Kourene request that the group sit tight on their information concerning the mole.  He'd like them to be debriefed before several of his senior officers, just in case any of them have questions.  And he needs to rest for a while...

The Bantha drops out of hyperspace some time later, emerging at Cadruc amid a cloud of small debris, carried with it through the jump.  Jalt immediately starts the calculations for travel to Mothessh.

Those calculations are interrupted, though, as an alarm sounds throughout the ship.

"I don't like the sound of that."  The pilot studies some instruments, then, "We're picking up a distress beacon.  Automated, so no telling how long its been out here.  It's broadcasting a set of coordinates in this system and, by my estimate, going there would add an hour onto the time before we can move on to Mothessh.  Plus however long it takes us to deal with the situation."

Rhijans grunted softly.  "Might be worth taking the time here, anyway.  There's always a chance the Empire planted some kind of tracking device on here...not that they necessarily expected us to get loose, but if they were suspicious of you, they could always ask a few questions and then let you go to make it look like they'd decided to clear you...and then follow you around and see if you led them anywhere suspicious."

He jerked his head toward the medical bay.  "Shard and Juragga detained the Imperial tech...could be worth asking him a few questions about what he was doing on board..."

"Seconded," Shard agrees, leaning in the cabin doorway (though ready to move if others wish entry).  "For starters, I don't like ignoring beacons.  Automated doesn't mean there isn't someone in trouble.  Secondly...Rhijans makes a good point."  Not surprising, that.  "That's the kind of thing that would be smart to do, and we can't assume the Empire is stupid.  We need to check the ship thoroughly and query that tech."

She grimaces.  "I can get the information out of him.  Painlessly.  Might take a bit, is all."  Void knows how Rhijans is going to take that, but it's what she has to offer.  "I'd like Haarmon's help with it, is all, unless he'd be better suited to hunting down tracking devices."  Another grimace; Haarmon probably is, at that.

Third grimace.  "Though honestly?  I'll be happy when we can get off the ship.  No offence meant, Jalt - this ship has saved our behinds more than once.  It's just that the Bantha is in dire need of a cleaning after Haarmon's 'distraction'."

Rhijans let a trace of a smile play across his face.  Actually, I have an idea for starting with the questions that I'd like to try."  His tone was, if anything outside of it's normal, flat tone, colored with a hint of humor...if he found things humorous.

"If it works, it will save you a lot of time.  If it doesn't work, it won't cost you more than a few moments and you can proceed as you would have."  He gave a grimace of his own and added, "And, no, it doesn't include inflicting pain on him.  Although...If we decide to go that route, I think we've got a good option available..."  His gaze flickered in the direction of You-Why.

Kourene nods, "Use whatever you've got to get information from the tech.  It could save a lot of lives."

"No offence taken." Jalt says, absently, his attention apparently on his instruments.

Finally he looks away from them.  "It could be a trap.  Pirates sometimes use automated distress beacons as lures.  Imperials too.  Ship picks up the beacon, broadcasts a message to say, hang on, we're coming.  Gets to the beacon, and finds pirates or Imperials laying in wait nearby with their emissions screened."

"Just making sure we all know what we're maybe getting into."

"Some fear will help," Shard states quietly. "If I can get him to focus on the answers, it makes it easier." A glance at You-Why of her own, and she nods in agreement.  "Not that we'll carry through with anything."  It probably doesn't need to be said, but the older woman enjoys clarity.

"You got it, Colonel."

Her attention slides back to Jalt. "I see the problem." Pursing her lips, she starts to pace.  "We could ask the tech," Shard slowly muses.  "But I'm guessing a technician wouldn't have information of Imperial traps in this area.  I'm for risking it, but really, really carefully."

Rhijans nodded, and walked into the medical area, appearing perhaps more wraith-like with the dark gray of his skin scarcely offset by the black bodysuit he had yet to remove from the stormtrooper uniform.  He walked over to the tech, his gaze calculating.  "The lady with the lightsaber is going to come ask you a few questions.  Yiu've seen, she knows how to use it...I assume you know what that means.  I wouldn't lie to her, if I were you...she'll know."

He gave a pained grimace, and added, "If she feels you're being less than honest, things could get...unpleasant."

Without waiting for the reaction, he turned and walked back out.  "He's all yours," he said to Shard.  "I'm hoping he knows more about Nimadda than Jedi...if he does, he should be pretty scared right now...and ready to answer anything you ask."

The tech winces as Rhijans warns him about Shard's intention to question him.

"I don't know anything, really.  I was pulled in by the stormtroopers to run some basic scans on this ship.  Nobody told me why, or what I was looking for.  Just that I had to run a full set of standard scans."

Haarmon was personally of the opinion that, having escaped the inescapable dungeon with the one person they were looking for who couldn't possibly have been there in the first place, with no injuries and no deaths and everyone feeling pretty good about things, they should hang the distress beacon and punch it for home. Quick-quick, like.

But he was starting to get too tired to argue, and he figured the ops guys had a better handle on all this than he did anyway.

And then they started in with the tech. He knew Shard wasn't going to let things get too far, but all the same he had no stomach for the process.

So he figured he'd start looking for tracking beacons. Terminal first. Floor sweep after.

Frowning, Shard trundles after Haarmon as he leaves the area.  "Haarmon, if you have a moment, I'd like you to join me in the medical area." Leaning forward, she lowers her voice. "Student."

Without waiting for reply, the older woman marches back toward where their tech is currently cloistered, passing Rhijans as he exits.  Her eyebrow rises. "It should help," Shard replies.  "And You-Why probably would have given him heart failure.  Thanks."

That said, she walks into the room and moves to the chair holding their captive.  Coming in on the tail of his reply to Rhijans - no doubt called out toward the man's back as he left - she cocks an eyebrow. "Scans, is it?"  Grabbing a chair of her own, she glances at the door to see if Haarmon has followed.

Then she focuses her eyes on the tech again.

"So, these scans.  What were they for?  Did you find anything you were to report before we interrupted you?"

OOC - Haarmon, I left it open-ended whether or not you followed. ^_^

Haarmon paused when Shard addressed him directly, and then stopped dead in his tracks when she said the S-Word. He sighed. Bit his lip a little and clenched his hands. He had a few quick, feathery, unkind thoughts about the unfair playing of the Mentor Card when it wasn't really applicable.

But he let them pass. Shard wouldn't call him student unless she had something to teach. And he had asked for this, hadn't he?

So he turned and followed her into the medical bay.

The tech looks distinctly nervous, even before Shard starts asking him questions.

When the interrogation actually starts, and there are two people facing him, all he can do is stammer out the answers, his mouth so dry that his tongue feels like it will crack...

"J-just the usual sc-scans.  Ch-checking for b-booby traps, ex-explosive d-d-devices.  C-contraband.  Search the nav c-computer for c-course information."

A-a-and y-yes.  I w-was t-told to g-give all results t-to the st-stormtrooper commander f-for him to l-look over.  W-wasn't ordered t-to look for anything - ah - s-specific... j-just d-do a f-full set of scans and r-report all results.  P-positive or n-negative."

And he can't seem to stop once he starts.

"It-it-it's Lady N-nimadda, s-see?  V-very thorough.  H-hates if w-we m-miss something."

Speaking of distress, Juragga emerged from the Lav after far too long.  He moaned and clutched his stomach, then ambled to an acceleration couch and sat shakily.

Shard glances up at Haarmon as the (Imperial) tech stammers his way through the explanation.  She studies him for a long moment.  "If you can," she quietly states when there's a break, "quiet yourself.  Open up.  Find corroboration for his words, same way you heard me before."  If he can't?  Well, that's part of learning as well and she'll give him the long explanation later.

Back to the tech.  "All right.  I believe you.  Did you have the chance to report anything?  That's my first question, and don't get cocky - when I say I believe you, there are reasons why.  Start lying, I'll know."  Leaning forward, she cocks an eyebrow. "And the next question after that one: I want to know what kind of gossip is running around your ship about the Rebels in this sector.  If you tell me the truth, I won't be angry, even if it's unflattering."

Distantly, she hears Juragga's groan and shudders.

"N-not yet."  He shakes his head, "Hadn't fini-finished the scans y-yet.  S-some w-were done, and d-data w-was being c-compiled.  C-collated.  Others... just st-started."

Shards second question brings a curious look, followed by a sneer.  When he speaks again, he seems calmer.  "We're winning.  That's what they're saying.  You rebels have nothing.  You're short on supplies, personnel, and equipment.  You're demoralised and on the run, and you haven't won a single significant victory."

"And soon you'll all be dead or captured.  We have a prisoner, and when Lady Nimadda questions him, she will know everywhere that you're operating from."

Rhijans smiled grimly, teeth barely showing, as he listened outside the medical area.  He pondered the reactions the tech would have if he learned that the vaunted Imperial forces had managed to have their prized prisoner snatched out of their own detention area by a mismatched band of misfit Rebels.

He looked over at Kourene, silent, but with the dark humor apparent in his glittering eyes.

Haarmon didn't really want to even be in this room, and he certainly didn't want to make the sort of intimate connection with a stranger (let alone this stranger) that he made with Shard before. Would it be the same? What would his thoughts sound like? What would his emotions feel like?

He shuddered.

But. Student. Mentor. Doing as he was told. This wasn't exactly rousing montage material, but all the same, he took a breath and closed his eyes and tried to touch that whatever it was that was out there.

And reached through it toward the tech.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:42, Wed 01 Mar 2017.

Shard nods.  She's pleased by the results thus far, and the tech has begun to calm.  Better yet, he's slowly regaining the sense of superiority she has experienced in most Imperials in her lengthily career going against them.

...you rebel scum...

Her eyes flick to Haarmon; the young man looks nervous.  Almost nauseated.  "Look for calm," she whispers.  "But don't deny your fear; we feel it for a good reason."  It's all the instruction she has to give him right now; later, they'll talk.  About this, about his feelings, about what he experiences.

But that's later; for now, back to the tech.

"Thank you for the truth." Her voice raises a touch.  "That's what he understands of it, in any case.  He still hasn't put things together, I suppose.  Does anyone have any specific questions for him?"  Those dark eyes remain fixed on the man before her.  "Questions germane to our current situation?"

Rhijans glanced at Jalt and Kourene.  In a low voice, he said, "Probably no sense asking about the distress beacon...it's something he likely wouldn't know about, if it is an Imperial trap...unless he knows they're doing them in specific areas.  Doesn't seem likely a tech would be in on that, though..."  He nods, as much to himself as to either of them...he didn't generally verbalize his thought process, the constant stream of 'If/Then' scenarios he played out in his mind, but he figured this situation warranted it.  If they disagreed with his assessment, they could speak up...

"Tracking devices," he declared, loudly enough to be heard.  It was possible, though unlikely, that the Empire had somehow tagged the ship as a standard procedure, when it was brought aboard...a tech, even if he wasn't involved, would likely know about such procedures...

The tech starts at the mention of tracking devices.  Then, "No.  At least n-not yet."  He tilts his head towards a storage case in the corner of the room.  "I have one.  B-but I hadn't fi-fitted it yet.  It's in there.  Not activated."

"The stormtroopers wanted their information before I did anything else."

You-Why shuffles into the room and remarks, "If you require any help, I am proficient in over 35,000 interrogation techniques.  Some of them are actually quite amusing... "

Shard nods as the tech confesses the presence of the tracking devices.  "All true thus far, as much as he knows.  Though we ought to check the device just to be sure - maybe one of his friends activated it before they came on board, without his knowledge."

She cocks an eyebrow at You-Why.  "That's...quite a lot of techniques." One probably has to do with a piece of cheese and a string, she considers, and shudders.  "For now, our prisoner is cooperating; we'll save you for the hard ones." Her eyes snap back on the technician. "I think this one has figured out that he can't put lies past me, given what he saw before."

Before, when she and Juragga brought down his escort.

"Do you know anything about faked distress beacons in this sector?" she continues.

You-Why bows slightly to Shard.  "As you wish.  Though I do find that amateurs tend to obtain results which may not be totally useful.  Please let me know if he proves to be recalcitrant."

"No, no-nothing.  I'm a tech, I repair things, set up equipment, and d-do scans.  They don't d-discuss strategy with me."  The tech is sounding calmer, though he does keep glancing at UY-3PO.  "I think your d-droid is defective."
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:56, Mon 27 Feb 2017.

Rhijans gave another grim smile, unseen by the tech.  His voice echoed from beyond the medical area, "Funny, he seems to be working perfectly to me.  I certainly can't argue with his results..."  He let an unpleasant tone twist into uis words as he,said the last.  He hadn't seen what You-Why had done in uis interrogation when they were hunting the mole...but it had been undeniably effective.

"I'd be careful with that line of argument..."

"He's being very cooperative thus far," Shard clarifies, hoping that will continue.  She's running out of questions, in any case, and the tech really shouldn't be expected to know a great deal.  Returning her stare to the man, she leans forward, elbows on knees.  "Relax.  You've been a help and really?  You've not given us anything we couldn't have figured out with a little more time, so don't start feeling guilty.  You're in a bad situation, and need to make the best of it."

Her gaze sharpens.  "But...don't start getting ideas.  That's dangerous for you.  Try to be wise, not clever.  Wise will keep you alive, here.  Clever?  That'll get you killed."

Leaning back, she glances at Haarmon, then fires a look over her shoulder. "Anything else?"

Rhijans looked from Jalt to Kourene, questioningly.  "I don't have anything more to ask him...either of you?" he asked in a low voice.  Focusing on Kourene, he added, "Might be a good opportunity to ask some strategic questions...long-view, what-does-the-Empire-know-about-us stuff.  I tend to be pretty focused on here and now and how to get to what comes next without dying.  It's your job to worry about long-term plans and strategies."  Again, as so often, his words were coldly, almost brutally analytical...no sign of humor, recrimination, or pride colored his observation.

Kourene shakes his head, and says quietly, "He's just a tech.  In my experience the Empire doesn't brief its lower echelons on strategy.  In fact, as a tech, they barely count him as military.  They'll teach him how to operate and repair equipment, and that's it.  As far as the Empire is concerned, he doesn't need to know about strategy, so he doesn't get told anything about it."

"Because the less he knows, the less he can reveal if he's captured.  Remember that the Imperials wouldn't consider running a daring mission to rescue him, so to cut the chance that he gives us information, they wouldn't give any to him."

Jalt interrupts, "I'm not picking up any Imperials in the area.  Do we commit to trying to reach this beacon or not?  I've got a rough fix on it, and if it's a trap then it'll be sprung if we get much closer."

Haarmon opened his eyes and shook his head sadly at Shard's question. "Nothing. Got nothing." He wasn't sure if he was disappointed or relieved.

He took a moment to think before commenting on Jalt's news.

"Shouldn't we, you know, get the Colonal to safety before we start sticking our necks places? Like, sorry, Colonal, I know you're not a maiden in distress or a lost kitten or anything, but speaking long-term, aren't you more important than whatever we're likely to find at the end of that beacon? Even if it isn't a trap?"

He was a little uncomfortable talking tactics. That wasn't usually his game.

Shard puts her hand on Haarmon's shoulder. "Don't worry about it.  This sort of thing takes time," she quietly assures him.  Failure is only another step of the way towards success, from her perspective (not all teachers are of that opinion).  "It'll come."  Glancing back toward Rhijans and the colonel, she shrugs. "I don't know if it's worth keeping him.  He's a tech.  He doesn't have any serious information.  At best, he can describe us all, and we know cursed well they already HAVE our descriptions."*  A shrug.  "Keeping him will tie up resources."

A slight pause, then she realizes people might misinterpret. "I say we find some way to turn him loose.  Let him find his way back to wherever he wants to go."

Haarmon's question bounces the ball back to the discussion of the distress call.  Shard slowly nods.  "A perfectly understandable perspective.  Laudable, I think, to look on it that way."  Another nod to Haarmon.  "There's a math at work - a cursed important math.  Considering the entire galaxy, considering the stakes, and considering that even the slightest advantage might push things in the wrong direction, I completely understand making that decision."

Pushing herself to her feet, she moves to the medical counter, puts her hands on it and leans over it, back to the room. "But...I've never been much good at math."  Probably why I'd make a lousy commander, much less a general.  "It's a cry for help, that beacon, and if it's not a trap then there are people who need us.  I'll abide by whatever the colonel decides, or the consensus...but my vote is on the beacon."

So many more things she could say that would explain her point of view, but they'd sound like judgements on the other perspective.  Shard doesn't want that; when she states she understands it, she speaks the truth.

*Part 12: Osmur

Rhijans nodded, and looked at Kourene.  "I'm with Shard on this one," he said, perhaps unexpectedly.  "I'll follow your lead on this...but my inclination is to check out the beacon.  At the very least, get close enough to get a look at it and see what kind of problem may arise for anyone approaching."  He didn't offer any explanation for the decision, just stood there, looking askance to the Colonel.

Haarmon kind of half-shrugged with a crooked little smile. He wasn't really expecting anything different. And truth be told, he would have been disappointed had anyone listened to him. Math or not, they were the good guys. And this was their job.

"Side quest accepted," he muttered, mostly to himself.

Kourene sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.  "You're right, of course." he says.  "If we don't investigate this, then we're as bad as the Imperials.  Jalt, go for it, but be ready to jump clear if it is a trap."

"Got the new hyperspace calculations just about plotted, Colonel, just in case." the pilot returns.  He adjusts the Bantha's course, "Twenty minutes or so, and we should know if this is genuine or not."

"Now, what exactly do we do with this tech?  We have choices, and some are better than others.  Basically they come down to kill him, maroon him, lock him up, or just turn him loose."

Rhijans answered without hesitation.  "We can't let him go...he knows too much.  The Bantha would be hopelessly compromised if it became known that we didn't just steal it out of convenience...as it is, Jalt likely can't use her anywhere near Imperial space.  But he also knows we've got a woman with a lightsaber, who knows how to use it, and travels with a Wookiee.  Any female human who even stood close to a Wookiee would be instantly flagged...we'd never be able to operate as a team."

He shrugged.  "The most practical option would be killing him...but I have no doubt that several of us would object to that.  So, keep him or maroon him...and marooning him would require finding an appropriate spot to put him down.  Keeping him is the simplest viable option, right now."  He might as well been discussing fuel allocations for a combat group...his tone made it sound like simple math.  To him, it was.

"Lock him up somewhere, and lose the key." Jalt opines, agreeing with Rhijans.  Admittedly he seems a little distracted, concentrating on homing in on the beacon, as he is.

"Find somewhere remote where they have a workable cell.  Take his uniform, so he can't be easily identified as an Imperial, unless somebody gets close enough to talk to him.  Then you can... "

"Uh oh... I have a bad feeling about this."

Kourene glances at him, "What is it?"

"Well, we're either going to have to fly through an asteroid field, or our beacon is in the middle of it."

Rhijans scowled.  "How long to detour around the field?" he asked.  Asteroids presented a myriad of problems, beyond the pure danger of trying to navigate a cloud of debris in space that could have objects travelling at different speeds and different trajectories.  If those problems proved real, the go-to plan of a hyperspace jump to safety became useless...going to hyperspace amongst asteroids was insanity, of the suicidal variety.

"If we can fly around it, we can get a better read on where, exactly, the beacon's coming from...and if someone's waiting to get the drop on us, we'll have a better chance of seeing them if they have to keep moving to stay hidden."

Haarmon listens to the discussion about what to do with the tech. He knows about this sort of thing, of course. He's seen enough vids, and by now, enough action, to know that in war, sometimes morality is really just hard, cold math. And when you add this one up the ledger tells a pretty clear story: us, or him.

And that's not really any kind of choice at all.

"I think we need to keep him. At least for now." At least he was in agreement with Rhijans. That was usually a good sign.

The news that they had to go into an asteroid field shut him up. He ran over to the cockpit and looked out the windows.

"How bad is it? Is this, like, speeder-without-a-seatbelt unsafe? Or more like naked-in-a-rancor-pit?"

"Oh, it looks bad." Jalt responds, "I'd say it makes being naked in a rancor pit look like a blue milk run.  Lot of variation in the field density.  See here?  And here?" - he indicates two locations on the display - "Extreme concentrations of rocks there, with lots of collisions causing vector shifts that propagate out through the field."

"I'm all for flying around it, until we can triangulate on the beacon.  With any luck, we won't need to go in there.  Going around could add an extra couple of hours, depending on how far we have to go to get a fix on the signal."

Kourene sighs.  Too many problems all at once.  "We keep him under lock and key until it's safe to release him.  At the same time, I don't want him at the base, in case he escapes.  He's a tech, he could sabotage a lot of vital systems if he got out of his cage.  Not to mention getting off world with information on the base location."

Rhijans nodded to Kourene.  "If we can't find a place to tuck him away before we go back, I'll make sure he's under close supervision.  He does anything that even makes me suspicious, and he'll go from prisoner to corpse, on the spot."  He made no effort to conceal his words from the tech, and even shot a look at him, before adding, "Starting now."

The look he gave had no malice or anger in it...it was pure calculation, weighing the point at which the man went from nuisance to liability...and left little doubt that Rhijans was, indeed, quite serious about the promised change of prisoner status.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:09, Fri 17 Mar 2017.

With the prisoner warned, and apparently heeding that warning, the discussion about what to do with him continues for some time.  Jalt continues to skirt around the asteroid field, getting a fix on the beacon, while listening in on the conversation with half an ear, and offering his own opinions.

"The problem would be finding a place to keep him away from the base that you could guarantee would stay secure.  There are plenty of places I know of where you could put a package, but most of those places would sell it back to the Impies for a good enough offer."

"You need to find some contacts that can hold on to him, and will stay trustworthy.  Probably not the Hutts."

Rhijans snorted softly.  "DEFINITELY not the Hutts.  They'd start a bidding war to see whether it was worth more to us to keep him held than it was to the Empire to get him back with any potential intel he's collected.  We don't exactly have an abundance of resources for this kind of thing, right now."

He scowled for a moment (vaguely in the direction of the prisoner, just to remind the man how much of a problem he was already presenting and how slim the margin was between 'held prisoner' and 'shot as a liability'), then offered, "What would REALLY be best would be sending him off to some other sector...he doesn't know anyone to contact for help, doesn't know where to go for sanctuary, and if he does get away, he doesn't have any information to help the Empire in that sector."

That would solve a lot of problems.  However, being an easy solution to a complex problem, Rhijans was doubtful that there was any such connection available...

Relief that the prisoner won't be dealt with harshly suffuses Shard.  She's also heartened by Haarmon's support of the mercy plan, despite his earlier proposal. "I'm totally in agreement with the lack of Hutt involvement." Rhijans, as usual, has cut directly to the heart of THAT issue. "We'll work something out," she optimistically states (a rare thing for her). "For now, we'll have to work up some kind of makeshift cell onboard the ship.  AFTER we deal with the current problem," the older woman clarifies.

Said problem being the asteroids.

"I've never been naked in a Rancor pit," the woman muses. "Though it has been close from time to time.  This mess could be the reason we HAVE a beacon.  I'm all for taking more time for the rescue; doesn't make sense to get ourselves killed in the attempt; no help to anyone."
This message was lightly edited by the player at 16:51, Tue 21 Mar 2017.

"I could see if the other Alliance group that we contacted could plsce him with somebody that they know." Kourene muses.  "They seem more widely connected than us, which was one reason I was so pleased to contact them.  I'll get a message to them as soon as possible."

"Found it!" Jalt interrupts.  "The beacon's on a large rock close to the outer edge of the field."  He makes an adjustment to his instruments.  "Not to dense around there - the rock's gravity has swept up a lot of the smaller rubble, I guess.  It should be easy enough to manage."

"I'll head over that way."

"Keep your eye open for any stray energy signatures..." He was sure the pilot already had such things in mind, but it never hurt to speak up.  "If anyone's got a weapon-system operational, or they have to reposition a ship to stay hidden, there should be some kind of give-away signal."

He looked over at Kourene.  "I'm not altogether ready to believe that we just happened to stumble across a random accident out here...but stranger things have happened."  Like them managing to walk in and steal a high-value target from the heart of an Imperial Star Destroyer...or pass themselves off as Imperial personnel long enough to get access to the vital innards of a massive shield generator, and blow them up.

But he wasn't about to say anything about that in front of the tech.  Right now, all the man knew was that they'd stolen a captured ship...he might have guessed at Kourene's identity, but thus far, nobody had confirmed it.  The less the man knew, the better off they all were...including him.

"Works for me, colonel," Shard fires back. "Seems like an acceptable alternative for our prisoner." Acceptable, in that it doesn't involve 'death' or 'marooning'.  Then Jalt calls in the location of the buoy, and her attention shifts.

Moving to his chair, Shard leans over and stars out of the cockpit, looking ahead.  It's impossible to see at this distance, of course - she'd need to be right on top of it.  But it's a better view than the wall.  The bounty-hunter has the right cautions for Jalt, but she has one of her own. "Hey, Rhijans."  Shard makes a quick wave toward the innards of the ship.  "Why don't you and Mr. Sharpshooter -" this said with a jab of the finger toward Haarmon "- take up residence in the turrets?  We might need those extra few seconds."

A flick of the eyes toward Haarmon follows. "I understand you did well with the guns, Haarmon; better you in that turret than me."

Rhijans glanced at their captive, then over at Kourene.  "You mind baby-sitting him for me?  Someone's gotta keep an eye on him..."  He looked at the tech, his expression giving some idea that the margin to 'unacceptable burden' had narrowed in that moment.

"Either that, or take my spot in the turret.  I can't do both at once."

"It's all cold and dead out here.  The only anomaly is the beacon.  No odd energy signatures.  In fact no energy signatures, odd or not.  Sensors don't show much more than rock and void.  Both at almost the same temperature."

The Bantha swings in closer to the asteroid as her turrets come to life.

Kourene and You-Why observe the prisoner, the droid making an odd, rhythmic ticking noise, which increases in volume, briefly, whenever the prisoner looks in his direction...

"There's a large area on the surface covered with a thin layer of mixed alloy fragments, none of them bigger than a couple of metres long.  The beacon is close to the centre of that area."

Haarmon blushed a little at both the poke and the praise. He knew it had been pretty much just luck, but it was pretty badass all the same. He was about to run off to the turrets when Jalt updated the situation.

"I haven't been around a lot of asteroid crashes. Not in real life anyway. Does that make sense? Would a crash that serious leave the beacon working?"

"I expect they build beacons tough," Shard muses.  "But I can't say for sure either way." She eyes the asteroid as it becomes visible.  "Aaaaand...we're not going out for a look, either, I'm guessing." A shrug follows. "Crashed starships aren't exactly my area of specialization either.  I've tried to AVOID them."

Her lips purse, thoughtfully. "We'd better be ready for trouble," the older woman whispers.  For her, in this situation, that means 'damage control' and 'fire suppression'.

"Depends." Jalt says, "Could be the ship was shot down-  If it exploded in flight, the beacon might survive, and then all the wreckage landed here without having to hit hard enough to damage anything.  Or maybe the beacon was buffered by other pieces of wreckage."

"But Shard's right, these emergency beacons are pretty sturdy."

He considers for a moment, then, "Best we can do would probably be to find the beacon, then haul it aboard remotely.  Maybe send a droid out to retrieve it.  The beacon is usually built into a sensor package that would tell us what happened here."
This message was last edited by the player at 19:54, Mon 03 Apr 2017.

"How close do we have to be to pinpoint its location?" Rhijans asked over the ship's intercom.  Sitting in the turret, he had a view of the asteroid field unlike any he'd ever intended to have...

"Pretty much close enough now."  Jalt returns, adjusting the sensors, "These beacons are designed to be found, and ships have systems that are optimised to track them easily.  There, got it."

The Bantha moves in on the asteroid, living up to its name as it dances through the rubble field.  Eventually she reaches a zone close to the target asteroid that has been largely cleared of rubble, and Jalt stops cursing under his breath.

"Taking us in closer."

Below the ship, a thousand fragments of metal reflect the glare from her drives.  Jalt holds her a hundred metres above the field of wreckage.  "The beacon is below us now.  Looks to be under one of the larger pieces down there."

"Anybody got any objection to us collecting it?  This is your last chance to speak up."

"We need to find out if someone requires help," Shard quietly states.  "I've no objection to picking it up."  She grimaces at the sight of the wreckage.  "Doesn't look good."

Rhijans grunted, looking down at the scattered debris.  "Doesn't make much sense to come this far and stop now.  There's always a chance that whoever started the beacon is around here in an escape pod...grabbing the beacon could give us the info we need to find them.  Or at least let us know why this happened and whether it's something the Alliance needs to be aware of in their operations."

It could have been any one of dozens of things, whatever destroyed the ship that was now in scattered heaps below them.  Most of them were natural events that would have little impact, if one was aware of them.  A few were even fleeting, freak incidents that would likely never affect another ship the same way.  But some...pirates, raiders, Hutts defending a new smuggling route...Imperials guarding some new research station, or some new Imperial weapon...those were need-to-know situations.

"That all makes perfect sense.  Here we go then... "

The Dancing Bantha descends the last hundred metres and touches down gently on the surface of the asteroid.  "Artoo!  Artoo!  Where are you?"  Jalt pushes himself away from the controls and strides out of the cockpit to search for the astromech droid.

As it happens, he doesn't have far to search - the droid comes rolling out of the corridor to Engineering at high speed and almost runs into him.  The little astromech is chirping excitedly.  "What?  Never mind whatever you're saying.  There's a distress beacon just outside.  I want you to go and bring it back inside."

R2-O0 is still whistling franticly.

"Oh my!" interrupts You-Why, "Sir.  He says that there is a small problem with the hyperdrive.  He says it is not serious, and he has effected a temporary repair, but he is not sure how long it will last."

"Of course there is," Shard gripes. "Okay, this is looking worse and worse.  Is the problem something that, for example, could have been caused by the Imperials?"  She wouldn't put it past them at all.

Not that she understands how they could have prepared something in advance to trap them in this particular location, barring knowing where the rescue group was heading, but.  Nefarious plots?  Definitely right up their alley.

Rhijans gave a grunt.  With the ship down, the view from the turret was compromised, so staying wasn't much help.  As he climbed out, he asked, "Temporary, meaning it could fail at any moment?  Or he's nit sure how many jumps it will hold through?"  He got clear of the ladderway before he continued.

"If it's not any risk of failing until we use the hyperdrive, then there's not much to worry about at the moment.  And is it something we can fix while he retrives the beacon, or will it require an extended repair and access to facilities we don't have?  Because if it's the latter, we better call for help right away, unless we want to risk a failure mid-jump..."

He was less concerned about how it had happened, than about how to resolve it.  Besides, Shard had already asked the relevant questions about that possibility.

"He believes that it may be the result of minor combat damage."  The R2 unit keeps whistling, and You-Why translates. "There are several burnt out relays, which might be the result of an energy discharge against the hull in the rear upper starboard section."

"The repair is temporary in that it will probably hold for a few more hyperspace transits.  Unless something else fails and puts a strain on the system."

The protocol droid is beginning to sound faintly hysterical.

"We're all doomed!"

Rhijans let a ghost of a smile play across his face.  "I think we'll be just fine, You-Why.  We should be able to get some help after the next jump, so the patch-job won't be under too much stress."  He decided that diverting the droid might be the best option...

"For now, I need your help keeping an eye on our guest and making sure he doesn't do anything to complicate our progress."  Telling someone that their fears were needless usually didn't help much...giving them some other place to focus that nervous energy was much more effective.

Shard nods, leaving Rhijans to take the lead on the discussion with You-Why.  He's probably handling it better than she would, in any case. "I'm just glad it didn't turn out to be deliberate sabotage," she mutters.  Rather than combat damage - deliberate, but not in that specific manner.

"All right," she continues.  "Let's get that flight recorder, Oh-Oh.  Then we can get out of here." To safety.  To getting the colonel back where he belongs.  To getting that void-cursed hyperdrive fixed.

...to a good night's sleep.

"Sir, I will gladly help watch the prisoner." the protocol droid responds.  He sounds surprisingly keen.

Reldan lays a hand on the dome of the diminutive astromech droid, "You did good."  The droid responds with a series of distinctly unhappy noises.  "He says that he knows, Sir, and does not need you to tell him."

"Little nerf-herder's getting more full of himself every day." mutters the pilot, trying to conceal a smile.

"There's not much in the way of an atmosphere out there, and it's dark and cold, so you'll have to go out alone, since You-Why has pulled the indoors duty."

The droid whistles mournfully.

"The beacon's under a big panel, about twenty metres straight out from the cargo ramp.  Go out, get it, and bring it straight back.  Don't touch anything else, and don't get distracted."

"We'll be waiting here for you."

"Probably be a good idea for someone to be in the lower turret, to keep an eye on him.  Just in case..."  They had no reason to expect any nasty surprises for the droid...but Rhijans liked hedging his bets, when he made them.  Anything that might cause trouble for the astromech droid would probably be a lot less troublesome after being hit with a few shots from the turret guns.

He looked over at Jalt.  "Probably me.  You can go assess the problems on the hyperdrive and see if there's anything more to be done...I'm guessing not, but a second perspective can't hurt.  I'm pretty sure You-Why will keep our guest safely tucked in his corner."  He gave a hint of an unpleasant leer at the Imperial tech, hinting at the options the droid could exercise if given a reason...even though Rhijans actually didn't know, for sure.  But the tech's imagination would be far scarier than anything Rhijans could describe, he was certain.

There isn't a great deal for Shui to add for the moment.  "Just don't hit Oh-Oh," she fires after Rhijans.  A witticism; the bounty-hunter isn't the kind to spook and open up indiscriminately.

If only she were better trained, Shard muses.  Then she could do it herself, from here, and Oh-Oh wouldn't need to go into danger.  Sadly, musing is her limit at the moment; well, that and pacing.

She eschews the latter, not wanting to get on anyone's nerves more than she already might be.

"Lemme go see if the computer's got any info on that. Error logs. That sort of thing," Haarmon mutters as he goes to the nearest terminal. He wasn't into pacing either. But he needed something (anything) to do instead of standing and waiting.

You-Why goes to sit with the prisoner, while Jalt goes with R2-O0 to the cargo ramp.

Rhijans drops into the ventral turret and waits for the astromech droid to appear.  The external environment doesn't seem very inviting.  The atmosphere, such as it is, is filled with swirling ice crystals and thin streamers of pale fog.

The droid rolls off the foot of the ramp, hesitates, then sets off across the surface of the asteroid...

Haarmon drops into a seat and starts checking technical logs for any information about the hyperdrive.   

And that leaves Shard and Juragga at a loose end...

Rhijans never really seemed to look bored...but his attention riveted on some motion he noticed.  "Something's out there...not sure what.  Some kind of worm, or snake, or something...a dozen or so legs, about a meter long..."  He gave the call over the intercom, in case anyone else on the crew knew for sure what it was...and whether it posed any risk to the droid.

The guns swivelled around, pointing in the direction of the thing and tracking, as best he could, its motion...ready to fire if it appeared to be making a break for the astromech.  Rhijans wasn't confident enough with this particular weapon to wait until he was sure it was coming at the R2 unit...the risk that he'd hit the droid, himself, became too high.  "If it makes a move toward the droid, I'll see if I can scare it off..." Or kill it...  He wasn't above shooting an unknown creature if it appeared to be a threat.  But because it was an unknown creature, he didn't know if it was alone...and if it wasn't, he didn't know how its cohorts would react to one of their own being killed.

Definitely at loose ends.  There's little Shard can do in this situation but watch, but then...there will always be such situations.  She just needs to wait them out.  In the past, that would be accomplished with some liquid assistance...now, she needs to get through without.

It's surprisingly difficult.

"I'll stay near Jalt," she finally decides, moving to follow the pilot and the droid.  "Close to the cargo ramp.  Keep us posted, Rhijans."

As Shard arrives at the cargo ramp, Jalt turns away from the ramp door.  "Do you want to wait for him to get back?  If you hit the green button the lock will cycle and let him back in.  The red will close the ramp and seal the lock.  You can see the ramp on this monitor."

"I'm going to take a look at Engineering.  See if there's anything I can do there."

R2-O0 wends his way carefully across the irregular surface, intermittently shrouded in fog or ice storms.  The droid stops at a large piece of metal hull, and tilts forward to examine it, then produces a cutting torch and begins to slice up the panel.

The creature moves cautiously towards the astromech droid.  Whatever it is, it isn't going to break any speed records...

Motion caught his eye, and Rhijans noticed additional forms moving.  "Our new-found neighbor has company," he said, drily.  "Two...no, three more.  They get within ten meters of the droid, I'm going weapons-hot."

That didn't leave them much room to advance...but he didn't dare cut the margin any closer.  He wasn't a gunnery specialist.  Truth be told, he'd be more comfortable out there, next to the droid, with blasters in hand.  Should have thought of that earlier, he told himself.  The stormtrooper armor...well, his suit, at least...would have been effective for limited exposure out there.  The others had been damaged, and whether or not the damage compromised the seals on the suits, he didn't know.  But if he took the time to get back into the armor, now...those things could easily close on the droid.

He stopped that line of thought.  Useless energy spent.  Instead, he focused on the creature that was nearest to the astromech, aiming about a meter in front of its approach to that ten-meter mark he'd declared.  And waited, finger hovering above the firing stud.

Shard nods. "I can handle that.  I think," she finishes with a wry smile to the pilot.  Green button, red button...about the extent of her technical expertise.  Sidling up to the monitor, she eyes the ramp, searching for any signs of movement.

It's not implausible that whatever Rhijans has spotted will have friends, after all.

And then, moments later, confirmation (though not on her camera). "Maybe warning shots first?" she suggests, but that's all it is - a suggestion.  Rhijans is the Person Behind The Gun™, and she's not going to second-guess him.  After all, Shard can't even see what's happening.  "Your call, mind," she clarifies just in case he takes it wrong.

The monitor gives Shard a very limited field of view - just the access ramp and a couple of square metres of rock and scrap metal.  It isn't even a clear image.  But it does seem to show that there's nothing moving in the area that she can see.

Which could be good.  Or it could just mean that the pickup isn't sensitive enough to detect anything smaller than a bantha.

Juragga wanders through to wait with her.

From the turret, Rhijans watches as the astromech droid cuts away a section of metal and drags it to one side, before returning to the newly formed opening to retrieve the beacon.  The creatures immediately move to swarm around the piece of discarded metal, clustering as close as they can without actually touching it.

In the cockpit, Haarmon is running diagnostic programs which talk with the ship's computer in an effort to find out exactly what's going on with the hyperdrive.  "Jalt, you might want to check the port side cooling systems, there's been a lot of overheating own that side."

The turret tracked minutely...as long as the creatures were interested in the scrap the astromech was discarding, and not the droid itself, things were fine.  But Rhijans kept an invisible line between them and the Artoo unit...

"So far, they're more interested in what the droid's throwing away than the droid.  As long as they keep acting that way, the guns will stay quiet..."  They weren't here to start trouble, after all...and it was a little late for that, anyway, as the wreckage in his field of view mutely testified.

They might be able to fix some trouble, though...just which trouble would depend greatly on what happened with the droid.

The creatures, whatever they are, cluster around the piece of discarded metal, pushing as close as they can without actually touching it.  And R2-O0 pulls a short cylinder out of the freshly opened hole in the metal plate, and starts back towards the ship with it.

"Good call Haarmon." Jalt responds, "The coolant compression system looks to be shot.  I'll get it fixed as soon as we get back to base.  If they have the parts."

The monitor near the ramp door shows R2-O0 rolling on to the bottom of the ramp...

Haarmon smiled and nodded. He liked being useful. "You think maybe there's anything salvageable out there? I mean, R0's already there."

Rhijans tracked the droid back toward the ship, keeping a wary eye on the...whatever-they-were, watching for any sort of rush at the droid.  An individual didn't last long in his career field by drawing attention with needless weapon fire...the trick was to be fast to fire at the right time.  And when nobody was actively threatening you or your team was not the right time.

"Well, Oh-Oh just arrived at the ramp," Shard states.  Her finger hovers near the green button.  "Just need him to get in the airlock, and we're home free.  So to speak."

Assuming, of course, that nothing ELSE has snuck into the airlock, say from outside of the camera angle.  That would be pretty much the norm for their luck, she sourly considers.  With that in mind, Shard employs her other hand in the readying of her best, close-range weapon and the one she least prefers to use.

If she can be said to prefer to use any weapon, that is.

Shard lets R2-O0 into the ship, and the droid enters, dragging a short cylinder with rounded ends.  There is a flat box, about ten centimetres square and two centimetres deep, on one side of the cylinder.  Moisture is already condensing out of the air and forming a layer of frost on the metal surfaces.

It looks like the box was attached as an afterthought, and welded on in a hurry...  There is a row of numeric keys on one side.

The astromech droid studies the cylinder, then extends a manipulator to tap the box.  He gives a distinctly puzzled sounding whistle.

With the droid aboard, and no indicator of hostile intent from the denizens of the asteroid, Rhijans extricated himself from the turret,climbing back to the crew area.  In his own way, he was itching to know what was on the retrieved message buoy.

Well.  That's a plus.  Relieved, Shard ensures the lock is sealed and turns to Oh-Oh.  She doesn't foolishly reach for the buoy, not wanting freeze-burns on her hands.  Instead, she squats down and studies it.  "Yeah...that's interesting.  And worrisome.  I hope this isn't a bomb."

An unpleasant thought.

"If you can keep it coming until it warms up a touch, I'll take it after that," she continues.  "Thanks, Oh-Oh, and great job."

Haarmon ambles over to the group when the droid returns. He was curious and a little excited about whatever it brought back and he was not disappointed. He loved a good mystery box. Especially the sorts with numeric keys on one side.

He almost grabbed it before Shard spoke and he jerked back his hands.

"Yeah, good work, Canned Goods. That's some quality extraction. Hey, can you hold it up there and spin it around a little? I wanna have a look at it."

And he inspected it for access ports or entry points of any kind. He was pretty sure he'd be able to crack it open and mess with it if he had to. But that required waiting for it to no longer be a frozen ball of skin-sticking horribleness.

And he wanted to mess with it now.

Oh-Oh props the cylinder up for Haarmon, and others, to examine.  It's hard to make out details beneath the layer of rapidly forming ice crystals, but the numerals on the keys are in Aurebesh, which is probably one of the galaxy's most common written languages, and there is a groove that forms a rectangle on the top surface of the box.

There don't appear to be any breaks in the surface of either the cylinder, or the box, apart from a row of five tell-tales, winking seemingly at random, on one end of the cylinder.  The droid whistles and chirps quietly as it adjusts the angle of the beacon on request, so that everybody can see it clearly.  At one point, small characters in Aurabesh script becomes visible on the cylinder as the light shines upon it at just the right angle.  A serial number, and a couple of words...

Phoenix Ascendant.

"Phoenix Ascendant?" Rhijans read the words out loud, then gave a small snort.  "Whoever they were, they apparently picked the wrong time and place to ascend..."  His tone made it apparent...he wasn't expecting anyone to find the comment humorous.

But it gnawed at some corner of his mind.  He didn't like things that seemed out of place...and a crashed spaceship in a should-be-abandoned asteroid field was way up there in terms of things not feeling right.  He craved some explanation...

Haarmon was just about to open his mouth and make a crack about the irony of the name, but Rhijans beat him to it. But that's cool, he had another layer of snark just waiting. "Yeah, and why are pilots all so dramatic? Just once I want to find a ship called the big metal thing I cart crap around the galaxy in."

He peered at the box more closely, trying to determine if he'd ever seen a thing like this, and how to get into it, and if it had logs, and how to access them, and whatever else.

"Good idea.  Remind me to change the name of the Bantha as soon as I get back to civilisation." Jalt says as he walks into the room in time to hear Haarmon's remark.  "What's that?  Has anybody thought that it might be full of baradium nitrate?  Might make a mess of the ship if it does."

He crouches to examine the cylinder and its attached box.  "Some sort of lockbox.  Beacons are usually put in a compartment in the hull, between the inner and outer layers, so putting something with the beacon might make it hard to find if somebody boards the ship.  So smugglers maybe?  Though I don't recognise the ship name."

"The name's actually familiar, somehow...Something I heard...I don't remember when.  I don't even remember what was significant about it...some old spacer's tale or something?"  He scowled.  The fact that he almost remembered the name annoyed him more than it being a total enigma...

He gave a miniscule shrug of frustration.  "Whatever it was, it wasn't recent...from well before the Empire's rise, maybe even before the Trade Wars..."

Haarmon nodded. "Yeah, I never heard the name, but I've seen this kind of lock panel before and it's old, old, old. So old we might find a womp rat inside powering it by running on a little wheel."

He peers at it.

"I think I could pop it open. See what's what. Doesn't look dangerous." He looked up at his teammates. "You game?"

"If it's something they hid with a beacon, it probably wouldn't be explosive.  Unless you have a really weird personality and want to kill people who potentially come to rescue you," Shard notes.  She purses her lips, listening to the others consider.  Rhijans might actually know the name...Haarmon says it's old.  Really old.

"I don't know about womp rats -" why does everything come down to them, anyway? "- but I doubt it's going to be immediately dangerous.  I'm good for opening it.  Though if it turns out to be something that looks like some kind of round stone the size of a couple of fists, I request it goes out the airlock immediately."

A brief shudder.  She had one experience on a ship with Locus Navis Varicellovirus, and it wasn't pleasant at all.  Though the pilot's hair had kept her amused for days*.

* Gratuitous reference to temporally congruent SF movie.

Jalt considers Shard's words, then, "So maybe something that was valuable to them, so they hid it in a secure location.  Then the ship crashed, or it was deliberately crashed, or somebody shot it down.  And something kept the owners, or their friends, from coming to collect their... whatever it is."

"Sound plausible?"

Oh-oh makes a rude noise, and lays the beacon on the floor.

"Anyway, I'm going to lift us off this rock, and get clear before we make the next jump."

He moves towards the cockpit.

"Hang on..."  He held up a hand, looking down at nothing in particular, his brow furrowed in concentration.  "I think...I'm not positive it's connected to this, but I'm remembering more of a story I heard.  Back before the Clone Wars...some transport that disappeared.  There was a cargo they were desperate to keep away from the faction that became the Empire...an Old Republic ship.  If this is it, we may want to make sure before we take off."

He shook his head, a look of frustration in his eyes as he wished he'd paid more attention to the story when he'd heard it...he wasn't even sure the details he wished he could recall had ever been mentioned.

"Agreed."  Shard's eyes narrow. "If there's something else here - something from the Old Republic - we need to check that out.  Who knows?  It might have some importance, beyond historical value."

But that means...

"Do we have any pressure suits?  Clearly this rock is big enough to have SOME gravity," she continues.  "So we might be able to go outside and check around."  A slight grimace crosses her razor-sharp features.  With her luck, they'll end up finding a small crate of lightsabers.  Though Haarmon would no-doubt be ecstatic.

Mental note; make sure Haarmon knows it's a Very Bad Idea™ to try to use two.

Haarmon put the black box down and stopped noodling with it. He looked up at Shard and made a face. "I'm, uh, not real sure I'm all that excited about going out there, measurable gravity or not."

And then something hit him, his thoughts jogged by Jalt heading to the cockpit.

"R-Zero? You wanna double check the hyperdrive? Make sure it's not going to explode out from under us if we try to lift off?"

He picked up his terminal and started running diagnostics and stress tests to exactly that effect. He wasn't much good at fixing things, but he was a whiz and knowing how bad they were broken.

The droid emits an angry-sounding series of chirps and whitles, finishing with a noise that sounds like something that from the wrong end of a Hutt with stomach problems.  Then he turns and rolls away, following Jalt towards the cockpit.

The beacon, and its attached box are left laying on the deck, with ice-cold water trickling off their surfaces to pool around them.

Haarmon's terminal starts making much friendlier sounds as it starts its diagnostic processes.  A call echoes back down the bridge corridor.

"Two!  Last I checked we had two pressure suits!  Not sure what state they're in now, it's been an age since they were used."

Rhijans 'hmph'ed softly.  "I'm game..." He'd feel a lot better covering anyone that was looking around out there with a blaster in his hands, as opposed to relying on high-powered ship's guns that he had little experience operating.  He also considered himself lowest on the pole of priority for survival...good shooters weren't hard to come by.  Kourene was at the top, of course...Alliance command personnel were few and far between.  Jalt had to fly, Haarmon could do things with a computer that Rhijans couldn't even envision...and Shard was...well...he'd overcome a lifetime of skepticism about the existence of Jedi and The Force, far enough to accept that they did exist, and Shard had some ability.  And that was another thing he could never envision himself doing.

So, to his mind, he was the natural choice for the high-risk assignment.  "Where are the suits?"

"Don't worry, Haarmon," Shard reassures him.  "We'll risk the less useful portion of the group.  That means me."  An odd dovetail to Rhijans' own musings, that, though she hasn't considered the bounty hunter to be such.  Planning, tactics...they need him.  Badly.  Another thought occurs to her, then. "But in the future, we're going to need to talk about you doing a little EVA..." She leans closer, studying him.  "You're going to need to face your fears at some point, I suppose."

Then away, turning to Rhijans, the bounty-hunter already looking to go.  "Can check the pressure seals on the suits, then head out.  No sense waiting.  Haarmon should cover us from the turret...and can, as he has so aptly demonstrated."

A quick side glance at Juragga follows. "Not you either, Juragga.  Suits are the wrong size, I'm guessing." Then she's walking past Rhijans, tapping him on the shoulder - in his sightline, of course.  It's not a matter of worrying about him drawing on her out of reflex, no (there's no question about his control); it's more courtesy. "Let's go find some old stuff."

A pause.  Then, "No cracks about my age," Shard throws over her shoulder.

The suits are in a locker close to the hatch.

A quick inspection reveals no immediately obvious issues.  The life support systems all seem operational and fully charged on both suits, the seals are tight, and there is no sign of decay or loss of integrity.  Add to which that they are emergency suits, which means they're designed to be donned quickly and easily...

Haarmon, meanwhile, turns his attention to searching for ways to connect his terminal to the box, which doesn't appear to have the requisite ports...

Rhijans started following Shard...his steps faltered, for just a moment, when she made the comment about no jokes about her age, and a confused look flickered across his face for a moment...

But there was no time to puzzle out why she might have thought he'd resort to jokes about age (or anything else, really) at a time when there were so many important issues hanging over them.  He dismissed his confusion, for review at a later time (if he still felt it warranted any further analysis at that point), and followed Shard to where the suits were stored.

He donned his quickly, still clad in the body-glove that was the base garment for the stormtrooper armor and therefore ready to fit easily into the suit.  His only other concern was whether the gloves allowed for a finger to fit on the trigger of his blaster...

Shard pauses at the sight of the suits. Void.  Add that to Things She Hadn't Considered™.  Her split skirt?  A problem.

Grimacing, she takes a quick glance at Rhijans - already well-into getting ready to go - and shrugs.  Professional, no question there, so she's going to need to be the same.  With a sigh, Shard strips off the dress (leaving her in her simple underwear) and swiftly dons the emergency suit.  The dress and cloak she folds, settling them in the locker...the blaster and murderstick, she takes.

Rhijans, she cannot help to note, is in fine form.  Better ask him what kind of exercise program he uses, the older woman muses.  She could do with a little of that, though her personal exercising (and tormenting of Haarmon) has begun the process.

Also, the lack of hard liquor...which still hurts, if she's honest.

"Ready," the woman mutters, slicking back her hair with one hand and locking down the helmet.  "Good thing Jalt keeps these things in sharp shape." 

Rhijans and Shard cycle through the lock and make their way down the cargo ramp.   Movement is easier in the less than standard gravity.  The plain ahead of them is covered in a blanket of broken metal parts, a relatively thin layer of detritus, covered by an even thinner layer of dust.

There don't appear to be any large structures, just a field of dull, silvery fragments, partly buried by reddish dust.

There are life forms too - pale, flattish worm-like creatures, but with about a dozen jointed legs.  No visible sensory apparatus, unless the slightly darker stripes running along their bodies serve that purpose.  Despite the numerous legs, they move slowly...

Haarmon looks at Juragga and shrugs.  "Adhesive contacts might do it.  Slap them on the surface, and hope that any signals get through the casing.  Unless you have any better ideas?"

Rhijans gestured off into the distance.  "He retrieved the beacon over there.  Keep an eye on these worm-things...they didn't react to the droid, but they live on something and if it's flesh, they probably haven't eaten in a long time..."  He shifted his grip slightly, making sure he could get a finger on the fiting stud quickly.  Jyst in case...

Despite Shard's comment about risking the 'less important' members of the group, Haarmon was happy that this particular task was being handled by the two people who could actually do things. Computer fiddling was fun, and sometimes useful (and even, sometimes, like in the Star Destroyer, downright awesome) but he thought of it like pretend-work. Not real work.

What Shard and Rhijans did, that was real.

But whichever the case, he turned his attention to his little acquisition. Whatever they found out there, there were for sure some fascinating things to be found in here.

He got to work. Dug up some contacts and some adhesive. Threw together a couple of meters and readers and control-boxes and got the whole ungodly conglomeration attached to the PBD. Started tip-tapping out code to interpret the signals the whole messy, duct-taped thing was giving out.

If none of this worked, he was going to break out the tools and crack it open.

Well, come to that, he might do that anyway.

But first thing's first.

OOC. Hacking the Box:
09:00, Today: Haarmon Dak rolled 21 using 5 dice with the WEG Classic system ((4,2,{Wild}4,5,6)).

"Yeah," Shard mutters. "Let's keep vibration to a minimum if we can.  They'll have some kind of sensory system -" maybe "- and in this, it could be anything." One eye on the creatures, she draws her own blaster - secondary to Rhijans', there's no question which of them will prove more effective if trouble starts - and checks the position of the weapon at her belt.

"We'll take it slowly." Slow movement, to be sure - the gravity here isn't all that as well, and Shard doesn't want a quick shift to send her flying.

Relaxing, she breathes out one long exhalation, and begins to center herself.  This one is simple; not so much need to find the space between fire and ice, only a realignment of sorts.  She's here, a living element moving through the universe; now, she needs to feel the pressure of Others against her own energies.

Haarmon starts running a codebreaker, and after about a minute one of the row of panels on the box lights up with a green-blue numeral.  So far, so good.  No alarms, no explosions... 

Juragga hoots mournfully, when it becomes apparent that the box is not going to instantly spring open...

Outside the ship, Shard an Rhijans move across the cold surface of the planetoid.

For a little while, there is no reaction from the locals.  Then some of the nearer ones start to move closer to the visitors.  So far there doesn't seem to be any hostility, and the creatures don't exactly seem to be fast moving...

Rhijans kept a suspicious eye on the possibly-indigenous life-forms...they'd left the astromech alone, but that didn't mean they wouldn't try to make a meal of biological, rather than mechanical entities...he gave them a two-meter allowance, ready to fire warning shots if any of them looked ready to venture inside that boundary.

Shard relaxes...about a hair, nothing more.  "They're probably curious," she mutters, "not having seen much other than their own kind hereabouts." Which is heartening, as it points in the direction of No Indigenous Predators lurking about to make them wary of 'Not Us'.

"Definitely not aggressive at the moment," she continues. "Which doesn't preclude them being dangerous.  Might have the wrong chemistry, or some kind teeth that might open up these suits.  In short?  I don't think we need to seriously worry, but I wouldn't want to go say hello, either."

Keeping an eye on their potentially-inquisitive natives, she continues her search.  Gingerly. "Got anything yet?"

Rhijans made a noise that could have been part snort, part short bark of ironic laughter, part grunt, and maybe even part sigh of resignation.  "Beyond a whole lot of miscellaneous wreckage?  No..."  He paused for half a beat, and added, "It would help if we had any idea what to look for..."

For the time being, he split his attention between keeping an eye on the local creatures and looking for anything that didn't look like another pile of random metal plating...

Haarmon nods, satisfied, as another digit flares into life.  Faster than the first, which could mean either pure luck, or that the heuristic algorithms are getting the hsng of the code...

The natives mov a little closer.  Then the foremost stop, gathered round a boot print, one of Rhijans'.  Antennae wave above the print.  Then two of the creatures start what must be the galaxy's slowest fight.  They start charging at each other, repeatedly, albeit at a very slow speed.

They keep turning to face the opposition, and bashing their front ends together.  Eventually one succeeds in catching the other from the side, and flips it over onto its back, where it lays writhing about, and slowly coiling and uncoiling.

Meanwhile, the two rebels are finding nothing but wreckage from the hull of the ship.

Rhijans kept an eye on the competing critters, relaxing minutely as their lack of speed became somewhat apparent.  "Well...it looks like running from trouble is a viable option... he quipped drily.  That was good, because their numbers were enough to leave him dubious about the prospect of fighting his way out of trouble...

"I'm not astounded at their predatory skills, no," Shard agrees, keeping with Rhijans' tone.  "They might force us to take a detour if things get ugly, that's all."  She continues with the search, frowning.  "I'm not seeing anything interesting just yet.  You?"

Pointless question, but she's feeling twitchy.  Too much stress lately, and there wasn't even any Zidran Brandy to take the edge off any more.  Letting out a long, slow breath, she struggles to center herself.  There is a method....

"When you open yourself to the Force," her teacher lectures, "you may use the energies flowing through you to act upon yourself.  Indeed, mastering yourself is the first step to mastering the world about you.  Walking shoeless through a Zidran blizzard, releasing sand-spider venom from your body, ignoring shock and pain from a wound, sharpening your senses to a knife-edge, all of these things and more are possible."

Struggling to hold her plank position, sweaty hair dancing from her trembling, Shard just wishes he would shut up.

Sharpening senses.  She remembers that.  Discarding the ice of her learning, she fights again for the balance between heat and cold.

Shard stands still.  Behind the face plate of her helmet, Rhijans can see that her head is bowed.

Then she lifts her face, and starts to turn slowly on the spot...


Haarmon's terminal finds two more symbols in quick succession... three more to go...

Rhijans stood back, mindful of the miscellaneous critters.  Not all that long ago, he would have scoffed at what Shard was doing...he'd seen enough to change that.  He didn't understand it, by any means...but his skepticism had been blunted.  He shifted so he could look past her, in the direction she was looking.

Shard's features twist into a grimace.  Ugh.  When this is over, she's finding a fresher and showering.  Also scrubbing her mouth.

Some things, you just don't want to know about yourself.

Fortunately, it's highly unlikely that those around her will notice what she just has - the tastes, the scent, especially trapped in this suit.  Or maybe it's the suit itself.  Or some horrific combination.  Not that it matters.  Squinting, she peers into the distance.  Over the years, the woman realizes, her eyesight has deteriorated slightly, something she never really realized until now.

But then, it has never been this good.

"Good news and bad news," she breathes, trying to keep from her own voice echoing in her head.  "The good news first: the wreckage goes for a bit, but I can see some hull plates there -" with pointed finger to indicate a distant bump "- that look like they're lying atop something substantial.  Seems like a good starting place.  The bad news?"

Her hand opens, waves wide.  "There are more of those creatures here.  Hiding.  I don't think they're dangerous, themselves.  But the fact that they do hide, that they can camouflage themselves, tends to speak to a need."  A small sigh follows, more quietly than her norm. "Which potentially means a predator."

Just.  Our.  Luck.

Moving about the plain is hard work.  The metal makes the footing treacherous and unstable, and presents the constant risk of damage to the suits.  The going is slow, and requires constant alertness.

At one point Rhijans sets foot on a plate which slips and plummets into a concealed hole in the rock below, leaving him balanced on the edge of the drop.

But as they get closer, it becomes apparent that the curvature of the asteroid's surface has led them to misjudge the size of the mound, which rises about twenty metres above the plain.

Looking back, Rhijans notes that the ship is below the horizon...

"Keep a sharp eye out...we've come far enough that we don't have any fire support and no extra eyes watching our backs," he commented grimly.  He'd had a few comments come to mind regarding potential predators, and dismissed most of them as pointless.  The creatures, themselves, being relatively small and definitely slow, didn't indicate a particular aggressive and large predator...at least, not an active one.  But an ambush predator, that laid in wait and grabbed them as they wandered by?  Or a predator's predator...those could be dangerous...

He stopped that train of thought.  There were enough unknowns to worry about without multiplying them in his mind.  "Jalt, we may have found something.  Looks like we're a little ways over the horizon from you.  Moving in for a closer look."  He gestured at the mound.

"Let's see if we can find a way in..."

"Hold on a few seconds.  I'll bring the Bantha a bit closer, just in case."

The mound is approximately twenty metres high, and sixty across the base.  A haphazard pile of junk.  Something moves to block the distant sun for a moment.  The Dancing Bantha hovers overhead. and floodlight light up the surface, considerably brighter than the primary ever did...


Shard and Rhijans start to circle the odd structure, and soon find an opening, a metre od so in diameter.

Aboard the Bantha, more digits lock into place.  Only one to go now, and the box should unlock...  Unless it explodes...
This message was last edited by the player at 20:18, Mon 03 July 2017.

Rhijans looked around, something in the better lighting catching his attention.  "The metal's different..." he muttered aloud, before clarifying, "Either we've got multiple crash sites here, or this is hull plating and what we were walking on initially was internal...or the other way around.  But there's definitely a change in the metal..."

That didn't do a lot to make him feel better.  Multiple crash sites would explain why there was so much metal around...so would a single crash of a large ship.  But multiple crash sites raised the question of what caused more than one ship to crash on the asteroid...and whether or not it was a threat to the Bantha...

All that went through his mind, in silence, as he and Shard circled the heap of metal, until they found a hatch, of sorts...or, at least, an opening.  He looked at her.

"What's your gut reaction to the thought of going in there?" he asked.  He could not yet bring himself to ask her if she 'sensed' any danger in there...he'd gone from openly skeptical of the Force to acknowledging there was 'something', but that was a step more than he was ready to take, yet.  His body language, however, indicated he intended to go in...

"Good plan, Jalt," Shard fires into the comm as the man brings the ship closer.  "Might need the guns.  Might need an escape route."  The latter being more likely.

Squatting down, she studies the opening she and Rhijans have found.  A small snort follows as Rhijans dances delicately around a suggestion, but she certainly doesn't mock.  Rather, it's amusement and appreciation.  I guess it's not quite garbage to him now, she considers, and that's a good thing.

"Gimme a second to think," she muses.  "I'll let you know...."

So.  Back away from the sharpening of her senses, then, and reach for something different.  Now Shard once again reaches for the feeling of the life surrounding them, the surge and flow of its energy pressing against her own.  The creatures...Rhijans...and anything that might await below.

Anything biologically alive, in any case; it won't help with synthetics.

Haarmon was barely even aware that the Bantha started up and was on the move. He was so intent on what he was doing, so fully focused on the numbers and letters cascading across his terminal, that the entire Empire could board the ship and he'd barely notice.

He did hear Jalt talking, however, at the periphery of his senses.

With some regret, he looked up from his work and keyed the intercom.

++ Jalt? Should I, you know, like, man the turrents? Or something? ++

He certainly didn't want Shard and Rhijan's lives depending on his shooting. But he for-sure for-sure didn't want to be in the corner like a dope if something happened he could have helped prevent.

"Good idea Haarmon.  They have no clue what they're getting into down there." Jalt replies, "Even if you can't shoot too close to them, a little blaster fire might drive off anything that's causing trouble."

Shard peers into the hole, noting the way it slopes down into the ground below the heap of metal, and the rough unfinished edges of it, bordered my multiple mismatched pieces of metal.

Haarmon, with some regret, put the box aside and strapped himself into the turret, swiveling around until he could see what Shard and Rhijans were up to. He was ready to... do... whatever it was that he had to do.

Rhijans scowled at the opening, his expression all but impossible to read through the helmet of the EVA suit.  The opening seemed a little too regular to have been a convenient accident of debris falling into place...someone or something arranged the wreckage...

Someone could be someone that intended to come back and retrieve something, or was hoping that friends would come along and rescue them or recover their cargo.  There was a chance they booby-trapped the way down to...whatever...

Some THING could be a large, intelligent predator that needed a sheltered place to rest...and wouldn't take nicely to being disturbed.

Regardless of who/what made it, caution was called for.  He adjusted his grip on his blaster, making sure it was sure and square in his grasp, ready to be used, and waited for Shard's verdict.

"Yeah," Shard breathes. "Something down there.  Can't tell what.  Maybe a predator, maybe one of those worms."  She crouches, staring at the hole with narrowed eyes.  "But...I don't think it's smart.  Animalistic?"  She shrugs.  "Sorry.  Not sure I can do any better than that."

Closing her eyes, she lets out a slow sigh. "Enclosed places.  I hate to say it, but it might be best if I go first."  Her gloved fingers close around the cold metal at her belt.  "This thing gives off light and getting past it isn't so easy," she murmurs, hefting the metal cylinder.

The helmet turns, and she regards Rhijans bleakly. "If it were something I figured we'd need to shoot, I'd be all for you taking the lead.  But this situation..."

From his seat in the turret, Haarmon can see one of the suited figures moving closer to the opening.  Body language and gait suggest Shard.  Plus Rhijans doesn't have a lightsaber...

Reldan Jalt's voice reaches his ears, carried over the internal comms, but clearly being transmitted to the people on the ground too.  "If you're going inside, just watch it.  I might not be able to track you under that metal, and Haarmon definitely won't be able to give you any kind of covering fire.  At least not safely."

"Thanks for the encouraging words," Rhijans answered drily.  He hefted his blaster, careful to make certain the muzzle was pointed in a safe direction.  "At your back," he added in a low voice, one hand reaching out to rest easily on Shard's shoulder.  The lightsaber provided light, as well as defense, yes...but it didn't provide eyes in the back of her head.

At Rhijans' words, Shard grins, a very non-'Jedi', feral expression.  "Never questioned that." Blade ignited - a blue-white, simple beam, closer to the latter colour than the former - she slowly moves into the opening.  "I'll let you know if I feel something coming closer," she whispers.

Her voice rises slightly.  "Yeah, thanks, Jalt.  We've got it."  One foot after another, now, her senses still focused on feeling that curious pressure against her own life that tells her of another one.

Inside the opening, the tunnel slopes down steeply, and the assorted rough metallic debris soon gives way to bare stone, worn smooth by... something.  Certainly not the passage of time, or the elements - this rock has no real atmosphere, after all.

Rhijans and Shard make their way down the incline, crouching down low in the confined space.  Using their gloved hands to steady themselves, they soon detect a low level vibration in the stone, like the sub-vocal purring of a predator.

Jalt holds the ship srteady, even after the pair have entered the mound.  Unpleasantly he finds himself having to focus on not thinking of the structure as a "nest", or even a "hive".

He tries to communicate with them, without success.  Then he settles for talking to Haarmon instead.  "I've lost communications with them, but I still have a low quality trace on their location.  Distorted and erratic though.  I've got a bad feeling about this."

"Either something really big is a noisy sleeper, or something big is operating equipment of some kind down here," Rhijans commented, letting a hand linger on the wall for a moment.  "I've been places where the earth was moving...but nothing quite so steadily rhythmic...feels more like a ship's power system, I think.  But I'm no expert on that..."

Still...they were here looking for something that agents of the Old Republic had hidden from the growing Empire.  An operational power source was a good omen.  It was just a question of what, exactly, that power-source was...

"Not an expert myself, but optimistically I'm voting power source," Shard mutters.  Her hair is limp, now, as the humidity slowly builds in the suit thanks to her sweat.  Low gravity or not, this is a lot of walking in a confined environment.  "Of course, we're never that lucky."  She grates out a tense laugh.

Pausing, she turns and points a finger 'below and behind'.  "It's that way.  The...whatever that's alive." A shrug follows.  "Maybe the tunnel curves around.  Maybe it lives in the center of this asteroid and has tunnels coming out all over, allowing it to pop up wherever for a snack?"  Another laugh, short and sharp.  "That's more our luck."

Her fingers trail on the rocky walls. "Smooth.  Too smooth."  Rhijans already knows this, of course, but as always Shard can't help but talk when stressed.  It's always later, when the stress peaks, that she goes silent.  "Let's keep going."

The tunnel continues down, deep into the layers of rock which form the majority of the asteroids mass.  The walls glimmer and gleam in the light of the saber - not moisture, but ice crystals.  There was water here once, long ago.  Perhaps, at some point, the rock had been part of a larger body.  Maybe one with an atmosphere...

The slope seems to be growing gradually steeper, and more difficult to negotiate, clad as it is in a thin, irregular coating of ice.

The vibration still comes up through the floor from somewhere below.

And suddenly the floor drops away, as the tunnel pitches down into an almost vertical shaft...

Haarmon's console chimes softly as the last symbol on the code lock glows brightly on the panel.  The box hisses, as the lid unfastens, and thin jets of white vapour pour out around its edges...

Oh man! Awesome!

You always hoped you get to play with something in real life that's as cool and as dramatic as the stuff they played with in the vids, but in real life computers and components were just spartan and utilitarian and boring.

They almost never popped open and spewed badass smoke and things.

All the same, he licked his dry lips and carefully, carefully, looked at the interior of the thing before touching it. Only once he was sure it was safe did he open the lid. Carefully.

"Hrrrmmmmmm.  Well...that's problematic..." Rhijans observed drily.  He scanned the shaft, looking for a ladder, carved footholds, some kind of lift mechanism that could be called by a control panel...something that would make this more than an apparent dead-end.

Pursing her lips, Shard leans over.  But not too far.

"I guess I could carve footholds," she mutters.  "Three of them or so.  From here.  They'd be lousy, we'd get a meter down, and then I wouldn't be able to make more of them due to me using both my hands to hold on and not wanting to try stabbing a rock just past my feet with this thing."

Another pause for consideration.  "We could slide down.  And then be stuck there for the amount of time we have left of air.  I could carve handholds to climb back up, but only if this tunnel doesn't twist and turn and go fully vertical or, or..."

Frustrated, she waves the burning blade over the abyss.  "All this for a dead end," Shard grouses, staring down into the dark. "I guess if the colonel figures this worth checking out, we could come back with climbing gear."  And a thermal detonator for whatever is waiting below, she absently considers.

"Hot void," the older woman mutters.

The waving 'saber casts a fair bit of light down the shaft.  Enough to show that the bottom is beyond the range of illumination.  And it appears to be a natural hole, or possibly scraped out by an animal.  No ladder.  No elevator.  Just the same stone surface, with a thin layer of ice.


Haarmon opens the lid, cautiously, and peers into the container...

Rhijans' scowl deepened.  This presented a mystery...and he didn't like mysteries.  "Guess we've gone as far as we can, unless Jalt's got some climbing gear aboard the Bantha..."

He debated with himself for a moment, then looked around for a rock, or piece of metal...some kind of debris he could drop.  "Hold the light steady for a moment..." he said.  He could gauge how long it took the object to drop as far as he could see...listen to hear how much longer it took to hit anything solid below.  That way they would know, in the off chance that Jalt was equipped for spelunking, just how much line they would need.  He didn't want to start down and find out at the end of the cord that they didn't have enough.

"Void," Shard hisses, a sick feeling growing in her stomach.  "I think we should put a hold on that, Rhijans, as we're about to have company."  She rises to her feet, carefully - gravity at one tenth means every motion needs careful consideration.  "Whatever is down there, it's awake now and starting this way."

Lips press thin behind her faceplate, the colour bleeding from them.  "Backing up might be a good idea, as well," she murmurs.  It's not yet the time to prepare herself - dividing her concentration could be dangerous, and she needs to know where their 'host' is at the moment.

For a moment she's back on the green world, the hell world of the mine, lost in the forest after her escape.  And the silversith has her scent.  Shard shakes her head; this isn't that world, though whatever maw rises toward them might be just as deadly.

As pointless as it might have been, Rhijans kept a grip on the stone he'd picked up...and adjusted his grip on his blaster again, bringing it to the ready.  Compared to the blaster, the stone was a trivial item...but it was something, an option.  If the blaster didn't take care of any problems...if whatever it was happened to be too big and too mean to be dissuaded by blaster bolts...well, he didn't intend to go quietly.

Haarmon drops to the floor, holding his head and striving to keep his most recent meal down...

Something rises out of the shaft.  A sickly pale something, with a smooth, rounded front with a circle of dull, black eyes close to the edge.  Whatever it is, it fits the tunnel exactly.  The front splits into six segments, and they open up to reveal concentric rows of spines, undulating, as if passing something along to a central orifice, which  opens and closes in rhythm  with the moving spines.

In the near vacuum of the tunnel, the creature is eerily silent...

"Did I mention I have a bad feeling about this?" Rhijans said, in a tightly controlled voice.  Big didn't necessarily equate to hostile...but it did increase the chances that one might become a snack...or a smear on the ground...completely by virtue of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and too small to notice...

Atavistic fear grips Shard at the sight of the rising beast and its questing feelers.  It's not...it can't be...no, no...  Swallowing thickly, she takes a shuddering step back, and another, the burning light in her hands trembling.  The mouth, for all of its nightmarish purpose, is wrong.  But the shape.  And the eyes, those eyes.

For an instant, despite the void, she hears a discordant piping, like the mewling of a thousand tiny throats.

Rhijan's words slice through the bone-deep terror - such a talent for understatement! - and Shard blinks, shakes the sweat from her eyes.  She's here, not in that green hell, and not alone, not this time.  "Back, back," she murmurs, voice steadying as she begins to back away, always keeping the burning blade between herself and the awakened horror - a sadly optimistic defence.  "Outside.  Ship's guns," the older woman grates.  They haven't come too far in, have they?

They need to escape this fresh hell and its monstrous Satan, arisen from some frozen lake below.  Rhijans has her back, no doubt with weapon levelled.  Breath slows, shoulders relax, and Shard seeks the fulcrum between the balancing act of frost and fire.

Escape...but if they cannot, fight.

Rhijans nodded, the gesture mostly lost in the suit.  "You lead," he said, simply, followed by, "If you can't make it up, you're the step-cutter..."  He was sure...not positive, but pretty sure...that he had a better chance of climbing up the icy stone tunnel they'd come down than Shard had.  And he'd be damned if he was leaving her behind because she lost her step.

"I'm also the damn burning stick of death that this thing needs to wade through," Shard points out - reasonably, she thinks, but her tone is likely a tad more snappish given the stress.  All this said whilst backing away.

Hopefully Rhijans isn't being gallant; it wouldn't be a mark against him, mind, but given the situation?  Potentially inappropriate (also surprising, on several levels).

"I'll make you a deal," she continues in a more rational tone. "We walk pretty close together, this thing stays between it and that monstrosity -" said with a waggle of the lightsaber, nowhere near either of them "- and we get out of here.  Carefully."

Rhijans grunted noncomittally.  "I'd rather get out of here fast, truth be told.  If that thing decides it's going to the surface, I'm pretty sure we'll wind up smeared along the wall, saber or no saber.  If you're leading and the ice is too slick, you can do something about it.  I can't.  Blasters are lousy stone-carving tools..."  Even as he spoke, he backed away from the pit, while still looking down and tracking the advance of the...whatever it was...coming up from below.

The practicalities of the situation  force some slight changes in the plan - moving backwards through a slippery tube, only a little more than a metre in diameter ,e, perforce, not something that can be done quickly, or shoulder to shoulder,

Even when followed by a gaping nightmarish mouth only a little less than a metre in diameter.  Fortunately the creature doesn't seem to be much faster than the two rebels.

So the pair retreat, pushing over the slippery stone on their rear ends...

And eventually they find themselves moving over crushed metal fragments, at which point the toughness of the suits turns out to probably be a good thing...


And as they get closer to the tunnel entrance, Reldan Jalt's voice reaches them over the suits comms, crackiling and broken up, " ...mon is sick.  Not ...at's wrong!  The ... ...penned and he ... out.  I thi... ... dying!"

A series of low-volume expletives...in a variety of languages...escaped Rhijans' mouth, barely recognizable as more than a breath.  "Sounds like we have TWO reasons to keep moving, now...and I hope you can do something for Haarmon, because most of my training has been the opposite of saving lives..."

He kept moving, angling toward where he expected the Bantha to be...

Scrabbling along, trying to keep ahead of the...the...thing, Shard feels a scream coming when Jalt's message arrives.  Biting her tongue, she manages to hold back a stream of curses.  Haarmon, sick?  DYING?  This thing behind them?

Rhijans makes up for her with as close to a howl as she's ever heard him make: a whispered volley of invectives, some of them quite imaginative (part of Shard's brain absently catalogues the best for later use).

"I wish," she gasps, continuing to struggle her way toward the surface.  "If this is something from the Old Republic - I don't know, like a mind in a box* - anything I know won't be of use.  And..." She winces as a foot slips, regains her balance.  "I'm...not well-trained."  This brings another wince, being the first time she has come close to open discussion on the subject with the bounty hunter.  "If basic medical practices can't help him, I doubt there's anything I can do."

Hot.

Steaming.

Void.

"It's a cursed rare time I wish my bloody-handed teacher were still around," she hisses, savage in her desperation.  "But this is one!"

* Our jaunt through Obscure SF moves on from Foster to Shahar/Edghill.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:44, Wed 09 Aug 2017.

Haarmon, eyes closed, head pounding, stomach clenching and throat closing in reflexive response, tries to reach to close the cursed thing. He wasn't sure if it was the pyramid that was causing this, or some kind of signal, or some sense memory of his former life as an Emperor of some kind...

But he could work it out later. Right now there was closing the lid, and not heaving his breakfast cereal all over the deck.

Although, considering what he'd done to the Bantha in the past, a little whoopsie wasn't even all that big a deal.

The two rebels scramble out of the tunnel, and it is a relief to get into a space where they can stand.  Unfortunately their pursuer follows.  And turns out to be some sort of giant worm, it's whole body studded with countless stubby pseudopods which drive its bulk along.  Even the ones which would normally push against the sides and roof of the tunnel keep working in the open air, although there is nothing for those particular limbs to gain traction against.

Five metres of the creature emerge, and there is still some of it inside its lair...

Haarmon's hand flails helplessly, trying to slam the lid closed.  But it doesn't seem to be wher he is reaching for.  Either his senses are playing tricks, or the box is moving to avoid him.  And then Jalt's boot stamps down and slams the lid with no difficuly at all...

Rhijans tried to hurry along, doing his best to be careful of jagged edges on the wreckage they were now traversing.  "Jalt!  We have company...something followed us out of the ground, or decided to come out while we were down there...and it's big.  Better be ready to put some distance between the surface and the Bantha..."  He did his best to try and hurry Shard along, keeping an eye on the thing behind them and trying to decide if it was coming after them, or if it might be after the ship.

"This way!" he said, pulling in a direction about five degrees off a straight line to the Bantha.  They needed to know what the thing's target was...

"Void, void, void," Shard whispers to herself, a toneless chant of desperation.  Not like this, please, not like this. She resigned herself to dying violently some time ago; one doesn't watch teams shot to pieces without some sobering (or leading-to-intoxication) realizations.  But eaten alive?  By that thing pursuing them?

Without question, she twists to follow Rhijans - it's worth a shot, certainly.  Even so, "It has eyes," she gasps.  "I'm betting it's following us!"  Not argument, but clarification; the thing might have sensed the Bantha's approach thanks to vibrations in the asteroid, but it likely has a lock on them, now.

Though, to be honest, Shard would be all-too-pleased to lose that bet.

Her foot hits a rock and she stumbles, careful with the murder-stick.  Wouldn't it be a hoot if it was THIS thing it sensed? "I'm not normally one for explosions, but would a grenade dropped behind us do something?"

Haarmon groans weakly, rolls over, and pushes himself up into a sitting position.  Jalt claps him on the shoulder.  "You'll live." and hurries back through to the cockpit...

The creature stops, head swaying from side to side about twenty metres from the tunnel entrance.  The other end is still inside the tunnel.

And then the thing starts to move again, following the two rebels, and sliding further out of its lair...

Up above, the Bantha swings around and starts to move towards the pair as well...

"Question answered," Shard gasps.  Holding her concentration isn't easy, as much as her teacher made it seem.  But if the thing actually manages to catch up...she needs to be ready.  "Jalt!  Any way you can...put down ahead?  I think...we're gaining ground."

A quick glance ahead - no tripping hazards - then a quick glance behind.  "Maybe," Shard admits, optimism not exactly her strong suit.

OOC - I guess...keep running?  We're not exactly space heroes.  ^_^

Rhijans spoke up, in more decisive tones.  "set down one hundred twenty meters ahead of us, ten degrees to our right.  We'll change courses as soon as we see you go overhead.  He was breathing hard, but not yet labored...he didn't want to push the limits of endurance for the suits, though.  He continued, clinically, "We changed course, it took the thing a few seconds to reacquire us.  Should give us a few more meters on it when we hit the ramp."

If he had any doubts about hus plan, they didn't come through in his voice.  And his face, in the brief glimpses it was visible, wore a mask of intense concentration...he didn't appear to be wasting any effort considering options if he was wrong.  But, then, he rarely did...

Haarmon stared at the closed box for what seemed like a long, long time. His mind was a whirl of conflicting emotions. He was so awash in his own head he didn't even think to try any of the techniques Shard had taught him to quiet his mind. And even if he had, he wouldn't have been able.

What was he going to do about this?

One thing for sure, this crazy box needed more study.

But first...

"Jalt? Do they need any help out there? Can I, you know, do anything?"

"Got you Rhijans.  Your new friend is quite the charmer."

The Dancing Bantha adjusts its course and angles down towards the designated landing spot.

Jalt shouts over his shoulder to Haarmon, "Go stand by the hatch!  As soon as I give the word, pop the outer door so they don't have to wait to get aboard!"

The worm-like creature seems to be taking a definite interest in the two fleeing rebels, an it continues to pursue them on their new course.  Luckily, as Rhijans note, it doesn't appear to be fast.

It is, however, quite large.  With its head, and gaping mouth, now some thirty metres from the tunnel, its tail is still inside the shelter of its lair...

Plummeting like a stone, the Bantha comes to a halt less than two metres above the surface of the asteroid.  The boarding ramp extends, and almost touches the ground.

Shard and Rhijans move over that ground at the best speed they can make, considering their need to not tear open their suits on any of the metal fragments littering the stony surface.  Ahead of them, they can see the brightly lit, welcoming interior of the Bantha's airlock.

Behind them the somewhat less welcoming horror finally emerges fully from the tunnel.  Fifty metres long, or a touch more, the beast pauses in its pursuit, raises its head, and appears to study the ship.

Then the mouth opens up like Timoran sunpetal, gaping far wider than it had inside the tunnel, revealing row upon row of undulating spines...

Just run.

That's what her brain keeps telling her.  Just run.  Don't look back.  Don't try to figure out how far away it is, because if you're running as quickly as you can, seeing it won't make any difference.  Don't try to figure out what it's doing.

Just run.

And she does, for a short time.  But it proves impossible; the reptile brain has needs that cannot be thwarted.  And Shard, after a point, has no other choice.

...why did I HAVE to do that?

Bile in her throat, its iron taste slicking her tongue, she returns her gaze to the ship.  "Jalt!  I think that thing has decided the Bantha is the meal!"  Apparently, Rhijans and her are only appetizers, and why not, given the size of this monstrosity?


I hope it can't shoot those spines.  Probably not.  They're probably something to ensure its food makes it all the way down.

...getting shredded the whole time, far, far too slowly. 

Rhijans, unlike Shard, had no need to look back.  If the thing was going to catch them, he'd rather not know until it was too late and he'd make better time with his attention focused on where he was going.  "I think he's expecting that option," Rhijans replied, drily, breathing hard but evenly.  "Otherwise, he'd have actually set down..."

He maneuvered himself carefully between the...whatever-it-was...and Shard, figuring that if he was behind her, she'd be more motivated to keep running than worrying about the thing behind them...and less inclined to look if she couldn't see it because he was in the way.

"Just keep moving...faster we're in, faster they can leave, and the faster we're all safe away from this."  He was talking as much to himself as to Shard...but saying it aloud certainly didn't hurt.

Just a few more steps...

I'm stating the obvious, Shard considers.  And it's wasting Rhijans' time.  Best to avoid that in the future, though the older woman doesn't know how.  This isn't the first time she has remarked such, and her habit seems to be solidly ingrained.

Then the bounty hunter starts to drop back.

Shard shoots a quick glance over her shoulder, incredulous.  It seems impossible that he's tiring before her, but for what other reason might he be...then Rhijans himself states the obvious - without any serious gasping - and it hits her.

He's doing it on purpose.

"You..."  Still running - well, as running as one can do in this gravity without risking death or soaring off into space - Shard grits her teeth. "Rhijans, I happen to be...carrying the thing that'll give that monster serious indigestion!" she manages, slowing down a touch herself in an attempt to run - well, move - in a line.  "Not going to...argue about who gets to be last...but maybe nobody?"

Pacing himself to avoid knocking Shard down, Rhijans gave a grunt as an initial response...it might have been amusement, or just acknowledgment.  It was hard to say.  "I'm not getting on that ship without you," he said managing it all in one breath, before pausing to take a couple more.

"And I AM getting on that ship."  There was a finality in his voice...no interest in even considering the question of having to cause the thing behind them indigestion.  It was the verbal equivalent of giving her a push on the shoulder to encourage her to move faster.  Whether or not she took it that way, he had no idea...

And then the pair are on the ramp, and it starts to lift, even as the ship does the same.

The creature rears and gapes its maw again, and this time a bright blue membrane expands around its neck in a sort of frill.  Then it "rushes" towards the Bantha.  An exercise in futility, as it turns out - the ship rises far more quickly than the thing can move.

As Jalt pulls the ship around in an upward spiral, the creature can be seen on the surface below, rearing upwards with its mouth and neck frill both spread wide.

"From this distance it looks like a flower." the pilot remarks, looking down at it from the cockpit.  "Some sort of weed that you'd need a thermal detonator to clear."

At the airlock door, Shard and Rhijans start to remove their suits...
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:46, Mon 28 Aug 2017.

Rhijans paused for just a moment after getting the helmet of his suit off, favoring Shard with what might have been a ghost of a smile.  "Told you I was getting on this ship..." he said, in the closest thing to a teasing tone he'd uttered in...ages, really.

Then he proceeded to finish climbing out of the suit without further comment or fuss, reverting back to the cold functionality that was the norm for him.  Jalt had said something about Haarmon possibly dying, and they had a prisoner still aboard, though he had faith that, between Colonel Kourene and You-Why, the Imperial Tech had been kept well in hand.  But there was no time to linger over the successful evasion of whatever-that-thing-was, or to spare any time in getting out of the suits.

A flower.

"I'm gonna strangle him," Shard sourly grates out as she sags against the panelling.  It's not serious; inside, she's struggling against a storm of emotions.  Horror, disgust, elation, all make for a sickening mess when combined with physical exhaustion.  "Flower.  That's one horrifying bloom..."  One eyebrow rises as she studies Rhijans; reading him is always difficult, but he seems...pleased?  Almost playful, at this point?

As much as Rhijans can be, in any case, and it's not a bad look.

"Well, I have no issue with you being right, here," she shoots back, recovering a hint of her equanimity.  "Take the win, I won't begrudge."  Helmet off, she manages a grin before brushing her sopping hair out of her eyes.

Suit comes off, next, Shard turning away for modesty's sake.  Grabbing a towel, she briefly swipes at the sweat on her body before climbing back into her split-skirt dress. Really going to need time in the fresher after this, she muses.  Then she recalls the experience of heightening her senses within the suit.

It hadn't seemed possible before, but that fresher is looking even better, now.

"Better figure out what's up with Haarmon." Stating the obvious, again, but as always Shard feels the need to punctuate.

Haarmon, oddly enough, is standing close to the hatch, having allowed Rhijans an Shard quick access to the ship.  He looks a little shaken, if anything, and perhaps slightly pale, but otherwise he seems all right.

"I got the box open, and there was something inside, but then I felt sick and almost passed out.  Jalt slammed the lid closed again, and I felt better right away."

Haarmon rubs a hand through his hair, "Funny thing is, I don't remember what it was.  I can see myself looking into the box, and I can see that there's something there, but I can't make out the shape of it.  And if I try too hard to visualise it, my head feels like Juragga's pounding on it."

Rhijans shot a glance over at Shard.  This was outside his realm of expertise, or even of comfortably faking it.  It sounded mystical, somehow, and he didn't do mystical.

"He made it sound like you were at death's door...what we could hear of him over the commlink at the time, at least.  Doesn't take a whole lot of metal wreckage to screw up a commlink signal around here..."  He gave Haarmon a measured look, before adding, "Glad to see you're not."

Shard resists the urge to double-check Haarmon's health, herself.  If he says he's all right...  He's your student, it's natural to be worried.  But she needs to trust him on this.  "Yeah, we were pretty worried," she replies, with a small smile herself. "Rhijans almost frowned."

She gives a short nod to the bounty-hunter, figuring what he meant.  "Let's go take a look at this box.  Maybe a look in, as well.  I'm hoping it's not a mind-in-a-jar or somesuch; I like my body being mine."  It's less of a concern, now, with Haarmon acting as he is.

"No!" Haarmon said, far more sharply than he had intended, at Shard's suggestion.

And then an awkward pause.

"I mean, do what you gotta do. I ain't the king of noone. But I.. uh... don't think it's anything good. You know. Whatever it is." He managed to sound halfway sincere, but he found he couldn't meet Shard's or Rhijans' gaze.

Shard shoots a glance at Rhijans.  Now this, this disturbs her.  Glancing around, she finds an acceleration seat and sits down.  "Haarmon.  From where I'm standing, something is clearly wrong.  Will you tell us what?  Please?"

She doesn't like this, doesn't like it at all.

Reldan Jalt flies the Dancing Bantha above the surface of the asteroid.  "There's a lot of wreckage down there for some reason.  It's as if the ships were attracted here, perhaps by the beacon, and then something caused them to crash."

"The thing is, I don't know of anything that could do that.  Especially so often.  I'm not sure I want to find out either."

He falls silent for a moment, then gives a long, low whistle.  "Some of these wrecks are pretty big.  I don't think that creature could have  pulled them down.  It probably couldn't have wrecked the Bantha even."

"In any case, if we're all done here, I'm taking us higher up."

Rhijans spoke up.  "Nothing to be gained by loitering above the surface here...if anything, it increases the chances that someone else picking up the beacon finds us here, and I don't think they'd buy the 'we were just looking' storyline."  He shrugged, and added, "Wouldn't hurt to keep an eye on it, for a little bit, but best do that from a distance that doesn't incriminate us."

He looked at Haarmon, trying to discern, in his own way, what the slicer's issue was, or get some kind of read on how he was reacting to talk about the device.

Climbing down from the gun turret, Juragga warbled an interrogative towards Haarmon, moving over to make sure the kid was okay.  He'd had that overgrown weed in his sights, but had held fire until the last moment, just in case.

Maybe he'd never make a good gardener.  But now his concern was his friends... Haarmon in particular.

Jalt pulls the ship into an ascending spiral, putting some distance between the Bantha and the surface.

"How's Haarmon doing?" he calls out, without taking his eyes of the instruments, "He going to live?"

"Interesting.  With the beacon removed there are no signals down there.  No emissions of any kind.  It's just a rock, covered with wreckage.  But something made those ships crash.  So why didn't it affect us?"

Rhijans answered readily, a scowl creeping onto his features as he spoke.  "Seems to be fine.  Is that beacon still broadcasting?  Don't really like the idea of an emergency transponder advertising our whereabouts..."  He liked it even less when he thought about potentially returning to the Alliance base with it...it would make staying out of Imperial focus a lot trickier if the thing was sending a distress signal the entire time...

Shard's eyes narrow.  Everyone is doing a lot of talking, and a pretty ugly picture is starting to form.  "Hold steady, Jalt!" she calls out. "Maintain this distance, but no further!"

Spinning around, she faces up to Haarmon. "Haarmon, whatever you saw inside the box, we're going to need to know.  And soon.  Because I'm starting to get the idea that maybe those ships didn't crash coming to pick up the box."

Now her eyes turn toward the object in question.  "Maybe they - each and every one of them - found that box.  And crashed on the way out."   Shard draws in a deep breath.   "If that's the case, how?  And why?  Was it because of something up there?"  She points, roughly 'away' from the asteroid.  "Or was it because of something in there?"

This time she points at the box.

Haarmon sat and fidgeted and wrung his hands and his face screwed up in a couple of different unhappy expressions. He was reluctant to answer for all kinds of reasons, from not wanting to worry anyone to not wanting to be laughed at to not wanting to be believed...

...and yes, because it felt like the thing in the box was for him. And all for him. And he wanted something all for his own very very badly.

All the same, he knew that whatever it was, it was too big and too strange for him to handle on his own.

"It. Um. It..." he made a long drawn out moan of unhappiness. "Um. Shard? You said you aren't a Jedi, right?"

If she wasn't a Jedi, like for reals, then maybe it was okay?

Shard swallows the instant retort, studying Haarmon.  It's clear this is Serious Business™, and she needs to carefully consider her answer.  Because whatever it is, it's going to define...something.  A stance?  Herself?  Haarmon's choices?

Doesn't matter; it's always best to go with the truth.

"I'm not a Jedi," she agrees, quietly. "I was apprenticed to one - padawan, they call it - but I never finished the training.  Quite." A long, slow sigh, and she keeps her gaze fixed on her own student.  Not looking anywhere else, certainly not.  "And I don't agree with their philosophy, not any more."

Burning light lashing the room mixed with blaster-fire from the screaming, terrified techs, and all she can do is watch... 

"Not any more," she repeats in almost a whisper.  Then her voice rises slightly, and she places a hand on Haarmon's shoulder. "Haarmon.  Trust us.  Please?"

Juragga caterwauled his support, encouraging the kid to share with them - and trust Shard.

Haarmon took a deep breath. Aside from any other concerns, he couldn't blow Rags off. When the wookie got all sincere, there was just no resisting him.

Still. It was weird. And maybe embarrassing.

"It. Um. It. Uh. Talked to me."

Rhijans blinked a couple of times...but otherwise betrayed no surprise at the statement.  "And just what did it have to say?" he asked.  There was perfect frankness in his tone...no skepticism, no doubt.  Since joining the Alliance, he'd seen enough things that a talking box on a derelict asteroid covered with wreckage didn't seem beyond the realm of possibility.  And Haarmon, for all his bluster and bravado, had never failed them in a tight spot.

He was willing to reserve judgment on the matter until he'd heard it all.

Haarmon sighed and shook his head and gritted his teeth. The further he got into this, the worse he felt. If he could, he'd go back and just forget it. But he was too far into it now.

"Ugh. It opened. And then it was in my head. And it said that it could help me. That it could help me learn what the Jedi couldn't teach. And then I was unconscious. And after that you were there."

His face flushed a little. He felt ridiculous.

Juragga's support garners a quick smile from Shard, but her concern for Haarmon grows as the young man struggles to get his explanation together.  Finally, it comes, delivered in a halting near-whisper.

Mind.

In a box.

But maybe it's not something dangerous, she hazards, slowly nodding.  There's no scepticism; Shard has seen odd things, experienced odd things.  A talking box, possibly containing some kind of archive*, possibly a computer system or so forth, certainly isn't out of the question.  She opens her mouth, and Rhijans pre-empts her query.  No mockery, either, not that she had expected any.

Good, nonetheless.

So she decides to wait; rushing in all of the questions tying knots in her throat wouldn't be good for Haarmon.

"Jalt?  We holding steady?" she calls over her shoulder, watching their teammate for his reaction to Rhijans' inquiry.

And it comes, and Shard's eyes widen slightly.

Oh, danger here.  Something that comes from the past, something that offers as its opening.  Not something that seeks to understand Haarmon first, but rather it - potentially - tempts.  That sets off alarm bells; Shard isn't against a certain balance (and, in fact, courts this balance), but this reeks of something much further along the line from her old mentor's cold, sterile ways. 

"Haarmon," she slowly begins, "I believe you.  And because I believe you, I need to know: please tell me word for word what it said."

And her guts knot with fear, fear for Haarmon, not for herself.

* Another gratuitous Bes Shahar reference...  ^_^
This message was last edited by the player at 17:03, Wed 06 Sept 2017.

It was hard to undo a lifetime of conditioning, and part of Rhijans balked at the notion of the Jedi teaching anything.  But he recalled some of the feats that the Twi'lek they'd extracted, early on...things that he'd never imagine being possible.  And she'd been, by her own admission, incompletely trained...

And, therefore, no matter his initial reaction, he had to take Jalt seriously.  So, apparently, did Shard, he noticed...her slowly-phrased question seeking to parse the exact terms of the offer the...whatever-it-was...made to Haarmon.  He sat back, listening analytically.

Haarmon squinted his eyes and his brow furrowed in something halfway between thought and pain.

"I can't really remember all that well."

But how true was that? And if his brain was hiding things from him, was it because it was hard? Painful? Embarrassing? Or was it because he was trying to shade things such that maybe he could get access to the thing one more time before Shard spaces it?

And why did he want access to it anyway? It was clearly bad news. That was obvious enough before Shard started up on it. And he trusted Shard. And it's not like he was doing the whole Frustrated Apprentice My Master Won't Teach me the Good stuff bit.

Not yet anyway.

Or was he? How could he be sure? Now that he had all this Force business all up in his business, he had to worry all the time about what he wanted and why he wanted it. It wasn't enough anymore to watch his mouth. he had to watch his own mind.

Shard was showing him how. But it was hard. Hard. Hard.

This Force business was complicated. And he hadn't even gotten to hold a lightsaber yet.

Another sigh.

Okay then. All in. He'd trust Shard and Rhijans would know what to do. One more time at least.

"It said it could help me. It said the Jedi can't teach me what I need to know."

A pause.

"Verbatim."

Shard closes her eyes at the words.  She's thinking, furiously.  Maybe that's the wrong thing to do; maybe she should be going with her gut.  The problem?  Her gut is divided.

She doesn't like this at all.

She doesn't like the idea of hurting Haarmon.

Given the choice, though, she'll take the latter over the former.  The problem is, she can't be sure the situation is as bad as it seems.  Hence, the thinking.

Eyes open, sidelong glance to Rhijans.  One corner of her mouth rises, a tight half-smile.  "All right.  Some of this might sound like Bantha crap to the people in the room."  Gaze flicks to Juragga.  "Or maybe not.  We'll see."

Slowly, Shard sits down on the acceleration seat.  She doesn't want to look like she's lecturing.  "So, my problem with this.  Any time someone comes to me and says 'I can give you what you want.  Those people can't, but I can.'  That sounds like 'Agenda' to me." She studies her hands.  "Sounds that way here, especially since - I'm guessing - you made no mention of 'Jedi' to start with?  You didn't even say anything to whatever is in there?  It just...said that?"

Shard sighs.  Here's the rough part. "It gets worse.  Maybe.  Remember what I said about the training being dangerous?  About how it's easy to get sucked into what the Jedi used to call the Dark Side?  How it can twist you into something different?  Or maybe just bring out that selfish, 'I am the center of the Universe and everybody else, they're ants and not important except for my amusement' child-self?"  Another shrug.  "Call it 'evil' if you want; I'm all for that, even without any spiritual implications."  She waves a hand.  "Ghea Nimadda, let's say.  Anyway, let's accept that it can happen."

Leaning forward, Shard studies the box.  "The Jedi used to speak of the Dark Side as insidious.  Like something that drew people.  It was 'attractive'.  It caught you by strong emotions - rage and hate being the two big ones, but there were others.  Sneaky, almost."  A shudder follows that statement.  It almost got me.  "So they divorced themselves from such things." The older woman grimaces. "In, what I feel, was a bad way."

"Point here, though, isn't to debate their ideas and methods.  I don't like the sound of what that...thing...said to you.  Seems to fit with what the Jedi thought about 'The Dark Side.'  'Heyyyy...I can give you what you want.  The Jedi can't, but I can.  All you need to do is...listen to me, and not them.'"

She snorts. "Of course, the Jedi said the same about the other side, and killed anyone who disagreed."

Her eyes snap up and she looks at Haarmon, finally.  "I'm not saying 'toss it in a furnace'.  Maybe this is a good thing we've found, I don't know.  I want your idea on something.  Did you get any feel for what lay behind the voice?  Its...personality?  Outlook?  How'd it sound when it said that?"

Rhijans' lips tightened into a thin line as the words were repeated.  Shard's explanation went beyond him, largely...moralistic relativism, much of it, that meant little to him.  "It would be an easier decision to make if there'd been some notion of what it expected for the knowledge.  'Dark Side' or not, it's often true that some beings can teach what only they know, and that you can't learn from others.  But this sounds suspiciously close to offering something for nothing, or next to nothing...and while what I know about the Force is worth the weight of bantha flatulence, I do know that nothing worth having is acquired easily.  The more useful it us, the more you sacrifice to get it.  If someone offers it easily, they've got some hidden plan to make you pay later, somehow."

He looked at Haarmon.  "You're the one it talked to...any impression that it was a something-for-nothing offer?"  He didn't need any knowledge about the Force to be skeptical of the offer...life had provided him with plenty of skepticism.

"GuuuuuuuuuuUUUUhhhhhrrrraaawwwwhhhh," Juragga comented. Nothing's free.  And some things in this galaxy you don't need to learn.


It's obvious this thing is laced with some bad mojo, or you wouldn't have gotten sick from looking at it, he continued, his voice a modulated throaty bass.  But not angry; his tone was, if anything, soothing and parental - patient.  Not to jump to conclusions - anything can make you sick if you have too much of it.  But I'm old enough to remember the Jedi.  And their counterparts.

Maybe this isn't that.  Maybe it really can teach you something.  If it could teach me to be a ballerina, would that mean I needed to learn? He pulled his lips back to show a fanged grin.

What it has to offer, what you need, and what it costs - these are not necessarily related in any way, he concludes. And he put a shaggy paw on Haarmon's shoulder gently, in support. Make sure it all lines up, before you buy in.

Now they were all staring at him. Judging him. Lecturing him. Probably thinking he was like some little kid who stuck his hand in the wrong cookie jar and now needed a good, long talk about ruining his dinner and minding his manners and who knows what else.

You know that's not true, some part of him tried to say but another part of him, a sneaky, smooth, sibilant part, insisted otherwise. And that insistence was smooth like greased ice. Soft like old ashes. Sweet like overripe berries.

And that voice said that it was time for him to stop being a child. And the first step was telling all these... people... to leave him the void alone.

He took a deep breath and shook his head.

"Yeah. All of that. And twice over again. I don't think it's anything good."

Rhijans nodded, satisfied.  "It needs looking at...somewhere safe, that isn't dangerously close to a bunch of suspiciously-wrecked ships on an asteroid in the back-end of nowhere.  Preferably by people who actually know something about this kind of thing.  But not by us, and definitely not now."

He glanced momentarily at Shard, before looking back to Haarmon.  He had a feeling she wouldn't particularly care for what he was about to say next, but...  "If it turns out to be on the up-and-up and isn't some kind of mind-sucking death-trap, I say you get what it offered.  You figured it out, got it open...maybe that's some kind of test, to see if you're resourceful enough."

Reldan Jalt comes out of the cockpit and looks around the room.  There seems to be a lot of tension in the atmosphere, even considering Haarmon's seizure, or whatever it was.

In an attempt to defuse the situation, he asks, "Anybody object to my setting a course for home?  There's too many wrecked ships down there for me to feel comfortable."

Rhijans gave a brief nod.  "I think that would be highly advisable, actually.  Unless someone's got some further insight, I think we've learned about as much as we're gonna learn, here."  He didn't expect any dusagreement, but he looked around the room, giving everyone the chance to speak up if they felt otherwise.

Shard looks first to Haarmon, for his input.  Then Rhijans speaks, and she turns her gaze his way.  His own eyes flick to her - why, she's not sure - and he finishes with the idea that Haarmon should continue...assuming, of course, it isn't a mind-bender.

She shrugs.

"I'm not adverse to Haarmon using the...box?  If it's not dangerous.  AND he still feels he wants it," she clarifies, with a quick look back at the younger man.  He seems more reluctant about it, now; his words, at least, indicate some serious concerns.

"And while I'd like to be part of whatever bunch has a look at it," she continues, "I'm for sure biased enough that we need a group of people, not just my say-so.  Objectivity."  Her eyes narrow for an instant.  "And I think Haarmon should be in that group."

High time to start trusting her student...not that she distrusted him before.

With a wave, she releases the issue of holding position.  There is still some nervousness - why DID those ships crash, here? - but if Jalt feels it's good to go, why not make the attempt?

Haarmon nodded, at the taking off. He was so over this place it wasn't funny. And the faster, and father, away they were, the happier he'd be.

He gave what Rhijans and Shard said some thought.

"Now that we're talking about it, I'm not entirely sure I want to get anywhere near that thing again."

A pause. A moment's thought.

"Which is, I guess, the best reason for me to do it. So. Yeah. We get safe. As safe as we can manage anyway. And then. See."

His voice was returning to its usual level of confidence, but it wasn't all the way there yet. The experience had shaken him in ways he was just becoming aware of.

Juragga hooted his approval.  Slapping his furry knee, he rose, and made his way to the ladder for the gun cupola.  Pausing there, he leaned against it and looked back.

Shard grins at Juragga's affirmation.  "Choice," she states.  Then shrugs. "I must be channelling...someone I used to know.  You've got the choice, Haarmon.  Sure, it's important to face our fears, honk, honk, honk." She makes a goose's beak out of her hand, moving in time with the sound effects; between the relief at their escape, and the relief at Haarmon being still alive and - seemingly - of sound mind, giddy Shard has regressed somewhat, heading towards what she had been as a no-doubt annoying student. "It's also pretty important to know where to put the foot down, so if you want to skip when we start poking into this...box...that's fine."

A shrug.  "But I'd like to have you there.  You have some good perspectives, stuff I've never considered." That's a fact.

"Until then, I keep teaching you, if you're willing."  She snorts.  "Which means we'd better start on some new stuff, to keep you busy.  Including learning to wave this thing around without killing yourself."  A touch on the murder-stick.  "After all, I'm going to need you to hold onto it when it's my turn at the box."

A sigh.  A grimace.  Her head comes up, and she looks about the group: the colonel, Jalt, Juragga, and Rhijans. "Yeah, I'm...teaching Haarmon.  Not Jedi stuff, not completely.  For one thing, I'm not qualified.  For another, I'm not interested in teaching that.  But without any training, he did something that took me years to learn, back at the base when he was hurt.  There are things he needs, and needs to know, now, because this stuff?  It can get dangerous."

Her voice drops to a whisper.  "Just ask Ghea Nimadda."

Jalt looks a little uncertain, "Wait... Haarmon was laying on the deck screaming in pain.  He was trying to close the box, but couldn't touch it, like he was blind drunk or something, and couldn't control where he was putting his hand.  I had to close the lid, and whatever was in there didn't affect me.  As soon as I shut it, he started to feel better."

"I mean, this is what I saw.  It might not be the same as Haarmon's perception of the... incident.  But if you're going to let him try again, I'd rather it didn't happen when I'm around to see it."

Rhijans looked clinically at Jalt as the pilot spoke.  "Let's get out of here, first...then we can worry about what to do with the box.  We didn't find anything else...except some freak asteroid worm...and I don't think the worm fits the rumors of some kind of device or weapon or something that could defeat the Empire.  The box...?"  He shrugged

"Maybe.  Maybe Haarmon wasn't trained enough for the thing inside.  Maybe the box was opened wrong.  Maybe there's a way to filter the effect so it isn't incapacitating.  This isn't the time or place to figure it out."

"Okay, that's more worrisome," Shard mutters as Jalt explains his own point of view and experience.  Rhijans has his say on the matter, and it all makes sense: get out, worry about the box later.

"No disagreement there." 

Still seated, she glances up at Haarmon.  "You're sure you're okay?  Because what Jalt says, that's not good.  Any lingering pain?  Headache?  Anything at all?"  Leaning forward, elbows on knees, she surveys him from head to foot. "I have to ask.  Kind of goes with the territory, knowing what shape you're in."

Haarmon blushed a little under Shard's scrutiny. And he found he couldn't quite meet her, or anyone else's eyes. He knew this was important. And he knew that sifting through his physical and mental and emotional state was important for this whole "Force" thing. He just wished she hadn't started it here, in the room, with everyone crowded around. It felt like therapy with an audience.

"I feel... okay...ish... body-wise. A little hungover, almost. Like I could use a nap. But. Also. I'm still..."

A long pregnant pause.

"Conflicted? About it? Like maybe I shouldn't have told you? Or embarrassed about it? Or regretful? Sort of?"

He laughed a dry, humourless laugh.

"But I don't know how much of that is just me and my own, you know, whatever. And how much, if any, is the... thing. I'm new to all this."

A second laugh, less dry, more humour.

"And by 'new to this' I mean both acting like an adult and also talking to an ancient sentient box of evil-doom-temptation. So it's a bit of a mess in here."
This message was last edited by the player at 13:16, Wed 13 Sept 2017.

Silence, as Shard listens.  Really listens - not only to his list of potential ailments, but to his state of mind.  And tries to find the underlying feelings.  To understand.

He still feels like a kid, she realizes.

"Should probably get you checked out," she hazards.  "Make sure there aren't any long-term issues.  As for the other..."  He just shared, Shard.  Can't let that pass.  Doesn't matter this is in public, he managed, right?

That...takes courage.

"Truth being, I'd feel a little regretful, myself.  I get that.  Part of me wishes I had learned more."  Putting her chin in her hands, she studies the wall.  Small wonder Haarmon is having problems meeting her eyes; it's no easy thing, when one is giving up painful truths.

"I think the..."  A small laugh of her own.  "'ancient sentient box of evil-doom-temptation'?  Good descriptor.  I think that's unique to everyone, here.  As for that other thing?"  Her teeth grate for a moment.  "I've no place to judge, not with where I've been for a long time, now." Her fingers run through her hair.  "I'm kind of new to not looking at the universe through the bottom of a bottle."

Said.  Done.

Gut clenched, she looks up at...what?  Her student?  Not how she sees Haarmon, no.  Not as a kid, either, not in a while.  "I get it," Shard repeats.

Rhijans watched the exchange silently.  Whatever it was, it had more of an impact on Haarmon than just hearing voices in his head and convincing Jalt the slicer was at death's door.  He sounded different...mature, in a way.  The false bravado was gone...for the moment, at least, and while his characteristic turn of phrase was still intact, Haarmon seemed to be using it in a more measured fashion.  It could have been the natural result of consistently being put in high-risk situations and having everyone dependent on him--that aged a soul, and Rhijans, while familiar with the former, was still learning to cope with the latter--but it could also be the experience with the box had shaken something deep in Haarmon's being...that he was, actually, matured in some accelerated way by the experience.  Or that it had scared him so badly that his brash manner had slipped.

Time would tell...but talking about it now would only make things awkward.  "Right.  Let's get out of here, get Haarmon checked out...if anything's off, I'm guessing it's a little outside the programming of an autodoc to diagnose it, much less treat it."  He gave Haarmon a measured look as he spoke, gauging his reaction.

"We've also got a captured Imperial tech, assuming You-Why hasn't indulged his new-found proclivities, and we've got to decide whether he goes back home with us or we dump him on some outbound transport to the far side of the Outer Rim."  He paused for just a moment, then finished, "But either way, we keep the box under wraps.  Mothessh already had one security breach, let's not give anyone the added temptation of reporting it and adding another."

"Tibanna gas!" Jalt says, and snaps his fingers, "We could head for a tibanna gas mining operation I know, and I could use my contacts to get the tech frozen in carbonite.  Would keep him quiet and out of trouble until he was thawed out.  And you could freeze him with that box strapped to him."

"Keep them both safe until you know what you want to do, and where."

And then he laughs.

"Just kidding.  I know some places where you could dump the tech, where he wouldn't be found.  Real middle of nowhere wilderness spots on planets that have next to zero inhabitants anyway."

Juragga rumbles, "Make sure it's someplace he can actually survive.  Techs aren't known to have wilderness skills."

Rhijans didn't particularly care about what happened to the tech...but he suspected members of his team had a more compassionate view.  "I was thinking of sticking him on an Alliance transport to some distant sector...he could, perhaps, be turned and it would never hurt to have someone familiar with the guts of a Star Destroyer available to ask questions from."  Claiming any concern beyond that, for himself, would be dishonest...but aside from bragging up the Imperial forces, the man hadn't actually done anything particularly malicious, so Rhijans couldn't see any justification beyond convenience for throwing the man out an airlock right now...and 'convenient' often led to trouble, in his experience.

Shard makes a moue of concern.  The matter of the tech is becoming more and more difficult by the hour, but she's not willing to go the route of her former mentor.  "I'm liking Rhijans' idea a hair better, sorry Jalt.  Simplicity and no serious concern about him dying due to malnutrition.  Or getting eaten.  By the time he gets back to anywhere that matters, what he knows won't be terribly important."

A shrug, then. "Colonel has the final word, though."

Jalt folds his arms and leans up against the wall, "Somebody could go wake Kourene,  Last I heard he was going to rest, get some strength back after being a prisoner.  If you wake him, you can get his input straight away."

"I mean that's got to be better than coming up with some complicated plan, then having the Colonel just say, 'Nah... just space him.'  Right?"

The pilot nods his head towards the bantha in the room.  "I'm still curious about that thing.  Why did it affect Haarmon, and not me?"

Shard laughs quietly.  "Good point.  Once we're done here, I'll go beard that Sandperson in its hovel," she states.  "Get the boss' read on this and follow through."  On anything but spacing, the older woman considers.

The colonel will need to put up with some insubordination if he asks for that, and he owes them.

...not that she expects he'll decide on execution.

Turning to face the box, she consider's Jalt's question.  Finally, Shard lets out another sigh.  "Fair question.  I have a theory, but that's all it is for now." Now she chooses not to sit, instead beginning to pace; this sort of thing makes her tense.  "Some people are sensitive to certain things.  We've all met some who seem very lucky, or who are really good at reading people, or who almost know what's going to happen before it does.  At least, I have, and I've heard enough stories over the years to figure that others have as well."

She offers a shrug.  "Sometimes it's exaggeration.  Sometimes it's coincidence.  Sometimes it's just what it is - luck, an unusual talent, or simply being good at reading situations.  And sometimes, it's a sensitivity to what the Jedi called the Force."

"The theory is - in brief - that the Force is an energy that permeates everything.  Not so far-fetched, once we take the philosophy out of things - we already HAVE energies that permeate everything, like gravity.  So run with that.  Some people are born with a greater talent to fly ships.  Some people are born with an instinctive feel for math.  Some people are born politicians.  And some people are born with a higher sensitivity to the Force."

She looks up with a wry smile.  "It doesn't make them any more special than anyone else, either.  It just means that, like everyone, they have particular talents.  These people find it a lot easier to learn to open themselves up to this energy.  To feel what it carries with it, to feel connections it creates."  Her eyes snap back to the box. "I think the box looks for those people.  Or maybe it's just that it can sense someone who has had training?"

Rhijans listened, clinically.  Shard's explanation of the Force made it easier to accept that such a thing might exist, in spite of his cultural denial of it...and it made sense that, if the box contained some kind of entity that had access to that energy, it would attune to others with a similar affinity.

"I'd hazard a guess it's looking for those with at least some degree of training, if Haarmon's recollection is accurate at it actually said something about teaching things the Jedi couldn't."  He looked over at the slicer and explained, "There's a chance that it just gave you a kind of emotional impression, if such things are possible, and those are the words that your mind associated with it...but that isn't, explicitly, what it was saying.  Hard to know, when there's only one witness and his apparent physical state at the time was dire..."  His tone carried neither acceptance nor denial...pure conjecture, no judgment passed on anyone involved.

Boxes promising training were a bit outside his realm of experience...so was anything associated with the Force, prior to stumbling into Jedi and other Force users as a Rebel.  He didn't know enough about it to pass judgment...

Jalt scratches his head.  "Right...  So it might be set up to find and attack people with a bit of talent.  Well that just gives me a couple more questions.  First of all, why?  If you're attacking people with limited ability, then they don't seem as if they'd be much of a threat anyway.  Why go to that much trouble?"

"And second... is it a good idea to take it somewhere with a higher population before finding out what it is, and how much of a threat it represents?"

Rhijans gave the pilot a look that might have been amusement.  "Is it a good idea to try and break a high-ranking prisoner out of an Imperial detention block with a team of three or four people and a couple of droids?"  With the minutest of shrugs, he continued, "We seem to specialize in making ill-advised operations work out..."

He paused a beat, and added, "If you'd prefer we check it out here, far away from any help if something goes wrong, we can.  It doesn't seem to affect everyone, so if there's a couple of us on hand to snap it shut when things start going sideways..."
This message was last edited by the player at 03:07, Fri 22 Sept 2017.

Haarmon sat quietly, thinking his thoughts.

As they paused, however, he spoke up, his voice grim and sombre.

"I had a theory like it fed on grace and charm and good looks."

A pause.

"So I figure you're all safe. 'Cept Rags. He has to watch the void out."

A little smirk curled up the corners of his mouth.

Juragga blinked, then let out a full-bellied guffaw, slapping his knee in amusement.

Shard relaxes a little.  Nobody laughs, nobody throws rotten fruit...Haarmon cracks a joke, but that's just another indication he's getting back to his normal state (frustrating for a teacher, but good to see at the moment). "Good questions, Jalt," she muses, chuckling along with Juragga's laughter. "And yeah, I'm definitely safe."  Those three things deserted her years before, Shard figures, if she ever really had them.

"Why limited ability?  Start them down the 'wrong' path early, and they grow into that kind of a person.  If it really can teach people, then..." She purses her lips. "Maybe it's some kind of trap, made by the...the Sith, I think they were called." She shrugs; Shard isn't a historian. "The Jedi had enemies.  Second question?"

She gnaws her lip for a long moment.  "We could look at it now.  I'm not sure I want to see Haarmon in a seizure again, though.  It sounds awful.  I could check, as well.  I've...had some training from a Jedi.  Years ago."  And there it is.  "If it can recognize that somehow...I guess we could see what it says."

The idea makes her skin crawl, but.

Jalt nods slowly at the answers to his question.  "Just give me some time before you open it again.  I'll get the ship into hyperspace, and then I'll be free to help... we already know that it didn't affect me the first time, so I'm probably immune.  So it makes sense for me to be here, just in case I'm only immune because I'm some kind of freak."

He grins.

"My mother always told me there was something wrong with my head.  Maybe she was right, but not the way she thought?"

"GraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAwr," Juragga comments.

Do you want me to look?

Shard grins at Jalt.  "Yeah, good plan.  And your mother?  She was right, Jalt; I've seen you fly under pressure, nobody is that good if they aren't crazy to start with." Her gaze flicks toward Juragga, appraisingly.  "Well, setting aside the fact that if you go bonkers from whatever is in that box, we're in serous trouble, I don't think it's a bad idea for you to try as well.  As long as we can make sure you won't wreck the place or cripple all of us."

She purses her lips.  "Come to think of it, maybe it's not such a bad idea for all of us to have some kind of...checks on us when we look in that thing."

Rhijans' face showed the unease that crept into his voice.  "I think it's a good idea for whoever opens it to have something that keeps them in check...just in case.  But I'm not sure it's a good idea to have all of us take turns opening it."  He didn't explain further...but he was still coming to grips with the notion that the Force was not just some lingering ancient superstition.  The prospect of exposing himself to some...thing...that apparently used the Force to speak directly to a person's mind was a little too foreign for his comfort...not to mention invasive.

Shard fires a look at Rhijans, then sharply nods. "Good point.  Choice, then, and we don't need everyone to look in it." Her lips purse in a thoughtful moue for an instant. "In fact...it's probably better we don't.  If this thing has lingering effects, that might be disastrous.  We should probably keep the, erm, test pool to a small one." 

It's not, in fact, an attempt to spare Rhijans; while Shard recognizes the concern on his face (though it comes as a surprise), she hasn't connected it to any worry about himself on a personal level.  Rhijans?  No.  Instead, it has her thinking about what might be his concern.

A nod of thanks to Shard for the compliment.

"Like I said, it didn't affect me the first time.  But I didn't really look at it, so I can't even describe what it looked like.  I just needed to know where to kick to close the lid, so I focussed on that.  I think it was some kind of jewel, about the size of a fist, or a bit smaller.  Maybe."

"I can describe the lid in detail though.  I came at it from that side, and the lid partly hid the thing.  Plus I was concentrating on closing it fast - I could see it was making Haarmon sick.  But it didn't affect me, so far as I could tell, so I'm prepared to take a proper look."

Jalt hesitates for a second, "But if somebody else wants to be the one, I'll back down."

With no apparent objections, Jalt crouches beside the box.  The lid isn't properly close and moves with the lightest touch.  The pilot removes his hand and looks around the room.  "Last chance to  tell me to space the thing... "

"Hang on."  Shard checks Jalt for a blaster - if he has one, she removes it.  "Juragga, maybe get behind him, but don't look in the box."  Another thought, and she pulls the metal cylinder off her belt. "Don't know if this thing can just go after people with a little training, so..." That said, she slips the lightsaber into a locker, pausing to cock an eyebrow at Haarmon.

No objections yet, so she figures he's good with it.

"Okay," Shard sighs, putting her own blaster in the locker along with the murderstick.  "I suppose I'm ready."

Her fingers only tremble a touch.

Rhijans wasn't obvious about it...but his stance shifted slightly, his hand resting on the butt of his blaster.  He'd very much have preferred doing this somewhere else...where lives wouldn't be lost with a flip of the wrong switch, and where he didn't have to be present, because it made the small hairs on his neck stand up.

But if everyone else was determined to try it...and, apparently, they were...he'd stand ready to intercede if things started going wrong.

With preparations completed, and everybody in their chosen place, Jalt opens the unlocked box again...

Juragga leans in, squints his teal eyes, and then huffs.

"WaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAArgh," he commented.

What's the big deal.  It's a little crystal pyramid.

Rhijans' eyes narrowed as he saw into the box...but they didn't stay there long.  He still couldn't understand the Wookiee, so he didn't realize Juragga had seen the same thing he did...but satisfied that the thing in the box presented a minimal physical threat, he began watching the others in the group to see if it presented some other kind of threat.

Whatever it was, it didn't seem to have much effect on him...and for that, he was actually quite relieved.

"Holochron..." Shard whispers as the crystal becomes visible.  For an instant, she's hearing the words of her teacher, and for once doesn't discount them.  Ice fills her veins, fear thickens her throat.

"Shut the box!" she snaps.  If Jalt doesn't comply, she lunges forward and slams the lid herself, making cursed sure to keep from touching the crystal.

OOC - Short post, but I want to make certain whether or not this happens before Shard starts blabbing.  :)

Jalt hesitates, for what seems like an eternity and a half, but is probably closer to about a half second.

Then the lid slams closed with a bang.

As an afterthought, he presses the stud to lock it.  "Right.  What was all that about?"

Shard sags against the wall, grimacing.  She can almost taste the feeling on her tongue, a bitumen slick of anger.  "Thanks, Jalt.  That's..."  Both hands through her hair this time, eyes closed.  "Close one," she croaks.  "Maybe."

Her head comes up.  "What was it about.  That...thing...is a holocron.  Back in the day, the Jedi discovered crystals they could use to make, erm, call it recording devices that were attuned to a certain kind of energy field." She sighs. "The Force.  They used them to store important data, knowledge, lessons, that kind of thing."

A shrug.  "Or so my teacher told me."

Sliding down the wall, she sits on her haunches.  "Now, he showed me images, told me about them...Jedi holocrons were cubes.  That?  That was a pyramid," she unnecessarily states.  "The Jedi were sticklers for doing things in a specific way, so I'm betting it's not a Jedi holocron."

Her lips twist - not quite grimace, not quite frown. "And...I'm guessing nobody else felt this?  I could practically smell the anger radiating off it.  Between that, the colour?  My guess is it's a Sith artifact."

Shard's voice drops to almost a whisper. "My teacher...he once told me Sith holocrons were dangerous.  Full of all kinds of void-cursed knowledge about that dangerous side of the Force, the one that changes people...or maybe unlocks the uncaring, 'center of the universe' we all have buried in us."  Her haunted gaze rises, and she stares at Haarmon.  "He also said they held the minds of the Sith who made them."

Another scrub of the hair.  "I didn't ever put much stock in it.  But...with what Haarmon says, with what I felt?"

Haarmon took a step closer to Shard. It was also a step between her and the box. His hand had fallen to the butt of his pistol (something that hadn't happened in weeks). He was aware of none of these things.

"I didn't feel anything that time. Just frustrated whispering."

A pause.

"Did it talk to you?"

Rhijans didn't feel anything in particular from the thing in the box...but there was no mistaking the impact it had on Shard.  "That would explain what it said to Haarmon...about teaching him things the Jedi couldn't.  I guess, anyway..."  His entire life, the Force had been a myth...Jedi were folklore, at best, and at worst they were self-deluded frauds.  He'd hardly even heard of Sith before getting in with the Alliance.

But he'd worked with Shard long enough to have faith in her judgment.  And to recognize signs of very real stress on her countenance...

"So, examining it later would be a bad idea, then...?"

Juragga roared in disgust.  We should dump it into a nearby star, he commented.

It must sound crazy.  She must sound crazy.  Hesitant to look around, Shard stares into her hands.  Haarmon shifts a touch closer, notes what he felt, so different to her own experience.  She grimaces, but then he questions.  Not denying, not arguing, just...contrasting.  Rhijans?  The bounty-hunter sounds thoughtful, rather than scornful.

She can't help but grin at Juragga's reaction; the smile is a shaky thing, but real.

"No voice, no whispering, but...I wasn't really close to it.  Or holding the box.  Or anything."  She stumbles through the explanation, searching for some kind of thread to grasp. "Only my feelings of its...feelings."  Hard to say, about a glowing crystal.  "And while I only have my teacher's word about such things, I know enough about the situation between them and the Sith to figure anything Sith probably isn't good news."  A snort.  "I'm none-too-fond of a lot of the Jedi stuff as well, but that's neither here nor there.  Sith were a nasty lot - as I understand their entire philosophy was 'strong rule, weak serve or die'."

Finally, she looks up, studying all of the faces around her.  Jalt, Juragga, Rhijans, Haarmon.... "Part of me wants to keep it.  Knowledge shouldn't be lost, all of that.  But.  I think it's too dangerous."

"I'd buy that explanation.  I've heard stories, and a lot of them are weirder than some haunted crystal."  Jalt shrugs, "I mean, I've heard of droids that got wiped, and then developed the same personality they had before.  Including holding a grudge against the person who ordered the wipe."

"Or space slugs big enough to grab hold of a ship and swallow it."

"So this... " and he gestures towards the box, "... what did you call it?  A holocron?  Well that just doesn't seem that far fetched."

"The real question is, what should we do with it?"

"RAAAAAAAAAUUUUrrrgh!!!" Juragga repeated.

Dump it into a nearby star!

Haarmon made a sour face and said nothing. In truth, he didn't think he was in the proper frame of mind to be involved in this decision. A sizable part of him still regretted telling anyone about it. And a goodly portion wanted to just grab it and go lock himself in the bathroom (well, maybe not in the bathroom - it was still a mess in there) and...

...he wasn't even sure what he wanted to DO with it. Just have it. All to himself. Secret and secure.

And none of those were healthy instincts. Or constructive ones.

He shared Shard's reluctance to destroy it. He had a computer nerd's desire to save everything. And the deepest part of him still thought of knowledge, raw data, as an absolute good (and only the uses its put to can be bad).

But nothing about this thing was good. And it had gotten its way all up inside him in a bad way.

Then he had a thought.

"Is there...." a pause, "Is it, like..." a dry chuckle, "Is it, you know? Magic?"

Shook his head.

"Not MAGIC, but, like, it has to have a program, of some kind, right? Like, it's basically a driod all tarted up to SEEM like an evil space wizard. Right? There can't be, like, a PERON in there? Can there?"

A pause. A long pause.

"What I'm saying is, could we, like, download it? Strip the data and kill the evil wizard? You know?"

He took a half step closer to hit. He wasn't even aware he'd moved. His eyes and face were alive and excited. He wasn't even aware he'd moved.

"Like, I bet could get into the insides of it. Decode it. Even the most sophisticated program is just a series of steps. And it's not the DATA that's off, it's the interface, right? The super-Sith-sign-up-sheet. But what if I could find out everything it knows without having to go through the interface?"

He was close now. His excitement narrowed and grew still. His eyes locked on the box.

"Yeah. I bet I could. Go in the backdoor. Siphon out all the knowledge. Then I could know everything it knows. And no danger to anyone."

Almost touching it.

Support, of a kind, from Jalt - he doesn't know anything of this specifically, but has seen weirder in his time, apparently.  So that's four for four, and the relief is immense.  The idea of the team, of any of the team, thinking that she has gone around the bend is anathema to Shard.  They're too important.

A wince, then, as Juragga repeats himself.  "I'm heading in that direction myself," the older woman mutters.

Then Haarmon.

Shard watches, first with curiosity, then concern, as Haarmon closes in on the box.  Her teeth set as he speaks his final words.  Fear and anger bubble up within, and for once she listens to her teacher's voice.  Partly.  Calm is needed here, but calm without arrogance.

"It imprints a mind.  Is it the same mind?  Is it the Sith themselves?"  Thinner than paper, her smile. "The Jedi believed it.  But even if it isn't, does it make a difference?"

She leans forward.  "But I'll run with it.  Let's say you're right.  Let's say that you can dredge the information out of there, Haarmon.  Now you have information that ancient Sith used.  Ancient Sith who embraced the kind of minset that Ghea Nimmada embodies, who viewed the weak as either servants or target practice.  Sith whose idea of a good 'master-student' relationship was the student trying to surpass the master and kill her to prove they had what it took."

Her voice lowers. "All of the Jedi methods of accessing the Force, for attuning themselves to the energy patterns, they use the calm, empty feeling.  The Sith?  They tended to draw on that part of the energy pattern that seemed to either enhance their selfish, uncaring mindset or even create it in them.  Their methods, their techniques, all of that will be based on those methods: the channeling of hate, of pain, of rage."

"I've tasted that once."  Shard closes her eyes for a moment, remembering the screams, the smell of burn, the hatred filling her.  "It's real."

Her hand rises and points at potentially Haarmon's new teacher. "Whatever knowledge it has will be what you have.  And maybe you'll need to follow the same methods."

Standing, Shard moves Haarmon; it's too close to the box, a Rimbesman handspider lurking in the corner of her vision.  It's hard to ignore. "Haarmon...the danger will be to you." She locks her eyes with his, willing him to look away from the box, a tiny coffin for a dead mind. "That's your choice.  I believe everyone gets a choice.  It's just...I'm your teacher.  And I'm your friend.  I cursed well care!  And I'm begging you, please."

"Please don't."
This message was last edited by the player at 17:04, Tue 17 Oct 2017.

That stopped him pretty much dead. Shard didn't do a lot of begging. He blinked and shook his head and realized where he was standing and took two, three steps back and his body language sort of deflated.

He rubbed his hands against his tunic with his mouth a tight line, as though they were dirty or oily.

He took a moment to think. To really think. He knew he should take her word for it. She knew more than he did. She was the teacher and all. But he also knew that sometimes people who knew more used that knowledge to lock out other options. The DATA was an absolute good, But it could be misused.

"But. You said. That. You didn't know if the Dark Side created the anger, or the anger called to the Dark. You said it's about intent. Right? Why we do what we do? And other than that, it's a skill? Right? The breathing and the visualizing. Even the void-cursed pull-ups. Skills. And intentions. That's the two pieces. Right?"

A pause.

"So. I'll grant the Evil Space Wizard is too smart for me. And MAYBE even too smart for you. Maybe. But the skills are the skills. No? And our intentions are good? Aren't they? And if the Jedi were too much the one, and these Sith were too much the other, then the answer is something in between? No? And isn't that the balance? Skills on the one hand and intentions on the other?"

Another pause.

"Or are these two completely different activities? Two sets of skills?"

He shakes his head. Steps away again. Takes a deep breath.

"Look. I'm all about choices, but I don't have enough information to make this decision. Tell me what to do, Teacher, and I'll do it. I trust you."

Rhijans tensed, almost imperceptibly, as Haarmon approached the box.  The words were vintage Haarmon...'Let me play with it and see what I can find out...'  But the behavior was...off, somehow.  It made him feel like he was watching a spice addict trying to say no to the next hit.  He didn't know much about the Force...even less about Jedi, and still less about Sith.  But Shard did.  Maybe not a lot, to judge by her words, but she knew far more than he did.  And she thought the thing in the box was bad news.

His hand eased to the grip of his blaster...and then relaxed slightly as Shard pulled Haarmon back, and then as Haarmon backed up further on his own.  "We need someone with more knowledge to tell us how to use it," he intoned, emotionlessly.  "Doesn't look to be any kind of dataport on that thing, Haarmon...how are you gonna download it?  Keep in mind that last time you had the open box in your hands, you were basically a drooling heap on the floor...Jalt thought you were dying."  Cold, clinical analysis...no disparaging overtones tainted his words.  "Seems like it'd be pretty difficult to siphon data if the thing renders you catatonic when you touch it."

He still didn't understand Wookiee, but he'd been around Juragga enough to read enough body language, and understood that the Wookiee did NOT like the thing, either.  "I don't know what to do with it...but right now, my gut instinct is to do as little as possible.  Close it up and keep it quiet until we can find someone who knows more about it than us, and knows how to use it properly."

Juragga's body language was agitated as the interplay occurred.  His teal eyes narrowed as Rhijans' hand hovered near his blaster.  He didn't want the kid to grab the thing either.  But for a moment he prepared to throw his body between Rhijans and Haarmon, if the gunslinger drew, to take the shot for the kid.

But thankfully that didn't happen.

"GRROOOWWwwwr," he snarled.  Striding forward, he reached out with both paws and grabbed the thing, lifting it clear.  He pivoted on heel... his eyes canting towards the airlock.

Rhijans couldn't understand Wookiee language...but body language was pretty universal among bipedal sentient species, and Juragga's message wasn't hard to figure out.  "Or, yeah...sling it out an airlock.  But we should do that in a place where it can't lure someone else in to get it.  If this thing's as bad as Shard makes it sound, we need to make sure someone like Nimadda can't get it, more than we need to try and figure out what it might teach any of us."  He sounded (on the surface, at least) completely unsurprised that Juragga was ready to get rid of it.

But one thing he'd learned was, as dangerous as an item might be in the hands of a novice, it was infinitely more dangerous in the hands of someone who knew how to use it.  And it didn't sit right with him to just leave something THAT potentially dangerous out where someone might stumble across it, similarly to how they had...and take it back to Nimadda.  Or someone worse...

Shard grimaces at Haarmon's questions. "The Space Wizard -" sure, why not? "- is probably too smart for me, too, Haarmon.  I just heard things about the Sith which you haven't, is all."  It's easy to see the turmoil in him, the conflict, but...is that the cause of the box?  Or is it Haarmon?  Because if it is...

...she understands.

Especially when he continues with his queries.  Her response starts with a dry, strained chuckle.  "You've just proved yourself smarter than me.  Like I said, I learn from you as well, Haarmon.  Yes, it's about intent.  So maybe there's stuff in the box we could learn."

And Rhijans cuts in with some questions and logic of his own.  "Probably need to go through 'speaking' with the Sith mind inside it," Shard mutters.  "If anyone could find a way around that, it would be Haarmon, but while he was trying?  I don't like the idea of that thing having access to anyone's brain."

She's about to continue when, whoosh, the box is gone, snatched away by Juragga with the intent of dumping it out the window, so to speak.  Rhijans, with his customary calm speed, is already all over that.  And, like him, Shard isn't thinking that Juragga is wrong, just that they need to decide HOW.

"Let's just not toss it quite yet."

While the bounty hunter deals with that, she returns her attention to Haarmon.

"There are...some exceptions, as I understand.  There are some abilities, some skills, that draw directly from that side of the Force that the Jedi called Dark.  They're like..." Again, she sketches in the air, helplessly.  "Manifestations, I guess, of its energy.  And dangerous to use.  They open you up to that energy.  And I don't know how to stop that.  Or even recognize the one kind from the other, until I try."

Sagging in place, Shard shakes her head.  "I'm a poor teacher, Haarmon.  I never finished the Jedi training, and I'm muddling my through on my own path.  But you know that.  This box?  It would be a much, much better instructor.  With it, you'd probably learn how to cloud minds, to throw around stuff without touching it, maybe even to speed up other people's healing." She shakes her head.  "The problem is...even if you circumvent that thing, you'd be walking a minefield, one through which I am no guide."

Both her hands rise to grip his shoulders.  "And I don't want you to do that; not because I doubt you, but because I'm afraid of what will happen if you make a mistake.  Just one, and we all misstep.  But I can't choose for you, in the end.  I won't."

"I'm your teacher, not your master."

Fingers slowly open, and she lets her hand fall.  Shard closes her eyes.  "And whatever you choose, I'll support that." 

She won't be Nimadda...but, void help her, Shard won't be her mentor, either.

And at that precise moment, there is a harsh buzzing sound from the cockpit.  Jalt curses under his breath and then, in a louder voice, adds, "Collision warning!" as he turns on one heel and heads for his pilot position, where he starts scanning the displays for any sign of whatever triggered the alarm.

After about a  couple of seconds, the Bantha makes a radical course correction which causes deep vibrations from the drives to reverberate through the hull.  Somewhere inside the ship something falls and breaks with a loud crash.

At Jalt's declaration of what the alarm was, Rhijans immediately found a seat and braced himself for an impact...which, apparently, wasn't going to happen.  At least, not just yet.  "What is it?" he called out...debated for a moment, then started toward the cockpit, in a walking stance that gave him better stability in the event of more sudden course corrections.

They were flying out of an asteroid field, so it was entirely possible that it was just a relatively innocuous chunk of debris...but they'd flown into the asteroid field because they picked up a distress signal.  If they picked it up, someone else could have.  Someone like pirates...or the Empire...

If that was the case, their fate was largely in Jalt's hands, for the time being.

Juragga roared in dismay, and - caught mid-step - toppled backwards, heels flying, the mysterious Sith Holocron clattering to the deck and skidding across the floor.

"Mind the cursed box!" Shard snaps, as fear spikes through her.  It's a box.  It's a recording.  But it's not just that, it's a holocron made from force-sensitive crystals capturing a Sith mind.

Is it possible that the holocron is what caused the potential collision, to prevent Juragga's action?

Grabbing hold of...whatever solid object she can, really, including Juragga if necessary, she attempts to get one foot on top of the box to keep it from sliding into something.  And breaking.

'Release' is suddenly a really ugly word.

"It looks like... " Jalt calls back, then hesitates, "... about half of a star destroyer, or something.  Big anyway.  I noticed it earlier, but it was drifting away from us then, so I ignored it.  Now something made it decide to head for us."

"It's not under power, and every sense the Bantha has says it's dead, and cold as anything else around here.  So I have no clue how it could change course.  Luckily it doesn't seem very maneuverable, so it was easy enough to avoid.  In fact it's just going in a straight line."

Jalt thinks for a few seconds, then, "It's like someone just gave it a push, then forgot about it."

Haarmon squeezed himself into the nearest niche in the bulkheads as fast an as hard as he could and held on for dear life. He went white when the box went flying and whiter when Shard reached out to it. He wanted to jump and push her away, certain that, somehow, for some reason, it wanted her to touch it.

And then what Jalt said, somehow, made it worse.

"That's not... that can't... is that... space-wizard stuff?" He asked about the idea of someone giving half a dead Star Destroyer a push.

Still struggling, Shard catches Haarmon's question.

It's a valid question.  And from what Jalt said, that's one heck of a piece of debris to push around.  She has neither seen nor heard of anyone affecting that size of object with the Force.

And yet.  And yet.

"I would say it's a tad bit of a coincidence to just disregard as a possibility!" she cries back, still hoping to get the cursed box under control.  With her foot, not her hands.

Rhijans scowled.  "Would that chunk of debris be large enough to wreck those ships we saw downed on the asteroid?" he asked.  It was unfamiliar territory...in every way...yet instinct made him look for connections between highly unlikely events in such close proximity.

The rumor had said the ship that disappeared carried something the Republic (or what had remained of it, those who'd seceded before Palpatine declared what was left to be the Galactic Empire) had hoped might prove to be useful against the rising waves of Imperial forces.  What that might be, he couldn't imagine...he thought on small-scale, tactical terms, and didn't understand enough about the grand scale of interstellar warfare to have any notion what might swing the balance.  But something with that kind of power could, conceivably, still be operational after all this time...
This message was last edited by the player at 07:11, Thu 26 Oct 2017.

Jalt still remains at the controls, and does some quick estimates, "Easily."  Then another idea strikes him, "Or whatever was strong enough to move that could have just nudged them into a collision course with the rock.  That'd explain why there were so many wrecks down there."

"I'm going to take us out of the system, out of range.  Then I really think somebody needs to wake Kourene."

"Don't bother, I'm already awake.  What in the Void is going on?"

The Colonel is standing in the doorway, glaring pointedly at the box pinned under Shard's foot.  "And what's that thing?"

Rhijans turned with a crisp, not-military turn.  "We picked up a distress beacon and followed it into this asteroid field, which we're now leaving.  Couldn't find the particular vessel that was sending the beacon, because the signal was coming from an asteroid that was covered with wreckage, looked like multiple ships.  We had the astromech droid go out and retrieve what we thought was the transmitter..." He gestured down at the box.

"It was something else...Shard can explain it a lot better than I can...I don't know Force stuff..."  It was a credit to how far his attitude about the Force had shifted that he managed to not sound the least bit skeptical in his reference to it.

Juragga did his best to right himself, and leaning on the archway, pry himself to his feet.  He glanced to the Sith Holocron, and leaned down to pick it up... unless Shard stopped him.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAgh?" he gruffed. What the hell's going on?

Pleased that the box is now under SLIGHTLY better control, Shard shoves it up against the bulkhead and pins it there.  "Juragga, I think we'd better leave this thing sitting where it is," she cautions.  "At least until we get out of here.  I think...we've gotten into it pretty deep, now."

How do they get rid of something with that kind of power, when it objects - strenuously - to its disposal?

Kourene arrives, Rhijans explains, tossing her the ball.  Shard fields it.  "It's a holocron.  A...memory unit, something the Jedi and Sith used to make.  This one seems to contain a mind.  A memory overlay, if you want to go that route.  It's Sith, it's awake, and it's void-cursed pissed off."

Her lips twist in something that isn't quite a smile.  "It gets worse, as well.  Seems it can affect the area around it, and has strong objections to disposal."  An idea comes to her, and she holds up a cautioning hand. "Let's not think about shooting it before it knows what's happening."

Potential disaster, there.

The ship lurches suddenly, as Jalt triggers the hyperdrive.  "Right, we're clear of Cadruc.  I calculated a jump that'll drop us in interstellar space, far enough from any systems that we'll be impossible to find."

"I had to do it fast, though, so hopefully we won't hit anything on the way there."

Kourene scowls, "Captain Jalt.  Can you join us, if you have a little time."

The Colonel closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb.

"I know about the Sith.  I fought alongside Jedi during the fall of the Republic, and I... I heard some really nasty stories.  I don't want that thing anywhere near Mothessh.  So, any ideas for disposing of it?  For that matter, is it safe for us to be talking about it like this?"

And then he smiles a rueful smile, "I suppose it's a bit late to be asking if it's safe."

Rhijans shrugged.  For all the fear being expressed, it was, still, just a box (to him).  How much trouble could it cause, actually, if no one opened it?

"A close fly-by of a star and jettison it like refuse...let the star's gravity and fusion do the job."  He looked around, adding, "Even if it is, somehow, strong enough to resist destruction from the gravity, heat, and fusion, how would anyone manage to retrieve it?"

Juragga hooted his support of Rhihans' idea!

"I can't think of anything that could survive falling into a sun." Khourene agrees, "Even something that's potentially been around for a long time."

He looks at the pinned container for a long moment, "The box doesn't look that old though.  Where did you find it again?"

There is another jolt, as the Bantha drops out of hyperspace, and Jalt's voice comes over the internal comms, "We should be fine here.  We're outside the system, and there's nothing bigger than a grain of dirt for at least a million kilometres in any direction."

"I'll be right there Colonel."

Rhijans explained, more carefully, "Jalt's hyperspace jump after your rescue put us at the edge of that asteroid field, and we picked up a distress beacon.  So we went looking for it.  The beacon led us to a particular asteroid that was covered with wreckage...looked like it could have been multiple ships.  The Artoo unit locked onto the signal, went out...and brought this back."  He shrugged.  "Beyond that, we don't know much..."

He gave a curt nod to himself, recalling something.  "The ship's name, on the beacon, was Phoenix Ascendant.  It sounds familiar, somehow...something I heard somewhere, about an old ship...but I don't recall any specifics."
This message was last edited by the player at 01:39, Fri 03 Nov 2017.

Khourene pales, and leans against the bulkhead.

"That's a name I've not heard in a long time."

"Twenty years, give or take."  The Colonel pushes away from the wall, and moves unsteadily to where he can take a seat.

"It was during the Clone Wars.  The Separatists got wind of something they could use to fight the Republic - a lost weapon or tool of some sort - and they put a considerable effort into searching for it.  Naturally the Republic tried to find it first.  The Republic had an advantage though - records showed that it had been placed aboard a ship about a couple of hundred years ago, to be transported to a secret location."

"That ship was Phoenix Ascendant, and somewhere on its mission it just vanished.  Following the planned course turned up no sign of it.  Everyone just assumed that the ship had exploded, or a nav error had taken it into a star, or something."

"So it's a Separatist space wizard? Politics is complicated."

Haarmon was keeping a close eye on the box too.

Juragga huffed.  He remembered those days, and said as much.  In Wookiee.

Then he suggested, warbling in a hooting tongue, that if the Rebellion had more Wookiee warriors like himself, they could stand better.  He mentions the loss of his family, and the others taken by the Empire.

Finally he deflates and adds simply that he'll do whatever he can.  No matter the cost.

Rhijans shrugged slightly at the news.  His world had been largely unaffected by the conflict between Separatists and the Republic...no strategic or economic value to speak of, so the war had been Somebody Else's Problem that only marginally impacted life in any way...aside from being the catalyst for the rise of the Empire.  That had impacted life significantly...

He'd spent enough time overhearing conversations to know that the Alliance had sprung from the last elements of the Republic...and a little mental math led to...

"Well...if this is what the Separatists were looking for, sounds like a pretty good reason to destroy it.  The Empire's already done a pretty hefty number of the Republic as it is...leaving them additional weapons to finish the job faster just seems...well...suicidal, really."

Kourene smiles, "The Separatists weren't the real enemy, as it turned out.  They were a diversion, drawing attention away from the true enemy that was growing in the heart of the Republic.  Oh, I've no doubt that they believed in themselves, but while the Republic was fighting them, the Empire grew inside the Republic."

"But you're right... this thing needs to be destroyed.  Or put were the Empire can't find it.  Preferably where nobody can."

Jalt enters the room, "The good thing is that it looks like closing the box seals the thing in, at least that's how it seems.  It was trying to do something to Haarmon, but it stopped as soon as I kicked the lid shut.  I think we're safe as long as the lid's closed."

Rhijans nodded.  "Then I say we keep it closed, and set course for a really hot star that's off the common space lanes.  Dump it when we get there and let gravity and fusion do the job for us."  He shrugged.

"Pretty sure we can keep it closed long enough to accomplish that."

"Then that's what we'll do.  Drop it where nobody will find it."

"Flis" Jalt says, "Hot star, not prone to flares, so anything we throw in won't get blown out again.  That the sort of thing you want?"

"No, not Flis." Kourene responds.  "It's an Imperial world.  Got a garrison stationed there that outnumbers the civilian population."

The Colonel ponders briefly, then, "Yakusant.  Hardly anybody in the system, and it's not usual for Imperials to go there.  And it's Tfalta Dawl's home.  She can keep an eye on things for us."

Jalt nods.  "I'll go and run the course calculations for Yakusant then.  Shouldn't take long."

As he leaves, Kourene's face falls into a thoughtful frown.  "The tricky part will be getting this thing into the star.  Any suggestions for delivering it from a safe distance?"

Rhijans shrugged.  "Strap it on a rocket or something?  Don't know if Jalt's got any kind of missile launcher on board.  I figure if we fly in as close as possible to the gravity well and eject the refuse...take a vector that sends the refuse toward the star...even if someone else happens to realize what we're doing, by the time they could get there, it would be far enough into the gravity well that they couldn't get in to retrieve it, and make it back out again."  His face quirked in something that could, maybe, be construed to be a hint of a grin.

"But nobody should have any idea that we're there, much less what we're doing."

"That... could work." the Colonel says, with a thoughtful nod.  "And I honestly don't think anybody will see us.  Jalt's a smuggler, an expert at avoiding detection.  Plus Yakusant... well, it's not exactly the Galaxy's busiest system.  The chances of our being spotted are minimal, in my opinion."

More thinking, then, "Even if the Bantha can't launch missiles, we can put the box into the trash, get close to the star and jettison the trash in that general direction, and on a vector that will carry it in.  Slower than a missile, but it should work well enough.  Plus it would look more like garbage disposal, rather than trying to hide something."

Haarmon listened and did his best to follow along. He was mildly interested in the political history of the Empire, and very interested in the ultimate fate of the box, but all the same he found his focus slipping away from him more often than not. He wasn't the most focused guy most of the time anyway, but this was different.

And then he realized something. And was worried. And that was when he realized he was toying with the idea of somehow pretending to destroy it, but really keeping it for himself, keeping it secret, keeping it safe.

And he couldn't tell if it was his own thoughts, or.... you know... not.

"The faster we're rid of it the better," he said, "Tell me how I can help."

Juragga hooted his agreement. Destroy it quickly, he urged.  The longer it remains, the greater the danger.

"Agreed" Kourene nods grimly, "We don't keep this thing hanging about.  If it can do what Shard says, then it's just too dangerous.  And we can't afford to hold onto it on the off-chance that she might be wrong."

He glances at Shard apologetically, "Not that I think you are."

"We take this thing to Yakusant and drop it into the sun.  Use a missile if we can, otherwise just momentum and gravity if we can't.  And we don't let anybody stop it from happening.  Are we clear?"

"Perfectly," Rhijans replied.  Even if I have to strap on that vac-suit again and throw it from the hull...  He didn't say it...but between his tone of voice and expression, it wasn't hard to pick up the general sentiment, if not the exact words...

"Yakusant, here we come." Jalt reports over the internal comms, and there is a jolt as the ship makes the jump to lightspeed.  Beyond the cockpit windows, the stars streak out into thin lines of light, before vanishing, to be replaced by random blobs of light, energy patterns glowing faintly in hyperspace...

"I'm going to interrogate the prisoner.  If our protocol droid has left him capable of speaking."  Kourene grins grimly, and sets off towards the medical bay, where UY-3PO is guarding the prisoner...

Rhijans grimaced slightly.  "Pretty sure he can still talk.  You-Why seems pretty enthusiastic for interrogation, but he's also very efficient, in my experience...and he did have pretty clear instructions that the Imperial was to be left unharmed, as long as he behaved."  He made no comment about the options if their 'guest' had decided to push his luck...

With a Wookiee warble, Juragga offered to help... incentivize... the prisoner to speak if You-Why's abilities were insufficient.

Juragga follows Kourene through to the medical bay, where they find the prisoner bound to one of the diagnostic couches.  You-Why hovers nearby, seemingly studying a case of medical instruments.  The tech eyes the droid with bulging eyes.  The protocol droid picks an item out of the case, and holds it up before his optical sensors.

And.  Then.  He.  Laughs.  A cold, mechanical laugh, with little of humour in it.

"Make him stop!" the tech pleads, turning his attention to Kourene, "I'll tell you anything, but make him stop!"

Still in the room with Rhijans, Haarmon, and the box, Shard turns as R2-O0 passes though.  "Wait Artoo.  Can you weld this closed, so it can't be opened again with the lock?"

The astromech unit whistles affirmatively.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:38, Mon 11 Dec 2017.

The R2 unit waits for shard to remove her foot from the top of the box, then drags it away from the bulkhead.  He starts welding around the lid - all sides - before using welding torch to  burn the lock, filling the air with the stink of scorched and melted circuitry.

A self-satisfied whistle indicates a successful operation.  The holochron is sealed away, short of somebody, or something, taking the box apart.

Kourene looks at the prisoner, then at You-Why.  "What's been going on?"

The protocol droid carefully lays the instrument back in the case.  "Nothing has been going on, Sir.  Not yet."

Rhijans gave a tight-lipped smirk as he listened outside the medical bay where their 'guest' had been under watch.  The implications of a protocol droid with a sadistic streak were concerning, yes...but, for now, Rhijans could appreciate the way the droid had subtly scared the Imperial into ready submission.

He glanced over at the holochron.  "Once those welds cool off, Juragga, you're probably the best one to hang onto that.  Nobody's lifting off you without a fight..."  He didn't figure it was likely that anyone would try to steal it...thus far, they were the only ones who knew where it was, to the best of his knowledge.  Shard wanted nothing to do with it, obviously...and Haarmon, while not as vehement in rejecting it, had followed her lead pretty readily.  But it didn't hurt to prepare for the unexpected...

Juragga woofed an affirmative, ready to take upon himself the task of being the holocron's guardian.

"Here's the thing." Kourene replies, "I'm not sure that you, being just s tech, would have any information that would make it worth my while ordering him to stop."

"You'll need to convince me that you do before I say anything to him."

"Right.  Right... "  The tech ponders for a moment.  Then... "They don't tell me everything, I'm just a tech.  I get ignored a lot.  I've been in rooms where  senior officers have been discussing a new weapon... "

"Yes, we know about that.  It's been destroyed."

"No, I mean yes.  It was destroyed, but that was basically just a prototype.  Proof of concept.  They started work on an improved version before the first was even finished."

Another pause, before he continues, "And Os,  I was on a ship that picked up supplies of Agrocite at Os earlier this year.  It's stored in an underwater facility there."

Rhijans spoke up from outside the medbay, moving in as he spoke.  "Do you actually know where this storage facility is?  That's a lot of planet to search for something underwater..."  Agrocite could make an attractive target...either to steal for the Alliance, or to destroy and deny the Imperials use of it.

"And just where is this other weapon being built?"  Hearing a rumor of such targets was one thing...having solid, actionable intel on them was another, altogether.

Kourene bangs his hand down on the table, "Osmur!  The construction project at Osmur that was sabotaged.*"

"Yes, Osmur.  But if it's been sabotaged then it won't be there any longer.  The project will have been moved, or abandoned.  I know nothing more about it."  The tech looks dismayed.  Whether it is because one of his bargaining chips has been rendered null and void, or because he's shocked to hear that the Imperial weapon project has been sabotaged, isn't entirely clear.  But...

"Os, however... that I can help with, I think.  The ship I was in landed on the northern hemisphere, on a floating city at the eastern end of an island chain.  One of the bridge crew mentioned that the location had been chosen because of a deep trench in the ocean floor nearby."


* link to a message in this game

"Void.  They're still working on the superweapon?"  Shard struggles not to groan; of course it wouldn't be that easy.  "If they've moved, abandoned Osmur, it's still possible the underwater facility might have some kind of information or somesuch.".

Pacing back and forth, the older woman thinks furiously. "Which means someone needs to go back," she muses. "Which likely means us.  Under stealth, this time."  Her smile is strained.  "I don't think me posing as Ghea Nimadda is going to work twice."

Haarmon groaned internally. He liked it most when things came at him one at a time. But that didn't seem to be the way things worked out here.

"So we, uh, do the thing with the sun at Os? Or do that now and then head over?"

Rhijans wasn't in any doubt about priorities.  "Get rid of the box now...as remotely as practical, don't take it with us anywhere there might be a strong Imperial presence."  It was as much as he was willing to say in front of an Imperial prisoner, even if chances of the man getting word out were highly remote.  If he did, all the Empire had to go on was that they had a box, of some kind, that they didn't want the Empire to have.  It was a long leap from that to 'some kind of recorded Sith sentience looking for an apprentice'.

"After that, I think we can worry about the agrocite.  Judging by the look on his face when Osmur was mentioned, I suspect he hasn't really stayed up to date on events there, so we'd be back to almost no useful intel, whatsoever.  We know they're still working on it...somewhere.  May not even be in this sector, anymore, since the Moff has demonstrated his inability to protect such an important project from infiltrators and saboteurs."  There was a twinkle in his eye as he spoke, that would only be noticed by someone watching him closely (and familiar with his mannerisms)...but his tone of voice was as dry and matter-of-fact as if he was discussing a maintenance list for a common transport.

"Once we're rid of the box, however, we should probably deliver our extra personnel...it won't do us much good to be dragging an Imperial along with us, and our other guest shouldn't be placed in the forefront of contact with the enemy."  Again, the cagey reluctance to let any actual solid information about Kourene's identity slip...he honestly couldn't recall, for certain, if anyone had given away the fact that their extra crewman was the commanding officer for the Alliance forces in the area...but he wasn't going to say anything to directly confirm it.

"Right.  We hide the box as planned, by putting it in a close orbit around the sun at Traposooine.  Just as we discussed."  Kourene is clearly making sure that the tech doesn't know what they intend to do with the box, or where they plan to do it.

"Once we're sure we can collect it again when we're done at Os, we can head over there and see what we can discover about this agrocite storage facility.  Maybe take it out of the picture somehow."

He shrugs, "Or make it inconvenient to use."  Then his face breaks into a smile.  "Though it occurs to me that we're aboard a freighter.  I'm sure we can liberate enough agrocite to make the visit to Os very worthwhile."

"Works for me," Shard murmurs.  Not that she's giving the orders - it's up to the colonel, really.  If he wants to go with the two birds, she's not going to argue...and does think it a fine idea, to boot.

"All right."  Marching over to the tech, she eyes him dubiously.  "You're going to live.  And we won't hand you over to You-Why.  Consider yourself a very lucky man; don't try anything foolish, and you get to stay lucky."

Turning back to the others, she spreads her hands helplessly.  "We're short the kind of setup we'd normally have going into this kind of thing - no prep for equipment, etc.  I guess we'll make do with what we have.  Anyone have a reason to wait, or shall we get started?"

Her lips purse as she considers their new 'guest'. "With the box."

"One thing at a time..." Rhijans offered.  "We can deal with the box now, no need for additional set-up.  Let's get that out of the way and then assess what we need to do for the rest."  He hadn't nodded...but he noted and appreciated Kourene's subtle misdirection.  Odds were good the tech could find a way to report back to the Empire, somehow...but all he had to report about the holocron was some mysterious reference to a box, which would be hypothetically left in near orbit around a star...except it was the wrong star, and it would be IN the star, for however long it took for the fusion reaction within the stellar mass to sunder the atomic bonds to held the whole thing together.  But if the Empire decided they wanted to investigate, near-orbit of any star left an awful lot of space to search for something as small as a box.

And if an Imperial task force suddenly turned up at THAT star, the Alliance would know there was a leak.  Yes, Rhijans decided...Kourene had thought that one out well.  "We should be there soon, unless we stop and redirect somewhere en route.  He's a little tricky that way..."  He jerked his head in the general direction of the cockpit.

"I think I know what we can do with our talkative friend here." Kourene says, smiling.

"We take his uniform and dress him in whatever else we can find, then drop him off somewhere where the Empire isn't popular, so he needs to keep a low profile if he wants to live."

"Now I know he'll probably find a way to get in contact with the Empire again eventually, but I'm hoping that by the time he does any intel he has will be out of date.  Warning them about Os will be of limited value, for example, if we've already hit Os half a year before he managed to escape."

The Colonel looks around the room.

"What do the rest of you think?"

Rhijans shrugged.  "A lot less resource-intensive than what I had in mind.  My only concern is whether him re-establishing contact potentially compromises any of us...if he's in another sector, it will be that much harder for him to relay any useful intel."  He thought for a moment, then added, "If we get access to records, and flag his personal file as a deserter, that would be really good incentive for him to just settle in with the populace and not try to reconnect with the Empire...and it would taint the credibility of anything he told them, should he manage to not get shot before he could pass word along."
This message was last edited by the player at 06:40, Fri 12 Jan 2018.