The Droid N97 has been at the computer scanner for three days. The only break was for when he took over piloting duties as the organic crew needed rest and nutrition. When they finally get a message from command he narrows in the scanners looking for a formation or area that would be compatible with a new base of operations.

Replying to Liaka via comlink, "Confirmation: Searching now."

Kixue engages in basic conversation over the next three days. He doesn't offer up much about his past but he does take part in group conversations. When not engaged in conversation he goes over data and files on his data pad, trying to stay abreast of any news that may affect their mission. The change in orders to investigate a new set of coordinates offered some welcome relief to what had become a fairly tedious mission.

As they are greeted with heavy rains and winds Kixue finds himself jostled about Kixue staps in and takes out his electro binoculars to see if he could find a place to set down.

" With this weather are we really going to be able to do a proper investigation of the site? "

Liaka peers into the rain, slowing down and turning the repulsors to 75% of maximum to keep level. "Don't know, but we have to set down anyway. If it's a good location for a base it must have at least a decent place to put down a speeder."

She eases the speeder closer. "Hey, Kiuxe, could you help me over here. I could use another set of eyes on the sensors, I can hardly see a thing in this downpour."

" Sure thing lieutenant " Kixue puts his electro binoculars to the side and takes over the co-pilot controls.

Turning the datapad off, Geoff sighs as he looks up and out. Looks like trouble is coming. This going to be fun.

Rotating his head and neck, Geoff clears his throat. "If it is as bad as it looks, we will want some high ground and stay inside. No reason to chance it."

Looking out the window, Geoff takes a moment to gauge the weather...

[What is the skill and difficulty for gauging the weather?]

Likaka slows the speeder down even further and looks at the storm clouds. "It just seems like a heavy shower, doesn't really affect the speeder too much," she says.

She looks at Oro and Geoff "You guys have been here longer than the rest of us. How has the weather on this planet been so far? Any crazy storms to worry about? We can at least do a fly-by to see what’s what down there before deciding if we want to wait out the storm or not.”

Survival check for Storm in the next few minutes : 2eA+1eD 1 failure

Shaking his head, Geoff looks at Likaka. "Our time was mostly in the city, though it did rain our second night. That being said, my experience has been mostly in refugee camps and cities, so I am relatively useless in this situation. Personally, though, I would rather find some place high and covered and wait it out for a bit."

Shrugging, Geoff turns to help N97 with the scanners.

N97 comm's Oro, "Urgent: Weather interference. Need assistance on scanners." When he arrives the droid puts him to work on stabilizing the readings as the droid digs out the results. With his assistance, and a quick break in the heaviest part of the weather, the readings come into clarity.

N97 comm's Oro, who is still next to him. "Update: Readings secured. Assistance appreciated." He then sends the data to Lt. Liaka Atala's console, overlaying the valley floor over her mapping display in a 3-D hologram.

Liaka swings the speeder around from its course and drops it down into the valley. For a moment there is a sense of calm, as she rides a slightly clearer band of atmospherics in the sensors down onto the point where the scan is to take place. She cannot see where the supposed site for the base is supposed to be - both due to its concealed position, and the increasingly appalling weather conditions - but she trusts the scanners enough to know that it's there.

As she brings the speeder in close for another pass though, something else pings up on the powerful sensors' active system - a small, rapidly closing object.

The missile, roaring on a tongue of fire, slams into the hull of Recon 1, shaking it badly. On the scanners, what looks like a dozen contacts suddenly burst out of the undergrowth, fire raging out from them. They have the drop on you, but on the other hand, you can see them with your scanners as well as they can see you - however they spotted you to begin with.

As soon as the multiple enemy contacts show up on the scanners N97 goes to open ship comm's. Then the he sees the missile incoming. With no seemingly emotional reaction or excitement in his voice N97 sets off the warning klaxon. Then the crew hears him over the comms. "Alert: Brace for incoming missile attack. Multiple hostiles on the ground. Battle stations."

Liaka reacts quickly and immediately accelerates, trying to dodge the incoming missile, but Recon 1 is simply not built for fancy maneuvers. "Goddamn it, someone get on the cannon and return fire," she grunts as she steers the speeder up, before going on a dive and banking hard to the right, trying to get behind a rocky outcrop to prevent another missile lock-on.

"Talk to me, people," Liaka says, her tone getting calmer as she focuses on piloting the vessel out of harm's way. "Who's out there trying to make my day worse, and what can we do to return the favor?"

OOC: I'll use the free maneuver to fly away as far as possible, trying to get some sort of terrain feature between us and the baddies.

Kixue is jostled in his seat as the rocket impacts with their craft. He shakes his head to clear it from the ringing noise that such an impact would cause and then stares down at the scanner. " I'm counting maybe a dozen targets but I can't seem to identify them using the scanner. If I had to guess though likely Imperial! "

The blast and shake of the craft causes Geoff to curse. These idiots. Last time we do anything stupid.

"Lieutenant, get us the frak out of here," yelled Geoff as he moves to takes Oro's spot. "Site has been compromised and will do us no good to check it out."

Taking the spot, Geoff also plugs in and looks at the droid. "Next time you want help, ask for the guy with the least combat ability. Oro is a better fighter than I ever will be. Also, check the **** communications next time. This was an ambush from the word go and you should have realized it."

Not caring if his words had an Impact, Geoff turned to assist N97 with the communications and scanners, double check maps and the previous weather reports. Survive this and we can hopefully get back to base. Then we can have a nice chat about this.

With his posterior upper back display N97 confirms receiving the instructions from the doctor. "Confirmation: Message was direct line encoded message from HQ, checked for security. Scanners working perfectly, however with storm we were to low to avoid the initial ambush. Thank you for your concern."

The discussion of whether the team's mission is a trap is interrupted by a sudden jolt on the speeder's controls. A second missile, blasting out of the storm - which is making visibility steadily lower by the second, to the point that even the ground below is visible only in the fractional time in which lightning lights up the sky - slams into the underside of the speeder. The effect is near-instant: the speeder's controls seize up, the engines roars and sputters, before lurching over forwards. You can actually feel the repulsorlifts failing from the front forwards, and as they do the nose drops down, and with your forward momentum you begin racing towards the ground.

As you descend, you fully expect - given the rate of fire the missile launcher has achieved thus far - that another missile will slam into you. Yet there is no further impact, no sound of tearing metal or further blast on your hull. Something must be up with the launcher. Certainly, that last shot was far less effective than it might have been, and as the speeder drops Liaka realises that there is still some give left in her craft's controls. She tries to bring the craft's nose up, and after a good deal of wrestling with the controls she feels the nose of the craft indeed start to rise up. Her navigation controls are dead, the speeder dying, but there is enough power to ensure that they land safely. Control momentarily restored, she casts her eye about for a landing zone - any landing zone.

Liaka curses loudly in her native tongue as she tries to keep the speeder from crashing head on into the cliff side. Under other circumstances the crew of the small speeder might have enjoyed the fact that the Twi'lek language seems perfectly suited to link together obscene words in a way that still make it sound classy and eloquent. But all that is lost on the crew as the whine of the engine, the warning sounds from three different warning klaxons and the sound of the storm battering the damaged speeder leads them to belief that their last moment in this world has arrived.

"Kiuxe, try to boost the forward landing repulsors only on my mark," Liaka shouts as she wrestles the controls while simultaneously switching off multiple systems and diverting power to the few remaining navigational systems. "Now Kiuxe," she shouts, trying to make herself heard over the noise. She scans the surrounding area, looking for a good place to crash. For some absurd reason, for a brief moment she recalls the smug look on Somal, the annoying Twi'lek quartermaster, as she shoved the Crash Survival Kit to Liaka.

She pushes the engines to until all indicators hit red, powering away from the ambush. "There, an open area next to the cliff. I'm going for it," she shouts at Kiuxe, who has his hands full trying to keep the speeder level. "Everybody, hold on to something," she shouts towards the rear of the vehicle. "Brace for impact!"

The speeder hits the ground at high speed, the forward repulsors, operated by Kiuxe, keeping the speeder relatively level to the ground at the time of impact. "Reversing thrusters," Likaka announces, before cursing again in her mother tongue. "Or not, we have lost power, pulling emergency flaps to slow us down."

It is hard to hear what the Twi'lek pilot is trying to say as the bottom of the speeder gets scraped off on the rough ground. The ruined speeder finally hits a tree and starts to spin as it comes to a halt in thick bushes just meters away from a narrow but fast-flowing river. The engine is billowing smoke and by now even the emergency power is out. It is clear to everyone on board that the speeder is unlikely to fly, ever again.

"It's my first crash," Liaka whispers weakly as she unbuckles her seat belt. "Is everyone OK?" she says, looking over the rear of the vehicle. "Grab whatever kit you can, we have to get out of here before our friends arrive to finish the job." She grabs her kit and the crash kit, again thinking about the look on Somal's face when she hears about this, and kicks open the pilot's door before jumping out of the vehicle.

Crashing is dangerous. Still, it beats exploding in deep space.

With a quick rotation of his head N97 sees that everyone has braced for impact. Desperately he works the computers trying to boost energy to the engines he finally has to give up and just locks his hands to the panel with a vice-like grip just before impact.

Even though inorganic, his sensors have the same vulnerability to fast rotation distortion and inertial damage that organics may endure. After the ship settles it takes him a few seconds to gain his bearings and then releases the now-dented computer panel.

"Grab whatever kit you can, we have to get out of here before our friends arrive to finish the job."

With a short comms reply to Lt. Atala he confirms receiving the message. Before moving to the back of the speeder to sort out the survival gear, he removes the data core of the speeder as standard procedure to limit it being sliced for location and operational data.

The rain clears up Liaka's head after the crash. She slides on her scanner goggles, which are linked to the new combat scanner she swindled out of the quartermaster's assistant. Surveying the scene she can see no incoming as she sets the scanner to detect motion and heat anomalies in the direction the enemy fire came from.

"Right," she says, looking back into the speeder. "We have limited time. N97, can the communications array from the speeder be salvaged and brought along in less than 30 seconds? If not, we need to destroy that, and preferably the auto-blaster as well. The rest of you, grab equipment we need and get out of there. Prioritize what personal gear you need and any survival gear. Oro, grab the tent and grenades. Kael, get the rations and climbing gear. Doc, grab a carbine or two if you can. Guys, share out gear if you have to, we can't let stuff we don't need slow us down, we have to bug out, we are in no condition to fight an enemy whose strength and capabilities we do not know."

As she speaks she stuffs the crash survival kit unceremoniously into her backpack, which expands somewhat to accommodate the additional gear. She then looks around through her goggles, trying to determine the best way to get out of this situation without getting cornered by the enemy.

Kixue frantically works the controls as Liaka orders him too. He wasn't sure why he was in the co pilots chair since he had no formal training and in hindsight maybe he should have taken a lesson or two. Lessons would be added to his to do list, assuming they survived their plunge towards the ground. When the order came to brace for impact Kixue wasn't sure what he could grab onto that would make this crash any more pleasant. The second item on his to do list, best ways to brace for a crash.

The young ensign was dazed for a moment after the crash. He carefully unbuckles himself and then carefully climbs out of the downed speeder. He pats his body to make sure he's still in one piece. Nothing major, aside from a growing headache. That would have to be addressed later though. A moment later he's back in the crashed speeder rumaging for supplies.

Kixue slings one of the carbines over his shoulder and then grabs the rations and the climbing gear. With luck this equipment won't weigh him down and slow them down too much as they make their trek to safety. " Which way are we going Lt? "

"Confirmation: Yes Ma'am" is the reply N97 gives to Lt. Atala. Pulling up the command structure on the main ship computer he enters a code into the system to cause the main power supply to overheat and explode, then he pulls the main components of the comms array.

Over everyone's comm's the metallic and detached voice of the droid comes through. "Alert: 30 seconds until self destruct." Aiding where he can he helps get the crew out of the doomed speeder and far enough away. Following the others he keeps his posterior sensors trained on the ship, waiting for the inevitable explosion.

Oro reaches into the speeder and retrieves the tent - which he stows over his back thanks to its effective carry-straps - and the case of grenades - which he clamps into the small of his back thanks to its field-modified grappels. As he stands up to move away, he looks up at the point the fire came from, then along the base of the ridge.

"I think I see a path. It takes us away from the enemy, but I wouldn't like to follow an unknown trail without visibility or intelligence. Your call," he tells the others.

In response to Oro, N97 offers an option: "Observation: The path does appear to be the expected way to use, so perhaps we should follow it, but then use grenades to set up a few traps and an ambush?" He then puts forth the recommendation of 1-2 grenades on a delayed proximity timer. When passed they will activate a 2 minute timer, then the next time they are passed they will explode. Then further down the path he could set up a couple of immediate and slightly delayed grenades. We could ambush them there, then as they retreat in a hurry they will come accross the initial set of grenades. This is especially effective if the initial set of grenades are right after a defensible area, they will rush back to the defensible area assuming it is safe.

He concludes with, "It is a technique that Lt. Atala and I have used before."

Liaka thinks for a moment. "Negative. We don't know who uses the path or where it goes. It is more logical for us to go cross country. Are we all here?" She shoulders her pack, much heavier with the crash kit, checks the charge on her blaster and waits for the others to get ready, scanning the area around them with her new gadget to spot incoming hostiles.

" Aye L.t. " Kixue looks around and then glances back behind them " We should get moving pretty fast though. I don't imagine it will take them long to catch up to us. "

Kixue glances down the trail and then back at the group and then down the trial once more. He tilts his head and then starts moving down it " I think we should go this way ma'am. Something is drawing me in this direction. We should follow this hunch. " It wasn't often that the Force guided Kixue's choices but when it gave him insight he often found it prudent to listen, even if the feeling was nothing more than a hunch and not something he could logically explain to the others.

Then noting that the driod is unarmed he holds out the blaster rifle for him. " Here take this, we all should be armed. " With that he unholsters his blaster and begins down the trail.