Hi everyone. Thank you to those of you sending reviews. They mean a lot to me and I'm happy to know that there are people enjoying this fiction. So please keep your comments coming. Hope you enjoy this next installment!
Disclaimer: I can claim no ownership of any of the Star Wars characters or places.
Dastardly Deeds
Heading out of the Maintenance area with the voiceprint recording in hand, Exile heads out into the fuel depot proper and looks around.
"The fricken droid was right," Exile sighs as he sees the containment fields blocking his way to the left. More mining droids attack and he uses his sonic grenades and vibroblade to disable them.
He turns right and comes to the administration room of the maintenance level. He heads for the terminal and messes around with the buttons. "Oh yeah," he finally remembers, "the voice thingy is needed." He pulls out the recorder and plays back the voice he stole from the droid. Full system access is granted and exile gives a whoop, "Yes!"
He unlocks the door to the airlock as the only apparent way out is to go outside. Then he notices something flashing at him from the terminal.
"What!" he exclaims. This was the terminal used by the person who ordered the overdose of sedatives to be given to the patients in the med bay AND it took place after the computer was voice printed.
"Why that stupid dead meatbag! What did I ever do to him!"
Exile plays a hologram recording of the hateful maintenance officer who explains that the protocol droid was bothering him with a lot of stupid questions so he put him to work on the mining droids. He also says that the Jedi served with Reven in the Panderinglorien War ten years ago. Then he says the same thing that everyone has been saying about Corky wanting to turn him over to the exchange. He suspects that someone is trying to sabotage the facility.
"Yah, yah, I already heard all this," grumped Exile as he presses more buttons. Then a message caught his eye. The maintenance officer explains that if a ship was docked, then someone could bypass the containment fields by boarding the ship and going through the fuel lines to the other side of the fuel depot.
Exile checks the fuel lines on the camera and sees T4-U2 sitting in one of them. "What's he doing in there?" Exile wonders. "He doesn't look so hot."
Exile leaves the administration room and heads to the airlock after defeating more droids. He finds a space suit and climbs in. "These things always make me look fat," he whines.
Then he heads out onto the catwalk of the asteroid.
As Exile passes one of the exhaust ports a stream of hot gas shoots out and makes him dive for cover. "For crying out loud!" he yells in his helmet. Just then Atomic's voice comes over his com link.
"Exile? Is that you? I hear you," Atomic said cautiously. "Where are you?"
"Look out the window," Exile says.
Atomic presses his face to the glass and spots a man lying on the cat walk in a space suit. "Be careful," Atomic says. "I see someone out there. He might be trying to sneak up on you."
"That IS me, you moron. Can you shut the damn vents off? I think my ass hairs have just been singed off," Exile says.
"That's you? You look fat," Atomic observed with his face still pressed on the glass.
"And you look like an imbecile!" Exile retorted.
"Jeez, you don't have to be so mean!" Atomic said with a hurt voice. "Let me see what I can do." Atomic backs away from the glass and fiddles with the terminal. "Sorry, no can do. Can't shut them off so you'll just have to be careful."
"Well, that's a novel idea, thanks," Exile said as he crawls forward to avoid further burns.
"It's strange," Atomic says, "but it looks like that gas has been rerouted outside just a few minutes ago. Like someone knew you were going to be out there."
"Yeah? I think I have an idea of who that might be," Exile says, thinking of HK. "Thinks he's paying me back for tricking him."
"Who does?" Atomic asked in confusion.
"Never mind," Exile says as he stands up, finally in the clear away from the vents. "Hey, you want to see a neat trick?"
"Sure," Atomic says as he smashes his face against the glass again.
Exile unfastens a few weights from his boots and says, "Watch this." He bends his knees and launches himself upwards, doing the splits in the air in front of Atomic's window and then going slowly back down.
"Wow… that's so cool," Atomic says in wonder. "Can you do a back flip?"
"Let's see," says Exile as he launches himself in the air again and slowly manages to tumble himself backwards in the air. Except when he lands this time, he misses the cat walk and has to reach out and quickly grab onto the edge of it. "Aw that was close!" Exile pulls himself back up to the catwalk and says, "You want to see a front flip?"
But Atomic doesn't answer him. His dumb struck face is staring straight out at the large space cruiser coming to dock. Exile turns around and watches the ship as it slowly pulls in, the words Hard Liquor Binger are painted boldly on its side along with a picture of juma juice with a large red X on it. Inside the bridge window a slew of drunken sith assassins could be seen dancing in a conga line, juma juice sloshing out from their cups.
"Those bastards!" cursed Exile. "They're the ones who brought the juma juice on board!"
"Huh?" said Atomic. "What are you talking about?"
"Never mind," Exile said. Then a scaly man with part of his face gone came up to the window and looked out at the Exile on the cat walk. "That must be the dried Bantha poo doo man that the droid mentioned."
"Poo doo man?" Atomic asked.
"Never mind," said Exile again.
Poo doo man lifted his hand at the watching Exile and stuck up his middle finger at him. "Hey, he flipped me off!" Exile said.
"I don't think he likes you very much," Atomic said. "What did you do to that guy to get him so mad?"
"I don't remember," Exile said. "But I think I better get going now. He's really making me nervous with that exposed eyeball look he's giving me."
"Alright, just hurry and get back," Atomic said nervously. "I don't want to face poo doo man alone. There's something strange about him. Something not quite normal."
"Ya think?" Exile snapped. "I'm going to do the splits over this next gas vent and then get into the dormitories. I'll get back to you as soon as I can."
"Alright, be careful," Atomic said.
"Enough with the 'be careful' stuff already," Exile said as he took a flying leap over the gas vent.
"Now that was the best one so far," Atomic said, clapping.
"Thanks," Exile said. "See ya soon." He continued to the dormitory airlock and stepped inside.
He took off the spacesuit in relief and heard the sound of metal clanking behind the next door. "More droids," he said, as he geared up for battle. Fighting his way towards the storage room he finds a dead woman with a datapad. She says she was trying to get to the dormitories but the turrets wouldn't let her. Her friend Mybad was killed trying to run past them. Then she complains that she couldn't get into the storage room.
Exile turns around and sees the door marked Storage Room. He easily unlocks it and looks back down at the dead woman. "You must have been pretty lame, lady," he says. Then he turns and snags everything he gets his hands on.
"Now to get by the turrets," he says as he equips his mining rifle and opens the doors. The turrets begin to fire at him but he shoots back with the laser until they are both destroyed. When he walks through the room, he sees dead Mybad lying on the floor. "You disable the turrets and THEN you enter the room!" he tells the dead body.
In the next hallway he destroys yet more mining droids until he comes to the Shift Assignment Console. He repairs it and takes a look. It shows that the number of miners available for duty has decreased in the last three days. Exile scans the rooms with the camera and sees the mess hall, full of droids, and the poison gas vents simmering in the west dormitories. He can see dead bodies laying everywhere and no sounds or voices coming from any of the rooms on the com system. "Surprise, surprise," he says.
Exile is able to shut off the gas from this terminal and open the door to the dormitories. He is just about to enter them when he stops in his tracks and looks to the right. A sign with an arrow pointing to the mess hall can be seen.
"Mess hall? Perhaps a little juma juice stored away in there somewhere?" he mumbles. He turns and fights more droids and turrets, stealing all the items he can along the way. A data pad tells that the fumes have been making the miners nauseous. "Yeah, fumes will do that," Exile agrees. An even more interesting find is a data pad that tells of a hidden stash of contraband in one of the east dorm rooms. "Contraband huh?" says Exile in excitement. "Better check it out." But first he rummages around the kitchen, throwing food off the shelves and out of the containers. "Damn it, where's the juice?" he yells.
He has no luck finding any juma juice and resigns himself to exploring the dorms for more goodies to take. Heading for the east dorms first he frisks all the dead bodies and hacks up a few more droids. Room by room, he empties the valuables, until he comes to a room that he needs to blast open with a mine. When he succeeds he finds the hidden contraband that was promised.
"Oh MY!" he exclaims as he looks at the treasure. "A bottle of Juma Juice and a copy of Space Slut magazine!" Exile jumps on the bunk and opens the bottle with his teeth as he turns the pages of the magazine, his eyes wide with excitement. He pulls open the centerfold of a naked Twi'lek woman riding a Kath Hound and sighs. "How did they ever do that shot? I wonder if it was a real Kath Hound. I'd love to be that Kath Hound." He gets a dazed look on his face as he daydreams until a siren goes off throughout the facility. He shakes his head and returns to reality. "Oh yeah! Poo doo man! I forgot about all that. I sure hope Atomic and Krusty are all right." He hops off the bed and rolls up the magazine and shoves it in his pack along with the rest of the Juma Juice.
Exile finds some more data logs on a dead foreman and on a dead dock officer. But he needs a haloreader to view them. After he cleans out the bodies and rooms of their items he heads to the west dorms and does the same there. The dead mine administrator is lying next to a functioning haloreader and he too has a log to be plugged in.
Exile plugs in all three logs and gleans more about what happened. The mine administrator gives part of the code for the turbolift out of here. He says they have locked down the dorms because of the explosions and they should have enough supplies to last a month. He thinks that Corky is to blame for all this. Then Exile watches as the poison gas fills the room and the miners all fall over with a thunk. "That's horrible," Exile says.
The mine foreman log explains that Corky wanted to recruit him to help kidnap the Jedi. But the mine foreman says he doesn't want to deal with the Jedi, that Jedi cause big trouble and make big wars. "We're not THAT bad!" Exile says to the hologram. The hologram continues to tell of Corky teaming up with the maintenance officer to start a diversion. Then Corky came into the hologram and knocked the foreman out. "Stupid punk," said Corky, "if you're not with us, your against us."
The dock officers log says that he wants to evacuate the dormitories to the hanger bay but they can't get by the containment fields. He's been transmitting codes into space as a distress signal. He shows the codes he's been sending and Exile smiles. "Well that was easy. I'm outta here."
Exile leaves the dorms and finds the turbolift to the administration level. There are three dead bodies in the room before the lift and one has a hologram. Exile plugs the hologram in and sees that the dead bodies are Corky and his thugs. Corky is recorded talking to the maintenance officer about their plans to turn the Jedi over to the exchange. Corky says he knows someone who can arrange transport. Then a message comes on of the maintenance officer, telling Corky that he's sending some mining droids to the dorms and that he's gassing everyone. Corky tries to get out through the turbolift, but the codes have been changed. Then HK's voice comes over the hologram, mocking Corky and his pals as Corky dies.
"So, it wasn't the maintenance officer after all!" Exile finally figures. "It was that HK droid! He's the one who killed everyone and shot me full of sedatives! He better hope I don't run into him again!"
Exile punches in the turbolift code and makes it back up to administration level.
As the lift door opens Exile jumps back in surprise as he comes face to face with Krusty.
"Krusty! You scared me!" Exile exclaims. "What are you doing slinking around like that?"
"Our enemy is heeeerrrrreee," she wails. "The one who fired upon the Ever Hunk."
"Poo Doo man?" Exile asks.
"Huh?" Krusty looks at him in confusion. "I have no time to tell you, you took too long down there. What were you doing?"
"Well, uh, … finding a way out, you see," Exile said.
"Why does your breath smell like Juma Juice," Krusty asks, sniffing the air.
"You must be hallucinating," Exile answers.
"We must leave quickly. If we can't reach the Ever Hunk we must escape on the ship that just docked here," Krusty says.
Exile remembers the drunken sith dancing with juma juice in their hands and says, "Yeah, that might not be such a bad idea."
"Come on," Krusty screeches and pulls him back into the main administration area.
They run back up to the communication's blister where Atomic is standing with his back to them. Atomic turns around and says, "Hey, you made it and… WHOA, who's the old one?"
"This is Krusty, she's coming with us," Exile says.
"You Jedi seem to be breeding around here," Atomic comments.
"What? Who told you that? Did that droid come here and speak to you?" Exile said as he worried about anyone finding out that he slept with Krusty while he was drunk.
"I have no idea what you're talking about!" Atomic said. "I only meant that I didn't know there were two of you here! Jeez, you're so touchy."
"We have no time to talk about this now," Exile says. He tosses some lasers to Atomic and Krusty and says, "We need to get on the Hard Liquor Binger. It's the only way we can get past the containment fields and finally to the Ever Hunk.
The three start running towards the docking bay but stop in their tracks when they notice HK standing there with some floating droids.
"You should have stayed put Master," says HK.
"I know all about you now, you murderer. You killed everyone here!" Exile shouts.
"No Master, not I. I had the poor quality droids do all my dirty work for me," HK says. "I was trying to protect you Master. The miners were going to turn you in for the bounty and I couldn't let them take my prize away from me. I administered the sedatives to you in order to keep you quiet while we awaited a ship."
"Why you stupid oaf! You could have killed me," Exile said. "Who's paying you to find me?"
"I can't tell you that Master," HK said. "I can only say that he's very wealthy and he wants to possess you."
"Possess me?" Exile said. "Well you can just tell your boss that I'm not a Panderinglorien. I don't believe that people can be owned."
"Oh get over yourself Master! You know, you were very difficult to find. I happened to find you by chance on the Hard Liquor Binger. I was so excited! I sabotaged the ship but then that blasted Ever Hunk showed up!"
"You're the one who sabotaged the Hard Liquor Binger? Are you responsible for giving me Juma Juice as well?"
"Yes Master, I knew you had to be sedated somehow. Then that old woman showed up and tried to take you away! Now, Master, you need to go back to your Kolto tank and wait like a good little drunk."
"I'll show you a good little drunk!" Exile fumed as he took aim. Krusty and Atomic began firing as well, hitting the floating droids first and causing them to explode. Finally HK exploded.
"That was fun," said Atomic.
"Yeah, it was nice to shut him up. Let's pick his parts clean and get off this asteroid," Exile smiled.
Krusty lifted her arm straight up and pointed at the ceiling as she yelled, "To the Hard Liquor Binger and beyond!"
Exile and Atomic looked at her in silence for a few moments. Then Exile said, "Yeah, Krusty, whatever."
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Next Time: The exciting escape from Perilous Mining Facility! Our heroes FINALLY reach the Ever Hunk.
Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Please make some noise and let me know! I'll try to get the next chapter to you sooner.