Log:Rebellion: Heist Heist Baby II
Second part of the truck heist.
OOC Date: July 09, 2023
Location: Chandrila
Participants: Rieve Selki as GM, Hadrix Kora, Rey & Lira'una
And so here the 'hunt' comes to its inevitable conclusion. The great corporate beast of an armoured truck having made its slow and lumbering way through the city, finally reaches its final destination. While those seeking to liberate the creds have taken cover and found their ideal locations on the gantries and so forth overlooking this final stop on the tour of the armoured truck's path, the scene laid out before each and all is simple enough. The armoured truck itself is parked outside the nightclub, a hefty and unwieldy behemoth of a vehicle that could certainly take a great deal of punishment, though it was found to have a few weaknesses as the group followed it here, making plans as they went.
One such plan ringing in everyone's ears being a lightning strike, securing access to the truck entry, clearing a way to the cab and disposing of those who refuse to surrender.
o The large antennae on top was noted with regard to blocking comms. o Also the repulsors were vulnerable to ionization. o A tracking device had also been noted beneath, with some time (4 minutes?) needed to access.
Down below? Oh the lifters were doing their thing. Cradling hexagonal stacks of many creds and loading them into the back, giving the repulsors a moment of whirring resentment as they readjusted their power-output to compensate for the extra weight.
The nightclub employee overseeing the exchange tossed his cigarra onto the floor, crushing it beneath his foot in a flurry of sparks that soon died beneath that boot. Two of the guards, hands on their holstered pistols eyed their surroundings, but soon returned to some conversation or other they were having. To them? It was simply a normal day. One guard, evidently holding some measure of rank given the three pips upon his shoulders watched the loading quietly, arms folded, eyes narrowed. The loading continues... the guards are focusing on their task, oblivious to the group who have assembled and watch over them, with fiendish intent...
---
Hunkered in the hide position established, leaning to look out at the truck as the funds are being piled out and moved to be added to all the rest, there is one who has the physical posture of someone 'at work'. Adjusting how his rig hangs, and making mental notes about 'people resisting' with a particular distaste.
<<"Right.">> rough voice on comms as he leans out again, <<"They're loading, report your position. Let me know when you're ready and we'll kick this blurgg.">> the silvery blade of his beskad checked, the pistols strapped all about him. Little room for the big cannon, so the smaller ones will have to do.
'Let me do it.'
'No...'
'We both know I could do it on my own.'
'So could I.'
'You're soft.'
A rumbling sound from within the helmet of the Mandalorian and a tension growing in his form. But he holds, waits listening for people the comm in.
---
When we last left our heroes, the slender lavender acrobat that is Lira'una had just taken a ride up to the overlook with Hadrix via jetpack, which was far less concerning than whatever darkness she'd felt welling up inside him, trying to take over. Now, she too is up there with him, which was good and bad.
On the bright side of things, she was well out sight of the guards.
On the dark side, there was a dark side. And she was trapped on the rooftop with it.
So, she'd given herself some distance and snuck down a little closer so she neither had to make the rocket-man entrance nor jump completely off of the top of a building. Stealthy-ninja Lira more survivability.
<< "What's the plan? How are we keeping the truck from driving away? I don't exactly have a lot of stopping power, but I can aim to get a cryoban in the back... or under the front. Will it hold a truck?" >>
Lira kept her voice to a whisper into the mic, but she wasn't wrong. She was more of an anti-personnel acrobat than an anti-armor acrobat. And that spectrum progressively more questionable the closer the 'person' got to 'armor.' Not unlike the man she was talking to.
<< "ESS-KAY-TEE READY." >> The BT-SKT arachnid-droid Lira called Skits had a dark, ominous basic vocabulator, even on comms.
Lira had left Skits with the speeder 'just in case,' so he was down on ground level in case he was needed. He was /also/ super stealthy.
---
Leather boots settle in on the foot pedals of a rusted old speederbike. Leather gloved hands gripped the handlebars, as the rider sat back on the old torn mesh seat cushion. Her hands twisted the activation trigger causing the bike's engine to rumble to life, shaking nearby windows of a building that the vehicle had been parked near.
A second later, the bike burst in to motion, carrying its rider out on to a seldom traveled side road. Cloaked in black, with the hood back waving in the winds behind her shoulders, the black clad rider swept her covered gaze from side to side, her face masked over by a simple and unremarkable styled adornment.
A tracking device on the front of the bike, recently mounted to its console, is viewed by the rider, as she twists the handlebars to the right, casting her ride down an eastern direction, in to an alleyway where she applies more speed to the old rumbling bike, causing a few street urchins to dash out of the way as the bike rushed between them!
---
Rieve for his part is enjoying a social soiree several blocks away and a good many levels higher, enjoying the company of politicians, bankers, a night club owner, a collector and reseller of antiquities and relics. The guest of some prominent businessman, Rieve is is ensuring his honoured companion is nothing short of the focus of every conversation. Yet this is a good ways away from the 'liberation' of creds. Those hexagonal stacks that number a good few hundred thousand and change. In the immediate vicinity of that former Hapan 'Princeling' the wine is flowing, the canapes are floating from guest to guest, and not a soul is thinking of the violence of the streets.
The loading continued apace, slow and steady, the occasional gust of wind swirling detritus and the like about the boot-shod feet of the Corpo guards as they stood about that truck. Though the repulsors had been powered down, it was clear that the two guards within were still quite active in the cockpit of that cumbersome transport.
Another hexagonal block was loaded, with the lifter droid moving back towards the club to follow through on the next stack. Running a club for the occupiers was surprisingly lucrative.
The Commander turned to regard his men, the three pips on his right shoulder glinted in the light. "Last stack. Stand ready." The words barked officiously, and instantly those guards present stood a little straighter. The back of the truck remained open. The guards eyed their surroundings, a hand a piece resting on their sidearms holstered at their hips. "All quiet, we'll start to finalise loading." And so the loading of that final hexagonal stack of creds began...
... with a faint roar of something on the wind in the distance, and Lira and Hadrix's gentle chatter in the eaves.
---
<<"Cryo underneath, I expect it'd stall for a moment, enough time to disrupt. Throw it inside and you might damage controls.">> What is the big man planning now?
With Valeska, Colo and the miralian missing, things were going to go decidedly different than intended. <<"Without the others here, we're going to -">>
<<"Oh no...">> Gripper's voice now added to comms, while the small droid remains in her socket on the back of the big man's armor.
<<"Just try to keep up.">> and suddenly he's over the ledge and falling like a midnight purple meteor for the ground, a clean dismount that overcompensates for distance from the ledge, sending up a shower of sparks when his shoulder pauldron grinds against duracrete and a drain pipe - giving rise to a shrieking sound that lends his trajectory to an awkward tumble, as if trying to do a cartwheel from a standing jump.
<<"IhateyouIhateyouIhateyouIhateyouIhateyouIhateyou">> a chorus from the droid as Hadrix nears the ground at alarming speed, looking on a direct collision course when he gets a altitude alert and instinct cuts in. Jets flaring and he is hurled into the truck, at speed to put himself in with the money, and the guards. Crouched atop the stack and lifting his right hand, a two foot blade extending from the vambrace.
---
The figure in black atop the old rusty speederbike zips around a pylon of duracrete and city trash strewn across the alleyway. The rider twists the handles of the bike again causing it to veer around the obstacles in her pathway, before she bursts through a line of waste bins sending up a cloud of debris in all directions.
The rider bursts out on to the main industry road behind the truck mere moments after the bigger vehicle had trundled past the alleys. The rumbling engine of the speederbike whines more loudly as more momentum is applied via the grips by its rider!
With her black cloaked form leaning forward, the rider applies more speed, sending her up along the left side of the big armored truck!
The driver of the truck will just see the comparatively small bike, and its rider, zip past on the outside of the truck, before it darts over in front of the truck itself!
This is undoubtedly alarming, but not entirely impossible in this urban sprawl of a city...
---
Two distractions. The sudden bodily slamming of one individual into the back of the truck, with enough force to shake the vehicle, and the steadier yet no less swift arrival of Rey aboard her bike. The guards are certainly in a state of wild confusion as one second, and then another ticks by.
Hands move to pistols, and two stalk towards Rey, raising their weapons-free hands towards the civilian. "Halt right there! You'll need to move that piece of scrap or we'll run it over. We're not stopping for you."
The Commander, presently bellowing the orders, is shadowed by the second who seems confused as to where to focus.
The Commander soon turning towards the truck, his second-in-command is looking between the truck and Rey. The two at the rear aren't quite sure what just slammed into the back of the truck past them, though they are moving to draw their weapons as they focus on Hadrix. "Hey! Hey now!"
The two inside the truck, safe within the sealed compartment of the cockpit, can be heard over the comms the guards all wear.
"What is going on back there? Commander? Now what is this wannabe pod-racer doing in front of us? Come on! Move it!" A horn is parped at Rey, the menacing bugle of vehicular annoyance. Confusion abounds for these few precious seconds.
"Stay in the truck as per protocol, and you two go see what they're doing!" The Commander bellows at the two guards already approaching Rey, hands on their holstered pistols.
Tick, tick, tick.
---
Arm swinging forward as he scrambles forward rather than remaining like a sitting fwit on top of the money, Hadrix is moving - a thick rolling smoke from the nozzle extended from the same vambrace that his blade has extended from. His helmet's filter systems keeping his lungs clear and his HUD begins sweeping, trying to keep track of previously marked targets.
<<"I'm in.">> still pumping out the screen even as he pulls the blade from his hip - the silvery metal whispering from the scabbard and prepped to go for the hatch between storage and cab. <<"Hope this works, 'lek?">> a bit of a chuckle in the big man's chest as he leaves it up to his own armor to keep him protected as he angles to go for the hatch. Looking to seal himself in in, with the two guards and the smoke.
---
With two guards bearing down upon the rider, she gives them a simple look over her right shoulder after halting the bike's progress a few meters in front of the truck. She doesn't vocally respond to the guards, she just eyes them from behind her masked face. What reaction they do get out of the relatively small framed woman in the black robes is that she stands up... One foot comes up on to the bike's saddle, followed by her other, and a second later her full height is upon the bike, with her black robes billowing out in the wind coming down the street.
She angles her body, crouches and lunges in to the air!
An unnatural distance is achieved by this jump, to a degree that might both surprise and perplex the guards who'd been ordering her to move her bike.
Tumbling in mid air, a backflip, that ends with her extending her booted feet down just in time to make contact with the armored truck's roof, the black robed figure crouches again for a matter of balance, then raises back up with her right gloved hand snapping to her waistline.
A snap hiss follows her, and a golden glowing beam of energy extends down toward the truck's roof.
She stands upon the truck now, staring down at the guards with the emotionless mask conveying a challenge to them.
'What you gonna do now?'
---
The guards are certainly taken aback by the athletic leap atop the vehicle, more so is the worrying addition of a golden beam that extends towards the roof of the truck. The hiss sends a veritable chill down their spines as they level their weapons, one bellowing across towards the Commander. "Sir!" But there's no pause as the two open fire on Rey, soon followed by the Commander himself levelling his weapon towards the anarchic troublemaker. Likewise firing off a round towards Rey as he reaches for his radio. "Base, this is Gatherer #13..." It all happens in the blink of an eye.
As the blaster shots ring out from the front, the two at the rear simply take stock of their situation and fire into the back of the truck somewhat blindly. Knowing at least the armour will protect their friends at the front. The two at the front are blind to say the least, they can hear Rey above them, they can see the blaster fire of their friends, and they can hear their commander's call over the radio for reinforcements.
"We're under attack... last known locat..."
---
Hatch slamming shut with a shoving of a switch lever down before he is swinging round, an arch of flames from his gauntlet added to the chaos of the smoke he has filling the back of the truck. Blaster bolts ricocheting off of his armor - the mandalorian iron plates glowing in the wake of the strikes as Hadrix keeps moving. Re-angling for the front of the compartment, quiet now as he concentrates, it's Gripper who breaks the silence, forcing a terse response from Hadrix.
<<"Going to cover me if I have to get to the door">>
<<"Always.">>
The blade is moving, a line being traced in an armored uniform that looks like cosmetic damage until blood begins flowing - the return swipe wide and shooting up sparks from the impact with the wall. Racing for the front of the cabin, preparing to blow open the front if they can't open any other way.
---
The incoming blaster bolts sent to the black clad figure's form are all intercepted with graceful motions of the beam weapon's hilt handle! It's quick. It's precise. It's an unlikely answer to the aggressive attacks from the guards. Each bolt is attempted to be sent back to its point of origin, and at the end of the motions of the golden beam, it ends with the tip of the beam aimed skyward, and the wielder staring past the growling laser toward the guards who fired upon the black robed figure.
She just stands atop the truck now, her leather boots apart upon the truck's armored surface, her hands gripping the laser sword handle tightly as she just stares out from behind the mask.
She does nothing, she simply stands atop the truck, watching the guards, waiting for THEM to challenge her further, making it evidently clear that she's laying claim to the truck one way or another.
---
One guard falls back instantly the moment Hadrix's blade flashes out, slicing through armour and sending him crumpling to the floor, pained, bleeding, and still firing blindly into the smoke until the last shot pings off the closed doors. The second and the other guard move to try the handles, though they are quite useless from the outside. The guard who got a bolt deflected lies on the floor, wounded, clutching his stomach from where the impact slammed into him and knocked him prone, his friend instantly moving to drag his comrade away from the vicious attackers.
"Intruder, I repeat, stay in the cockpit!" The Commander barks to the two within the cockpit, the radio crackling as those outside fall back and watch.
"Reinforcements are enroute One Three, three ticks out."
The crackling static of the announcement rings out from within and from the radios of the guards. "Roger, I believe... one is a force user... we are unable to retake vehicle, it is currently static." The Commander snarls into his radio, obviously respecting that golden hued blade of light as much as anyone should. "You should surrender, reinforcements are enroute... give up now, make it easier on yourself." Yet even still, he and the two guards back away from Rey. A static hiss of acknowledgment of the problems this group face barks over the comms.
The door for Hadrix is indeed a tough one, sealed from within... a charge would be needed.
---
<"You should tell them to surrender...">
The Boar-Wolf Ealor's voice coming from the dissipating smoke in the holding section. A roll of det-tape pulled from his belt and moved with quick precision, one eye quite literally on the wrap-around view in his HUD and the other on his work as the adhering material clings to the door with the tamping layer exposed to air and the business side affixed to armor plating.
<"It won't go well if they resist... Worse if they shoot... I'm willing to solve this peacefully, to a degree. But I don't have patience for people making stupid decisions.">
Rolling to one side of the door and bringing his arm up in a curl to add additional shielding to the side of his head before he chins a tab that engages the detonators with a sudden -BWAM- that forces his helmet audio filters to block out external noise and likely introduces the poor folks in back with him to a stunningly sudden case of onset tinnitus.
---
The laser sword growls.
"Tell your people to stand down." The black clad figure says through their mask, a slight voice scrambler giving the female voice an edge of distortion and unsettling uncanny feeling to its tone.
Her sword is swept to the side, to her right as she advances a little with a step from her left.
"Tell them to abandon the truck." She commands the Guard Captain here.
"This fight is over, and your reinforcements will be told that pirates have taken your treasure." The figure orders down to the leader of the guards.
The truck rumbles violently beneath her feet, and the woman standing atop it shifts her weight to sidestep before she exhales softly.
Mandalorians. They have no patience...
---
Sirens in the distance.
Getting closer.
Hadrix's entrance to the main compartment from within ensures that those two guards, currently huddled and listening to the approaching reinforcements noww two ticks away, are suitably shocked and blasted by the sudden pressure within their compartment as the hatch is blown.
WOMP!
Oh their ears are ringing, their hands clutch at their ears and they roll forwards, at a loss, stunned and pained!
The Commander however, he looks to Rey and tilts his head as her words seep into his mind. "Abandon the truck, get out of there."
The others look to the Commander, there's sense there. There's a Jedi standing atop their truck. To shoot is foolishness at best. Yet they can see the truck shake, and two approach, weapons cast aside as they duck beneath Rey's gaze to pummel at the door. "Come on Jeh'ri, open the door!"
It takes a few moments, but Jeh'ri finally manages to paw at the locking mechanism, flinging open the door and allowing a measure of smoke to drift free. Jeh'ri and Nohsupfu-u, a Rodian slip free and stumble into the arms of their companions.
"Base... pirates have taken the treasure."
There's a pause. A crackle. "Say again One three?"
But any reply is lost by the guards stumbling to aid their tinnitus plagued colleagues. The Truck is open...
The sirens are louder still...
---
<"Smart.">
Getting into the drivers seat even as he is slamming the throttle lever forward, forced into an awkward seating posture thanks to his jetpack. Looking to the people outside of the repulsor truck as the hatches are shutting while he's getting into the first turn, angling the nose of the truck before switching to comms again,'
<<"Pheegus, we're en route. Be ready for a mobile pick up. Tell Kar and Greeza to keep the turrets offline unless we absolutely need them.">>
The kid was showing a lot more talent than she had indicated she had, if the crew outside of the truck had stood down so fast. Would be an interesting chat later; assuming they all didn't just die on the way out of atmosphere.
---
The emotionless mask just stares at the Guard captain, and his men, as they stood down.
The black robed figure moves toard the side of the armored truck as it rumbles to life, and with a swipe of the activation ring, the golden laser beam glides back down in to its handle. The figure unceremoniously drops off the side of the truck then back down to the spiderbike that she arrived on.
With a look over her shoulder at the guards, the bike is re-engaged, its thrusters firing up as it gains speed to move along behind the armored vehicle.
With her black robes flowing in the wind behind her shoulders, the bike rrider applies the gas to shoot ahead of the truck again, sweeping around to take point, to scout up ahead of the vehicle and to hopefully make sure the retreat pathway that was planned is clear.
---
As the two soar away, their skillful driving sees them draw ahead of the reinforcements. Flashing lights, sirens, an armed response that crowds that nightclub. Sure the sound of sirens grows and wanes, with police and security vehicles crossing sections and searching, but they are unable to locate the untrackable armoured truck. Hadrix's efforts having seen that truck simply vanish off the computer screens back at base. A blip one moment, and gone the next.
The commander and his men are dispatched to various ambulances that arrive to ensure their health, with Jeh'ri and his dear Rodian friend being tended to for bleeding ears, while their two comrades are dealt with for a blaster wound and a stab wound. All in all not much blood was spilt.
The hunt continues, but the truck and the bike? There's no sight.
---
A good many streets away, Rieve is already on his fifth vol-au-vent, and his third glass of Naboo blossom wine.
---
Hurtling down side roads, headed not for the city proper but for roadless territories on the outskirts, Hadrix keeps an eye on systems and display mirrors while weaving down an alley and then through a side street.
<<"Pheegus?">>
<<"We're moving. Tracking your comm signal.">>
The smoke coloured shape of the old VCX craft hurtles at low altitude, skimming over land with its ithorian pilot behind the controls and the aged Mir in the co-pilot seat. Oversized, even for its model, engines blazing and the whole craft streaking along at speeds that rival an X-Wings make it like rolling thunder when the outsized hauler vehicle comes into view,
Had to assume the kid was clear, they had eyes keeping watch though, just in case. Ramping over a stack of duraplast panels at a construction sight being assembled at the edge of the city the trucks repulsors carry it higher and higher with the added power directed to engines to accommodate for the credits weight.
No sudden drop or catastrophic downward angle, only the blockade runners' bomb-bay loading doors sweeping over it and docking clamps dropping to magnetically attach and begin hauling it in.
<<"Pheegus, go comms dark, shallow orbital exit path, put us on the day-side before burning for jump distance.">>
<<"Copy that... Helluva day, eh?">>
<<"Think I'll buy Narsai something shiny so she doesn't hurt me for not bringing her along...">>
---
Rey had been told this job was to help the Rebellion, but some part of her wasn't sure that any of this claimed treasure would reach good hands. Nevertheless, she had to try. She had to try to find ways to bolster those who would fight back against the dark forces controlling the galaxy today.
Mounted on her borrowed speederbike, Rey navigates the side streets all around the hover-truck, changing her placement in front of it, beside it, even behind it based on the needs of their winding pathway through the city proper.
Ending up behind the truck as it speeds toward the outer limits, Rey once more ignites her lightsaber.
This time the golden beam strikes through support pillars of a duracrete walkway that is suspended above the road they're on. She cuts through the pillars, with her bike rushing out from under its shadow as the walkway shakes, and drops down to the road where she'd been mere moments before.
In a bid to block the road from any pursuers, Rey once more disengages her saber and tucks the hilt back in to her robes before her hands grip the controls of her bike, and she jams the throttle forward, racing up alongside the hover-truck again with tendrils of her dark hair flowing wildly out the edges of the strange mask she's wearing.
Her speederbike makes growling howls that echo off of the walls of the city and bounce throughout the industrial zone's edges as the fleeing convoy breaks from the city toward their contact...
---
