Ask Twenty Inches of Solid Durasteel

[Acklay]

Mars had remained undetected in Mr. Sion Shif's network for a while now. After she and Terra left their little party recon so long ago, she'd managed to move laterally and gain access to one of the administrator accounts. It'd taken a while itself, but she had time and no reason to rush the process. The shard wasn't going anywhere, not if what she'd heard about had any weight. Once she'd gotten there she'd remained dormant, collecting data as she needed, but there wasn't much more she wanted. They had the list of guard staff (and when their shifts were), the patrol paths of droids, the location of cameras, the location of the safe, and the various security codes.

The only problem was that the code to the safe wasn't located on any server or file she could find. She and Terra would have to find the code before they could break into the vault. This, when the time came, was relayed to Terra.

"Mm'kay, so-" Mars placed a datapad on the table in between her and Terra as she slid into the booth on the other side, then used her metal index finger to flick it closer to the tiefling woman. "The stars have aligned and we have an opening. Shif has gotten into some legal trouble and is gonna be out of town for a bit, so now's our opp to slip in and nab that shard before the recluse shuts himself back in."

The datapad had a rough outline of a plan, including a map of the premises with rough routes of the guards (and guard droids) and every security camera location. "The only problem is the vault's code isn't located on the network, so we'll have to figure that out ourselves."

Mars drummed the fingers of her right hand against the table, creating a rhythm of solid taps made as metal hit the vinyl surface. "But, if we don't take advantage of this now, we might not get another chance."

tag: @Phoenix

 

[Terra Lanris]

It had been quite some time since Terra and Juno had come to do the recon of this house, but now the time had come to actually see it brought to fruition. The piece of the artifact that was here was still worth a great deal of money to the right people, and with the Empire growing in power, she was sure someone would pay handsomely for it.

Good, she said, nodding emphatically. Her helmet sat next to her on the desk, prepared to assist Terra in concealing her identity when they broke into the man's manor. Her pistol sat on her thigh, already set to stun.

We can enter here, she said, pointing to an area on the schematics. It's the delivery door. If we can bypass the electronic lock, there shouldn't be much by way of guards over there, she said.

As for the vault code, I'm sure we can find it when we get inside, she said. Probably in his room or... something, she said with a shrug.

@lizziie

 

[Acklay]

"Good idea," Mars nodded into response to Terra's entry suggestion. If they could slip in just after or just before a delivery truck arrived, the guards would hopefully be off high alert. The electronic lock shouldn't pose too much of a problem either, Mars figured, considering its code was probably somewhere on the system. That, or it'd just be a minute or two for her to squeeze in. "Need anything before we go?"

~~~​

They arrived at the location very, very early in the morning, before the sun was even a thought of the sky and the hum of urban life was still waiting for its residents to wake. Mars and Terra would both arrive on a speeder, leave it about a block away, then head toward the building. The delivery door was around back at the end of a short paved path meant for repusolor vehicles to follow, marked by a single, flickering yellow light.

"Alright, give me a minute to disable the outdoor security cameras," Mars muttered, pulling her datapad out and entering the system. It would take her a minute tops, but it would give Terra time to scout out for physical security before they went in.

tag: @Phoenix

 

[Terra Lanris]

Terra crept in alongside Juno, making their way up the road just in the side foliage and in the direction of the mansion. Her heart was pounding and her hands threatened to shake just like every time she did these kinds of operations. She wondered if - given enough time - people ever really got used to this adrenaline surge. She wasn't sure she would.

I'll keep an eye out, she said as Juno set to work on the first obstacle in their path.

Her eyes swept over the misty morning air, and she tensed. She heard the sounds of a clunk-clunk that heralded a droid, but... at this point there was nothing to indicate that the droid knew they were here.

She made a motion toward Juno to keep going as she crouched lower and tried to get a better view of what they were dealing with right now.

@lizziie

 

[Acklay]

"Alright, cameras are frozen," she said, her voice hushed. They were free to show their faces as long as no one was out to spot them. At Terra's motion, Mars continued forward, crouching low just like the tiefling behind her. She too could hear the sound of a droid's heavy footsteps, so she did her best to keep her own quiet.

On the other side of the foliage, the droid continued down its predetermined path. It hadn't spotted either of them, but it was blocking their path to the delivery door, which posed a problem. Mars noticed this and scowled underneath her mask. It looked like the guards were slightly behind schedule.

They had two options, it seemed. Wait for it to pass and waste time, or try to sneak around it. Mars looked back at Terra, curious to see if the tiefling had any ideas brewing behind her dark eyes.

tag: @Phoenix

 

[Terra Lanris]

Terra kept watching and waiting. She gave a thumb up to Juno when she said the camera's were frozen, which was good news. She didn't want to risk saying something aloud.

She held up a hand again to indicate they should wait. If there's one thing she'd learned heisting on the streets, it was that impatience could buy you all kinds of unexpected problems.

She waited and watched, as the droid started to move past them, she started to slink along quietly, heading for the side door only for a worker to appear out of the very same door, lighting up a smoke and Terra was forced to duck once again behind the delivery truck.

Her head tilted back and forth impatiently, and her tail flittered as well, more than ready to get inside and out of the immediately obvious and visible outdoor area.

@lizziie

 

[Acklay]

Mars kept close behind Terra, annoyed that the delivery truck was ahead of schedule and that the guards were behind schedule. It wasn't the worse thing that could go wrong, but the woman liked when her plans didn't fuck off to do their own thing. Of course, it was better here at the beginning than later on, she supposed.

They slipped behind the delivery truck to get out of sight, but they didn't have a whole lot of time. Knowing she needed to come up with a distraction quickly, Mars began to inspect the truck they were standing next to. It was locked, but it had one of those door keys that could be used to open it if the key fob died. This gave her an idea, and she quickly signaled to Terra that she should get ready to move around the back of the truck.

Using one of the vibroclaws on her hand, Mars pushed her finger into the mechanism and violently wiggled it around until she heard a click. Almost immediately the truck began to sound its anti-theft alarm, causing an exasperated groan from the worker. The woman quickly pulled her finger out and quietly slipped around the back of the truck, hopefully joining Terra. The droid guard was down on the other side, and after seeing no one but a frustrated worker unlocking the vehicle and climbing in to try and stop the alarm, looked away.

"Now," Mars mounted, pointing to the open door in front of them. With the worker distracted and the guard apathetic, they had a clear shot to get inside.

tag: @Phoenix

 

[Terra Lanris]

Terra watched as Juno quickly made a distraction for them, and Terra made use of it immediately. As the woman turned to the truck, Terra pressed onward. The disadvantage to having people outside was... they were outside and in a position to see the two women. The advantage was that the door was still unlocked.

Terra moved quickly, slipping into the door as the woman was just opening the door to the truck and closing it as soon as she and Juno were inside.

She had looked closely at the schematics before they arrived, and she recalled where the man's office was. That, she assumed, was the best place to find the combination for the vault, so she headed in that direction.

The inside of the mansion had "less" security than the outside. Still roving patrols, but not as many cameras because who really wanted to be watched and recorded in their own home? After all, how much security could one man have?

@lizziie

 

[Acklay]

Mars slipped in past the threshold, Terra carefully and quickly shut it thereafter, and the two heisters had successfully gotten inside. Rather than dressed up with heels and jewelry and here under the guise of partygoers, they were quite obviously here for a different reason. Between Terra's helmet and Mars' visor and full sleeves, they would be unrecognizable by anyone they happened to come across, at least.

"Okay," Mars exhaled, her voice barely above a whisper and just loud enough for Terra to hear. "Office?"

From their current entrance point, they weren't too far, but they were far enough that they couldn't just make a beeline for the room. The guard route has eyes on the hallway at almost all times, with only a few short recesses in between. But, first things first, cameras.

"Lead the way. I'm going to get cameras offline," she whispered as she pulled her datapad out from her pack. She could do it and move, since she was already in the system from their set up before.

tag: @Phoenix

 

[Terra Lanris]

Terra gave a nod. Yeah, best bet, she said quietly in response, looking down the hall. There wasn't much cover, and in her mind that screamed "problem" but they'd managed to duck into rooms before... if they could just get to the second floor.

Need me to wait? she asked as Mars said she'd get the cams offline. If need be, she'd wait, but if not she pressed on down the hall. She moved hunched over more out of reflex than anything. Somehow it made her feel more stealthy, though she was pretty sure it didn't actually help much. It was just like the bad old days breaking into houses and boosting whatever wasn't nailed down.

Now, though, they were here for something far more specific.

Her mind raced through ways to create a distraction before she settled on a plan. Something to pull their attention away, but not so severe that they would call for outside help. Something like a door malfunction.

She slipped over to one of the sliding doors into the room and pried open the controls, quickly hotwiring it so that the door would spastically open and close constantly. Replacing the control panel, she hit the "door open" button, and it started going ballistic. She was confident when the next guard route came through here, they'd be distracted and - as long as the two women weren't standing right next to the door anymore - they'd be able to slip past and down the hall to the stairs.

@lizziie

 

[Acklay]

"No, you're good. Cams will roll back anyway," Mars answered without looking up.

She lagged a bit behind Terra, but stayed a safe enough distance that she wasn't in danger of losing the woman. After a minute, once she'd gotten the cameras offline and in a loop, she stashed the datapad and moved quickly and quietly to catch up with her.

The cyborg woman reached her just as the hotwired door began opening and closing again and again, and again and again. It wasn't excessively loud, but it was pretty much impossible to miss. A good distraction, Mars decided. But they would need to keep moving and try to find a way upstairs.

"Over here," Mars hissed, keeping her voice down but having to raise it somewhat so that Terra would hear her over the sound of the door. She gestured to an empty room just a bit away from the malfunctioning door. They could wait, just like before, until they had an opportunity to go.

Mars slowly pushed over the door - which was already ajar - to reveal what was essentially a cramped storage closet. She made a face until her mask, but said nothing while she slipped inside. Once Terra joined her - if she did - she would place her metal finger just barely into the crack between the door and the floor to keep it just open enough for the tiefling to be able to see out.

After a minute or so, the sound of heavy footsteps could be heard approaching as someone or something came to investigate the incessant noise.

tag: @Phoenix

 

[Terra Lanris]

Terra peered out through the small crack as they hid in the closet, seeing the guard and then a droid appear at the door in an attempt to get it to stop.

Yeah, shut the breaker off if you have to, he said int a comlink. When he slipped into the room through a side door along with the droid, Terra saw their opportunity and quickly slipped out into the hall once again, heading for the stairs that they had seen when they'd been here last time.

She slipped upward, taking the stairs two at a time in the hopes of finding their target quickly. There was less security up here, and they had fewer obstacles to finding their room with speed.

@lizziie

 

[Acklay]

Terra moved, and Mars hurried out after her. She put the weight of her body into her toes, practically tip-toeing until she was out of sight and quickly heading up the stairs. Once she reached the top, she ducked behind the hallway wall and pulled her datapad out. The schematics for the building were projected in a pale blue above the device, and she pinched in to searched for any room that could be flagged as a potential office.

"Let's check these rooms first," she whispered to the tiefling after getting her attention. The cyborg woman pointed to two rooms on the left side of the building, and two on the right. They were both close to router, were small enough not to be a bedroom but big enough to not be a closet, and were tucked away from the main hallways.

"I'll go left," she added on before stashing the datapad away and creeping down toward the rooms in the left hallway. If she found the room, she'd ping Terra on her comlink while she searched for the code.

tag: @Phoenix

 

[Terra Lanris]

I'll get right, she agreed. Terra went to the right side as Mars went to the left, quickly poking her head into a variety of rooms without success before finally finding one that looked promising.

I might have something, she said into her comlink, making her way into an office area and starting to quickly paw through the various drawers with her gloves still on.

Head to the vault? Start bypassing the outer security system? she suggested, as she kept looking through. She could feel in her gut that she was close to finding it... call it her thief's intuition.

@lizziie

 

[Acklay]

Mars had just entered the first one of her rooms when her comlink crackled and Terra's voice followed. "Already?" she mused aloud, surprised. <Okay, I'll head down there. Keep me posted.>

The vault was downstairs, and not just downstairs, but downstairs downstairs, which was a convoluted way of saying it was in the basement and she was on the second floor. Thankfully, she was somewhat familiar with the floorplans thanks to their previous excursion here, and she roughly knew where the guards would and wouldn't be on her way down.

It took her about ten minutes to get down into the basement, avoiding guards and cameras in the meantime. Once she was down there, she slipped into a room and began working on disabling the cameras. She wasn't too far from the vault, so once she got the cameras out down here, she'd be good to go.

tag: @Phoenix

 

[Terra Lanris]

Like Mars, Terra also had a long trek down to the basement, but she managed to pull it off without a hitch. This wasn't her first rodeo, after all.

When she made it down there, though, Mars seemed to have already arrived. Kriff, I gotta pick it up. You're making me look like a novice, she said jokingly as she watched the slicer disable the cameras. Her tail flicked impatiently - something she almost couldn't help - but she didn't say anything, doing her best to give Mars the space she needed. After all, Terra knew she was good at what she did.

After a few moments, the cameras were down and Terra moved forward, using the keycard to open the lock. A series of clunks and hisses whirred through the huge door before it opened an inch, allowing them to pull it the rest of the way.

Terra was practically leaping out of her skin as she moved forward, that familiar rush and thrill coursing through her as she pulled against the heavy door and it swung wide open.

And there it was the artifact they had done all this work for sitting on a pedestal in the center of the vault.

@lizziie

 

[Acklay]

"I could always teach you a trick or two," Mars chuckled as she finished up. Once they were safe, she followed Terra toward the vault and waited for the door to open.

"Geez, must be like twenty inches of solid durasteel through this thing," she exhaled, referring to the thickness of the vault door. "Glad you found the code. I don't think we could've gotten through this thing with anything short of dynamite."

But, low and behold, the shard was perched on a pedestal before them. Mars approached it carefully and spent a second to check the pedestal to make sure there wasn't any funny business going on with it. The shard looked quite unassuming, but if it really was powerful enough to make that old man act crazy for it, she wasn't taking any chances on touching it. Thankfully her hands were metal, but she was still taking precautions.

Mars procured a microfiber cloth from her pocket, carefully covered the shard with it, then slid it back into a pocket where it would be snug and secure. Now, did they want anything else from here?

"See anything else in here worth swiping? Or should we just take what we came for?"

tag: @Phoenix

 

[Terra Lanris]

Terra glanced around as Mars took the prize from the pedestal and looked for anything else they might find valuable. She wondered to herself how long it would take for the old man to notice that things had been taken. It wasn't like he had daily use for this stuff anyway.

One way or another, Terra pocketed a couple of other small, valuable-looking pieces of jewelry and artifacts that they might be able to sell and turned back to Mars.

I think I cleaned up some of the easiest stuff to carry, she said. Of course there were larger things like suits of armor, weapons, and even what looked to be some ancient stone slab whose purpose was beyond the Tiefling, but that wasn't something they could just take with them on the way.

Come on, let's hit it, she said, moving out and closing the vault door behind them. She didn't bother taking anything back to the office and dropped whatever they didn't need right outside the vault door before preparing to exfil.

 

[Acklay]

Mars watched Terra clean up the room a bit, only taking one thing herself: a diamond necklace. While the cyborg woman never saw the value in buying pretty things, she certainly had no qualms stealing them.

"Another day, another gain," she grinned underneath her mask, reaching out for Terra to fistbump her knuckles on their way out.

Next step? Figure out a way to cash out the shard without getting got by a bunch of stingy force users.

tag: @Phoenix

// ENd Thread.