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.