Adrift

[Kuzo]

The passage between Tatooine and Tygara was not a particularly popular one, and the Jewel of Tygara wasn't as luxurious as it's name would imply. It was about as small, however. Even though the liner wasn't large, even with multiple stops at other planets on the way, it was barely half full as it started the next leg of its journey. Irajah suspected the owners were losing money on this particular flight. Truthfully, she suspected they were losing money over all, especially if the state of the ship were any indication. It was one thing to travel on the cheap. It was another thing entirely to have loose bolts rattling inches from your nose as you slept.

She wasn't a mechanic, but even Irajah knew this was concerning.

Still, the food was hot and they'd be getting back to Tygara soon. Ish. Actually, there had already been three unscheduled port of calls. And the food was lukewarm.

Okay, Irajah was probably going to file a complaint with the company when she got back.

Because of all of this, when the ship shuddered suspiciously, Irajah didn't look up from her stack of flimsies right away. It wasn't that far out of the ordinary for this trip. Instead, she rolled her eyes, shuffling the top flimsy to the back and looking at the next one. The print catalogues for the various ATC holdings she'd been given on Tatooine didn't seem to hold much of interest. At least, not with what she was looking for. Irajah sighed, an annoyed sound deep in her throat. The trip hadn't been a waste, but it hadn't gotten her anywhere in her search either. No one was making the equipment she needed, that much was plain. So now what?

The second shudder was enough to get her attention. Mostly because it wasn't a shudder so much as a grinding screeching wrongness that vibrated through the entire ship. The lights flickered once, then went out. Irajah looked up as eerie red emergency lighting filled the room. Laying aside the catalogues absently, she stood up, padding barefoot over to the door. As it slid open and she leaned forward to peer in to the hallway, the ship lurched a third time.

This time however was enough to send her sprawling. Warning klaxons joined in, offering a blaring punctuation to the crimson emergency lights. The ship shuddered and then, lay still- even the usual hum and shiver of an active ship dead beneath her touch.

No longer traveling through hyperspace, the ship drifted aimlessly between the stars. While she couldn't know it from where she was, the ship's control room was torn open to space, killing everyone who had been inside in that moment. The Jewel of Tygara was dead in the void, and no one knew where to find them. Or what had caused the explosion.

Irajah had no idea yet what had happened. But she was definitely going to file a complaint.

[member="Niysha"]

 

[Niysha]

Considering how much Niysha hated ships, it was a wonder why she always seemed to be on one. Tatooine had held nothing for her, much like everywhere else she'd been. In fact, it had been worse than most, as the ability to see when someone was lying was an overt liability on a planet where everyone was lying all the time. Like it or not, she'd had to take a shuttle off-world as quickly as possible, under threat of rather violent discrimination.

Or possibly lynching.

Now, in a tiny cabin on a tiny ship with a tiny crew and a tiny passenger manifest, the young Sithling could but look out unto the impossibly massive, endless void of space. As unnerving - perhaps even "terrifying" - as it was, she had no other options. A ship was just shy of dead in the Force, she'd begun to tire of spying on the crew, and the passengers were the only things left for her to amuse herself with. Prying on them felt almost inconsiderate, but at the same time, without them she'd be left with the infinite emptiness of space. No Force out there. Nothing out there. There was a reason Niysha hated space travel.

She'd spent the last few days in quiet meditation, attempting to calm her mind by perusing auras and sussing out what systems the ship was and was not up to code with via electrical signals. After a while, she dropped the "was not" part, since the precious few ways this vessel was spaceworthy was beginning to be eclipsed by its manifold deficiencies. The young Miraluka began to yearn for mealtimes in the mess, if only for the precious few minutes of distraction that provided from the dawning realization that this ship, more than any other she'd been on, was a deathtrap.

Niysha had made a game of seeing which unpleasant part of her life she could distract herself from for the longest before some other dreadful aspect of her current situation caught up with her. She'd just managed to forget about how horrible the ship was by contemplating the void when there were warning klaxons. The poor dear had been far too deep in meditation to notice the shaking of the ship.

For the first two, at least.

The Jewel rocked again, and Niysha stood on shaky legs as she headed for the door to her cabin. Something was wrong. She'd managed to make it about a half-step out of her door by the third, what seemed to be final explosion. The ship's death throes shook everything on-board violently, and the little Sithling stumbled on her way out of her cabin. She braced for the painful impact of the deck on her face, then noticed an aura right below her.

She'd landed on one of the other passengers. Immediately, she struggled to her knees, then to her feet. "Sorry. Didn't see you there." Niysha reached down with one hand, offering to help the woman to her feet. "Are you alright? That one was pretty rough."
[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

OOMPH

Irajah had just been picking herself back up (or, at least, considering doing something other than hug the deck) when the looming sense of someone else fell over her. Literally. Without deliberation, Irajah scrabbled a little bit for the panicked two seconds it took for the pair to extricate themselves from the tangle.

She rolled over, then accepted the hand thrust at her, taking a heartbeat to reorient herself, both physically and mentally.

"It's okay. I-"

She stopped, hazel eyes blinking as they came face to face.

"I'm sure you didn't," came out in response to the I didn't see you there- and Irajah immediately regretted it. Thanks mouth. Thanks for that.

"I'm okay, no harm no foul," she said quickly. "How about you? That was quite a shake up."

She paused, frowning and looking up at the pulsing emergency lights. "Any idea what happened?"

​[member="Niysha"]

 

[Niysha]

Haah. Blind jokes. Niysha gave a soft, appreciable smile to assure her unwilling crash pillow that she hadn't taken offense.

"I'm fine. You made for a pretty safe place to land," she replied with a smirk, then crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall behind her. Dark but civilian clothes. Lightsaber hidden. She was a traveler, definitely not a renegade Force-user. "Not really sure what happened. From the looks of things, I'd say some bad maintenance in the engine room left it prone to things going boom. Then things went boom."

She'd need to be closer to tell what was happening. When the ship had been calm, the air had been free of emotional clutter and easy to See through. Now, there was nothing but panic and confusion, tinged with quiet streams of rage. The unfortunately Force-sighted girl couldn't see more than a couple of meters from her body. And besides, there was only one thing within that tiny bubble of discernible chaos that was catching her attention.

The woman in front of her was...complex. Intricate. Her emotions ran deeper than simple panicked confusion. Compassion, deep-seated horror, a powerful will to go on... She was favored by the Force, even if her aura wasn't sharp enough to allude to real training. Still, sharper than most untapped Force-sensitives. Maybe a bit of study. There was something else in there that Niysha couldn't put her finger on. Something obscure, not inherently of the Force (or even of life). It was worrying, but it just added to the intrigue.

The vagrant Sith couldn't help but cock her head to one side, offering an inviting grin. "Sorry, it's pretty rude to stumble over someone without introducing yourself first. I'm Niysha."
[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

Did she just call me fat?

Honestly, even she had, Irajah probably deserved it after her own comment. She shrugged, more to herself than anything else. What are you going to do?

Absently, she tugged at the long sleeves of her high necked tunic. It was a subconscious gesture, one that had started only in the last six months. She didn't even realize she was doing it. Making sure her bruises were covered was too deeply ingrained now.

Listening to the other woman, Irajah cocked her head to one side, short dark curls bouncing around her face. It looks like, she mouthed silently, but didn't comment on it aloud. That seemed beyond rude. Was she going to call out a blind woman? No. On the other hand, how could she know the ship was in such a state of disrepair? Irajah frowned, ever so slightly.

"Hopefully they'll be able to fix it and we'll get underway soon. I'm already mentally writing my letter of complaint to the company," she half joked.

"My name's Irajah, nice to meet you." She left off the Doctor part. This was, after all, a social call. "And we can blame the ship for any rudeness, deal?" Her own smile was evident in her voice.

"I'm going to go see if I can find out what's happening. Want to tag along?"

[member="Niysha"]

 

[Niysha]

If Niysha had had both normal vision and Force Sight, she might have made the connection between hiding discolored patches of skin beneath long clothes and the indiscernible taint in Irajah's aura. With only half of that equation, she was none the wiser. Instead, she chalked it up to modesty, one of those things that sighted people cared about. Honestly, it was silly. Clothes were for warmth, obviously. Fashion confused her; everyone was naked to the blind.

"Deal. Lovely to meet you, Irajah," Niysha replied as pleasantly as possible. The young Miraluka leaned her head back against the wall she was braced against, trying to take stock of her situation. If the ship was really dead in the water after this much misuse, they could likely use all of the help they could get fixing it. Besides, dead in the water out here? They'd freeze before they suffocated. One day, maybe.

Alright then. Apply yourself, girl. "Sounds like a plan. Just don't be too upset if they're not that eager to let us mess with their junker. The captain seems none too friendly. It'd suck to get thrown into house arrest during a crash." Finally pushing herself off of her wall, Niysha readily followed after the other woman as they wandered deeper into the ship.

Hm. Small talk? Probably a good idea. "So what are you doing out this far? Unlucky sightseer? Displaced refugee? Not a lot of options when it comes to Tatooine." Filling the silence of the ship was desirable, but blocking out the panicked shouting from nearby passenger cabins was enviable. It really didn't help one's calm to constantly hear how we're all doomed, we'll die out here, we're so far away from a main hyperspace lane, there's no hope, what are these idiots doing to get us out of this, and so on.
[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

The pair started to head down the hallway, following the red emergency lights on the floor.

"The Captain's something else alright," Irajah agreed. The tone of her voice said that in this case 'something else' wasn't a compliment.

While they talked, she kept pausing, listening. In general, the sounds were of the expected level of distress. At one door however, she poked her head in.

"Hey, is everyone okay in here? Okay, good, sit tight. I'll come back and take a look at your ankle once we know what's going on, okay?"

Glancing at [member="Niysha"] she offered a self conscious smile before remembering that no, she can't see that anyway.

"Actually, I'm a doctor," she explained as they started to head back down the corridor. "There's a trade fair, twice a year on Tatooine, of all places. I can't stand that place. But, I'm looking for some particular equipment, and I'd hoped to find it there. Struck out. What are you gonna do? How about you?"

 

[Niysha]

Well that was lucky. Not often you chance upon having someone with a valuable trade in the middle of a crisis. Oh, what Niysha wouldn't have given for Irajah to have been a mechanic, but a doctor was a close second. Now, if only the useless little Sithling had any valuable skills to bring to the table, apart from her weak grasp of the Force. Hopefully her Sight would suffice.

Also, why were they so calm? Death was a real and present danger at the moment.

It took Niysha only a moment to think up an acceptable answer. "Drifter, I'm afraid. I was working with someone a few months back. Staked my whole life on it. Then he went and died, so here I am." She shrugged, walking past a room that almost gave her a headache with all of the loud (both audible and aetheric) frustration pouring from inside. Ignore it. Keep moving. "I never have a chance to stay in one place for long. Lots of reasons. On Tatooine, I just had a slightly more immediate reason to leave than before."

Niysha realized she hadn't been turning her head to speak to Irajah. She remedied this. "That planet is extremely dangerous, y'know? I was there for maybe three days and I'd still take the threat of freezing to death on a broken freighter over going back." There was probably a reason she never heard of any Miraluka colonies on Nar Shaddaa, too. Liars didn't like people who constantly saw your true intentions splayed across your face, no matter how good you were at lying.
[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

"Tatooine is a maw-forsaken hell hole," Irajah agreed amicably. But she paused then, glancing over at @Niysha. "I'm sorry," she offered. Her tone was genuine. She understood loss, and it felt like it went beyond merely a business deal. But she didn't pry either, just offering those two words.

"I don't really have a place to call my own either," she said, clearing her throat a moment later. She spoke as they continued to thread through the corridor, heading closer to the control room. "I'm working out of Tygara right now- which, by the way, is a good place to look for work if you need it- but I haven't spent more than a week or two somewhere in some time either. So. I get it."

It was, despite it's content, a surprisingly easy conversation to have. Irajah liked people, liked talking to them, liked learning about them. So many things had kept her separate, private, recently, but it wasn't her natural state. Things had been so karked up lately, she didn't remember the last time she'd had a 'normal' conversation. Irajah grimaced, glancing around. The ship was dead in space and people were hurt. Normal? Yeah, this was the new normal it seemed.

The grimace turned in to a frown as they turned the corner. They could see the door to the control room ahead of them. The small, square window in the upper part of the door however....

"I don't think we're going to have to worry about the Captain getting mad at us," Irajah said slowly as she moved up to the door. She didn't touch the handle. Through the window, it was very clear that there wasn't much of the control room left. Instead, the blackness of space stared back at them.

"I don't think we're going to have the luxury of worrying about the Captain at all."

 

[Niysha]

What was she talking ab-

Oh.

Oh shit.

Niysha frowned at the door that led to nowhere. It was easy to tell what the vacuum of space looked like, compared to the habitable rest of the ship. There was life in the air here, even if it was stunted. The only thing beyond that door was lingering fear, and it was being siphoned off at a breakneck pace. The ship hadn't stopped moving at... actually, at sublight speeds. This was important. Speak, girl. "We're not in hyperspace. It looks like we dropped out of hyperspace before the explosion."

Mounting panic. There was no one around to notice that, of course. Niysha's half-face didn't really help convey her emotions terribly well, and there were no (trained) Force sensitives on the ship. She maintained her standard amount of visible composure, but her mind was racing. Without a captain - or likely any of the command staff - they'd be stranded with no supplies. Without sensors, they couldn't tell where they were or how far away they were from a habitable area. If the engine room was damaged (or gone, like the bridge was), they wouldn't have life support for much longer. Even if they did have life support, they wouldn't have food for a month, and they could be stuck out here for much, much longer than a month.

Her face cracked, just a bit. Not a frown. Something much more dramatic. "I need...gimme a moment." One needed a calm mind to hone one's Sight. Niysha's was not even the tiniest vestige of calm, so she pressed her hands to the sides of her head and attempted to concentrate. Calm. Remember Lord Adekos' words. Not the content of them, but the tone. Ever calm, ever steady. A man of sane concerns, but one who didn't allow his fear to get the better of him. Remember and emulate.

The mantra helped, at least a bit. Niysha's Sight grew sharper towards the edges. She could pick out individual auras further into the ship. Mostly passengers. Of the crew...the goon the captain kept around for security was missing, the mechanic was in the engine room, though his aura was weakening. He was grievously wounded, then, as it was unlikely he was asleep. That was all. The first mate and captain were gone. Focus on what you have, not what you're lacking.

Several long seconds later, Niysha finally raised her head. The Miraluka's mouth was contorted a bit, attempting very hard to keep straight. "The engine room is at the back of the freighter. I'm pretty sure the mechanic is there, and he looks very hurt. You're a doctor, right?" Focus. Assimilate assets. Forge them into a weapon to strike your problem as efficiently as possible.

And most importantly of all, DON'T PANIC.
[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

Irajah was fairly certain for a moment that her new friend was about to be very, very sick all over the floor. She knew that tone of voice- the swimming, mental scrabble of a world suddenly turned upside down. She watched closely for a moment, but didn't interfer. If she had to, she was ready to dodge or catch her if she fell, but fortunately, it seemed like she didn't need to. Mentally, she nodded, pleased that the other woman had her self together.

Then there came the eerie nonsense- Irajah blinked as [member="Niysha"] explained what was going on on the other side of the ship. It took a second to process, and then-

Of course. She's a Force User. That explained, well, frankly a lot actually now that she thought about it.

Since leaving home, Irajah hadn't had a single positive interaction with a Force User. At best they were neutral or weird. At worse, well. Let's just say that Irajah wasn't particularly impressed by them as a general group. She found the Jedi in particular to be inconvenient at best. It was hard not to frown. She didn't completely succeed.

Then the actual content of what she'd said sunk in.

Oh. Kark.

Irajah was off like a shot. Sprinting down the hallway.

There wasn't really a conscious set of thoughts here. But it boiled down to this: even beyond her responsibilities as a Doctor, they needed the mechanic if there were any chance of getting out of this alive. Oddly, she didn't question the accuracy of Niysha's words. She just assumed that the other woman knew what she was talking about.

 

[Niysha]

And she was off. No words, with swirling distrust and other mild negative emotions in her aura. Niysha frowned, herself. She might have just lost a friend by not pretending to be something she wasn't. It couldn't be helped, though. Her talents were needed if they were going to get out of this alive. She'd deal with the repercussions of revealing herself on a passenger liner after the very real danger of freezing to death in the middle of nowhere was behind them.

As Irajah bolted off into the ship, Niysha followed. Fortunately, neither one of them was a trained athlete, so it wasn't particularly difficult for her to keep pace. Unfortunately, that also meant it took them a very, very long time to reach the engine room. Niysha couldn't say much, of course. She was too busy running, which was rather taxing on her oxygen reserves.

She did try to focus on the way, honing her vision of the corridors in front of them and the room at their destination. Focusing Sight was a trick that took quite a bit of practice, but since Niysha hadn't had a lot of training and several months of nothing much apart from running and hiding, she'd had plenty of time to do exactly that. She could manage complex textures now, and even depth perception over short distances. "Complex textures" included the entire hallway corridor and all of the debris filling it, knocked loose through the explosion. "Depth perception" meant she knew exactly how far she'd need to run.

So, even though she wasn't a parkour champion, the amount of information and foresight her Sight provided allowed her to catch up and match pace with Irajah despite her athletic handicap. She still reached the engine room panting, waiting silently outside as she checked the mechanic again. "Still alive, though he's in bad shape." Niysha frowned as she physically turned to face the older woman. "I hope you're good at miracles."
[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

"Didn't-I-tell-you?" Irajah panted, grinning up at [member="Niysha"] (or, she would have if she could get her facial muscles under control). "Miracles-are-my-specialty."

They'd run past her room on the way here, Irajah snagging her med kit (never leave home without it). Pushing in to the engine room she frowned.

"What in the unholy maw happened in here?"

There was blood splattered across the machinery. The mechanic was curled in on himself, his back to one wall. Irajah had no idea how to tell if anything was broken or not. Other than the bleeding man on the deck of course. She closed the distance, dropping to her knees with an uncomfortable sounding thud next to him. She murmured quietly, one hand finding his pulse while the other started shuffling through her bag.

"Pulse weak and erratic. Pupils dilated. Breathing labored and that smell-"

One of her hands went questing, coming up wet with dark blood. She looked up at Niysha, her face stricken.

"He's been shot in the lower abdomen. My guess is with a slug thrower at close range. Perforated his bowels- if we're lucky."

Lucky? The alternative was that the bullet bounced around inside of him, chewing his intestines up completely. She removed a case from her kit, setting up a syringe and plunging it immediately in to his neck.

"Niysha, I'm.... going to need more hands than I have. Have you ever assisted with exploratory surgery before?"

What in the hell kind of question even WAS that?

 

[Niysha]

Fresh blood had a faint aura to it, a combination of the body it came from and the pain of its shedding. It was somewhat haunting to see just how much of it there was everywhere. Truth be told, Niysha had never been in a medical emergency before. Her entire world so far had been dust and schools and hunger and fear. Now...it was mostly fear. Fortunately, her constant panic made her feel just a little bit juiced. Unfortunately, telekinesis and mind tricks weren't going to fix a stomach wound.

Irajah needed help, and Niysha needed the mechanic in order to get out of this alive, sooo... "Alright then," she replied numbly, taking a knee across from the other woman, hands held up and ready to go. "I can't promise how much help I'll be, though. I haven't fixed anything worse than a skinned knee." She'd caused a few worse injuries, but not many. She'd suffered worse injuries, but the doctors don't tend to teach you their trade when they're already being put out of work by medical droids.

Hm. There was one thing she could do. "If there's anything you need to find, let me know. I'm pretty good at finding stuff." Provided the Force wanted her to find them, at least. Sometimes she didn't even know what it wanted. In fact...that was almost all the time. And the few times she did, it was normally because it had almost literally been spelled out to her.
[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

Irajah explained what she needed. Her tone was businesslike- matter of fact. Before starting she laid out each item she would need, telling [member="Niysha"] what each one was as she went. Niysha's main job was going to be handing her things as she needed them- mostly. There would be one point where Irajah would need someone to hold the man's lower intestine for her, so she could make the necessary repairs. That didn't bother her, did it?

Why this ship didn't have a proper med-bay, Irajah had no idea. It had been the first thing she'd noticed, the first thing she complained about- and the first thing she'd gotten the stink eye over from the Captain. Legally, they were required to have one. Well, legally they were required to have a cock-pit too, so, what were you going to do?

After disinfecting things as best as she could, Irajah injected a local anesthetic. Without proper equipment, she couldn't put him out, as much as she wished she could. That and once they had him stable, they needed him to be awake. He groaned, only semi-conscious even now, but she hoped easing the pain and getting the bleeding stopped would help.

Glancing up at Niysha, she offered a quick, encouraging smile.

"Ready?"

 

[Niysha]

Holding a man's guts in was hardly a pleasant experience, but Niysha had experienced far worse in her life. The fact that the air around her was thick with pain and distress was far more upsetting to her than having viscera under her nails. Besides, she'd bisected a faceless hell-beast in recent memory, and they were anything but clean and sweet-smelling.

"Ready when you are," she replied with as much of a smile as she could manage while surrounded by and, shortly, wrist-deep in pain and blood.

Medical applications of the Force would have to be on Niysha's list of things to study at some point, but it was honestly more likely that she'd have no possible way of actually using them herself. Her powers were driven by emotions, and calm, steady Force techniques like healing and soothing pain tended to be outside her reach. That said, this woman was Force-sensitive and had at least a small amount of training. She was a doctor. It stood to reason that she might know a thing or two about that, herself.

Niysha's hands were at the ready, of course. She was hardly a surgeon, but her fingers were delicate and her grip was light. Hopefully that would be more useful during surgery than the other skills she could bring to the table...which basically amounted to "nothing, you useless sack of anxiety. You exist to bring fear and death, not relief and life."
[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

Irajah and [member="Niysha"] got to work. The engineer was lucky, for a lot of reasons. The bullet had gone right through, puncturing but not shredding, which made all of this something slightly more useful than simply a waste of time. Irajah moved and acted no differently than she would have if she had known this would save his life. As it was, however, she knew there was a very good chance that this man would die anyway- but from an infection, rather than directly from the wound itself. Here, with only her emergency kit to work with, there was no way to counteract the effects of his bowels spilling in to his abdominal cavity. She would do her best of course, but Irajah knew exactly why she was working so hard to save this man's life for the moment- and it wasn't for his sake.

If they could keep him alive for a little while, it might save everyone else on the ship.

Irajah's brow was furrowed, set and concentrating as she stitched and cleaned and injected. But she knew that the reason she was here, fighting this fight was because of pragmatism. This man was very likely going to die, despite everything she was doing. But maybe they all wouldn't.

By the time she sat back on her heels, the temperature in the engine room had dropped several degrees, and the chill was creeping through the deck against her knees.

"I've stopped the bleeding and everything is all closed up," she said quietly. "It's still going to hurt, but you're out of immediate danger." It was a careful untruth. True, but incomplete.

"You saved my life," the mechanic whispered.

Irajah looked at him for a moment. And made a decision.

"Yes," she lied slowly. "And I know that you're in a lot of pain right now. I'm going to give you what I can, but I can't knock you out. Because we need you to help us find a way out of this situation. To save the lives of everyone else on this ship. The bridge is gone and we're dead in the water without a way to contact someone or control the ship from here. And someone attacked you. Can you tell us what happened?"

Irajah knew people. But she didn't know this person. Was there a chance that, if he knew the truth, that he was probably going to die anyway, he'd still put in his all to save everyone? Of course. But experience told her that the opposite was more likely to be true. That the weight of impending death would paralyze him. No shame in that, it was sentient nature.

But right now, they couldn't afford that.

 

[Niysha]

Pain and fear were some of the first individual emotions Niysha had learn to distinguish from people's auras. It was easy to do that on a Sith world, but she had an inkling that it was probably pretty standard for the entire galaxy. Life was short and brutal and wrong, so it was natural that the most common things people felt were fear and pain. Niysha could see both in abundance. Right now, they needed this single man who knew how to repair this ship to be a functioning sapient. If they left him to his own devices, there was a better-than-zero chance that his civilian ass would go into shock. He had just been shot, after all.

For a second or two, Niysha was silent and still, making an independent judgement. Left alone, he could curl up and die, and that would be the end of them, or he could pull together and work with them to save the ship with no ill effects. With Niysha's intervention, he would pull together to save the ship, but later he'd likely be very upset with her. Not to mention it might destroy what little Irajah already thought of her. Did she want to lose a friend in order to increase their chances of survival? Better question: was Irajah even really a possible friend? She was doing a good job of keeping her prejudice under control during a crisis, but there was no guarantee what would happen afterwards.

Considering she saw the Force every waking second of her life, one would think that Niysha had a better grasp on the future.

With a slow, controlled exhale, she centered her mind. This man was in massive pain. His will was likely weak, as was his resolve. She'd exploit one of those to bolster both. Before she even saw the mechanic seize up, Niysha waved her hand in front of his face and spoke with steady authority. "If you focus, everyone will be safe. You can save us."

The man winced a bit, then his eyes lost their focus as the Force worked on his mind. His mouth repeated exactly what Niysha had said right back to her. "If I focus, everyone will be safe." His eyes seemed to snap back into focus with a new fire in them, and, though pained, he made an attempt to sit up. "I can save us."

Niysha let out a quiet sigh and turned back to Irajah with a miserable, almost placating look on what was visible of her face. "Sometimes, people just need a little encouragement. Try again." Once again, Niysha internally winced that her will to survive was stronger than her need to live an enjoyable life. They'd all make it out of this, if she had anything to say about it...and in the likely event that she had to add another name to the list of people who hated her forever, she'd deal with that later. After all, self-loathing was pretty great fuel, too.
[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

Irajah watched it all unfold with a growing sense of unease, and, if she were being particularly introspective (which, to be honest, she didn't have the luxury of in that moment) disgust.

But not purely disgust for this blatantly manipulative use of the Force. Also disgust at herself, because, really, even though she hadn't used the Force to manipulate this man, was she really any better? She was still lying to him about his chance of survival in order to increase her own chances.

That was, however, all working on a deeply subconscious level. On the surface was just that feeling, again and again of what right do they have to treat people like playthings? Jedi, Sith, something else. It didn't matter. They were all, in her experience, exactly the same. Use the Force to make other people do what they wanted, one way or another.

That deep, internal disquiet of and what exactly does that make you here however, was enough to keep it to herself- unlike previous encounters. Irajah had a bad habit of mouthing off to powerful Force Users. So far, it hadn't killed her. But there was probably an invisible line, somewhere in her future, where that would no longer be the case.

"Um, okay. Sure," was what she said instead. Clearly uncomfortable, but survival loomed in both of them.

"Can you tell us what happened?"

The mechanic, his eyes a little glassy (from pain or from Force manipulation? Irajah didn't know), nodded slowly.

"I don't know who. Didn't get a good look, but no one on the crew. I had just finished my work when I heard the shot. It didn't hurt at first. Not a lot. More like I got punched. Then I felt the shuddering in the ship. Couldn't keep my balance. When I fell, that's when- when it started. To hurt I mean."

"And you don't know who it was, besides one of the passengers?"

The mechanic shook his head.

[member="Niysha"]

 

[Niysha]

Good. He was responsive. Frankly, Niysha wasn't sure that that little trick would work. She had to improvise in the moment, and the problem with improvisation was that it frequently ended in catastrophe. Slap-shod repairs to an engine were roughly as stable and functional as the average attempt to patch a Force technique to fit a situation it wasn't intended for. This man was coherent, for the moment. Irajah roiled with hatred, and Niysha winced when she Saw it, but otherwise stayed quiet to let the good doctor work.

Eventually, she came by a proper recounting of what was going on. Treacherous crew. That would mean that the saboteur was still on the ship somewhere. Deep breath. Stand to action, stupid girl. "We need someone to fix this ship to make sure we don't all suffocate, and hopefully to get a hyperspace beacon out to a rescue party. That's the only way we'll make it out of this."

But that wasn't their only problem. "I think you should stay here and do that. Whoever did this could be very dangerous, and we can't afford to have more than one specialist shot today." The Miraluka caught herself hugging herself for comfort. "I can...I'll be able to tell who it was. I'll catch them and bring them to a secure place for questioning." She swallowed hard. "Please try to get the life support functioning. I'd really prefer not to freeze to death out here."
[member="Irajah Ven"]