Kel and Xander found a restraining bolted and deactivated administration droid, 3D-4K. Xander removed the bolt and rebooted the droid. 3D-4K told the pair that the last thing he remembered was talking with EV-8D3, the supervisor droid. After a bit more discussion, they took the droid to the security room to send schematics of the locations of the generators to Trex in order to try and stop their continued destruction.
Organizing the scared miners, with the assistance of their leaders - Marv Moray and Bonda, Ymira, Zavi and Roona drove the mining cart back to the mine entrance to confront the droids who were building a wall of containers. Having contacted their friends, Kel and Xander, the plan was to catch the droids in a pincer move. Reaching the mine entrance, EV-8D3 was quickly aware of our protagonists, despite being nowhere in site. The droid responded with a scathing tirade that made the team seriously pause. But soon the battle was at hand.
As the heavy droids moved forward, the battle droids took up cover spots around the containers and other bits of machinery. Zavi blasted one of the Lifter Droids, while Ymira and Kel took out several of the B1s. The two BLL droids moved closer to attack with their dangerous grapplers while the two PK Worker droids advanced on their flanks. The PK's mining lasers flared to life.
Several hits managed to stop one of the Lifter Droids and Roona was nearly caught by the other as the rocks she perched on had shifted and sent her sprawling to the floor in melee range. The Rodian scout was just able to scramble away in time. While R2-B7 quickly sped at Kel and Xander, it did not attack and rolled quickly past them and out of sight. The two on the back side of the attack continued their blaster fire, slowly clearing out all the B1s, while Roona and Xander focused on the Medtech medical assistance droid. Each of them had recognized that the Med droid was controlling the others. Not an easy discovery as it was done remotely through the mine's system network. Once FX-769 was destroyed, the remaining Lifter and PK stopped in their tracks.
At that point the third generator was destroyed and things were still looking dire. If the 5th generator was destroyed, the mine would collapse in the terrible atmosphere of Gavos. Even now, the place shuddered and the wind could be heard sneaking through the hairline cracks forming in the walls, and the stink of ammonia and methane could be felt. Time was running out. After a brief discussion with Marv, it was determined that it was likely Lookout, an exploration droid, in the scout car that was doing the destruction. Trying to figure out which generator Lookout was going to next would be tricky, as the droid was not moving in a direct path from one to the next. It was actively skipping over some for others, then doubling back.
A map and schematic of the generators, as well as the regional topography would be necessary and while the team discussed the process of how to locate the scout car and exploration droid, Xander continued to hack the computer system. He was first able to learn that there was a ranged network system set up, which allowed the astromech droid to do maintenance routines from the mine itself. Normally this would never be used as any droid that was self-aware could potentially take over anything on the network. Here in the enclosed mine, that was not an issue. Meanwhile, Trex informed the team that the cargo ship had taken off from the other landing pad. The Trandoshan confirmed that there were no lifeforms on board. But the droids, EV-8D3 and R2-B7, were likely on board. Kel had destroyed the control pod, but as Roona pointed out, the droids could jack in to the ship in many places and take control.
Running a detection routine, Xander located the scout car's location and was able to confirm that the exploration droid was on board. Zavi sent a binary instruction to tell the droid to stop its destructive task, but it responded back that it was unable to stop. Clearly the droid had also been fitted with a restraining bolt. After some tense moments, Xander was able to use the network system to connect to the restraining bolt and then was able to shut it down. Lookout was now able to return to the mine. It turned out that the exploration droid was more or less satisfied with its subservient role to other sentient beings. Because it was not convinced of the need for a droid rebellion, it was fitted with the restraining bolt and forced to destroy the generators. However, the instructions it was given allowed for an inefficient process for destroying the generators.
- Adminstrative Droid 3D-4K
- 20d0b59142efe4927057f0c2ed7884d3.jpg (80.76 KiB) Viewed 730 times
Ymira negotiated some with Marv in an attempt to bring the total higher. Roona suggested they needed at least 90k credits to satisfy Bargos' greed. Ymira, with some help from Kel, was able to negotiate up from 83k to 85,500 and then to 87K, pointing out that they had saved all the miners who they encountered. Marv agreed and committed to increase efforts to bring in more Oridium more quickly as the miners' part of the bargain. With the collection of credit chips in hand, the team returned to the Krayt Fang and jetted off in return to Tatooine and the hope that Bargos would be satisfied with their efforts.