Private Mining the Horizon

[Gren Blidh]

An unknown species of lizard wouldn't be a gourmet meal, but it would fry just the same. That is, once the scales were removed.

"Guess you've got some spunk to you after all," Gren cracked a smile and scoffed at Honey Hallowell 's sudden display of savagery. "We'll need a fire first."

Gren could have used his blaster to potentially light a fire amidst the underbrush, but that would create too much noise. It was still unknown whether or not there were other survivors from the crash, and more importantly, why the ship downed in the first place. He would prefer to leave their presence here in the woods as covert as possible for now. The fire would be started the old fashioned way - rubbing sticks together.

"So..." He continued as he began collecting twigs, "Where were you traveling?"

 

[Honey Hallowell]

Honey inclined her head towards the man, then shook her head stoically. Good for him if he thought she was spunky; it was nothing to her. She would do what it took to survive, if that meant slamming a lizard to death with a club, she would do it. If that meant slamming Gren Blidh to death with a club, she would do that, too. So far, he had been an irritant, but nothing more, but there was no guarantee that would continue forever.

She picked up a stick again and scratched out: AWAY FROM CORUSCANT.

A pause. Then she scratched that out, smoothed it over, and wrote: NO SET DESTINATION - CORELLIA MAYBE??? YOU?

She didn't know if he was reading it, so she left it there and set about rubbing the sticks together over the pile of kindling. She didn't know how she knew how to start a fire. It was turning out to be quite a journey of self-discovery, here. Soon, smoke was curling up from the leaves and kindling.

 

[Gren Blidh]

Gren's singular eye observed her message in the dirt, and after a moment of silence, he reclined back further on his rock.

"About the same. I just needed to get away from the cities," He responded. He would keep those reasons to himself for now, but Gren imagined that Honey Hallowell was doing exactly the same thing. She was obviously hiding far more than she was willing, or even able to, reveal. This only heightened Gren's suspicions about the incident.

"I don't think this crash was an accident," He finally said. "It may have something to do with you, or me, or maybe even both of us."

 

[Honey Hallowell]

Honey looked sidelong at her fellow survivor, studying his profile for a moment. Then she hefted her writing stick and scratched out: SOUNDS SUSPICIOUS TO ME. She stuck the stick into the ground beneath her scrawl and gathered some more kindling to put on the burgeoning fire. Soon, there was a slow flame consuming the leaves and sticks that they stacked, casting a warm orange glow for around a meter around the fire. She paused to warm her hands in the glow before returning to the stick and moving closer to scratch out another message.

WHY DO U THINK THAT? DID U SEE SOMETHING? WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY?

She leaned over and tapped Gren Blidh on the shin with her stick, then directed him to the scrawl.

 

[Gren Blidh]

When the scribbling was done and Gren leaned over to see what she had written, he recoiled with a scoff.

"Yeah, and there's nothing suspicious about a mute woman with no memory, finding herself aboard a freighter that crashes for no reason," Gren wrinkled his face at her and crossed his arms.

The emberglow of the flames between them illuminated Gren's cycloptic gaze as he waited in silence and patience, while Honey Hallowell scrawled her message. This form of communication was certainly not the most efficient and could potentially slow them down to disastrous effect, but Gren would take what he could get from Honey. The two silhouettes before the fire barely knew each other - and certainly didn't seem to like each other - but they were each other's only ticket to survival. When she had again finished drawing in the sand, Gren leaned over to take a look.

"I didn't see anything," He clarified, and then a long pause. "It's just something I feel. I don't know what you were trying to escape from back on Coruscant. But maybe there are certain... parties out there, interested in you as they are me. Maybe they didn't want us to escape."

 

[Honey Hallowell]

Honey regarded him, her glacial eyes narrowing slightly as he spoke. Immediately, she began writing out a retort with her stick: DONT REMEMBER BEING MUTE BEFORE CRASH. MAYBE CAUSED BY IT?

In fact she was quite sure that she had been 'mute', as he called it, before the crash. She remembered trying to speak on the flight, but being unable to force herself to make the words. But she didn't like his all-seeing, all-knowing, holier-than-thou attitude, not a bit. So she wouldn't give him the satisfaction, at any rate.

She put the lizard on a spit and held it over the fire. The skin sizzled and popped; it was nauseating, really, but still she felt a hunger gnawing at her, and it wouldn't do to eat it raw. She propped it up on the fire and then picked up her writing stick. NORMALLY THIS IS CALLED A CRAZY CONSPIRACY THEORY, BUT GIVEN THAT OUR SHIP CRASHED FOR NO APPARENT REASON YOU MAY NOT BE WRONG.

 

[Gren Blidh]

Unaware that Honey Hallowell was lying, Gren would take her scrawls at face value. Sitting back in the sand and crossing his arms as he leaned back against a rock, the mysterious smuggler sighed.

"Well, that's some luck."

Stars were coming out as Honey began weaving her second message in the sand. Soon the sun would be completely set, and the blood orange emanating from the horizon beyond the trees would give way to darkness. From here, Gren had a pretty good vantage point of the crash site; the main body was obstructed by the trees below him on the mountain, but he could see the plumes of smoke still rising from the ashes of the freighter, though now weaker than before.

"Exactly. How often do you hear of a ship crashing on its own?" Gren said in reply to her second message, leaning forward. "You know how many failsafes are built into those systems? Contingencies upon contingencies. It would take a catastrophic computer failure of almost impossible magnitude for the ship to lose all support-"

Gren stopped speaking as his eyes caught a few bright flashes in the sky above. At first nothing more than barely noticeable shooting stars in the sky, it soon became apparent that the light was emanating from ships entering the atmosphere. Two vessels in all, the make was unclear. They, too, were headed towards the crash site, although judging from their approach, it was a controlled landing.

"Put the fire out!"

 

[Honey Hallowell]

Honey frowned. Ships crashed on their own, she was sure of that, but it was comparatively rare. She wanted to point out that the ship they had been on was ancient. It wasn't like it was state of the art. It was probably rickety when the plague years began. But that was an awful right to carve into the ground with a stick in order to argue a mostly-irrelevant point with a comparative stranger, so she simply gnawed on her grilled lizard and tried very hard not to vomit in the process.

He went silent, and she stopped mid-bite and looked up, then to the side, then up again. Her eyes found the ship trails too. She dropped the lizard.

She quickly grabbed a broader stick and began to dig sand from the earth to dump on the flame, damping the heat and light. She repeated the process several times until the fire was out, then waved her hands to try to clear the smoke before dropping into a crouch. She tapped Gren Blidh on the shoulder and gave him an inquisitive look. Honey had lost sight of the ships as she had been doing the grunt work that he had instructed. It was the least he could do to give her a status update.

 

[Gren Blidh]

Gren peered from between the underbrush down at the inlet below. Light from the ships flickered and danced between the leaves in indistinguishable patterns, and flecks of life poured from them in an apparent attempt to examine the wreckage. At first their was no sound besides the engines of the ships, which de-escalated to a dull hum. Soon, faint voices could be heard. Distant and indistinguishable at first, they began to grow in the darkness beyond until they were accompanied by the sound of footsteps rustling the jungle foliage not far off, beams of flashlights cutting through the jungle haze in search of the source of the fire. They hadn't put it out quickly enough.

"We have to get out of here," Gren turned to his accomplice. She wanted her status update, and that was it.

Gren illustrated the severity of the situation with his lone wide eye, while his other hand reached into his jacket and pulled out his blaster pistol again. At least the fact that Honey Hallowell was mute would play to their advantage now.

 

[Honey Hallowell]

It was too dark to see what the men approaching were wearing; they could have been rescue workers or law enforcement or soldiers or mercenaries or corporatist goons. She didn't want to wait around and find out, and it seemed that Gren Blidh felt the same. She nodded in agreement when he spoke and pulled herself up to her feet in a low crouch. Running would only get them caught; she crept towards the edge of the clearing, pushing through the low brush and into the trees.

Without the firelight, since dusk had settled over the area, Honey could barely see her hand in front of her face, let alone a path between the trees. There was a slight descent to the ground here; they were moving down hill. Maybe they could find a ravine or gully to hide in. Several meters into the wooded area outside the clearing, she ducked behind a tree and waited for Blidh. With his ability to speak, it was probably better that he should continue in front so that he could give instructions.

She reached into her boot and drew the vibroknife hidden there, holding it at the ready in case they came across anyone who needed stabbing.