadon's desk as Kagi dropped the accelerator, as gently as he could, onto it. "Here you go, Gadon," he said, slightly winded from having to carry the fifty-kilo accelerator as far as he did, without being able to distribute its weight among his other items. "One swoop accelerator prototype, as requested."
"I was beginning to wonder if you would make it," Gadon said, running his hand over the engine prototype. "The race is tomorrow, and my mechanics need time to install the prototype into the swoop engine of our bike."
"Yeah, about that," Kagi replied, laying his left hand possessively on the accelerator. "I scratch your back…"
"…And I'll scratch yours," Gadon said with a nod. "Don't worry, I'm a man of my word. I promised you could ride in the swoop race under the Hidden Bek banner, and I'm still going to let you do that." The aging man paused for a moment, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "I'll even go you one better. I'm going to let you ride the swoop bike with the prototype accelerator installed. You won't stand a chance without it."
"Gadon, you can't be serious!" Zaerdra objected. Kagi was starting to get a little tired of the multi-toned Twi'lek butting in. "We need one of our best riders on that bike! We can't let some rookie take the prototype engine into the race."
"Excuse me," Kagi said, a harsh edge in his voice as he glared at her. "I may not have ever been in a swoop race before, but I have had extensive training on the operation of military swoop bikes in combat operations, and I think that more than qualifies me to ride on the little toy versions you use in these races."
Zaerdra returned his glare, daring him with her eyes to try and put her in her place again.
With a smooth and practiced precision, Kagi brought his right leg up, resting his boot rest on top of a cargo crate in front of the desk. The fingers of his right hand brushed idly against the top of his sheathed vibroblade, his way of challenging her to try something.
"Now hold on, you two!" Gadon shouted, slamming his fist against the desk. "There'll be none of this bloodletting going on in my base. Zaerdra, back down. Mister Vayun, I do suggest not provoking my people within our own base. Now, as I was saying," he said, his voice as solid as ice, "there is a reason why I'm letting you ride the prototype. The accelerator isn't stable, and there's a chance it could explode during the race. I can't ask one of my own riders to take the risk; they'll be racing unmodified swoops. You'll be the only one using the prototype."
"So if I become one with the Force, one of them may still pull it out of the bag," Kagi said.
The gang leader nodded in response.
The commando shrugged. "Sounds fine to me. It'll be just like that time on Dxun, riding through beast-infested jungle with a leaking fuel cell and a shot engine, and Mandalorians shooting at me. I'll take it."
At this, Gadon regarded him warily. Silence covered the meeting for several long moments, then the gang leader shrugged it off. "You can stay here tonight," he said. "Like I said, the mechanics need to install the accelerator, so you won't be able to practice your riding. It shouldn't matter, though. With your military background, you should be fine. Just try to relax, and we'll take you to the track in the morning."