Part 9: Sabotaging Hosko

On their way to the planet, the crew made a stop by the Arcadis; a massive space station and trade hub located in the Hosko system. At the station, they sought out a data-decoder planet beforehand by a smuggler named Yabez, who Thakba had hired beforehand and sent ahead of the crew to smuggle a set of powerful explosives into the clony — so that they could later take it off his hands.

Also at the Arcadis, the crew found themselves trailed by a man who would only refer to himself by the moniker "Beans". He was a medical professional working at a clinic on the station, but had hopes of getting himself planetside for a while to feel a change of pace. Not ones to shy away from medical expertise, the one part the crew could agree they still lacked, they allowed for doctor Beans to come along with them

Once they reached the planet, the endeavour to get into the colony was an easy affair. Measures were fairly lax, but the local security unit — headed by a cerean by the name Zann Zehan — were told to be very suspicious of outsiders.

The crew rented themselves a speeder truck to cut way across Hosko toward Yabez' chosen rendezvous; a cantina at a sattelite station some hours away from Kessia Cordell, named Point Brooke. These sattelite stations were all connected to the central space port at Kessia Cordell, but situated far away to allow the station an even wider reach to operate the surrounding landscape.

During the drive across the open landscape, a strange rustling in the surrounding fields caught the crew's attention. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a flock of Skekfish lunged at their speeder truck and just barely the top of it before they dug themselves into the dirt on the other side of the road — from where tehy lunged up again to try and knock them off the road!

A wild chase away ensued, during which a handful of skekfish managed to get into the truck by way of a poorly secured back door, causing a commotion and a struggle to erupt. Eventually though, the crew managed to rid themselves of the threat, and subsequently high-tailed away as fast as they could.

Once they reached Point Brooke, and after some time spent to drop their rented vehicle at the local speeder cleaners, they met up with Yabez at the local cantina. There, the arconan let them in on what he had brought for them; the explosives with which they could topple Kawa-Zemke and cripple Bargos' operation.

Before the conversation could continue, however, suspicions began to rise that they perhaps were being eavesdropped on ...

Having met Yabez at the Point Brooke cantina and discussed the situation with him, the group took heed to the man's warnings to the threat that they may be watched by following along with him outside to where he had parked his speeder.

There, after just a brief moment, they seized the eavesdroppper — a young local man who spoke of himself as Andan Arthos. Yabez suggested simply killing the man, though the crew managed to veer away from the idea and opted instead to interrogate him.

The interrogation eventually put the situation into the crew's own hands, as Yabez departed. Anden convinced the crew to join him back to meet with his father; a local man who did not share much love for Kawa-Zemke.

At the Arthos family's home, Genden Arthos and Kaida Arthos invited the crew in for tea, and then later dinner, as they discussed the situation. What could they do to deal with the corporation that had slowly been running Kessia Cordell and its sattelite outposts ragged?

However, the dinner was interrupted mid-way by a sentry droid coursing by, and then heavy knocks on the door from a security unit on patrol. There had been reports of suspicious activities at Point Brooke — and as to be somewhat expected for him, Genden Arthos was promptly sought out for questioning. Not a man without implications in trouble at the station.

After the coast was clear, with the crew hidden in the basement, planning continued for how they could take on the corporation. Maybe they could cripple the local management, put them out of business, and then hand Kessia Cordell over to the locals?

The plan they ultimately decided to settle on, was to infiltrate the Kawa-Zemke Tower in the middle of Kessia Cordell via a waterworks station just outside the station perimeter. Genden knew a man who worked there; a nikto named Kodan, who shared much of his own opinions and that he could easily reach out to and pull a few favours with.

As a piece of their plan, the crew schemed to fashion a set of fake moustaches — all made from Doctor Beans' own beard — so that they could use them to mask their own identities. Comedically, this even included glueing one such moustache to Jaxx's reinforced helmet, where it could only stay for so long before it began to slip off again.

Eventually the crew was back behind the wheels of another newly rented speeder-van, and back en-route toward Kessia Cordell. They quickly found the waterworks and made their way to park in its lot, though unfortunately for them the voice that picked up at the front-door intercom was not Kodan as they had hoped, but one of a member of the on-site security detail.

Jaxx decided to make a best-effort attempt to bluff them past, but failed, unfurling the situation into a wild firefight between the crew and the guards. One laid dead and two knocked out, the crew then finally found themselves face to face with Kodan, who was utterly aghast with the situation at hand ... though thankfully not so much so as to not be of use to them.

The nikto guided them along down to the main waterworks pipe, where they were handed each their set of protective gear and sent on their way down through the Kessia Cordell sewage system. Kodan had provided Voda with a map of the entire network, and a route that he had readily laid while waiting for them, so finding their way through was not a problem.

When they emerged again, it was in the maintenance space and storage down underneath the Kawa-Zemke Tower

Now that they were inside the Kawa-Zemke Tower itself, they quickly made their way up, seizing the first opportunity they could to tap into a set of exposed cables and see what Voda would be able to find. Fortunately for them, much of the tower's interior schematics were available there for them to see, and for Voda to download and use as their guide onward.

One thing they spotted on these schematics was a security room just one floor up ahead of them. They snuck their way onward, security measures quickly disabled along the way, before they readied themselves to breach the security room with a devious plan in mind; they would tell the guards they had spotted inside that there was a gas leakage in the basement. Their waterworks uniforms certainly gave credibility to the proposition.

They breached through, with Madaa Ki leading the way on delivering the panicked, heartfelt call for them all to evacuate. To their relief, the plan succeeded, and the guards quickly left. This created a good opportunity for them to elevate a security alert all the way up to the top of the tower, from this security room, which they did.

And just to make the situation seem that much more real, a few of them rushed their way down and set off to create a real, proper gas leakage. Why not double-down on a situation once it had already been created?

From there, the crew continued on in the wake of the guards that had just left the basement, up to the tower's lobby above. They pondered quickly over what way to take from there, and eventually decided the easiest approach would be to rush their way first to a mid-way landing floor some way up ahead of them, and then from there continue up to the top of the tower — where the Kawa-Zemke head offices would be waiting for them.

Of course, one troubling part they had to content with was that, from what they could tell of the tower's evacuation plans, the uppermost part by said head-offices had not yet begun to evacuate. Were they stalling? Another trouble was that they quickly discovered they had no easy way to make their way up toward the tower's higher floors, not without hacking the systems or taking the stairs that numerous people were all busily rushing down.

But as luck would have it, the crew found themselves assailed by a pleading request from one of the building's exiting workers — in the rush to leave, they had forgotten their pet up at the offices. They asked the crew, still disguised with their wasteworks outfits and now scuffed moustaches, to head up there and retrieve them, and even provided the crew with the means to get up there and do so.

Now with a key in hand, the crew headed straight for the top of the tower and directly to the main offices. There they found the Kawa-Zemke branch executive — the twi'lek Tal'akoa — and a pair of guards urging for her to finish what-ever she was trying to retrieve from her computer so that she could leave together with them. Again the crew managed to sell the lie of the gas leakage at hand, prompting the two guards to make their way off to the elevators while Tal'akoa only tried to bide herself more time before she too would leave.

In that moment, a call came through to the guards from down below. Two and two had been pieced together, and the party's ruse seemed to be at an end. They quickly barricaded the door before the two guards could make their way back, and wrestled Tal'akoa so that they could force her to come with them down to the tower's server room — which they knew to be just a floor down from where they were.

A fight ensued there, with the guards in the hallway, though the crew quickly pushed through and then made their way down. Doctor Beans had made an attempt to close the door upon the guards before they could make their way back in, but one had managed to slip a blaster just far enough through the cracks to shoot the man. It was not an incapacitating shot, though still a quite serious one all the same.

When they did managed to make their way down and into the large, dark, and all-throughout humming server space, all seemed clear enough. They made their way up along the second-floor walkway of the massive space, and into a control room up there. Once inside, they forced the branch executive to broadcast a message; for Kawa-Zemke to relinquish their hold on the Kessia Cordell station and its surroundings.

Mainly, the hope was for this to stir enough chaos for Kawa-Zemke that the conglomerate would be even more strained than they already were.

In the midst of it all, however, the doors into the server-room burst open, as another group of guards together with Zann Zehan — the station's security chief — rushed their way inside in an attempt to rescue Tal'akoa. Voda and Jaxx laid down fire together to try and keep the intruders at bay, while Quill, Madaa Ki, and Doctor Beans all three together made sure to keep control of the situation inside the sever operation room.

All seemed well and the job seemed done, providing they could get out past the assailing security unit in one piece. That was, at least, until Tal'akoa pulled a sleight of hand upon Beans and stole the scalpel that the good doctor had up until this point been using to coerce her along. Once she had it, she drove it straight into the man's abdomen. Already wounded, he keeled over quickly, leaving it to Quill and Madaa Ki to together diffuse the situation.

Once the firefight ended, with the guards either killed or incapacitated in the process, the crew quickly picked up their pieces — and their injured doctor — for an immediate extraction. Back down into the tower sewers, out via the waterworks, and then en-route in their speeder-truck to the station's landing zone where their ship would be waiting.

Regrettably, in the midst of all that had happened, the pet that they had promised to rescue from the tower's higher-floor offices went unresolved.

Once back aboard the Party Ship Omega, the crew did not wait to get away from Hosko. They had done what their came for, all that mattered now was toget themselves back to safety, and for Beans to live through his injuries.