Shard and Juragga continue to give the TIE pilots something to think about...

The Bantha jolts as its hull scrapes against stone as it rounds a turn, and Jalt curses under his breath.  Then he raises his voice, "Hold on!" and the ship turns sharply into a cavern with barely enough clearance, the engines already ramping down.  Jalt reaches for the landing gear controls...

In the turrets, Shard and Juragga see the TIEs hurtle past the cave entrance, little more than blurred shadows...

The ship settled...and Rhijans slowly let out the breath he'd caught when Jalt had swung into the cave.  "Do we stay here?" he asked, tersely.  "Or backtrack while they don't realize we gave them the slip, and increase their search radius?  If we're going to backtrack, we should probably wait a bit for that Star Destroyer to pass overhead, so they can't see down into the canyons here..."

Haarmon tried to keep the shock out of his thoughts, and certainly off of his face, but the depth of his surprise almost certainly lit up all over both.

But he continued staring at the baby, a furrow of concentration creasing his forehead, and his mouth set in a tight, grim line.

Shard slumps against the controls of the cannon.  She fights against throwing up everything in her gut (there's precious little); it has been some time since that happened, and the last one was due more to alcohol than stress and motion sickness.  The twisting, the turning, the accel and deccel...she's older now, and combining those things with the relentless stress of the pursuit is almost too much.

A few breaths...a few breaths more...and everything starts to cool down inside her.  Turning, she stares along the tunnel between the turrets for Juragga.  "Nicely done," Shard calls.

Then she hauls her weary body out of the chair and to the ladder.

"We'll sit here quietly for a while, then we'll head back to the palace and see if we can't get the parts we need from Dargo's stores.  The only problem I can see at the moment is that the Imperials are just as hidden from us as we are from them."

The baby makes strange alien sounds, laying in Haarmon's arms.  Or maybe they're just regular baby noises - it's not like Haarmon has a lot of child rearing experience... 

Kourene releases his grip on the edges of his chair, and flexes his fingers ruefully.  "Nice flying Jalt.  I hope that the Imperials don't decide to try and just flatten the area."

Rhijans gave what passed for a grin.  "If they were going to do that, I'm pretty sure they would have just opened up on us from the start.  We've got something they want...and they want it intact. "

He leaned back in his seat.  "If we're REALLY lucky, they'll assume we got smeared along a canyon wall.  But I'm not gonna bet on that.  We're going to be here for a while, I'm sure."
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 06:24, Fri 18 Jan 2019.

Haarmon was dimly aware that there was a whole thing going on behind him, around him, and that maybe they were going to live through all this. Whatever it was. But he had no time for any of that. No bandwidth, as they say.

There was just him. And the child.

Glancing back down the tunnel of the gun well, Juragga bleated a reply.  You too.

Then, with surprising agility for one so large and bulky, he unlimbered himself from his chair and scampered down the ladder with the skill of a lifelong tree-dweller.  He met Shard in the ladder well.

The one thing that seemed to rouse Juragga from his personal misery was looking out for others.

"GRRRRRRRRRaaaaumppph," he commented. We could not have done this without you.

And, as much as she'd let him, he assisted her to an acceleration couch.

"Nah... if we're REALLY lucky the TIEs all got smashed against the walls before they reported in that they'd lost us.  That way the Imperials don't know that we just vanished."

Jalt stands and stretches.  "I'm going to see if there's anything I can do to help the Bantha hold together until she gets those replacements."

Shard and Juragga enter the rec area and find themselves places to sit.

Haarmon is still sitting there, holding the alien infant.

"I won't be much help with that.  I know a lot more about flying them than fixing them." With the ship powered down, there wasn't much Rhijans could do in the cockpit, so he followed Jalt back.

"Good shooting, you two," he said to Shard and Juragga, before turning to look at Haarmon.  "Everything okay?" he asked, a little puzzled by the expression (or lack thereof) on Haarmon's face.

"Thanks, Juragga.  Really."  Shard gratefully accepts the help, feeling strained and stretched both mentally and physically.  Wandering into the rec-room, she flops down on the couch in her 'old' spot, next to Haarmon. "Great job, Jalt!" the older woman shouts toward the cockpit, meaning it from the bottom of her heart, and eyes Rhijans thoughtfully as the bounty hunter enters.  "Most of that was Juragga," she notes.  "I need to work on my shooting.  The rest was Jalt; I was along for the ride, really.  Whichever, we made it out alive." Again.

Something is missing, and she doesn't get what until Rijans continues: Haarmon isn't talking.

Twisting in her seat, she studies the young man.  Rhijans, it appears, is correct to be concerned.  With one finger, she gently prods the slicer's arm.  "Hey.  You there?"

Haarmon, eyes still narrowed and brow still furrowed, flicked his eyes toward his teammates for a fraction of a moment and he uttered a single sibilant hiss, "SH". It was short, loud, declarative. His eyes returned to the child.

He had his hands full.

Rhijans straightened in surprise at the rebuke...but didn't say anything.  Haarmon had been a little...odd...during the incident with the Holocron--but this was something else.  He fixed his gaze on the pair, watching to see what happened...

Colonel Kourene had been about to say something, until Haarmon's rebuke cause him to close his mouth with an almost audible clicking of teeth.  He gives Rhijans and Shard a quizzical smile, and a shrug.

Clearly this isn't something he's used to, but he is prepared to wait until he understands it better.

Eyebrows raised, Shard sidles backward until she stands close to Rhijans and the colonel.  She eyes the child with some suspicion.  "So...I think we'd better wait until Haarmon starts talking again."  It's an odd thing to say, given Haarmon's normal proclivity.  Shard has some suspicions, but...Haarmon is the person to confirm them, and it doesn't look like he's in distress.

Not in the least, in fact.

Haarmon nodded, his mouth pressed into a thin line of concentration. He looked up. Blinked, shook his head. Looked around.

"Uh, the kid says she wants a glass of water. We got a sippy cup or something here on the ship?"

He looked from face to face. Like he was coming out of a deep sleep.

"Are we safe? Are we okay?"

Rhijans gave a soft sniff that could have been an amused snort.  "We're okay, yes.  Safe is another question, but at least for the moment, nobody is shooting at us and we're relatively sure they don't know where we are."  He paused for a moment, then shrugged, and added, "We still have to figure out how we're getting off this rock.  Hopefully, the Empire doesn't have enough leverage on Dargo to make him refuse to deliver the parts Jalt bargained for earlier...or for him to mobilize his people to do a more in-depth search for us.  There's probably one or two, at least, who know these canyons well enough to do a slow passage through trying to find us, if they get word about where we disappeared."

He nodded in Jalt's direction.  "Jalt was right, though...if we're really lucky, the TIE pilots crashed before they got a chance to report that they lost us.  If that's the case, then the Empire REALLY has no idea where to start looking for us.  But for now, we're out of sight, and powered down, so unless they actually get eyes down in the canyon and looking at us directly, odds are incredibly slim that they'll find us."  He grimaced inwardly...he didn't like talking about being lucky, or playing odds...he was firmly of the opinion that you made your own luck. But they'd done as much as they could, so far...for the time being, at least, it really was a matter of luck.

He looked at Jalt again.  "What all can we do to help get the Bantha as close to operational as possible?  I'm nowhere near as useful with a hydrospanner than with a blaster...but I can hold a light or carry parts or something."  He'd never had occasion to learn much about how to fix space transports...just a little training on flying them.

"She says she wants a glass of water?"  Kourene nods slowly.  "Of course she does."

Jalt seems entirely unphased.  "There are some no-spill cups in the galley storage.  One of them should do the trick.  How is it... she... talking to you?  Never mind... I'm not sure I want to know."

The pilot opens up a wall panel to reveal a diagnostic console.  "I'm going to run some scans through the systems.  If there's anything basic that can be fixed, I'll let everybody know.  Anything more complex will probably need Artoo to work on it."

"Meanwhile, if anybody wants to check outside the cave for signs of activity, that'd be great."

Rhijans nodded, resting a hand on his blaster.  "That's something I can manage...be more useful there than I would be holding tools for you."  He looked toward the entry ramp, then paused.  "Anyone coming with me?"

Juragga hooted an affirmative.  Rising, he fished up his bowcaster.

Haarmon gets up and starts rummaging through the cabinets and storage bins and drawers for a cup that he can use with the baby.

"I'm, uh, gonna hang out here. Me'n the little blighter are buds now. And I don't... think... she wants to go wandering out in the world."

He did spare a glance down at the little bundle. Just in case.

Finding a cup he filled it with room-temperature water and put the spout to her lips to see if she was okay with it.

"But, uh, yeah, she can, well, not talk. You know. But, like, think? Language at me? Sort of? It's hard to explain. And really weird. And she can read minds and such too. Pretty cool kid, all in all."

For just a moment, Juragga canted his head and looked at Haarmon.  It was a strange thing to realize that your surrogate son was now becoming a parent.  He felt a slight tingle down his spine before shaking it off.

Rhijans' reaction was, visually, not unlike Juragga's...less of a cant to his head, but a cocked eyebrow made up for it.  For a moment, he watched, unsure what to make of it all.  Haarmon was talking about stuff that was uncharted space, not only to Rhijans, but to his entire race.

Rhijans gave another shrug, and turned back to the entry.  Not all that long ago, the Force had been nothing but a myth to him, and he certainly didn't understand it now, even though he'd finally come to admit that it existed.  He doubted he'd gain any enlightenment by discussing what Haarmon had said...more likely, he'd just wind up more confused.  Just like with fixing the ship, he'd excuse himself to do something that he actually understood.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:18, Thu 31 Jan 2019.

Rhijans and Juragga move out of the ship and head for the cave entrance.  Beyond, the canyon is fairly narrow, with overhanging walls which would make it difficult for anybody in orbit to see the cave entry.  A few hundred metres along the canyon, just where it twists to the left, thick black smoke is rising from the burning wreck of a TIE fighter which is smashed against one of the walls. 

The infant accepts the water, and starts to drink it, before stopping after a second or two.    Then she starts again...

Jalt studies the display on the wall panel.  "Not too bad.  As long as Dargo doesn't try to stiff us we should be okay.  The part that I need to get from him is still our only major problem, and I'm pretty certain he won't sell us out to the Impies.  He sees them as being bad for business, so he deals with them as little as possible."

Rubbing her forehead, Shard moves up beside Jalt.  It seems the best place at the moment.  Rhijans has outlined the situation with his usual attention to detail, though the grey-skinned man seemed a touch off-put by Haarmon's explanation.  Better off-put than irritated, she supposes; perhaps, Shard considers, she should talk with him later.  Even so, he and Juragga have the situation outside well in-hand; no point in going along just to be another body.

And Haarmon is doing quiet well with the child.  A child prodigy in the Force, in fact.  Two of them, Shard considers.  How long had it taken her mentor to train her to speak mind-to-mind?  And even now, it wasn't always a sure thing.  Haarmon?  Managed it without training, and continues still, even with minimal practice.  And the baby?

A disbelieving shake of the head follows that thought.

So now she finds herself with Jalt.  "That's great for Dargo, assuming the Imperials don't just up and kill him."  They might.  "But what about you, Jalt?"  Her voice lowers slightly.  "How are you holding up?" she quietly inquires.  They've had some time.  Time to think about Dargo, themselves.

Time for Jalt to really start thinking about his brother.