The Phantom Affair

[sw_npc]

Anyone walking out onto this floor of the hospital is sure to notice one thing: it certainly doesn't sound like a hospital. There's a lot of laughing, some loud exclamations, more than a few off-color jokes, the occasional yelp, and quite a bit of high-volume mockery

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[sw_npc]

"Underground?" Koyi shakes her head to herself, her braintails tossed over her shoulders to keep them out of her way. "But Mrlsst is too wet too--"

She nearly stumbles as she runs through a large, looming shadow, and she stops -- and looks up.

She smiles.

"We may have an underground after all!"

[twostandingby]

Tycho stops himself just short of running right into the Twi'lek woman, and he follows her gaze up the enormous, green tree, bushy and solid.

He starts to protest, to try to get her running again, but then he notices the rope bridge running from one treetop to another, high overhead, and he starts to be able to pick out structures. There are people living way the hell up there.

He has only one question.

"How do we get up there?"

[sw_npc]

By now, the entire group has paused to look up at the trees, as a couple of them lay down covering fire on the stormtroopers, who are keeping their distance for the moment.

Wes Janson clears his throat. "I have an idea." He points down at the bed with something of a grin. "Dllr, can you override the default floating level on this thing?"

[rogueofsullust]

Dllr gives the controls on the hoverbed an appraising look. "Sure." He turns his blaster rifle from holding off the sotrmtroopers for a moment--and blasts the controls.

The bed begins to rise. Quickly.

[i_love_kettch]

Wes grins as the bed rises and calls to the others, "Taking off! Jump on, guys!"

Somehow it holds up under the weight of all nine of them and continues to rise, if a little (or very) unsteadily. Groznik roars at the bewildered stormtroopers below, who eventually remember to shoot at them again.

While the others hold on tight to the edge of the bed or trade shots with the Imperials below, Wes peers up at the trees Koyi's pointing to -- and which they're approaching. Until a lucky shot makes a particularly nasty noise underneath them, that is, and he leans over the edge to examine the damage to the underside of the bed.

"--I don't like the look of this," he decides, scrambling back up. "We better disembark."

[hellobugbite]

Hobbie squeezes off a final blaster shot at the stormtroopers below before holstering his blaster pistol.

In short order, he's got a compact utility rope extracted from his belt pouches, and uses it to secure the bed to an off-shooting branch of one of the trees' massive limbs.

The Rogues scramble into the foliage, more or less gracefully, and he un-knots the rope, kicks the bed back to hover in midair.

"What the kiff're we going to do with that?"

[i_love_kettch]

Wes eyes the bed as he holds on tight to the tree, then peers over the edge at the stormtroopers far below.

"Ah, let it fall," he tells Hobbie with a sideways grin. "What harm can it do?"

[sw_npc]

What harm indeed?

The bed sputters, wobbling in the air for a moment before falling. Of the six stormtroopers climbing the tree behind the Rogues, three are lucky enough to avoid getting shot. Those same three are also unlucky enough to try to catch a descending grav bed.

But, hey... you win some, you lose some.