A Shipping We Will Go

[Scherezade deWinter]

[member="Anna Sachae"]​

Music blared all through the Giggledust, its doors wide open to ensure the noise sounded not only within the ship, but also without. Various forms of wildlife kept their distance as the young adult slash teenager slash whatever the heck she counted as kicked and stomped the ground, looking at the pile of various metals put together into a ship almost as old as dirt that had decided to majorly malfunction.

It had not been a pretty sight. There'd been screaming, there'd been panic, there'd been a moment of relief to discover her clothes had remained dry on the inside even though there was a violent red gash on her forehead and possibly a loss of consciousness for a grand total of three seconds. For once, Scherezade felt that luck had been on her side when she'd lost the coin toss about whether or not she'd be bringing her Loth Wolf or her duck with her on this specific trip.

And then there was friggin' Endor. She'd managed to see it on the map before her systems went down. Stupid planet full of stupid trees and stupid teddy bears with stupid spears. She wasn't in the mood for them. If any of them thought they could come poke her with their sticks, she had something much better planned for them. An entire circle of flammable fluid had been drawn around her ship. When night would come, she'd light it all.

Until then though, there was time to kill.

Scherezade grabbed every piece of equipment she knew to be capable of communication over distance, double checked that none of it was functioning, ands at herself outside in the sun, with a bunch of equipment so that she could try to fix it.

This would probably be a good time to mention that she had no clue what she was doing.

 

[Anna Sachae]

A PILE OF CENTURIES-OLD JUNK AND DEBRIS
Endor, Local Time 0945

The galaxy was a painful place to live. Most people didn't think of themselves as living in a post-apocalypse, in the wake of what Anna had recently learned was called "the Gulag Plague." Those that did rarely had the perspective that this plague wasn't even the most recent tragedy to throw the entire galaxy into ruin. Akala's breach into the Netherworld of the Force, the proliferation of Yuuzhan Vong sapient diseases, every era of galactic history punctuated at both ends by the reign of a powerful Sith-adjacent empire... Each world seemed to have more scar tissue than skin. Each planet ached to stand on, and listening almost brought her to tears.

The moon of Endor was much the same. It had recovered, largely, from the pain it had experienced in ages past. But as Anna dug through the shattered, scorched remains of what was once some kind of superweapon, she could still hear the echoes. If you listened hard enough, you could always hear them. Fortunately for the relatively peaceful creatures that still toddled about on its surface, Endor couldn't. Not anymore.

So, as the sparks from her plasma cutter crackled through the late morning air of Endor's temperate woodlands, Anna kept a positive outlook. At least, as much as she could while rooting around in an ancient death-machine's eviscerated corpse. The panel she was cutting at finally broke from the carcass of what as probably at one point an Imperial starship, and hit the ground just as there was a crackle on her broad-wave comlink.

Old survivalist trick: when on an "abandoned" planet, keep one comlink open to the widest possible number of channels you could. One way or another, you'll want to know when there's intelligent life nearby.

No intelligible words, unfortunately. Just a crackle. The equipment on the other end might have been damaged, or maybe its operator didn't really know what they were doing with it. Either way, Anna's objective had changed. She pushed herself off the ground, returned her torch to her tool belt, and stood up with an overhead stretch. First, probe the comm channel. Worst case scenario, no one picked up. Best case, that little message might give someone hope or save a life. "Anyone broadcasting, please tune to 98.703. If anyone's broadcasting on this or any other channel, please tune to 98.703."

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

[member="Anna Sachae"]

It was an hour later. The stuff in Scherezade's hands had made no advancement; broken was still broken, malfunctioning was still malfunctioning. She wished to every god she'd ever heard of that she would somehow magically develop the ability to fix these sort of things, at least for about fifteen minutes so that she could get one commdevice to work, but if any of those gods ever existed, they were probably flipping her the bird in that moment. She couldn't use her Technocracy either. So far, all she'd managed to do with that was deliberately destroy things, but not build or create.

Sighing, Scherezade leaned against her ship, looking at the sky. Such a pretty blue. She hated it. It was nothing like the only perfect shade of blue she knew, but thinking about that now was not going to lead her anywhere.

Frustrated, she grabbed one of the commdevicesin the heap, and tossed at a nearby tree. Not in any serious matter; if the Warrior were to use her full force, both device and tree would have shattered. But just enough to release a touch of tension.

…tune to 98.703…

Scherezade screamed with delight as she jumped towards the thing. Who'd have thunk that violence would've solved her problems on a day such as this? Her fingers almost shook as she turned the thing, hopping on the right frequency.

"Mayday mayday mayda," she almost screamed, "My ship crashed here. Sending coordintes-"

And the machine died.

Because of course it did.

 

[Anna Sachae]

After a couple of seconds Anna got her response. Unfortunately whatever communicator that survivor was using seemed more static than substance. She couldn't get any good information out of it apart from "there's someone in trouble." Of course, that was all the information Anna Sachae had ever required to help. She packed away her tools and left her salvage where it was. It would be safe there, if only for the moment. It wasn't like there was anyone around to take it.

Tapping her commlink again, same channel, she sent a quick response. "I didn't copy that. Please repeat." She knew she wouldn't get much out of it. Again, that didn't matter. A long time ago, Anna had learned how to "just go with it." Back on Dathomir, there had been a lot of ways Petra had explained it to her, but she hadn't had the best explanation. Once, when hunting with one of their cute little bows, one of Petra's subordinates had said "the arrow knows the way." That still resonated with Anna to this day. She found that most of the time she'd just wind up where she needed to be.

Even so, Anna turned on her cartographer program as she wandered off in a random direction. She'd need to be able to find her way back to where she was, after all.

Rushing never helped. The (biologically) young Kuati took her time on her little stroll into the middle of a mostly-abandoned forest moon. Fingers on the trees, eyes to the canopy... Honestly, leaves and bushes and rocks and lots of dirt weren't really her scene, but this was still pretty. It'd be so much better if they had an autowalk, though. Or, like, a McYoda's. Looking pretty and being fairly peaceful were nice and everything, but this rustic moon could do with some creature comforts.

In about ten or fifteen minutes, Anna could see smoke through the treetops. It was obviously where she was going; the natives had barely figured out that you could tie a rock to a stick, so it was even odds that they knew how fire worked. The dark-haired lass made sure to make herself known with a quick, friendly "Hello? Any survivors?" before she made it into line of sight. As she now knew from experience, some people didn't much care for being snuck up on.

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Now it was truly broken. Not because of the crash. Not because such equipment did that at the most wrong possible timing. But because she'd gotten so pissed off that she smooshed it with her hands until it got bloated and then went kaboom in her hands. Technically, it wasn't supposed to do that. But the day things did what they were supposed to do around the not so little Sithling called Scherezade, pigs would learn to fly without scientific intervention.

Sighing, she looked down at her hands. The explosion had broken skin, and she could smell... Well. She could smell her own blood. Scherezade grinned. Of course. A Blood Hound, she had forgotten she could use one of the things that were her strongest suits; her blood.

As the saying went, blood called to blood. But being so far from where her sister might have been left her with little ability of being able to rely on that. Scherezade wasn't even sure if she was near the Unknown Regions, and worse than that, she wasn't even sure if her own sister was there right there and then. So she needed something else.

Something… Someone…

With a swift move, a knife made it from the side of her thigh and into her hand, and Scherezade cut deep and true.

"Kraujas Nu nuri an j'us," came the words, forming quicker than she thought they ever would, "Kraujas Nu rososûti sis koani, sis tsata," she continued. On and on, for several minutes, various forms that all essentially boiled down and translated into I'm krakking bleeding over here. It was only when Scherezade felt the power gather, enough of it forming, that she shaped it into her will. "Nisosûti ki shanwa."

Would it work? She didn't know. Was help already underway? She didn't know that either. Had she just lost too damn much blood for no reason?

"Hello? Any survivors?"

Scherezade could cry with pleasure. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she'd had her answer – all that bleeding had been for nothing, because no spell that involved other people ever worked that fast. But she ignored that for now.

"Over here!" she shouted back and waved, "All my comdevices decided their time was at an end and died on me!"

[member="Anna Sachae"]

 

[Anna Sachae]

Wow this place was a wreck. It wasn't just the kind of mess Anna would expect from a crashed ship. Normally, there wasn't much blood in a crash, and most starship parts and personal devices didn't blow up. When she approached, though, the smell of ozone and smoke was overwhelming. When she rounded a corner of wreckage to see what looked like a normal crash that someone had drizzled a light glaze of blood all over.

"Crap," came Anna's simple response. "You look like you got personally acquainted with a ruptured support strut." This was going to be interesting. She didn't exactly have a lot of training in medical triage. "I've got a medkit, but I'm not sure if that'll help with all of those fluids you're leaking there." Repairing ships was one thing. People were an entirely different field of science and she really didn't have much of a knack for it.

Right, focus on the problem at hand. Comm devices, keeping the ship from dying. Stepping forward, Anna stroked a single hand over some intact plating and reflexively winced. Thaaat was a lot of pain. She took a deep breath and closed her yes. "Alright, walk me through what happened. And please try to be as exact as possible." Straight to the task. Introductions actually managed to slip her mind at the sight of blood and mechanical carnage.

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Another human? In the middle of nowhere? Scherezade must've hit some dumb luck for that to happen. The smile on her face could've easily turned to tears with knowing she wasn't completely stranded anymore. Another human, one that had a medkit and didn't use another term for it, meant connection to the areas of the galaxy outside of the planet's orbit, which meant that unless Scherezade did something incredibly stupid, she was more or less saved.

"I tried to use the blood to get the help after I couldn't reach anyone," she said with a shy grin that mostly people tended to not expect from a six foot Amazonian woman. Looking down, only now she remembered… This woman was probably not like most people that were usually around Scherezade. Mostly in the sense that she probably wasn't used to someone who used Blood Hound abilities that more often than not required for the use of actual blood. Sure, Scherezade herself preferred to use the blood of others rather than her own, but sometimes a girl had to do what a girl had to do.

"It's okay though," she tried to assure her with a near childish voice, "I heal fast. This is barely anything."

Turning to look at her ship, she sighed. "Right…" the Sithling murmured, "I was trying to get some sleep and one moment everything is black and the next moment I've broken orbit and the ship's controls are screaming at me. I don't even know where I am since the holomap of the galaxy stopped working before I ever ran into the cockpit. Where are we?"

[member="Anna Sachae"]

 

[Anna Sachae]

Not a lot of help, that. Anna would have to figure it out on her own, then. That wasn't impossible or even very difficult, frankly, but it would have been nice to have a solid place to start from. "Endor," she replied as she walked into the shattered remains of a stabilizer fin. "The moon, not the planet. You're lucky you landed on this side, really. The other hemisphere is an absolute mess."

This ship had some utterly traumatizing history. Her hand almost quivered when she touched it flat to the exterior desh plating. It was ancient, and a very long time ago it'd been involved in some very bad things. Recently, not so much. Lots of travel, though. A flash of pain echoed off of the ventral hull, and Anna immediately got to her knees, rolled onto her back, and stuck her head under the ship. "Ah, there ya go. Hull rupture. Looks like space debris. Endor's orbit is a pretty dangerous place to fly. Normally you'd want some damn impressive particle shields." This ship obviously didn't have them.

"So, our first order of business is to get her up on her landing gears," she continued, pushing herself out from beneath the old, menacing ship. "Which is going to be a trick, because right now she's pretty banged up." Anna wandered around the back, stroking her fingers over the bulbous rear of the mighty machine. She frowned when she passed over a bit of torn, jagged metal. "Looks like she scraped a cliff on the way down. Engine casing's ruptured."

Hmm. Giggledust. That was a weird name for a ship. "She got a name?" Anna asked needlessly, her head poking around one edge of the old ship's steering flaps.

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Endor. She was on cannibalistic teddy bear planet. Still in the Unknown Regions. But more than that; the woman who was here now and was going to hopefully help had to actually check the ship out. Scherezade bit her lower lip hard, trying to keep herself from screaming and pushing the woman away. Not a soul had been inside that ship in over a year, and for damn good reasons as well. The last thing the Sithling needed was to need to start explaining about why the interior of her ship was basically heavy blood magic covered in pale pink wallpaper.

"Giggledust," she said slightly awkwardly, like a parent that is both somehow mighty proud of their kid but at the same time also incredibly embarrassed because years after their kid being alive, calling them after a spice maybe wasn't the best of choices, "I inherited her from my aunt," came the quick explanation.

Sighing, she looked at the woman. What was she doing on Endor anyway? Last Scherezade had heard anything about this planet, it was a First Order world. Of course, the First Order were long gone by now. Could she be a human remnant? Was she here to get a tan? Was she here to capture some bears to make a new fur coat? Somehow all of those options seemed highly unlikely.

"Is there a settlement around here or something?" she asked, "what are you doing in this place? And can you fix my ship? I'll obviously pay. You accept credits, right?"

Anna Sachae