Here's a closeup of Aria... She has Zenji needles in her hair... They aren't your normal everyday hair accessory! I seem to have lost access to my files on angelfire, which is a really cool web-building site. They offer blogging as well.... I hope it's just temporary. If it isn't I might have to ask a certain Bothan friend of mine to see what she can find out.

For STATS see Archives or look at beginning post...




FIELD REPORT

- MISSION: RECOVERY -
LT. ARIA GUNNIR

Briefed by Sorvax: Karnic Foe (Trandoshan), myself (Lt. Aria Gunnir), and Captain Uan’Arucia Ki (Bothan).

The Interdictor-Class Imperial Ship, STEEL GRIP, had sent twelve fighters that registered on Alliance scanners as missiles to attack the Rebel Base. Four X-Wings took them on, with only one X-Wing pilot succeeding in bringing down one of the strange craft in the general vicinity of the base. The unidentified craft were smaller and faster than TIE-fighters, reaching speeds during the battle of up to 750 km/hr, whereas X-wings usually reach speeds of up to 350 km/hr. Heavy Alliance casualties, as none of ours survive the battle. Our mission was to find our contact on FEST in the city of Maniobe, make our way to the destroyed Alliance Base, and collect as much data as we could. We were also to investigate the downed U.F.O.

DAY ONE: Ghotrik freighter POINT OF LIGHT docked in ST554; R2R2 stayed on board for extra sensory output. We thought the likeliest place to find our “brass mine” was to visit a bar - the bar on Fest, to be more precise.

We all mingled with various patrons to unobtrusively get information about the occurence upon which we were briefed. Our captain tried a Flame-Out drink offered to her by a Kerestian named Stev, but probably won’t try it again. Karnic spoke with two Correllian pilots (Quintas was the pilot and Prox was the copilot: they were brothers), and I spoke to a fellow named Jobekk Jon, who may or may not have been Correllian (he was a traveller, a big-game hunter).

PRIVATE ENCRYPTED NOTES: He was quite a gentleman, a quiet one. Somewhat mysterious. It was quite dim in the bar, so at first it was difficult to see his features. When he leaned back, a shiver went down my spine. He was dark-skinned, and it made his eyes look very eerie because they were a light, light grey. It was almost as though he had no irises at all. I heard some servos working, so I know he has a mechanical arm - just like me. He spoke in a low, yet intangibly resonant voice, telling me he was a tracker. He spoke of how his wife had been killed by a Wampa, and how he had killed the creature & now wore its hide. I found him & his conversation intriguing. But it had to end at some point so we could continue our mission.

We met up with our contact, Seline Di - whom I hadn’t seen since my very first mission with the alliance. We all agreed to meet back at our ship a 2200 hrs so we could plot the trek up to the base. This journey was made a lot easier by our Cracian Thumpers, and Seline had a nice little AT-PT: A. DETAIL. We also had our other supplies and cold gear supplied for us.

DAY TWO: We found a downed X-Wing and took some data from the flight recorder. Apparently no Alliance members ever travelled far from settled areas. We were expecting much less from the wildlife! As it was, we were attacked by RIX, and I was unfortunate enough to get a close-up of a VOOROO’s tonsils. It’s a good thing I know my First Aid and Med. and had several medpacs with me. We stayed overnight in a cave and struck out for the base in the morning. Speaking of which, sometime during the next morning, R2R2 (my droid) sent us a message from the ship: the STEEL GRIP was in orbit. That’s the last time Uan’ A could use her comm for a while.

DAY THREE: After another close encounter with the wildlife (an ARQUET) things got really interesting when we got to the base. A man, dressed in Rebel gear identified himself as Kez Duval, as he held his blaster up at us. He passed out however, and Seline and I did some speedy repairs on him. Eventually, by tapping into the base computer, we found out that we had unknowingly climbed down through and walked through a massive minefield without knowing it. Thank the Eternal that they weren’t activated. We found that we could control which mines were set and which were deactivated.

On watch that night, Aun’A told us the next day that she heard Kez muttering his name and serial number 857324 in his sleep. However, she couldn’t investigate if he was who he said he was at that point because her comlink was down at the time. She didn’t check earlier because we were all quite certain this man was an Alliance member.

We discovered that someone had tampered with the main computer, because the database stated that the triggers for the charges that are left for self-destruct mode were disengaged, and in truth they were not.

The job was done from the inside, because only certain personnel had any clearance for the information that was sabotaged. The data can be easily explained from viewing the information on the disk that I recorded it on. Also, the escape route - the transport tube leading out back - was blown up first, so no Rebels could escape. At the time we suspected some people in communications were responsible, because how else could they know when to deactivate the triggers or have information about the back exit?

We found a couple of names, and one that I feel bears further scrutiny: Chelrinda Offgood. The database contained pictures, and I noticed something significantly different about the first picture and the second one. In the earlier picture, she has hazel eyes. In the second one, she has bright green eyes. When we had tried to plant the device in the sewers on another mission, we found Sorch’s body, if you recall. Remember in that field report, I told Alliance Intelligence that her eyes were a different colour from the “Sorch” we thought was our contact? Also, I wonder how much Galloset knows about this impersonator? He mentioned he knew about the failed mission (the bugging device was found and dismantled). He may have been informed by the impersonator who may posing as Chelrinda Offgood. Please be advised to alert A.I. and others to watch for unusually green eyes, especially if they didn’t have that eye colour before!

I fixed up a snowspeeder, salvaging from other wrecked speeders. I figured it might come in handy later, thinking at the time, we could transport Kez a lot easier, since he’d already been through so much.

I was thinking of bringing Kez with us to the crash site of the U.F.O., but as a group we came to the decision that he’d be better off recuperating at the MedBay and waiting for our return. We left him there and went on our way to pick up the information on the U.F.O. the following day. I was torn about leaving someone to watch over him and needing the entire group. I loathed to leave him by himself, but I also didn't want him to slow us down.

We had set up a trigger to blow - just a chunk of ice and a candle. We didn’t light the candle, of course, but planned to when we returned.

The less left for the Imps the better. We headed out to the downed Imp missile. THAT was where all the pudu rained - er snowed - down on us.

Right after Captain Ki obtained the black box from the cockpit, we had some “old friends” show up. It turns out that “Stev Manosk” was actually Galloset, a bounty hunter who hunts other bounty hunters. Apparantly, Karnic thought it wasn’t necessary to inform me or his captain or the Alliance that he was still a member of the Bounty Hunter’s Guild. Apparently he was being taken back to the Imps because he “broke the law of the local authority,” the locals being the Imps, according to Galloset.

And, surprise of surprises, he had been led to us by a certain tracker. It was Jobekk Jon, AKA Hoth, who led Galloset to us.

I pretty much bit his head off, but he stood there and explained to us that he was just doing his job, and that he wasn’t going to do anything to us.

That’s right: we ladies were all going to be fine, if we would just stand there and watch Galloset and his two recalibrated mining droids squish Karnic and drag his remains off to the Imps. Well, none of us ladies felt like letting that happen. And Hoth just walked away. He left us to take care of these slargs alone.

Or at least I thought he had.

Karnic sustained heavy damage, in fact he almost died from getting pulverized from one of Galloset’s droids. Captain Ki and I tried everything to bring it down, and Karnic took blaster shots from each of us while we attempted to break open the flarging thing.

Well, I guess Jobekk was just out of sight because he managed to finish off the droid that was crushing our ‘Doshan friend.

But then he was gone.

And that’s when we could have used his help the most.

PRIVATE ENCRYPTED NOTES: Why does every man I ever meet leave me when I need him the most?

Poor Karnic was freezing because he had used his mini-rocket launcher at point-blank range at least three times and the force of the explosions ripped off his snow gear. We tried to warm him up before we went back - by heating some rocks. Seline lent him her parka until we made it back, but it was pretty dicey there for a while.

But the worst was still coming.

LATER THAT SAME EVENING: When we got back to the base, I swung back in from the top of the entrance with my repel gun, because Kez and we had agreed to set the mines, and were going to signal Kez to deactivate them. Well, there was no answer, so I went in to investigate and found that our little self-destruct trigger was going to blow! I quickly disarmed it - just in time.

Everything was pitch dark and there was no sign of Kez. This heightened my suspicion and I cautioned our Captain to look for booby traps or signs of Imps. I was so angry, I guess it clouded my thinking. We weren’t careful enough, because when we tried to open the arsenal, detonite blew us off our feet.

Captain Ki was unconscious, and we all had nasty wounds. We were all thrown clear.
Except for our dear comrade Seline.

She took the brunt of a reinforced heavy blast door to her chest. Karnic and I looked for her, but I had to get more med supplies to ensure everyone’s survival and the completion of the mission. It took Karnic an hour to find Seline, and he buried her where he found her. We all gave our final parting words.

At some point after all this, our Bothan captain mentioned she had remembered she had discovered a white Tie-Fighter pilot’s helmet aboard the wrecked Y-1300 on her watch the previous evening. I was wondering why she hadn’t mentioned this all before Seline had been killed. When she and I investigated further, we found a slightly worse-for-wear uniform as well. That’s when we came to the conclusion that Kez Duval, MUST have been the insider to bring what was left of the base down around our ears. He had been the downed pilot, and must not have made it back in time to the base for the other Imps to pick him up and had been wounded by a mine. How critical that information was in hindsight.

I contemplated putting on the uniform, to trick the Imps. I would have frozen outside, though, because I couldn’t fit my snowgear under it and it wasn’t much use for the weather conditions on Fest.

Uan’A put the helmet on and heard something on the com.

"Final descent.... Commence communications silence.”

We heard a ship coming down near the entrance... THAT’s when we turboed ourselves out of there! We all jumped on the snowspeeder I had fixed up. I backed up and used my grenade launcher to initiate detonation of the explosives. Then I told everyone to HANG ON and we flew out of there just barely keeping in front of a huge fireball - right under the Imps’ troop ship. The blast from the base started to roll the troop ship and was causing chain reactions from the mines.

The ground dropped below us, and we used our repel guns to get a foothold, and made it to our Cracian thumpers. We listened to the explosions die down and then I suggested we go back to get something of Seline’s (her holo-vid indicated her wishes upon her death, one of which was to return a strongbox to a man named RUSALT). Some team members were reluctant, but I was persistent, and we went back up.

Our Captain Ki found Kez, wounded again, in the cargo section of the Kappa Class Shuttle (it was an old Republic SIENAR Systems Troop Shuttle). She disposed of him there, since he was going to blast her. So much for his gratitude. Captain Ki secured the strongbox. We reached Maniobe, clambered into the Point of Light, and snuck out of there. We used another transport ship to hide from the Imps, but they sniffed us out because the ship we were hiding behind changed course. We jumped to hyperspace to escape.

REPORTING TO ALLIANCE LEADER SORVAX:

LT. Aria Gunnir.

PRIVATE ENCRYPTED NOTES: I turn this report in with regret and feelings that I could have done something to prevent the untimely death of Seline Di. Her absence will weigh heavily on me for a long time. If I hadn’t been such a hot-head, things might not have turned out so badly. Several things came to light during the mission that, if I had been thinking more clearly, would have pinpointed Kez as an Imp, in which case I would not have let him out of my sight for an instance. I request some time off to sort out some thoughts about this mission and what I need to do in the future.