He was chewing his own tongue off to pay for his silence. The things he was remembering he would have seen buried for the rest of his life and been happier for it. A soft and precise voice spoke old words of practical wisdom in his mind. Any second those blue eyes would flicker on, she would tip her head just so and place those long fingers over the elegant mouth she never had and would never have. Where she had picked up such a useless, yet so very becoming behavior would be forever a mystery. He waited while the others talked after his passive and quiet protest had been forgotten. He wanted to tell them to leave the damned shell, but didn't want to say why. He waited for her to wake up, retaliate and change their minds, but she didn't. Before Cheshik could get to her... it. Before Cheshik could get to it, Iisska stepped forward to where the droid chassis was hung on the wall and put his fingers on its jaw. He turned its head to the side gently. The neck gave way and the chin fell lifelessly to the chest. It was only a body with no soul. He prayed it was only a body with no soul. He prayed it had never had a soul before. Never had [i]that[/i] soul before. He helped Cheshik heft the heavy thing onto his shoulders. Not because Cheshik couldn't do it himself, but because the serial number would be on the small of the back just above the waist. He searched for it and found it quickly still while pretending to help. The first dozen or so numbers were the same, but the last four were wrong. It wasn't the same one. It wasn't her. When everybody had moved on and nobody was looking he heaved a deep sigh of relief and stilled his furious stomach and heartbeat. Iisska took up the rear of the search party some distance behind as Quin began to shoot out cameras and motion detectors. --- "What the fuck is going on down there? Tribals again?" an obese man with a breathing apparatus embedded into his face asked. He leaned over a portly alien woman with a visor as she monitored well over a dozen screens, displays, switches and lights. A handful of others sat around the large office at stations similar to hers. "No, Sir," she shook her head, "They've already disposed of twice as many patrol units than any tribal raid and they've been poking around our systems. This is someone very well armed who knows what they're doing." "Dammit. Can you get me a visual?" the man asked right as a screen went dark like several others had. "They're destroying our cameras too, it would seem." "Well this is just fan-fucking-tastic. Call the boys in security. Get the big guns out. Lock down our reactors and sound a station wide alarm." --- "Let's pick up the pace people!" Quin barked, "The engineering block should be close. That's where they'll have the power cores on standby." The alarms were spreading around them and growing louder. They could hear them kicking up along different hallways and wings. A loud voice started to bark orders over an intercom and then began to threaten them. [i]CEASE YOUR ATTACK. STOP WHERE YOU ARE AND PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND YOU WILL BE DETAINED. RESIST AND WE WILL COAT THE WALLS IN YOUR ENTRAILS.[/i] "What's the difference?" Quin rolled her eyes. The crew rounded a corner only to find themselves with a massive blast door sealing them out of the engineering block. Quin immediately started fiddling around with the control panel on the wall trying to find someway to bypass the lockdown routines. Sounds of more HKs could be heard rallying in their wake. The rest of the crew turned down the hall with weapons at the ready. Iisska backed up to Quin. The last fight had been more than enough droid action for him and everybody was beginning to wear down. "Will you just-- DAMMIT! Stupid fucking thing wont let me-- Just-- COME ON!" Quin punched the machine while the buttons flashed. "We don't got time for that," Iisska said to her. He looked around the console with his fingers on the wall before pressing his head against it and giving it a good hard thump with his fist. "[i]Have.[/i] We don't [i]have[/i] time," Quin huffed. "Look who's agreeing with me for once," Iisska retorted, "Stand back. Way back." A small army of the infernal, profanity spewing, blaster toting, Jedi splattering droids filled the mouth of the hallway. Iisska had his feet planted firmly into the edge of the floor opposite the control panel wall. He clenched his fists and set his shoulders with his head low like a charging bull. With a massive burst of the force behind him he shot back to the other wall faster than most eyes could see and impacted with a punch so hard the wall disintegrated at the molecular level at the epicenter. The surrounding six feet merely rippled and exploded out into the next room with the rest of the wall breaking free of the ceiling and only just holding itself up thanks to the reinforcements in the floor. Iisska was blinded by the fine mist of wall dust on the other side, but had otherwise gone clean through unscathed. "Hurry up!" he yelled back. Nyrette was already in after him and the rest of the crew followed quickly. They sprinted through the dust cloud away from the HK's. "Nice!" Quin yelled at him, "Great thinking! You might turn out to be useful yet--" They reached the end of the cloud. The room they were in spread out a couple hundred yards in all directions and was at least three stories high. Assembly bays and machinery filled the floor and parts hung from the ceiling. Huge parts. And fully constructed monstrosities. The lights on the half dozen [url=http://i.imgur.com/Lu0C280.jpg]house sized droids[/url] were flickering to life. One had already stepped free of it's restraints and now towered over them with missiles and rail-gun in their faces. Quin sighed, "I hate you again." Before the droid could get a bead on them she dropped her grenade launcher from under her rain cloak, got into stance, aimed and gave the droid a face full of fire as one of the heavy charges hit it square in the targeting module. The rupture deafened them and reverberated through the entire facility. The droid sagged and staggered back before gaining it's footing once more. The crew scattered.