Rescue at Coruscant I: Distractions

[Regulus Starborn]

RESCUE AT CORUSCANT


PART I
DISTRACTIONS

It is a dark time the REBEL ALLIANCE and the JEDI ORDER.
Having fled from Cloud City and the might of the GALACTIC EMPIRE,
a Jedi Master named SERENA LARAN, crucial to the survival of galactic freedom,
has been taken prisoner by sinister dark agents known as the INQUISITORIUS.
Without Serena's leadership, hope may soon fade for victory.

Intent on catching the Empire's attention, Rebel agents are
preparing to launch a brazen attack at the heart of the Imperial capital.
Among them are some of the most highly trained soldiers of the Alliance.

By order of the wily Colonel REGULUS STARBORN, the crack squad
of Rebel commandos slips through the Imperial defenses in a stolen shuttle,
prepared to cause as much mayhem as possible to distract the Empire
from their desperate rescue.

“Command didn't sell this as a suicide mission, but if you don't have a death wish... now is your last chance to get out. No one will think any less of you, or call you a quitter. There's no shame in leaving now. Not unless you have any self-respect, in which case keep your asses glued to those seats and your eyes on me. I don't want to hear who you are or why you're here 'cause the only thing that matters now is this.”

The holographic display in front of Colonel Regulus Starborn flickered to life, displaying three dimensional map of Coruscant's Under City. The light from the display was all that illuminated the cramped briefing room, casting an eerie blue glow and shadows across the Colonel's audience. The crows-feet at the edges of his eyes deepened as he frowned, tapping hard at a console key that was slow to respond. The hologram became blurred as the image magnified, then resolved into the crisp picture of a squat industrial structure.

“Generator twenty seven. Looks like any one of a hundred generator's you'd find on Coruscant, powering stars know what – but for all of you, there is only number twenty seven. You'll be flying one of our Imperial shuttles into the capital, and that means from the moment you set off, no communication with the fleet. Not so much as a hoorah when you touch down on Coruscanti soil, or what passes for soil on triple-zero these days...”

[Gus Kalendra]

Hours later...

The silence aboard the Imperial shuttle Bantam was absolute. As he looked around at the rest of the ship's passengers, Gus could practically hear the wheels turning inside of their heads. The words of Colonel Starborn played over and over inside of his own mind: a deceptively simple plan, made complicated by a hundred and one variables that none of them could predict. Not to mention the fact that they had only been given a handful of pieces to what was surely a larger puzzle – but that was how it worked, Kalendra thought, as he checked and rechecked his blaster rifle. They had their job to do, and any information beyond that was on a need-to-know basis.

Get in. Blow the generator. Get out. It was simple in his head but there were steps missing that Gus knew he wouldn't be able to take alone. With another furtive glance at the others, he hoped that the men and women who had been brave – or rather stupid – enough to volunteer for the mission had all the skills and the know-how to pull it all off.

[Ariana Darin]

The wait for the shuttle to receive clearance and break atmosphere seemed to take far longer than any of the passengers would have liked. The nuances in their movements, the glances cast at one another, the checking and rechecking of equipment, everything was caught by the eye of Corporal Darin. While she could not speak to if the motions were typical pre-mission for most of the others, those of Sergeant Kalendra were familiar enough that the Echani could tell something was off.

Her silver eyes locked on the man, though she suspected her words would be heard by the others. "We will be fine. There have been missions with a greater degree of difficulty in which we have been successful. This time will be no different."

[Jehkran Dmath]

Slumped over in his seat, Jehkran hummed. He hummed because he was scared. He was scared because he was stupid. There certainly wasn't any good reason to be scared, beside the fact that he gladly, and enthusastically, volunteered for a mission that went into the heart of Imperial terroritory, required an explosion for a distraction that could possibly end in his death and the team's stolen ship was going through clearance at a fatally slow pace.

There was plenty of reason to be stupid, though. A Jedi was involved in this mission, and in spite of the fact that he ran from his past in the mystical arts as a soldier, he had a soft spot for the guys and gals waving glow sticks around when blasters could destroy someone from kilometers away. Jehkran was well equipped to kill.

He was also quiet. With his head down, his lips fixed to a tune, and his elbows on his knees, the Echani impatiently, silently hummed a song.

[Gus Kalendra]

“We will be fine. There have been missions with a greater degree of difficulty in which we have been successful.” She was probably right, but for Gus 'we' wasn't something he felt like he was part of yet. Back on Corellia, he'd run with a crew who'd been almost closer than family to him. That kind of trust wasn't earned fast. Lifting his rifle, Kalendra squinted down the DLT-19's sights, fine-tuning the scope.

“Anyone a local?” he asked, lifting his head to glance at the mission group. Though they'd all been briefed on where the generator was and given some likely access routes, having a Coruscant-native take point would make a lot of sense.

[Adia Issoris]

Adia raised a hand from within her light combat suit, augmented with durasteel plating. It didn't slow Adia down more than a touch, and given the protection it offered, it was a suitable trade-off. A BlasTech A280 rested between her legs, and a pair of BlasTech DY-225s in hip holsters. If possible, Adia wanted to stun technicians working on the power plant instead of killing them.

Getting on this team had seemed to be a coincidence. Adia had tired of bounty hunting, even when it entailed wanted killers and other genuine criminals. It was never quite fulfilling. She'd returned to the Alliance in the hope to reunite with her son and the Jedi. Instead, she was told the Jedi were indisposed, and Alliance command wanted help with a mission on Coruscant.

"I'm familiar with the area. I can take point." She offered. Adia had done work on most levels of Coruscant, especially near Imperial Center. A power generator here would be guarded, but not as heavily as one top-side. The mission needed to be executed quickly. It was Coruscant, and there were strategically placed garrisons across the planet.

[Yun Tilgraze]

Special Agent Tilgraze started to lean forward to speak, but stopped when Issoris raised her hand. He wasn't a native, only familiar with certain sectors in and around and below the Capital District from past missions. When Adia was finished, he explained as much.

He acknowledged some of the hesitant looks cast his way. He wasn't part of their unit. He wasn't even a commando, or a solider for that matter. Not anymore. Mon Mothma had pulled him out of the rank and file years ago and placed him in Intelligence. His name had been tagged for this mission due to that past field work on Imperial Center.

That and because Alliance forces were spread thinner than anyone wanted to admit.

As valued as the Jedi were as a symbol, large segments of Rebel command did not consider them the kind of priority they probably deserved to be. After pinning so much of their hope on that Skywalker kid, not everyone was so eager to risk getting burned like that again.

Yun leaned back in his seat, running over the mission brief in his head. He had long ago made the final check on his anti-surveillance scanner, datapad loaded with encryption slicers, light armor, sidearm, and subcompact SE-14R.

Even though the bulk of the mission called for the kind of brute force that the commando squadron could bring to bear, someone up the chain thought they could benefit from an operative with technical knowhow and a little more talent for subtlety. He was there to help them get in, then out, and was more than happy to leave the heavy lifting in between points A and B up to the experts. This was still SpecForce's mission.

[Acacius Blade]

Acacius sat happily at the rear of the compartment, next to a weapons rack. His part in the mission was simple: backup. He was there in case the Imperials had an Ace up their sleeve. Usually the Rebels would be able to handle things by themselves, but since it involved rescuing a force-sensitive, the Jedi weren't taking any chances. There was no such thing as overkill in Acacius' opinion. He was there to make sure the job was done. He held his lightsaber in one hand, and rubbed his arm with the other.

"Is anybody else cold? It's freezing in here!"

[Ariana Darin]

The Echani woman only cast a glance to the Jedi that had come along on the mission in response to his question. Her lack of really understanding the subtleties of spoken word made her confused to if he was attempting to lighten the mood, or if he was serious and she could reassure him that the temperature on the planet would be warmer. It was probably best left to one of the others.

Ariana only felt tense at one point in a mission and that would be the moment they were experiencing at that exact point. When no matter what you did, no matter what was said, the outcome was entirely in the hands of someone else and circumstances far beyond her control. As the Bantam dropped from hyperspace, the uncomfortable knowledge that they still had to actually land on the planet was renewed. If something was off about the Imperial shuttle, if they codes they were using weren't exactly right, they'd be done. The Empire had gotten a bit more strict on what codes they accepted since Endor. Ariana had to give them at least some credit for learning from their mistakes.

With eyes closed, she waited for the moment to pass, already attempting to push her mind past the possibility that they would all die at any moment, instead letting her mind run through a series of routine guidelines for missions such as this. Guidelines that would no doubt prove completely pointless when it came down to it, but it was better than thinking about the shuttle dissolving into flaming bits of metal.

[Jehkran Dmath]

Jehkran's butt twitched in the seat. He was cold too. More cold from the fact that they were taking to long; the Echani had a hard time playing it cool with the fight ahead. Many Jedi were putting themselves on the line, and he understood the magnitude of the mission, but at the same time he was never one to be distant. Stopping his hum, he glanced over at the Jedi and smiled.

"Can't you do something about that with the Force?" He joked.

Leaning back, he waited as the ship went through clearing and surveyed the other operatives. They seemed in their own world. Soon, that'd have to change. Soon, they'd be on a world, together, behind enemy's line, fighting the odds for a cause much bigger than any of them alone.

[Gus Kalendra]

Minutes ticked by and Gus waited for the alarm sirens to start wailing. It was a stupid, irrational thought really. He doubted there was even any kind of siren built into the shuttle – but in his minds eye, he saw a split-second glimpse of the cabin filled with the strobe of red lights, everyone pitched from their seat by the sudden impact of a traitor-seeking torpedo. He blinked the image away and the pristine reality returned, only the faint smell of sweat dispelling the image of Imperial sterilty.

Beyond the cabin, the pilot fed the shuttle into the endless hyperlanes of traffic that encircled Coruscant like so many planetary rings. As they rotated around the galactic hub, simultaneously ships broke away in droves and sped down towards the surface, as if unable to resist the gravitational pull any longer. The Bantam joined them, just one in what must have been thousands to undergo the same process on that day alone.

They skirted at a safe distance by the dampeners which attempted to regulate the endless bombardment Coruscant's atmosphere by its trillion-strong population. They passed the garbage ships, which on a daily basis hauled millions of tons of waste to the planet's neighbouring moons or to the sun itself. Like so many tiny fish, picking away the detritrus and debris from the underbelly of a lumbering Whaladon, these ships kept the planet alive. Without them, the Imperial capitol would simply grind to a standstill.

“Approaching the Works,” the pilot announced and within moments smoke had begun to rise up to meet the shuttle. Gus peered ahead to the cockpit, where the view was intermittently appearing and disappearing, like a HoloNet screen picking up and dropping signal, showing brief glimpses of the world before degrading into white noise and static again.

[Yun Tilgraze]

The shuttle descended through the layers of aerial traffic, then further still into below the brightly lit surface into the lower levels. Yun counted the turns as the Bantam wove out of its designated flight path and into the endless durasteel canyons of Imperial Center, ultimately settling in an abandoned lot.

There were nearly infinite places to land in the city-world, but only a select few that were remote enough, and at the same time accessible enough to navigate through and service a starship, like this one used by one of Yun's informants.

He arranged for it to be available and abandoned during the mission's timetable, marking the first real risk of the operation. When they disembarked, they would either have a clear and secure path to the generator, or they'd be met by a platoon of Stormtroopers.

The sound of the door opening and the harnesses all around him unlocking confirmed it was the former. Agent Tilgraze rose and fell in with the squad.