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.