Interlude: Core Drive

[Hayabusa]

Etison is not a man of action, but as Tab has learned from their conversation he seizes an opportunity if there is one. He leaves his hiding place and sprints towards Tab, leaping over the downed black-armored stormtroopers and heads for the exit of the office.

It's only a second as Tab watches Etison as he passe him that he notices that one of the lying figures rolls sideways and back behind the safety of the wall next to the entrance to Etison's office. A quick glance around the table leads Tab to the conclusion that only one of the commandos is still on the ground with smoking rising from a hole in the helmet.

"Damn it! The di'kut got Niner," a male voice exclaims. "Take him out!"
A moment later a spherical object, the size of a fist rolls towards Tab. As a spy with the knowledge of the Empire's weaponry the Bothan knows that this small, blinking sphere is a thermal detonater and that it's going to detonate four seconds after it's thrown.

"Get out, get out!" The same voice shouts again and for a spli-second, Tab sees one of the Imperial commandos with a half-melted helmet and a third-degree burn on the uncovered half of his face. In contrast to the previous intimidation, where the troopers used the external speakers, Tab can hear them now, because of the destroyed helmet. It would be stupid to announce what they're doing, but the Imperial doesn't think about that right now. As he runs back to the windows and their zip-lines.

With the current speed the thermal detonator will arrive at Tab's cover exactly 3.5 seconds after it has left it's user's hand and Tab knows that it's going to evaporate anything in a five-meter radius and destroy most of everything else in the remaining vicinity.

The Bothan spy has to act now.

[Donan]

"Etison, down, get down!" The Bothan spins and barrels towards the man who'd jsut ran past him, using his weight and movement to hurl them both as far away from the detonator as possible. The two men sprawl on the ground a second before the explosive goes off..

[Hayabusa]

Tab tackles Etison a second before the detontation. The exit to the offices is too far away and they won't make it through the door and take cover behind it. So the Bothan drives them both through one thin separation between the desks in the landscaped office and behind a solid-looking file cabinet, less than three meters away from the exit. As the Human and Bothan slide to a halt behind the cabinet the thermal detonator goes off.

Speeders on the lanes outside pass the glassed office complex which houses Etison't offices. And no one paid it much attention even as three armored men began to rappel from the top of the building and blasted through the windows on one of the floors. They're hard to spot in the dark anyway and only a surveillance droid on the opposite building over a hundred meters away witnesses the events. Only seconds after two black-clad troopers jump out of the bashed in windows and grab their ropes the whole side of the complex erupts and an instant later the glass facade blows outside, followed by a fiery blast the size of a Lambda-class shuttle. Large chunks of duracrete and the shredded interior shower over the passing speeders and force them the evade the hail of debris. Only a few of them cannot get away fast enough and get knocked out of the sky by the rubble. Not even the droid notices that both of the men have vanished in the blast and only the smoking ends of their ropes indicate are proof of their earlier presence.

Inside the office, Tab takes the hands of his ears and blinks away the thick smoke. Taking a look back the way they came, he can see that most of the office has been destroyed. In fact most of the office is not even in the building anymore: half a dozen meters away the Bothan can look up and down to at least four more floors and even deeper into the building where the thermal detonator vaporized enough to leave a hole the size of the Fenn and the blast pushed anything outside. Etison and Tab can count themselves lucky as the jarred opening in the duracrete floor is less than five meters away from them. Coughing Etison stands up and points at the remains of the exit door. As the man speaks Tab can't hear him and just then he hears the ring of the blast in his ears. He can also see a fine line of blood running from Etison's ears and a bloody nose from the unexpected dive through the office before the blast.