Welcome to Gaia! ::

Captain Hildegard managed to secure the area on the stage with relative unnotice. There were no more shots, and the wounded, those living anyway, were being treated.

As he made his way off stage, he vaguely heard a voice from the side. Pulling the blaster up, he creeped his way backstage, torwards the service bay, where the back doors were. They were in the middle of closing.

He hurried forward, but didn't make it in time. Swearing, he beat on it, then pulled up the access box and tried the manual lever. It opened.

Poking his blaster out, he saw two figures, vague, running into the distance. He thought of leveling a shot, but they quickly disappeared into the shadows. He reached down for a comlink but found none. Cursing, he ran back inside to fetch Agaka.

A minute or two later, he burst into the command chamber, holstering his blaster. "Colonel, I just saw two suspects heading out back into the streets. I couldn't make out who or what they were, but they were heading southbound, through the alleys. We need to organize a manhunt."

He nodded, running off, the thought never having occured to him.

He found his troops, most of them all healed and ready to do something. He picked out everyone fit for the mission. "We've got us a manhunt, boys. Let's head on down to the weapons cache and gear up."

Leading them back to where Imperial Security had set up and where he found his blaster, they stripped the room of comlinks, E-11s, and DL-44s. There was barely enough ammo for them each to have a single clip.

Geared up, he took them out the serivce bay, and into the alley. "Alright men. There's about 20 of us. Split up into groups of seven, and start patrolling the alleys behind the building, especially those where a tank can't get through."

The men saluted, and started organizing into squads. He barely noticed that some of them had bandaged hands and blood patches. "If you see anything suspicious, radio in IMMEDIATELY, then engage. Last thing we need is another bloodbath and them running off into the darkness before we find any corpses."

They all nodded, and split up. Hildegard commandeered the lone 6-man group, and made his way for the dark alleys...

"Hold it Lieutenant!" Colonel Akaga yelled as he climbed aboard. He grabbed his armor from Twitch and started pulling it on, "Alright, you can head out."

As he pulled on the helmet he activated his mic, "Headquarters, this is Akaga... request ETA on those ARCs."

"Eight minutes," Jasmir Adder replied.

"Thank you," He glanced at Twitch, "Set up a datalink with the squadron. They'll be our eyes in the sky." With that done he took an E-11 from the stack of weapons stored in the rear of the vehicle and checked it's power pack. Then he pulled his rank badge from his uniform and slipped it into a small storage compartment on the armor. Then he glanced at the Lieutenant, "Might want to take that rank off if you want to keep from being a target."

(1- Hildegard's men were already there. 2- Imperials always set up security stations withint the buildings of any 'major functions. They usually keep weapons, comlinks, first aid equipment, etc. in there. 3- He was ordered to do it. Unless you've been paying attention, Hildegard is actually a mediocre soldier. He would never think of going on a mission on his own; instead, he'd take as many people as he could with him, and chose the paths least likely to run across trouble. That way he does his job and saves his skin)

As it was, Hildegard's men did not find anything at all in the back alleyways. As ordered, they kept to passageways vehicles couldn't fit through, maximizing their chances of catching them by a small, yet signifigant margin.

Within about five minutes, they'd scoured all of the alleyways immediately around the ampitheater, and met back up. "Orders, Captain?"

Having been addressed to by one of his newly promoted Corporals, he looked around. Not faced with many ideas, he pointed to a near-derelict building behind them. "Let's go check in there. The Spacies will pick up anything in the streets."

With that they jogged over to the building, beat down the door, and started combing their way through.

"And if this vehicle is damaged Lieutenant? You expect me to walk out of it without body armor?" Colonel Akaga replied cooly. He noted that she refused his advice with the rank emblem... Of course the idea of a sniper at a thousand meters using the placard as a bullseye apparently hadn't occurred to her yet. There was cowardice... and then there was common sense.

"As for leaving the vehicle... I didn't say anything about leaving, did I? This is the closest thing with full a full-comm sweep... It might as well be a command track." He turned to the tactical displays in the aft of the vehicle as he thought to himself: I don't want to be skewered by internal shrapnel either... that's why I've got the body armor.

((How will I hit you at night? I'll use a right hook.))

Charr and Lenler had just reached the opening of the alley when the old Merc paused.

His sharp ears picked up an odd hum, something aproaching and mechanical.

Pushing Lenler and himself behind a dumbster, the canny Rodian grippd his carbine and watched as the Hoverscout slid past the mouth of the alley, enroute elsewhere.

"What the hell is that?" he muttered quietly as it slid out of view.

((But are they on him? Probably not.))
"That it? Some grubby old dog of war? And I thought the fellow was dangerous." She said, clipping a few grenades to her belt. "So, what? We bring him in alive for trial or just put him down?"