Log:Explorer's Guild: Sabotage in the Sand

Explorer's Guild: Sabotage in the Sand

OOC Date: December 7, 2017
Location: Tatooine
Participants: Explorer's Guild: Sar Yavok as GM, Corr Waldin, Sapphira Solari

Tatooine! Oof, ouch, ow, 2 hot. Sar, the intrepid and well-endowed explorer extraordinaire, has found himself back on Tatooine after the run in last night with the EVIL Horst Mbasi, a stealer of many maps. Rumor is that the maps had to do with Tatooine, so...putting two and two together, Sar's brought some friends to help him track down whoever killed Mr. Mbasi and absconded with the aforementioned maps.

Sar is in the seat of his Razalon FC-20 and is hauling major ass over the dunes of Tatooine, with an X-34 landspeeder following close behind. Their destination? An outpost that seems to have cropped up overnight in the heart of the Jundland Wastes.

Driving the speeder bringing up the rear, Sapphira remains concentrated on the road. Though she's been rather quiet for most of the trip, at least this concentration gives her a reason to be quiet. She swoops this way and that, not quite keeping up with Sar but she's able to sweep around rocks and ravines safely, if without flair. She gets the job done.

Riding in the passenger seat, it's Corr Waldin, sweating it out in his brown armor, the spraypaint he definitely didn't use varying in shade enough to sort of work as camo in most natural and even many urban environments. Brown is great. "Where's this place at?" he asks Sar over the comms. "You didn't give me a lot of info to work with here, Sar, we're going in more blind than I like to be."

"In the Wastes," Sar replies back to Corr, revving up the FC-20 as he crests a hill. "Just keep an eye out. I don't like it anymore than you, but we gotta see what all the fuss is about."

Sapphira drives safely and responsibly, sweeping around an upstanding crag in a smooth and comfortable manner. Nothing fancy, just getting the boss from point A to point B. She doesn't speak, because she's super concentrated. But today she is wearing a new Tattooine outfit consisting of light, flowy, loose pants that sit low on her hips and a fitted tank top. She wears lightweight fingerless gloves that cover her entire arms, up to her shoulders with just a bare patch of skin exposed to the elements. She has a scarf wrapped around her red hair to protect her head from the sun.

Corr, as said, is wearing one of two outfits he owns. "Alright, keeping an eye out then," he replies, turning to squint into the heatwaves radiating off of the desert. It's all very Mad Max out here, just dust and a pair of speeders, and who knows, at any moment a giant skiff with a loudspeaker the height of a building and a man with a flaming guitar could appear.

"Always," Sar says throttling down as he approaches the cliff's edge. He comes to a stop and climbs off of the bike, a hand resting on the handle as he looks over the Wastes. "Should be a few minutes ride...that way," he says, pointing to the north. "If the rumors are true. Could just be a trap. Who knows?"

Sapphira pulls up and parks beside Sar, flipping a few switches so the speeder remains stationary. She looks over at her boss, squinting into the goggles she wears to protect her eyes, which are now coated and sandblasted. "Do we know what to even expect when we get there?"

Corr hops out over the side of the speeder, the blaster on his thigh providing a place to rest his hand as he glances around at the area, squinting against the sun because who needs goggles when you can squint? "Somethin' movin' in the sand there?" A finger indicates what he's talking about, a few small mounds of subtly shifting sand.

HUUUUUURK. HURK-HURK. Sand people! Tusken Raiders, if ya nasty. Whatever you call them, a trio of them leap out of the sand. Two of them are equipped with gaffi sticks and one's got a slugthrower. They begin moving with haste towards the explorers!

Sar is caught off guard, but he's quick, so he's immediately scrambling to grab the S-5 that's hanging from his speeder.

Sapphira yanks the goggles off her eyes and blinks at the sudden brightness and colors that the world provides. Well, color. Tattooine is kind of all one color, isn't it. She rubs some grit from those slender green things, until she hears the telltale HURK HURK HURK of either a Skyrim Horker or some Sand People. Well shit. "Krif!" The girl cries out, blinking against the light. She steps back preventatively as she reaches for the holster at her side, trying to yank the weapon out.

Corr's not that great with a pistol, is the thing. Real fast, he can draw like nobody's business, and he does, but then the explorer proceeds to point at the nearest Tusken Raider, pull the trigger, and miss. Frowning, he shoots again, but the shot still goes wide, zipping over the oncoming attacker's head. "One of these days I'm gonna get good at this," he mutters, starting to back up towards the speeder for cover.

"Hey, this was supposed to be easy! We employed out stealthy HUUUUUURK. HURK-HURK!" the Tusken Raiders must be thinking to themselves as Corr turns around and starts shooting at them. The one with the rifle singles Corr out as the deadliest, despite his aim, and fires a slug towards the young man. The other two descned upon Sar and Sapphira with their big ol' smackin' sticks.

Sar Yavok manages to get a grip on his S-5 and finally pulls it free of the holster, just in time to turn around and end of face-to-face with a Sand Person. Sar dives out of the way of the Raider's overhead smash, sending sand all over the gaff. What a mess.

Sapphira lets out a yelp as the Gaffi stick comes swinging at her head, giving her a nice clock and sending her sideways into the speeder. The weapon is in her hand now, and the impact of the stumble sends two bolts flying willy nilly into the air. The woman blinks through her daze, finding her feet under herself as quickly as she can before moving to rise from the sprawled position on the side of the vehicle, green eyes wide with shock at the Tuscan Raider so close to her with that Gaffi stick. Let's see if she can get a little more nimble.

Corr is used to this sort of thing, although he's usually packing a rifle, and the bullet that whizzes by his head doesn't distract him too much. Instead, he sights in on the raider attacking Sapphira, shooting from the hip and explaining why his aim is terrible, but the first shot he fires off blows a flaming hole in the attacker's chest, sending him to the ground with a 'huuuuhr!' "Damn it, every time we come here, someone tries to kill us."

"Man down!" one of them shouts in his native language. Though, to the group it just sounds like HUUUUUUUUUUUUUURK. But a panicked HUUUUUUUUUUUURK. The rifleman lifts his cycler and fires again at Waldin as Corr's quarry hits the ground, leaving Sapphira safer for the moment. The other gaffi-wielder swings again at Mr. Yavok.

Sar rolls back to his feet, blaster pistol in hand. He closes the couple of feet between him and his attacker, pressing the barrel of his S-5 to the Raider's stomach. The first shot connects in a muffled and squishy sort of way, while the second finishes the job and bursts out of the Sand Person's back, leaving him to slump lifelessly again Sar.

Quite suddenly, the one that struck Sapphira goes down. She blinks a bit, her free hand coming up to touch her head. There's some blood mingling with the pretty scarf she has wrapped there. Damn it all, blood stains. Now back on her feet and seemingly out of immediate danger, she lifts her weapon toward the last remaining Hurker. Her movements are simple but effective, much like her driving. No drama, nothing artistic. It's more of an execution, with the look on her face focused and unhappy. Pew. Pew. And as her arm with the gun in it lowers, the last Sand Person collapses dead.

Just like that, the attackers are dead, reduced to piles of smoking rags, and Corr glances between his compatriots as he holsters his blaster. "Everyone alright? You got hit, Sapphira," he observes, making him basically a medical doctor. "You okay to keep going?"

Sar Yavok steps to the side and lets the Tusken Raider slumped against him fall into the sand with a thump. He breathes heavily and slides his blaster pistol away, looking between Corr and Sapphira, "Find her a gauze or somethin' to hold against that." He turns to look back out over the cliff, saying, "I knew the Wastes were crawling with 'em...didn't think it'd be this bad." He pulls a pair of macrobinoculars from his belt and holds them up to his eyes. He scans for a few moments. "Corr, Sapphira; come look at this," he says, pulling the device from his eyes and gesturing out towards a glint in the distance. "That look like an outpost or more like a dig-site to y'all?" he asks, handing the macrobinoculars to whoever cares to look through them.

"M'alright," Sapphira grumbles, checking the blood on her hand and then turning for the speeder, where she can reach in to fuss with some supplies until a clean cloth comes out. She'll hold that to her head and the bump swelling under the cut there, then use her scarf to hold it in place so only a slight corner of blood-stained bandage is visible. She'll let Corr take a look while she sees to this.

Corr does take a look, taking over the macrobinoculars and peering through them. It's the classic style, two eyeholes and one actual lens, that digitizes things and shows them in enhanced clarity within. "Looks like a dig site. Lots of guards, though, some kinda mercs. Definitely a dig site, they got some power equipment in the hole and it's cordoned into a grid."

Sar Yavok nods to Corr and kneels down before he lays down, trying to make his profile as small as possible, because if Sar can see them, they can see Sar. He sucks his teeth and he looks out over the surrounding area. "Three of us ain't gonna cut it, I don't think. Not with that gash in Sapphira's head, we ain't."

"M'alright," Sapphira responds again at Sar's concern for the future of the mission. Whatever the mission might be. "Besides, if I get close enough I can put any of their equipment out of commission. That's the goal, isn't it? To stop them from whatever they're doing?" She asks, looking between the two men. She hangs back still, with the speeders.

"Well. We don't know what they're doing, not yet," Corr points out, getting down on his knees and then prone as well, fiddling with the macros. "Definitely digging. Maybe the same type of thing we'd be doing, just more... aggressive." He frowns, passing the viewer back to Sar. "What do you think?" "The goal is to take their place in whatever they're doing. Or take our place back, rather," Sar says, resting uncomfortable on the ground. "Whoever /they/ are, they hired Horst Mbasi to get maps of that area to them," he says, pointing his finger to where the dig site is. "Was supposed to be our job. Professor Ghardi over on Coruscant told me as much. He didn't know any more than that. Just that there's something out here important enough to steal and kill over," he says.

"Well," Sapphira says, moving up closer to the pair and at last lowering herself to crawl the rest of the way before she flops in the sand beside Sar. "If you're looking for some sort of hostile takeover then no, I don't think we'll manage it. But I could slow them down, if I could get close enough," she explains, looking over at the other two. "At least temporarily."

"Hm." Corr follows the finger, squinting now through bare eyes, his head raised up off the sand but the rest of him flat against it. "I don't know. This is more than we expected and more than we're prepared for. You much for sneaking, Sapphira?" he asks, leaning over to glance at her. "I don't know if we can shoot our way out of that down there."

Sar Yavok rolls over onto his side and looks between his two compatriots. "I'm game for just about anything," he says before squinting out into the distance again. "But we're at least gonna need a couple more hands and a drop ship to tackle that. They're dug in." He pauses before chuckling at the unintentional pun.

Sapphira looks over at Corr, then back at the site that she can barely see. She sinks her upper teeth into her lower lip as she considers. "I mean, I can try," she finally decides. "And if not, you go get some help and you come rescue me, right? Assuming they don't just shoot me." She looks at the two men, then back to the site again.

"No," Corr decides at the way Sapphira is planning to go about this, with the 'what could possibly go wrong' attitude and all. "You're not goin' down there and getting captured or killed. We don't do that over a dig site," the ex-soldier informs her with a look, shifting on his elbows to stare back down there at all those men with guns. "We don't know what they're lookin' for but we know they shot Hex all to pieces over the maps and a half dozen men are already dead over it." "Sorry, sweetheart, but Corr's right," Sar says, pushing himself back up to a kneel. "We need to see what kinda information we can get on these people before we go in guns blazing." He looks over at Corr and says, "The Freedom Cry'll do the job when we decide to make a run for it, though. As long as they don't got anything bigger than an E-Web." Standing up, he turns to begin walking back to the speeder bike.

"I can do it," Sapphira assures them, twisting to watch Sar get up and move away. "I just have to get in close enough. If it's as busy as all that, nobody'll pay any attention to me. Just a minute or so with some of their main equipment and it'll stop 'em for at least a day, if not a bit more." Big green eyes dart back and forth between them, hoping perhaps that they'll let her give it a whirl after all.

"I don't like it," Corr repeats, looking over at Sar. "What do you think?"

"Looks like she's hell-bent on getting it done," Sar says back to Corr. "We gotta be quick about this, though. In and out. Corr, you and Sapphira take the landspeeder a little closer in. Down around that outcropping there." He points. "Park it and move in on foot. I'll take my bike over there. That over-hang should give me a decent vantage point, in case stuff pops off. And if that fails, the Bloodfin'll get me in quick enough." He mounts the FC-20 and cranks it up. "If things don't look good; run. Whatever they got ain't worth losin' either one of y'all, alright?" He throttles up and speeds away, off toward his perch.

Sapphira looks back to Corr and nods softly. "I'll get it done, sir," she promises, apparently out to prove herself in some fashion or another. She pulls her goggles back over her face and checks her makeshift bandage before getting in the speeder to take them to where they need to be.

Shaking his head reluctantly, Corr climbs back in the speeder, a hand on his blaster to keep it from falling out of the holster as he hops over the low door. "Still don't like this," he mutters, glancing at the driver. "This goes sideways, you run like hell and don't look back."

Corr and Sapphira don't have as far to go as Sar does, so they arrive rather quickly at their destination. About 150 yards South of the compound. There's a duo of sentries just chillin out in front of the gate, shooting the shit back and forth. After all, they are just in the middle of the desert. Who's gonna come after them?

Sapphira adjusts her own weapon, picking up a satchel bag of basic tools and slinging it over her person. She steps up and out of the speeder to begin the walk. "I will, sir," she tells him. It won't take long for them to come up a dune where they can peer at the senteries. For that, Sapphira mimics Sar Yavok's earlier move and lays down, allowing her to peer. "Okay," she says to her boss. "So first we have to get inside."

"Yeah, get inside, and so on," Corr replies, slipping along behind her on his stomach to squint over the dune and down at the dig site. "This is a bad idea, Sapphira. I'll say it one more time, we get into trouble, you run. Don't wait, don't shoot, you run and you get back in the speeder and drive away from here."

Corr and Sapphira's current target? A big ol' excavator-looking machine that's currently doing all of the heavy lifting for the enemy team. It's bit is hanging down via crane into a large hole in the center of the area. However, the controls are near the front left corner of the compound. Not very far away at all once you've managed to get inside. If you manage to get inside.

Sar's speeder comes to a stop at his perch, and the old man climbs off of his bike once again. He grabs his E-11 out of a bag hanging from the speeder and begins crawling toward where he's going to set up shop.

"Roger that, sir. But, you know. If it does go sideways don't wait on me either. S'no point in everybody having a bad day, now is there." Despite the tension and uncertainty of the situation, there's a slight smile on her features. Damn adrenaline junkie and her weird addiction to adventure! It's a wonder that she's lived this long. "But how do we get past those guys, anyway?"

With that, Sapphira scoots backwards, moving away from the crest of the hill with nary a sound. Perhaps Corr doesn't even hear her go. But when he does finally look, he'll realize he's alone. Where the fuck did that little engineer go? The answer comes with a startling THUD. Somehow, using some rock outcroppings as cover, Sapphira was able to reach the fenceline by the gate and sneak up on one of the guards. That THUD was the sound of the handle of her DL pistol conking the guy on the head, who drops like a sac of Nerf Eggs. It was all done expertly.

"We're going to try to sneak up on them," Corr tells Sapphira quietly, the weirdly-smiling and not enough scared girl with the headwound. "If it don't go so well, I'll try to distract 'em, and then you get the drop on 'em as best you can. I'm sure you've spent enough time with Sar to at least picture they're him, right?"

So saying, he begins to creep forward, a sort of slower combat glide, but in his hesitant glance towards Sapphira, misses a rock which makes a loud thumping noise on the toe of his boot. "Hey!" someone yells, and Corr takes off, churning in the sand away from the digger and hopefully drawing the guards' attention away from the redhead, especially when the sand is looser than he thought and running in it is weirder than he thought and he loses his footing to faceplant full-force into it.

One down. "Huh!?" remarks the other guard, a Metal Gear Solid exclamation mark appearing over his head. "H-hey! You can't be here," he says raising his rifle to the now-prone Corr.

Sar is currently laughing his ass of as he watches the scene through the scope of the E-11.

As the guard turns for Corr, Sapphira takes a few running steps behind him before leaping on his back. She's quick to curl her arm under the poor man's chin, where she squeezes. Hard. Her teeth grit and her nose wrinkles as she focuses all of her strength into that sleeper hold, squeezing and squeezing until the guard falls to his knees, and then eventually to his face, uncontious. Sapphira just rides him down, hitting the sand hard with him. She looks up at Corr, heaving a breath. She's red in the cheeks from the exersions. "Okay. Let's go."

"I'm just here to, uh, see the sights," Corr replies, pulling himself upright and dusting himself off. He's dressed in armor, but maybe that's touristy on Tatooine! "I uh, the- I- tourist." He's a great liar. The guard looks confused by this, however, even if he's not buying it, and it works long enough for Sapphira to take him down. The director snorts sand out of his nose, nodding at her and following along. "You're an engineer, should be simple to take that thing outta commission for a smart girl like you," he murmurs as they go, his head turning this way and that, watching for more guards.

"Looks likes there's only two more between y'all and the control panel," Sar says, trying to get more comfortable.

And he's right. There's a guy on the other side of the gate, and one more right next to the controls. Both of them are as oblivious as they can possibly be.

Sapphira pulls herself up; she's coated in dust, but she doesn't seem to care. She creeps along to the fence, pausing near it and peering in through the gate. "Sar says two more," she tells Corr. She seems much smoother, much more confident in this element. The thrill of some risk apparently brings out the best in her! Sometimes. "So how do we handle this one?" she turns and asks her boss, the master tactitian that he is.

OKay, so they're doing this. Sapphira is able to creep around the fenceline and gate into the private area proper, and steps behind some oil drums nearby as a hiding place until the men are thoroughly distracted by Corr's bullshit. It's perfect. It's going to be great, it's going to be wonderful. She's going to drop him like another sack of Nerf eggs. With the gun in hand, Sapphira lifts her arm and swings ... just as the man ducks to pick up a credit chit someone dropped. There's a woosh .... and then nothing.

Corr just plows ahead when Sapphira fails miserably, sweating visibly, his hands kind of shaky, he's not a good liar, okay. "He says- he says you... you're fired for eating all the beans. He. Loves. Beans." The man is covered in sand, dirt, and Tusken Raider, it's a matter of time before this stops working, HURRY SAPPHIRA.

"Now...now you two just hold it right there," the guy stammers, seeing through their perfectly-woven facade. "I know for a fact that we didn't bring any beans out here. Boss said they wouldn't keep as well as corn," he explains, lifting his blaster and swiveling it between the two of them. "Now, just who the heck are ya?" he asks, before a tibanna cartdridge from on high beans him in the side of the head and he stumbles, smacking against the wall and falling over.

"Keep moving, dumbasses," Sar says over the comms, loading another tibanna cratridge into his rifle.

Sapphira is moving quickly as she can, too quickly to be quiet now. "Don't let me get grabbed!" She says to Corr ... likely too loud. But her steps are quick, and they bring her to the control panel before anyone can really figure out what she's doing. She has it open in a flash, and is yanking wires and putting them in at different spots. Sparks start to fly, and then there's a sizzling sound as the computer itself begins to overheat with an influx of power burning it up. She doesn't even bother to close it, then, she turns and flees back toward Corr and the gate. "Let's go!"

Corr does as she asks, socking the nearest guy in the face, wincing at the pain in his hand, but Sapphira's done it, real quick, too, and it sounds like she got it good. "Run!" he yells, tearing off behind her. Nothing like a little light sabotage in the afternoon.

"Hey! Come b-" PUNCH. The guy who spots Sapphira takes a quick straight to the jaw, before stumbling back and flipping over a railing to the sandy ground below. The big excavator starts to churn and grind, the large drill bit at the end spinning up to speed as the arm that holds it starts wigging out. The bit drives itself into the wall of the hole, where it shreds itself against the hard stone. Smoke begins to billow out of the control panel, and everybody's very concerned. Too concerned to spot the two Explorers booking it out of the compound.

"Well done, Sar says, standing up from his perch and moving to climb back into the seat of his speeder bike. "I'll see you back at Mos Eisley."