He stood in the rain a little while longer, letting the drops beating against his head, streaming down him in filthy rivulets. He exhaled slowly, letting the warm water wash away the stink of space off of him. He looked up, eyes flinching as a drop snared against eyelashes. This was not the life he had imagined for himself as a hatchling, cramped into a limping freighter with people that had no other options than to take what other people made. But it was better than where he was, the crumbling tenement housing on Corellia smelling worse yet than Nikto cooking and Weequay body odor. The peal of thunder cracked in the distance, but close enough to make him turn. The lightning would play havoc with the droid command modules, and the Captain would be ornery about it.

He picked his way carefully through the undergrowth, down the faint trail of mashed leaves and cracked twigs that led him to that little clearing. He chuckled to himself at the thought, the clearing in the woods, nothing but tall grasses and rocks where he had been three times this week, trying to find a place to clear his head. It wasn't the first green planet he had seen, but it was the longest that they had been camped down. It was the back side of nowhere, far enough off any of the regular hyperspace routes that no one would bother patrolling. Between that and the old ruins, it was a decent place to hide and count their recent hauls. Well, that and it gave him time to repair the old battle droids that had gotten busted up when they took down that last yacht.

It was only a few minutes down the path before he saw the outcropping, ruined stone walls so antique and weathered that they looked almost naturally occurring. He picked his way past the vines, peering around the corner, into the depths. The captain stood here, glowrod in hand and eyes tracing the weathered symbols. He cleared his voice, and the Nikto turned abruptly.

"Wolrob, I didn't see you there." The captain looked at the Gozzo before turning his attention back to the sealed vault. Scans had shown that there was a passage beyond, but the stone had weathered so badly that drilling through or using charges would cause the whole thing to collapse in on itself. If there was anything precious in there, it would be buried by trying to force their way in, and that annoyed the captain ferociously, making him obsess over the entry for the past few days.

"The droids are almost done, Cap'n." Wolrob punctuated that with a click of his beak. "Then, we are just waiting for the fence to show up."

The captain nodded slowly, speaking as if by rote. "Three days before the fence is due. Any routine maintenance you can get done in the meanwhile?"

The Gozzo restrained a chuckle as he adjusted his goggles. The captain knew full well that there was no supplies to do anything with. He had to cut chunks out of shipping crates to replace droid armor and carapaces as it was. He barely had any fuel for the cutting torches left, let alone quality replacement parts for the ships. His commlink chirped, the mechanical call twitching the tufts of feathers at his ears before he pressed the button and the message blipped across the screen.

"Hrm."

The captain ignored that. Wolrob twisted his head in curiosity before continuing. "Three days?"

"Yeah." The captain turned, an annoyed look on his maw. "Why?"

"Well, either our scanners are fritzing out again, or the fence is early." Wolrob adjusted his goggles. "And they're flying an old imperial destroyer..."