Let Sleeping Bes'uliik lie...

[Shia Kryze]

"You know they can't speak, right?"

Shia commented from her back, staring blankly up at the sky, laughing a little as the droid made a noise somewhere between a cats growl and the grunt of a tired warhorse, if filtered through a machines vocoder.

"Maybe it's written on him somewhere, or in his code. People do that."

She went silent for long moments, staring up at the sky with the blank expression of someone who's survived a near death incident. It was time to contemplate the beauty of the world, she thought. Then Yasha's words intruded.

"Uh. Right." She sat upright and looked at the recharging bes'uliik. "Funky, don't often see those. Well, I haven't anyway. Okay, you still got your interface deck?" She checked hers was infact still secured to her side, then started to walk over to Ruug'la'solus'sur'haai. "You know, I might just call you Solus for short, big guy. You know, unless it pisses you off. I'm going to dump the power from this emergency charge pack into his cells, then try and access the user interface sequences. I've got codes that... should make Solus here friendly. For your friend, I think he's programmed to go autonomous when his rider died. That's... not common, either he's not had a memory wipe or he's got a seriously smart brain, like say... Black Sky does, or Isley's White Iron Beast. Normally you'd have to override the security interlocks and enter yourself as an authorised user, which... is a bit like trying to hold onto a wild animal as it tries to shake you off. But I'd say your friend might have open access rights, or he'd have attacked us by now - he certainly wouldn't have protected us."

Shia hopped up onto the bare back of the immense bes'uliik, glancing down at the open missile hatches. "Fired dry, eh? Good. Went down fighting, didn't you?" She patted the silent droid as if it was actually alive, not for a moment doubting in her mind that the droid was a 'living' entity.

"Emergency power ports are usually mar... oh, right, old." She gently pryed open a port on the back side of the droid, slotted the emergency power cell into the space available then slid down into the saddle/cockpit (which was presently retracted, thankfuly) and opened up an access panel with a strange looking key with the owl-logo of the Night Owls on it, tapping it against her helmet as if kissing it before slipping it back into a pouch, then she connected the deck and hovered her finger over the button to trigger the emergency cell discharge and the boot sequence.

"Ready? This could get... lively for a few moments."

[member="Yasha Mantis"]​

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“They can make noise, I’m sure they can let us know something, eh?”

The girl beside [member="Shia Kryze"] had rare chances in her young life to sit and contemplate beauty of any kind. All the beauty she knew came from a few short days, a few weeks in the mire. One day, Yasha would be able to look back at this as a shift in her life. The horrors of the past were over. Yasha would learn how to contemplate beauty, how to relax and enjoy the life around her. It would start.

“Interspace deck? Inter-face… that thing with the thing that’s supposed to do the other thing?” Yasha looked over at Shia and shrugged. “I’m twelve… a little help? Which thing is the thing?”

Rubbing her hand on the side of her buy’ce, Yasha cocked her head to the side. “Most of what you just said made no sense… but okay? So there’s some words to give Solus to make him like me, or… huh? Sorry, I don’t get it… you’re not gonna attack me, are you buddy? Why would you? We helped get you out of your little prison.”

Dragging herself to her feet, Yasha rubbed her crushgaunts together and shrugged. “Yes, tell me what to do.”

 

[Shia Kryze]

"Right."

Shia hopped down from the back of the still inactive war machine and walked over to Yasha.

"First, deck."

She turned towards the recharging war machine and very carefully started to approach it.

"Try not to think of them as droids, try to think of them as people. Sometimes it can help to talk to them, right buddy?" She was speaking out loud, her voice pitched at a calm level. "So approach them carefully, keep talking, you never really know what code is in their semi-sentience programming, so you have to make sure that one without a rider and that you don't have the code for doesn't view you as a threat - and remember, some of these can be thousands of years old, anything could be in a threat database that old."

She made it up to the warmachines side without it so much as moving, other than the whir of photoceptors tracking her approach.

"Okay. Now we climb on it's back, this is normally when one will try to throw you off - which it will if it doesn't like you, or on odd Tuesdays, so watch out for the claws."

That'll be my advice when I'm 120, she thought, gently climbing on the droids back and ushering Yasha up with her. The droid grumbled, but did not actively protest, perhaps due to a lack of power, perhaps for a dozen reasons.

"Now, plug your deck in here, to the aux access port. You'll want, uh, that connector. With that model you have to sort of slide it in sideways... yeah, like that."

Shia took a breath, but as she needed to speak she couldn't hold it as was traditional.

"When you boot, you'll get an access menu. Either it'll have a security lock out, in which case our friend here will get as active as he's going to get and try to kill us, or at least get away from us. Or it'll give you a whole range of selection options. You want 'Rider Imprint', then you want to give it your ident package, he doesn't look like he's bio-keyed, so... that package will let him know who you are and will be the start of your bond. Also, it might have his name and model number - which will tell us what we can expect him to be armed with a do - he's obviously not an artillery model, on account of us not being under a railgun - and he's more traditional than the enclosed cockpit models, but that might be a series of variable cockpit hatches there in front of us, so don't freak out if those trigger automatically."

Shia pauses for breath, from the droid below there is a sense of machinelike patience combined with that edge a warhorse has to get moving and do something after a prolonged period in stables.

"Then... uh, well, it's nothing like riding a living animal and exactly like it at the same time. The trick is balance - staying on - and command - you'll notice there's no joystick or reins, he takes a combination of command from these finger inserts here, your knees - just like a riding animal and commands via voice or comm. Do not engage flight mode. He probably doesn't have enough power to get us down the mountain and well have to climb up again, that's usually these two switches here and pressing back as if to make an animal jump. If you don't press the switches, he'll just leap. Uh. Don't do that either, that cliff is pretty close and while they are very much smart enough, he might figure he can take the fall, or that you'll want him to fly - depends how his previous rider did things."

The droid rumbled something affirmative, after all, they could understand Basic and Mando'a commands. This one was apparently a bit smarter.

"Thanks for the confirmation, my friend. So we've got a smart one. That's good, he probably won't let you do anything stupid, unless he's feeling malicious."

And knowing your luck, little wolf, this bes'uliik will be as crazy as you are. Knowing my luck, he'll be crazier.

[member="Yasha Mantis"]​

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“People. Big metal killing machine people…” Yasha muttered, coming toward the side of Solus, one hand up and reaching for the harrumphing machine. It jittered and Yasha went still, waiting for the decision between a fight or a backwards run.

“Solus… You’re like a big gnarly gurlanin, like a machine version of Ra… Solus Rekr. You didn’t wanna hurt us, you saw we were going to get smooshed and you kept us alive… Didn’t you, Solus Rekr?” Yasha continued to walk forward, strafing to the side of the beast which slowly began to churn. “Are you a threat? Are you like me? I wouldn’t hate you if you saw me as a threat, most do… I’ve never ridden a bes’uliik before, Solus Rekr… a lot I haven’t done, but I have fought… I fought a ton. I’m sorry your rider died…”

The beast churned and chugged, as Yasha and [member="Shia Kryze"] ended up on the beast’s back. “… I know where she went… I went there too… you did your best, right? ‘Cause a wolf like you always does your best.” Yasha followed Shia’s instructions, patching in to the Bes’uliik’s connection point. The droid bucked and shook from side to side, servos whirring with the whine of gears in need of lubrication. Yasha clung to the bes’uliik, digging into its’ ‘saddle’.

“Woa!” Yasha cut her yelp off, and fumbled around on the back of Solus Rekr, as her HUD skittered between a security lock out screen and draining colours. The droid bucked and whirred, a mechanical grunt cutting the air, until the appropriate menu flooded in.

“Thanks, Mama.” Yasha whispered, feeling that ache in her chest she experienced when her mother’s AI keyed in and Uncle [member="Silas Mantis"] needed his amputated arm cauterized. Although Preliat destroyed his wife’s AI, Yasha wondered if there was some slim ghost left in the machine, a subroutine in her beskar’gam’s electronics, personhood-less, analogous to the ‘gam’s desire to protect and shelter the girl. The slicing program broke through the droid’s inner workings, translating from Mando’a to Epicant so the girl could read.

“Rider… rider Imprint…. there. I think it’s this one.” Yasha spelled out the words in Mando’a, as it translated to Epicant. “My basic’s nearly as bad as my Mando’a… we only speak Epicant in the family… you can learn it, right? Solus? Um… I think…” The machine bucked, whirring up on its’ four appendages and bounding toward old One Eye.

Yasha clung to its’ back, fingers trembling into the finger wells, and knees locking in. A cockpit hatch indeed swung out, encapsulating the girl as Shia likely went tumbling off as the bes’uliik bucked and swung.

“Shia!?” A flash on the HUD, protocols wakening up on the energy-low mechanical creature. Protective protocols… above anything… protect.

“Noono no no no no! Not the air! Not the-wait! St-oh n-ggh!” Yasha shut her eyes and clung to the beast, which slid to a stop by the cliff, between the gorge and One Eye. Encapsulated in the droid, Yasha finally felt a moment of panic. She didn’t like it.

“Solus Rekr! Shia’s my guide! Open the cockpit, it’s okay, we’re okay!” The girl yelped in Epicant, a linear translation coiling through the umbilical between the girl’s armour and the droid.

 

[Shia Kryze]

Shia was an expert at falling off things.

No. Really.

Shia had been trained as a mounted warrior since birth. There wasn't an animal going she wouldn't give herself good odds of trying to ride. She was going to try the Sky Demon, but Yasha got there first.

That means that you learn to fall really, really well. Particularly if you upgrade from animals to say... six meter high, armoured wardroids with bad tempers.

She bounced and rolled in the snow, bouncing to feet and give the the Wolf the eye. It couldn't see the eye through her visor, but she knew it knew, every bes'uliik knew the eye and she was willing to bet it could pick it up from the tilt of her buy'ce. You either perfected that look as a mounted warrior, or you went where you mount wanted, not where you wanted.

Sadly, it had no effect on the warmachine locked in protective mode and she dove to one side, prempting the low power blast from the droids laser cannon. Interesting. Okay, probably not enough power for the shockwave rods and if it has a tail gun, it can't use it without rider over ride. No missiles loaded. No space mines - thank the possibly existant gods for that. Her survival chances improved several tens of percent into something she deemed acceptable. It was also sparking quite badly from it's motivator core, so it wasn't going to fly anywhere and the etheric rudder... wasn't there anymore. The Wolf needed a little tender loving care, maybe Baiko would like a project and would kill her a little less.

"Yasha, calm down! You'll just scare it if you yell at it in... is that Epicant? You need to calm down, breathe and speak in Mando'a if you want it to obey voice commands. The translation matrix will confuse it!"

And like all the best ones, it's definitely smart enough to pick up on it's riders emotions - but like every one she'd ever met, not quite smart enough to always know what they meant.

[member="Yasha Mantis"]​

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Panic was a sensation Yasha only remembered twice in her life. When her mother floated in the batch tank aboard Isley Verd’s ship, and Yasha experienced the light of the galaxy for the first time, she felt panic when Preliat Mantis stared down at her unbelieving who she was.

It was years later during the first battle of the Civil War when Yasha felt true panic again. While Uncle Silas held her in the air, the unarmored girl shouldn’t have jumped. Free fall. Loss of control with no way safely down caused more panic than her deceased mother’s voice in her earpiece telling her how to cauterize a wound.

Clinging to the saddle of a millennia-old war machine, which bucked and rocked and refused to listen brought panic one more time to the fore. It wasn’t the rocking, the danger which caused such emotion in the girl.

Yasha couldn’t get out. She was fearless in battle, reckless in her tasks… but being trapped, incapable of getting out? Claustrophobia. It was the closest Yasha knew to true fear.

“Shia!” Yasha began babbling in her mother tongue too fast for any translation matrix to process. Eyes shut under her buy’ce, Yasha gripped into the finger holds of the bes’uliik and clung hard.

The beast bucked and whirred, firing what reserve it had at the usurper it expected. Speak in Mando’a? Calm down?

Yasha pulled one hand out of the finger grooves and clutched at her sternum, where under the armour, Ra Vizsla’s mother’s necklace reminded her that even the bravest warriors felt fear, and even someone who was afraid could do great things.

Ra would stay calm. Daddy would push forward. The adults in her life gave the girl a bedrock of calm. Calm. Down. Bringing her mind back to Mando’a brought back the terrible stutter the girl displayed when speaking Mando’a, and as a child learning the language.

“S-she is my vod. Stop. Open the cockp-puh-pit cover… p-please. St-st-a-and down. We’re… we.. w-hhhh… we’re safe.” Yasha cranked open one eye and shut it again, breathing steadier as she imagined she could get out if she wanted to. She wasn’t trapped on the back of an old protective war machine.

“We’re safe… stand d-down.”

The machine whirred, spat one more weak blast at [member="Shia Kryze"] and settled on the snow covered earth. While the old machine had stopped attacking, it had yet to open the cockpit. As Yasha opened her eyes and eased on the saddle, she gulped and slid her fingers back into the appropriate grooves.

“Awesome… that was wild… Shia? You dead?”

 

[Shia Kryze]

"Nope."

Shia announced cheerfully, hopping back to her feet with a remarkable degree of self-assurance for someone who'd just been shot at by anti-vehicular weaponry.

"I might be scratched, but it'll buff out." She kept her tone deliberately light. She couldn't see Yasha, but she has her own fears and knew what they felt like. Better to make light and let everyone play the badass card, that was, after all, the Mando'ade way. "Okay, so retractable cockpit - good for space flight, but you lose the view."

She took a few steps closer.

"So. The first word you want to remember is ke'gyce - command or order, sort of. Then try... es adade ara'nov - remove personal defences. If that's no good, then try es abiik'ar'garm - thats the old compound for cockpit."

She looked up at the warmachine with a surprisingly practiced eye. Mid-range model datewise, by the looks of it. They'd mostly become relics by the time of the Civil War, they came back into use sometime during or after the Plague. Still, a genuine relic.

"You don't need use ke'gyce every time you give it an instruction, but for now it'll make your intentions clear. Later, I'll explain how to add supplimentary handlers so you don't have to take care of it all yourself - unless you want to, but generally having them be quiet around the tech-types is good for morale."

[member="Yasha Mantis"]​

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“Few!” Yasha peeked over the horizon line of the bes’uliik and caught sight of Shia. “I can help… with your armour… promise.”

[member="Shia Kryze"]’s calm soothed the girl’s panic over being encased, entombed in the embrace of a once-dead machine. “Ke goose… ke geese… kegisiesese…”

She groaned and leaned back until her buy’ce tapped on the cockpit cover, becoming intimately aware yet again that she was trapped in the black iron beast. “Ke-gee-se eses-dadade ara nob…”

Pressing her lips together under her buy’ce, Yasha groaned again and got comfortable in the saddle of the beast. “This… might take a while. My pronounci-ma-fication sucks.”

Stroking her hand along the back spine of the beast, Yasha tried again, and again. Every time her stutter caused a chitter in the bes’uliik, a deep churning of its’ claws in the snowy earth. “Okay! Okay, okay… okay… ke’gyce … ses abick arrgarm… ke’gyce es abiik’ar’garm?”

The beast settled into the snow and the cockpit cover retracted. Yasha yelped out a cry of joy and slumped belly down on the bes’uliik’s upper body, arms akimbo along the side.

“Oh sweet bippy. [member="Kaden Mantis"] is gonna school me on Mando’a after he hears about this one… naw you’re Clan Mantis now, buddy. That means at least Baiko, Kaiden and Daddy should be able to touch you without going kaput skies.”

Unbound from the cockpit, Yasha’s mood improved seven fold. She sat up and waved at Shia. “How much more crazy do you think old red eye’s going to be?”

 

[Shia Kryze]

"Well, they say he's the most independent and cantankerous of them."

Shia comments, a little nervously, walking over to the immobile form of the ancient droid.

"So... lets assume its going to exciting, eh?"

She clambers onto the back of the droid, running one armoured glove over its armour plates as she does so.

"So... aux charger, check. Deck, check. Input leads, check. Master case key..." She produces the same master key as before and unlocks the aux inputs, the connects the cables, then glances up at Yasha and gives her a thumbs up.

Press the button, Shia.

Press the damn... *click*

The power pack discharged with a low hum, the ancient droid's one optic flickered with a dull light and the immense form rumbled, before rising unsteadily to it's feet. Shia frantically typed on the deck as the ancient droid slowly took stock of it's surroundings, solar panel chargers unfurling, then with a loud metallic rumble it lunged towards a pile of discarded metal, grabbed it in it's jaws, tossed it into the air and wolfed it down in a remarkably lifelike fashion.

"What? Ack! No. What are you..."

The droid made a deeply satisfied noise and started rummaging around in the remains of the battle, apparently hunting out power packs and other rare metals with it's claws.

"Rider ident. Sequence transfer..."

The droid stopped, removed it's 'muzzle' from the innards of some wrecked war droid and turned it's head so it's one good optic could see Shia on it's back. She gave it the eye for a long moment, then almost cheerfully the immense droid rumbled it's satisfaction and - entirely without instruction, went back to searching out key repair materials.

"Uh, so... we're repairing, then, I guess." Shia replied, looking down at the deck and detaching it carefully. "That was... anticlimactic."

[member="Yasha Mantis"]​

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Old Red Scar. One Eye the Petulant.

The scourge of Kryze Bes’uliiks….

“Hey, no fair! Mine tried to kill you! Yours just… what’s it doing?” Yasha peeked over the edge of Solus Rekr, standing with her feet on both sides of the saddle, hands farther up on the massive droid’s head.

“No, really, what’s it doing?” Yasha fumbled her way to Solus’ gargantuan, gun-toting head and watched as the old battle axe whirred, gruffed and began to chuff around for parts.

“Do they all do that? Hey, Solus, do you do that?” Yasha swung down around Solus’ neck, peeking into the ocular components of the war beast. “Do you?”

Cold blue droid eyes peered at the hanging Mando’ad’ika, and the bes’uliik rumbled, then rolled its neck and shoulders, tossing Yasha back into the saddle.

“Waugh! Of!” Yasha clambered on the beast’s back, and looked to [member="Shia Kryze"]. “Is that… is that it? What now?”

 

[Shia Kryze]

"Urm. I think he's in repair mode."

Shia checked several readouts by her hands.

"Yep, definitely in repair mode, and absolutely refusing to listen to anything I have to say... no, they don't all do this. I think Black Sky does, but that, uh... eats organic matter. One Eye here had an experimental repair unit installed... a long time ago, works great, unfortunately, you can't modify him or repair him yourself or... well, he scars."

Watching a bes'uliik 'eat' is rather like watching a very large, very angry bear munch it's way through durasteel, while occasionally delicately teasing apart components to get the one bit it's decided it needs. Shia frowns and gently urges One Eye to stop, she is promptly ignored.

"I can see this will be a... learning experience for both of us, One Eye."

The droid, to it's credit, utterly ignores her and continues browsing what passes for it's dinner - it's self repair is incredibly rapid, old minor battle damage is already healing, leaving only the gleaming 'fresh' scar across it's optics.

"I think Solus might need some care and attention, and your etheric rudder is... well... not there, so I wouldn't try flying him. He probably wouldn't even let you. So we're going to have to climb down. Which, if you've never done it, it's a terrifying experience. They like to go face first. So you might want to extend the cockpit."

She gently nudges One Eye in the direction of the shallowest part of the cliff they came up.

"Come on, we can get you refined minerals when we get down."

Bribery it seems, appears to work, the droid pauses for a moment to run an internal diagnostic, decides that yes, it can climb down successfully, then obeys her instructions.

[member="Yasha Mantis"]​

 

[Yasha Cadera]

“Orgmantic matter... you mean people... Ra’Ra’s Bes’uliik eats people...” Underneath her helmet, Yasha scrunched her face and stuck out her tongue. “That is... gee... how could it even get the components it needed from... organic matter? Blech.”

She tapped at the bes’uliik’s metal hide and wiggled her feet. “You hungry, buddy?” Solus Rekr waggled its solar panels and settled in beside Old One Eye to seep in the radiant sun. “So he’s a self-repairing robot who can’t be repaired, and he’s eating things and not listening… awesome. Want to play a game while we wait, or… we’re climbing down that cliff face first on ancient machinery that are half broke?”

Yasha looked down at the bes’uliik, then up at [member="Shia Kryze"]. “Aaaawesome… you and me climbing down the cliff?”

The only answer she got was the shuffle of droid feet and a single jump as the cockpit cover thrust around her. “Oh nelly!”

Yasha clung to the seat, her fingers digging into the grooves. “This… is…. awesome!!!”

The girl started cackling with laughter as Solus Rekr started clawing its’ way down the cliff face. “You’re the beeeeeeest!”

 

[Shia Kryze]

Shia shuddered faintly as Yasha vanished over the cliff.

What have I done? She mused. Then grinned. Unleashed terror upon the world, where it belongs.

Silently she guided One Eye to follow Solus down, never once using the hand controls, all with quiet vox commands and her knees. She didn't put the cockpit up, Shia never really got on with them - you rode a bes'uliik, you didn't pilot it. It was, she considered, a long way down.

"Try not to get too far ahead! This is still hostile territory!" She voxed down, that was probably futile, but then again... it all made for a better story in the end, right?

[member="Yasha Mantis"]​