Queen Ahsoka (Book 4, Yuuzhan Vong War)

Golden Temptation

To move forward, Ahsoka sent Baba back into the control room, to turn the air-con for level -3 on again, then make an estimate of how long the backup generators would have fuel at the current rate of energy consumption and how they could extend that time. That side mission the dark side had made her undertake, could very well turn out to take longer than the main mission. Next she ordered Pami to make the team to go up one level. While Ahsoka was going ahead to find the entry into the supply tunnel Pami had the tools from the mummies and all other gear loaded up the small quedaks they had brought and led the team to the next level via the staircase.

Yomin Carr's POV

Yomin Carr had gathered 300 warriors, whom he led down the crater onto the rooftop. He knew, the villains must have entered the building somewhere and after looking around for some time, he found the door, which had been forced open. The door was blocked, but it took the warriors just a few minutes until the door and the table holding it were completely destroyed. They navigated the highest story and forced their way into every room, but did not find what they were looking for. After having been running around the highest floor for hours, Yomin was at his wits end. They could not have vanished? Or did they vanish? Maybe there was a secret door? Eventually, he found significant dirt in front of a wall. Scrutinizing the wall, he figured that it was not a wall, but a slider door and they forced it open. It was strange, behind the slider door was a big shaft leading downward. At the side of the shaft was a small steel ladder. The infidels had really build strange things. The enemy must have taken that ladder, because there was no other option. His warriors could only climb down one by one and the shaft was deeper than he could see. It would take them hours. Those humans who built this must have been stupid. Vong's would have built a circular ramp to get up and down, as such people could pass in either direction and even animals could get up and down. With it being the only option, he got on the ladder and climbed down just to see another slider door a bit further down. After having seen the extent of the upper story and seeing the deep shaft and realizing, that slider doors came in regular distances, he figured, that the building might be extremely big. The group they were looking for could be anywhere. Vong were not used to ladders, ladders were a very rare thing for the Yuuzhan Vong. The many spikes and other things protruding from the body of a Yuuhzan Vong, particularly a warrior, made the use of a ladder rather difficult and dangerous. That was the main reason, why the Vong did not like them and used other means to get up and down. Complicating matters, the warriors had to deal with their amphistaffs while on the ladder and it came as things come in such cases. One of the warriors lost his grip, fell and took two more with him. They were flying by Yomin, crashed into the wall, bounced off, hit the wall again, bounced off and so forth. Vong were used to quite a lot, but that was something he wanted to forget quickly again. It was a dishonorable death. Now he broke of a piece of shell protruding from his body and let it drop into the shaft. After about 5 seconds he heard the impact, meant the noise traveled roughly 1500m, meant the ground was something like 700-800m down. If he would lose warriors at the current rate, he might be the only one arriving down there and that did not necessarily mean that he would find the villains. It was futile, they had to get up again and wait outside the building until the villains came back out. At some point, they had to come back out again, he just needed to be patient. So he yelled at the warriors who had followed him to climb up again. He had the hardest time to make them understand his new orders and it took about 30 minutes for them to come out of the elevator shaft. Meanwhile two more had lost grip on the ladder and united with Yun-Yammka.

On level -4

While going up into level -3, Pami clearly heard 5 heavy impacts in the elevator shaft. The engineer would have to check out, what had happened there. Something might have come loose and he needed to check if that imposed a problem.