Warrior ◊ Star Wars

chapter twenty-two: hopeful rescues, perhaps

"That's annoying." Mara let the wires drop, walking through the doors and into the building. The quick shield from the direct sunlight was an immediate relief. Now in the darker corridor, red warning lights illuminated the space and led towards what she assumed was the control room. The other two followed, BB-8 speeding in front of her.

"Well, it's nice to have shelter and all," Poe looked above him, eyes scanning the adjoining halls, "but I really hope I didn't blast up the air conditioner earlier."

"It is pretty stuffy in here." The blonde absentmindedly agreed, her head clouded by the noise, which kept blaring continually.

BB-8 had gone on ahead towards the main control console. They followed, going into a large room. A huge window should've been in front of the long console.

There should've been a massive window above the long slate of buttons and controls that allowed you to see into the basin and landing platform, but a piece of the wreckage obstructed most of the view. This made it so you could only see through the lower left hand corner.

The other side of the large room, which also should've been filled with control panels, had caved in and sectioned off a large portion of the area, which barred them from several other halls and accessing any other part of the building. Sparks still flew from random areas and small lights tried to flicker on, but it was mostly a mess of bent metal and hanging wires. It was a miracle that the section they were in was still standing.

Dameron immediately set down his rifle on the large console to focus on finding whether or not it still worked, quickly turning the alarm off. Mara glanced up at the tall ceiling, feeling a little anxious and questioning it's structural integrity. BB-8 said something about finding if there was anything they could salvage that'd be useful.

"I think we have power." Poe muttered, flipping a few switches near one of the comms as Mara looked over the console. The majority of it seemed functional, considering most of the damage was done to the other side of the base. She leaned over, experienced enough with most of the control panels the First Order used, but yet again, this was Imperial era tech.

Still, she imagined the same fundamental rules applied. The blonde quizzically examined it all, noticing similarities, "Is there a special channel the Resistance uses? Don't want to take the chance that Order might pick up a general distress signal."

"True, but I don't know if this'll have much range," He pointed to a few of the blinking lights that indicated how far the message could travel, showing that it wasn't nearly up to its farthest range, "Pretty sure I busted up most of the communication system. I can still use the secure channel, but it won't reach all the way to the base. Now we just hope someone out there is listening."

"Better than nothing." Mara tried to suppress the small hope that showed itself, considering this might fail terribly. She still had to plan for the worst, which would be staying on this planet even longer, "As far as I know, we haven't cracked your guys' codes yet or anything along those lines."

Poe laughed a painful, forced chuckle at the very thought of it, so tired of this planet and the very thought of this idea failing so terribly, "Well, I really hope that's not the case."

Mara watched over his shoulder, making sure he was programming everything right. She bit down in her lip when he flipped the wrong switch, quickly correcting him, "Other one."

Dameron fixed his hasty mistake, then went back to setting the right frequency. After a few seconds of this, the blonde did want she did best in the quiet; filled it with words.

"So do you guys have some super-secret line you say to signal to each other or something? I suspected you guys did. Never could figure it out."

Poe kept focus on what he was doing, but absentmindedly answered, "As a matter of fact, we do. Hopefully, it'll work."