Out in space, drifting rather than moving through the cosmos, was what initially appeared to be a tiny planet. In fact, if anyone had thought of it without any shred of sense, they might have thought it to be the tiniest planet in the galaxy, or a moon, based on its colour, but nobody was going to be yelling “That’s no moon, that’s a space station!” any time soon. This was mainly because this little metallic ball in space was no more than one hundred meters in diameter. An impressive enough size for most Wisties, tiny, fae-like creatures native to Endor. But for humanoids who averaged around five feet or more...well, they’ve seen bigger ships.
The lone biological occupant of this ball in space, was one Nebula “Nibs” Enibry, Corellian native, with a criminal record, and wanted across...well, at least one system. She was contentedly lazing around her “Command Centre” in her still unnamed ship. She figured as she was its sole occupant, she didn’t really need to name it. Drifting around in space meant she was beyond the reach of her personal nemeses on Corellia, and she was quite free to do whatever she fancied. Right now, she wished she knew what she wanted to do.
“Hey, Dopey?” said Nebula, addressing a Human Replica Droid that bore a striking resemblance to herself.
“Yeah, Oh-Gee?” said Dopey in reply.
“What would you do?”
“You mean now?” Dopey glanced around, removing her snow cap in the process, “I don’t know, what do you wanna do?”
“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking, what do you wanna do?” said Nebula.
“But I don’t know what I wanna do, so what do you wanna do?” asked Dopey right back.
Dropping her hands from the keyboard of her massive computer, Nebula gave her HRD a withering look, “Dope, I ask you what you wanna do, then you ask me what I want to do, and I ask you what you wanna do...let’s just do something, blast it!”
“Okay,” said Dopey, “What do you wanna do?”
“AAARGH!”
“That sounded good for noise pollution.” said Dopey.
And it was around then that she felt an odd twinge in her body. It wasn’t exactly a physical sensation, but she was so bored out of her mind right then, any distraction was welcome. Turning to look at the multitude of monitors adorning the cylindrical centre of the ship, the girl began typing rapidly on her keyboard, pulling up a holographic map display before her, and then squinting at it. She had pulled up a star chart, albeit a very incomplete one. After a while, she started narrowing it down to the few star systems she could see. Then she narrowed it down to one, and at last to a lonely little world.
There, she felt a thought say in her mind. Go there.
It looked as lonely a place as one could get, and she honestly had nothing better to do, and sufficient fuel for the journey and back if need be, not to mention enough consumables to last her indefinitely if she was so inclined.
“Dopey,” said Nebula, “set a course for that planet, there’s something I have to do.”
“You got it, boss.” said Dopey.
Rising from her chair, Nebula felt a familiar wave of dizziness hit her, and she promptly lost her balance and fell down none-too-roughly, but was quickly back on her feet as the dizzy sensations slowly passed. She clambered up to the “bridge” of the ship, which was presently five feet from the “Command Centre”. Unless she felt like moving it to her bedroom again.
“Course set,” Informed Dopey, “you can press the big red button.”
“Harlem Shake,” said Nebula, “whatever that means.”
She hit the button, and the ship slowly rumbled into position, and fired up its engines nearly a minute later, launching them lightyears from where they were moments ago.
“Not much to look at, is it?” said Dopey, observing the forest world.
“Let’s find out,” said Nebula, “Take us in.”
The HRD piloted the slow vessel, descending right into the atmosphere with relative ease. She continually updated the girl with reports of findings that might be of interest to her. There wasn’t much in the way of technology that she could pick up. Unless they were concealed from her sensors and scanners, this world was almost completely devoid of technology, aside from a distress beacon that both Nebula and Dopey failed to notice despite a blaring big red blinking light to mark its location. But life signs were another matter entirely.
Her heart still felt oddly troubled and she guided Dopey to wherever she felt like being closest to. It was mostly forest, making a clearing for a hundred meter wide ship rather difficult, but Dopey managed it nonetheless, finding an amazing clearing just about right in size for the ball of a ship. Once it was settled, and the landing struts didn’t appear on the verge of breaking, Nebula heaved a sigh of relief.
“It didn’t break, that’s good,” said the girl.
“I guess those bird droppings really can hold this ship together,” said Dopey with a wry grin.
Rolling her eyes, Nebula ventured down into the cargo chambers, which also doubled as launch bays for crafts or vehicles. Right now, she was going for an odd, almost equally rounded landspeeder with bulbuous windows in four corners. When she got in, Dopey followed after her quietly, leaving the ship in the care of the numerous other droids required to maintain it since Nebula had no living crew to assist her.
“Where are you going?” Dopey asked. “You’re not prone to random acts...well, not as random as this.”
“I know,” said Nebula, “but...maybe just this once.”
She offered no other explanation, and set off from her ship. The landspeeder proved to be as slow and ungainly as her ship, and the trek through the forest was not a straight path, but Nebula was determinedly working her way towards a definite destination. She eventually set her speeder down in a clearing off what looked like a natural path. “Stay with the craft,” she ordered Dopey, “I’m going on foot from here.”
Taking a personal medikit and a large datapad with a built-in scanner and comlink, she was on her way. It wasn’t a long walk, and the brunette took pictures of the various flora and fauna that she could spot or whatever interested her. Cataloguing unknown specimens and identifying things found in her personal library of information, even if she couldn’t determine what attracted her here, at least it won’t be a complete waste of time. There was quite a few things of scientific interest to her here.
She passed by a tree with a large natural bore in its roots, failing to notice a man and a woman in there, as she was engrossed with what she was reading in her datapad, muttering to herself all the way.
