Off the Beaten Path

[Kaili Talith]

[member="Jamie Pyne"]

Kaili continued fidgeting with her hands, dragging her one hand across the thumb on her other hand and then proceeding to pull that very same thumb across the palm of the hand. She couldn’t seem to keep her arms still, she felt safer when she did this, it helped her. A lump started to build in her stomach at the thought of what was going on and what they might be doing to her ship.

“I am the frightened one.” Kaili hissed a whisper back at Jamie. “These memories I mention are not good memories, they are the exact opposite of good memories, and right now I am locked up inside of a freaking storage room set up as an interrogation chamber in a hurry.”

“Stress just makes everything worse!” She whined before the sound of the door coming open sounded into the small room. Kaili twitched as in stepped a small man. He was a graying man with a prominent mole that sat right above the corner of his mouth. The man himself took a seat before the two girls and Kaili turned to look at him.

A moment of silence passed.

“Both girls.” He noted down on his pad. “Age range… Twenty to twenty-three, at most.”

“Ship make… Unknown.” He continued making notes. “Both blonde,” He looked at Jamie and then Kaili. “One blue-eyed and the other… Orange. Interesting.”

He put his stylus down by his pad before pushing it into a perfect alignment along the edges of the datapad.

“Well,” He began again. “You two certainly made an entrance.” He eyed first Kaili and then Jamie. “And you are just here by accident, you say?” Kaili looked away and he in turn looked at her. “I find that a bit hard to believe.”

“How did you really get here?” He asked, turning to Jamie instead.

 

[Jamie Pyne]

Jamie would have told Kaili to relax if she had time before the man, presumably the warden or something, entered. Unfortunately she would simply have to hope that Kaili could find it within herself to calm down.

The blonde sat up straight the instant the door clicked open, her eyes studying every inch of his face and body features before he took a seat opposite them, back to the door. She listened to him rattle off the basics of both she and Kaili, noting that he could not ID their ship. That was likely due to the nature of Kaili's design of said ship. All she could do there was hope he was not terribly interested in those details, lest they have more odd explaining to do when in truth they really hadn't meant to wind up where they were.

"Well," She started, "My friend and I were on our way to deliver the supplies that your men have surely already inspected." She turned to Kaili, "She's my pilot, you see."

Her eyes fell back to the man opposite the two. "I'm afraid I'm not much of a technical adept. We had an equipment failure of some sort, perhaps she could better explain that." Jamie smiled warmly. "But we wound up off course, I'm guessing a different hyperlane route. I'm not actually certain where here is, sir."

There was a roll of her shoulders.

"I'm a humanitarian delegate from Naboo. I don't much know about this area of space, so I do apologize sincerely for this trespass. All we're looking to do is repair our ship and be on our way."

[member="Kaili Talith"]

 

[Kaili Talith]

[member="Jamie Pyne"]

“You are a long way from Naboo.” The man nodded with mocking tsk. “Why exactly would Queen Versai send you to these distant parts of the galaxy with humanitarian supplies, huh?”

He eyed Kaili, the pilot of the ship. She looked back at him before placing her hands on the table and letting her attention set in the way it seemed to have been carved out of some sort of durasteel-like alloy. Robust, cold to the touch, and- “Your pilot seems awfully quiet.” The man said turning back towards Kaili. “I’ve found that most people that sit within this room, while they’re that quiet, are usually the kind we end up having to space.” A suspicious glance shot out at Jamie for a second before it shot back at Kaili.

“You better speak up, girl.” His voice went darker, more threatening than before. “Give me a name.”

“Kaili.” Kaili muttered under her breath.

“Speak up.” He ordered her with a boom.

“Kaili.” The girl spoke up more clearly this time.

“And who is this?”

Kaili looked at Jamie, her mouth opening out of uncertainty. Was she supposed to just go along with this? Just let a stranger tell her what to do, what to feel and how to act? Her mouth closed, her brows furrowed. No, Kaili was not someone who was going to be ordered around. She was a Talith, but she wasn’t just any Talith, she was Kaili Talith. Her father was one of the greatest warriors alive and her sister too.

No, she did not have to take this from him.

“Why don’t you ask her that yourself?” She retorted back at him with a stare that was ready to start spit fire into his face. “You’re pretty fething rude, do you know that?” The girl grasped at the edge of the table. “We accidentally stumble into your remote little corner of the galaxy and you see it fit to take us in and make death threats? Why not just blast us when we were already in space? What’s your game here, Administrator?”

Kaili rose from her seat. The chair fell to the ground and with no further warning the doors to the room swept open and in came two armed guards. The girl continued to stare the administrator down.

“Sit down, miss.” One of the guards demanded of her. “Now.”

The girl glared at the old man before them as she slowly cooperated. Picked the chair from the ground and took her seat, not once letting her laserbeam-eyes off the man’s face.

The man seemed unphased and simply snickered. “Well, it seems I was wrong.” He turned to Jamie. “Why should we offer you any sort of help fixing a problem that is not ours?”

“... And especially after that?”

 

[Jamie Pyne]

"King Marcello" Jamie corrected the man. "The queen has long since passed, I'm afraid."

Her tone was hardly rude, but polite informant. "Again, we weren't sent here. Humanitarian aide recognizes no boundaries, however, to answer your question more directly."

The short bout between Kaili and the warden raised the tensions of the room notably, most likely setting back whatever hollow leniency this man was willing to spare them to a degree. She gave Kaili a harsh glare, the unnecessary rhetoric was hardly worth the trouble it potentially caused. Not that it was unwarranted, but Jamie came from an upbringing where knives were cast beneath subtleties, not by sharpened tongues.

"Please excuse her. She's a bit distraught. My name is Jamie Pyne. House Pyne of Naboo and delegate of the royal court, council to the King."

Perhaps a bit of title throwing would help appease the man. Perhaps not, but it wasn't quite as though they had many options left.

"All we would like is a day, perhaps two, to repair our ship and be on our way." The blonde offered the man a polite smile. "If you would be so kind, we will make haste and be of no further trouble."

[member="Kaili Talith"]

 

[Kaili Talith]

[member="Jamie Pyne"]

The man did seem unmoved by the news of the queen’s death. He merely grabbed his stylus and made a new note on his pad and then put it down again. What he did seem amused by was the fact that Jamie would refer to Kaili as ‘distraught.’ His lips curving into a condescending smile at the attempt to fix what Kaili had said. The girl meanwhile merely acknowledged that Jamie was unhappy with her before she leaned back in her seat like an insolent child; stretching her back against its metal edge.

“I got the report here.” The man said and proceeded to tap at his pad. “Our scans are showing nothing on your ship beyond that what you mentioned, but…” He looked at the insolent Kaili. “I am not sure I want you around.”

He too leaned back in his chair, this time seemingly talking to Kaili. “Six hours.”

“Do what you can and leave.”

“That is all you are going to get. It’s non-negotiable.”

Soldiers stepped inside and the man bid his farewell to let them escort the girls back to their ship.

“I can do it in two.” Tsked Kaili as she held back the urge to flip him a bird on the way out of the room. She settled for whispering something rude under her breath instead.

 

[Jamie Pyne]

Jamie would have laughed if the guards hadn't come back in at Kaili's snarky remark in response to his strict hospitality.

Hospitality. If it could be called that with armed guards prepared to shoot dead anyone who deemed moderately inconvenient to the man they were employed by. She was certain that if there was anything else aboard that ship besides your every day run-of-the-mill supplies that their situation would have likely escalated into something much less friendly than what they had been received thus far.

As the guards escorted Kaili and Jamie back towards their ship the blonde remained silent, not out of anger with Kaili, but more so because anything else they spoke about on that walk back would likely make its' way back to the Warden, and he didn't need any more information about the two than he had already received.

[member="Kaili Talith"]

 

[Kaili Talith]

[member="Jamie Pyne"]

The walk back wasn’t very eventful either. Kaili held her gaze fixed at the ship as they stepped into the hangar to try and poke it for clues. It was her own creation, drawn by her very own hands, if anyone would see any blaring imperfections it would be her. A brief glance said that there was nothing about the ship that was wrong on the hull’s surface, but it was hard to actually get a good view when you hadn’t been granted full mobility around your ship yet.

The two soldiers left the two blondes by their lonesome in the hangar bay.

“Well,” Kaili’s voice echoed. “That could have gone worse.”

Way worse. They could be dead over what she pulled!

“If you want you could try to assess the damage on the interior while I give the outside a look over. That sound good to you?” Kaili looked towards the loading ramp. “Prometheus has a self-diagnostics routine if you want to give that another go.”

 

[Jamie Pyne]

Jamie laughed under her breath at Kaili's comment. "If it went much worse we would both have a few extra holes in our heads." Either that, or they would find themselves in bindings. As confident as Jamie was in their combined strength, they had no idea how many men this warden had at his disposal. It was best they fix their ship as quickly and quietly as possible and be on their way.

Preferably before the man changed his mind, or his terms.

"We should do this quickly. I don't trust that man." Kaili, she was sure, echoed that sentiment.

The blonde gave a nod. "Sounds good. I will go check it out. Be fast though." She didn't want to be separated longer than necessary.

[member="Kaili Talith"]