Gyro cursed as he pulled himself up from the ground. It turned out, he missed both shots. It wasn't the droids that scared him; it was the big hole into space. Their vacuum sealing only lasted for 20 minutes, which was exactly as long as it would take for their reinforcements to arrive. There was no point fighting, if they'd all be dead anyway.

The others could handle the droids. Gyro needed to find the emergency sealant. Every pilot knew it by the name 'Big Red Button' but Gyro doubted it would be so obvious in the base. Which room would it be in? Unless is was in one of the wings, it had to be in the security room. This was, after all, a security breach. Gyro backed into the security room, blasting at any droid he could see.

Hodges, continuing with his movement, pulled his blaster rifle up to the B1 in front of him and blasted it's head clean off as he side stepped away and sealed his armor. [15 rolled on attack. 15 damage]

Slade instantly dropped to one knee and turned towards the remaining droid and fired. Grinning under his helmet, he sealed his armor as well as the last B1 collapsed to the ground, a gaping hole in the side of its chest. [20 rolled on attack. 19 damage]

Riggs stepped back against a wall and sealed his armor as he watched the final two droids drop to the ground.

Gyro, panicked over the impending suffocation of him and his team, jumped to his feet and rushed into the security room to search for the emergency seals. As soon as he stepped in the room he noticed the button on the underside of one of the consoles. Sprinting over broke the glass covering it and slammed the big red button down. [21 rolled on perception.]

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As the others stood in the corridors, they watched as the hole in the roof began to close as an emergency seals kicked into place. As quick as the violence and noise came, it had gone. A quiet 'woosh' and footsteps were the only thing to be heard as Batter stepped out of the Med-Bay. Looking at the destruction in the center of the corridors he pat Riggs on the back. "Looks like you guys bought us some time. If you don't mind I have a wounded trooper to tend to."

Hodges slides down to a sitting position, breathing hard. As soon as the hole is sealed, he unseals his armor, and removes his bucket to wipe sweat from his brow. He was not really so exhausted as full of fear. He had never seen real combat, and was only glad they had all survived this first skirmish. His training had shown, as it had from the rest of his unit, though he had not really been watching them.

Pulling his helmet back on, he turns on his comm and, after a steadying breath, says, "Alright men, sound off if you ain't dead. This isn't over yet..."

Standing again, he leans on the wall, adjusting his rifle, and looks down on the fallen droids, allowing a bit of pride to seep into him. A Trooper really was worth more than a droid in a fight. Even a shiny-armored trooper that was greener than a Rodian in a fight.....

Gyro ran in to the security room, hoping to find the sealant button. "Button, button, button, where are you? You can't be that hard to find..." Gyro nervously murmured once in the room. Then he saw it: the big red button. On the underside of one of the consoles! What a stupid place to put it; how was one supposed to find it quickly in an emergency? Whatever, there was not time for that.

Gyro smashed the glass with he knee armour, then gave the button a heavy push. It had to work. All it needed to do was hold for one maybe two minutes, then it would be good. Gyro closed the security room door, though he didn't lock it, then unsealed his armour to let it's oxygen supply restock.

There was a flurry of activity as Riggs sealed his armour from the rapidly draining environment around him. All he knew was, upon opening his eyes, that they were home free: the droids were all dead! Gyro had disappeared, and Hodges was sliding down to a sitting squat, breathing hard. It amazed him how much could conceivably happen in the space of a few short moments.

"Alright men, sound off if you ain't dead. This isn't over yet..." Hodges mused in the space, likely to himself.

Riggs turned and caught his attention. "I'm okay, but I don't know about everyone else. I guess we should- Unf!"

Batter had given him a big pat on the back. "Looks like you guys bought us some time. If you don't mind I have a wounded trooper to tend to."

Riggs grinned to this. It was a good thing to hear after the little skirmish they'd faced. "Thanks, big guy- sorry for locking you in the Medbay like that. Sort of a... not very "team" move, I have to admit..."
And in all truth, it wasn't. Perhaps the mistake had been made because of the urgency of the moment. He'd never really faced combat before. Part of him was still trembling from the activity, but another part of him was charged. They'd survived their first fight- wasn't that something to be a little proud of? He supposed that, if by chance they were to face more enemies in the future, he would get better at the whole team strategy thing.

He shook himself and looked back up at the others. "Wait, what about the back-up we've called for? What about Caboose and Omega?? Didn't they say they were coming?" He remembered their parting words: this ain't no training sim...

Hodges looks up as he hears Riggs suddenly ask, "Wait, what about the back-up we've called for? What about Caboose and Omega?? Didn't they say they were coming?"

Looking around, the trooper shrugs. "Who knows. We can't rely on them. We don't know how many clankers are out there. They may have more than Omega and Caboose can get through....."

He pauses, cursing himself. This was no time to hurt Morale. So, he simply finishes with, "We need a plan. If we stay here too long, back up won't get the chance to save us. It is safe to assume the droids know where we are now, so we need to be elsewhere."


Walking away at that, he follows Batter, his gaze falling to the wounded trooper.

"Will he be able to walk or fight?"

Hodges asks, his reason for asking evident even with his face hidden under his bucket.

Batter didn't look up from the trooper as Hodges spoke. "Will he be able to walk or fight?" "Fighting is not an option for him. As for walking, he may need some help with that, he's taken a serious injury to his side and seems to be unconscious due to pain." Shaking his head, Batter reached into the opened medpac beside him and started searching for something to wake the trooper with.
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In the security room Gyro was greeted with a cacophony of alarms as consoles started flashing rapidly. The clone who was still with him stifled a yelp as he jumped back from one of the consoles near him. "This can't be good, this can't be good at all! Help me shut these things off before the droids hear them!!" The clone started to let panic creep into his voice as he ran back and forth between consoles trying to quiet them.
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Riggs and Slade stood alone in the corridors, surrounded by scrap metal. Walking towards the intersection, Slade kicked a droid's head out of the way. "That was awfully easy don't you think?" Bending down he grabbed one of the blasters laying on the ground and looked it over. "Bet you these hunks of junk are what got them scrapped by us." He tossed the blaster aside and started sifting through the fallen droids surrounding him.

"This can't be good, this can't be good at all! Help me shut these things off before the droids hear them!!"
"Blast it!" Gyro cursed as the computer blared at them. They couldn't have this now, not when they were so close to freedom. He could practically taste the freedom that they would get when they got off this barren rock.

Gyro sprinted over to the computer, and fear giving in to frustration, he punched it while trying to fix it. How could so many things go wrong in one day? It wasn't like this outpost was important or anything! The droids were just blowing resources off for a rock! Nothing more!

Calming himself down somewhat, Gyro continued to try and fix the computer. Zoning out the world around him, he went to comprehend and silence the alarms.

(OOC: Gyro concentrates fully on undersanding and muting the computer, and he leaves himself open to attack.)

Hodges leaned against the wall, watching the wounded trooper, his expression hidden under his bucket. And a good thing too, because his calm silence was simply him panicking on the inside. This wounded trooper would be extra weight. He would slow them down, and possibly get them all killed.

But could he really face leaving the man behind? He could, he decided easily enough. But the others would never go for it..... No, they would drag the useless man along, and in a perfect galaxy, they would save him.

That was assuming their reinforcements were coming in strong enough to even break through the Droids. If they couldn't this was all for naught anyways...


"Just like the simulations, eh?" He finally growls quietly to Batter, then chuckling softly, and moves back out to the corridor.

"Who knows. We can't rely on them. We don't know how many clankers are out there." This was Hodges' response to Riggs' question; the uncertainty in his answer sent a small chill down his spine. "They may have more than Omega and Caboose can get through....."

Riggs turned his head. "Maybe they're more powerful than we think," he mused, maintaining, in himself, an air of optimism. A moody clone by nature, Riggs was comforted by positive emotion and Hodges' uneasiness left him feeling strange. Caboose and Omega's potential arrival was something that gave him hope; he clung to the idea that they would be receiving backup and wandered down the hall.

Eventually, he found himself alone in the corridors with that other clone whose name escaped him. "That was awfully easy, don't you think?" The clone inquired.

"Too easy, perhaps..." Riggs muttered, more out of courtesy of response than anything else. He was distracted: picking up a fragment or two of scrap, he observed it mechanically. Surely one of the droids' simple processors was still working; perhaps he could toy around with later. He was teaching himself, on and off, how to get into the inner workings of computers to see how they worked and how they did what they did. One day, he hoped to combine it with his mechanical mind to turn it into a useful skill.

"...Bet you these hunks of junk are what got them scrapped by us." Still out of his head, Riggs misinterpreted the clone's observation about the droids' blasters as a statement regarding their processors.

"Aaah... we're just lucky that the Separatists are too cheap to buy anything better for them. Imagine what they could do if they were heuristic." It was, in context, a fairly comical response.

---

((OOC: Riggs wants to gather up some of the scrap metal left over from the droids, which he will use to tinker with later. I am assuming he doesn't hear the alarms in the security room. If he does, I can edit my response.))

Gyro's fingers tapped away at the computers as he attempted to understand their insistent blaring. As time ticked on, and the other clone panicked, understanding dawned upon Gyro. The alarms were going off about a severe lack of oxygen in the outposts Theta, Alpha, and Epsilon. Looking over the computer screens, the data continued to pump out information. Lack of oxygen, severe damage to structure, and most disturbing of all, no signs of life. Finally Gyro managed to silent the alarms, though the data from the computer still soaked into his mind.
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As Slade threw the blaster to the side, he stood up and stepped out of the wreckage. Riggs on the other hand, got down on his knees and started sifting through the droids bodies searching for anything of use. All he found that was of any use were the power packs from the droid's blasters. The rest, as far as he was concerned, was just scrap. As this happened, Hodges left Batter in the medical room to see Riggs as he dug through the droids.

No life signs? Lack of Oxygen was bad enough, but no life signs? Even the most basic clone armour could resist vacuum for a short time. Since there was no life signs, that meant the droids had killed them all. Gyro hastily silence the computer. This was going to be a problem... Remembering that reinforcements were on the way, Gyro calmed down slightly.

Gyro commed his fellow clones. "Uhh guys. If the droids begin to cut the doors just open it up and fight. There's not air in the other sections, and we can not afford a long term vent." Beginning to work with the computer again, Gyro attempted to reactivate the cameras in the other sectors. It's not like the droids were smart enough to deactivate or destroy them... right?

(OOC: Gyro attempts to reactivate the cameras to the other wings of the base.)

Hodges found himself watching Riggs sort through the heaps of junk that were left behind in the small skirmish, but only for lack of anything better. Always, the clone had been confident. He had taken the training sims by storm, and truly believed he could take on the droid armies and walk away unscathed. But this last event, his first taste of real battle had opened his eyes. Something he had never had to factor in in his training. The adrenaline. The real fear of death. The knowledge that his life could be snuffed out by a kriffing clanker that got a lucky shot off.

In the end, for any skill he could boast, it came down to the moment. Every little moment, and the need to make it to the next, trusting his instincts more than any skill he had learned. And, he admitted, if only to himself, he was scared. Here on this desolate outpost, surrounded by enemies with only these few clones around him for support, Hodges had to accept that statistically, there was no possible way they could survive. They would all die here, in service to a republic that saw them as disposable assets. No one would ever know their names, or how fiercely they fought to hold their ground. No one would add them to the history holos, or think of the sacrifice they made. They would be found here, riddled with blaster holes, and written off as an expense. Remembered only as the ones who failed in the face of danger.

Sighing audibly, the clone checked his weapon charge, and moved back to the blast doors. Removing his helmet, he pressed his ear to the cool durasteel and listened, almost hoping to hear the droids outside. To know they wouldn't simply be locked in this small wing, waiting to die. Truly, he did hope Caboose and Omega would make it, would save their useless hides and end this torment. But Hodges was a realist. And in reality, these few clones weren't worth a full extraction team. If the ranked officers saw it as a lost cause, which he was sure they would, then Hodges and his team would be abandoned.


((Just a listen check for this round.))

One could say it was like a treasure hunt. This was a hunt for something useful amidst all this scrap. It never ceased to amaze Riggs how much useless metal you could fit into a human-like machine programmed to kill anything it saw fit; he also knew that the common Separatist B1 was truly nothing special in the grand scheme of mechanics. He ended up with a small handful of power packs from their processors, which seemed to be the only thing worth taking amidst all the junk. Oh, well, he thought. It wasn't as though he'd expected to find anything truly interesting.

As he stood to his feet, a message from Gyro passed over his comlink: "Uhh, guys. If the droids begin to cut the doors, just open it up and fight. There's no air in the other sections, and we cannot afford a long term vent."
Riggs' heart sank. It was now very clear to him that they were in much bigger trouble than he'd originally thought. He set the power packs down nearby the rubble in a small pile for later and drew his pistol, checking the charge on the weapon and looking about apprehensively. Why did everything always have to go from bad to worse?

Well, he thought, help or no help, we're going to try our best to live through this anyway. He turned away from the corridor and jogged over to Gyro in the security room.
"Gyro," he called, "We need to keep our part of the base stabilized. I'm going to try to access something- anything, be it heavier shielding or emergency airlocks- to try and keep our atmosphere breathable." As he spoke, he strode deliberately towards the consoles, paying little general attention to what the other clone was doing, and began searching for the right mechanism.

---

((OOC: I don't exactly know what the base has for room sealing, as I have little knowledge personally about that sort of thing, but I'd imagine there must be something. Riggs' action will be to try to find that control somewhere and activate it around the central portion of the base- better yet anywhere that still has oxygen, with particular attention being given to the Medbay.))

Gyro's fingers pecked mercilessly at the computer as he sifted through system after system to bring the cameras back on. He couldn't help but be disturbed by the fact many of them did not work, and the ones that did showed nothing but destruction. Sifting through the working cameras he found the main sector they were in, and only small views of the other 3 sectors. All exterior cameras showed nothing but the blackness of space, and the hangar was empty except for the charred hull of a small transport.
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Hodges was left alone in the corridors with Slade, who wandered towards the Hangar doors. Pushing his ear to the durasteel door he sat and listened for anything on the other side. As he sat there in utter silence, he heard nothing except for his own breath.

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Riggs strode to a computer terminal and started searching security commands for sealing the main part of the base. He could find nothing that would help as emergency doors had already been closed. Searching awhile longer, he managed to find energy shielding for the exterior of the door, as well as a self destruct sequence for the base if it were to fall.