Sand and Sun

[Munin]

[member="Spark Finn"]

The few seconds of extra speed helped, or Munin thought so anyway. They zipped across the open plain of the desert, a trail of sand tossed up into the air in their wake. His back pressed against his seat, fingers tightly wrapped around the controls of the speeder as they shot forward. Munin's scarf whipped in the wind, smacking against the side of his face as they got closer and closer to the canyon. In the distance one could start to hear the roar of the sands, the wind tearing across the air and the howl of gales pressing closer and closer.

"Almost there." The words were said too quiet for Spark to hear, though she could make the assumption herself.

The canyon drew closer, and then suddenly within another heartbeat they were there.

Almost immediately Munin pulled back on the controls, slowing them to bring them to a more manageable speed. The added boost that Spark had given them had long since passed as they came to the edge of the canyon a path, perhaps carved by a long gone river, sat within the center of the cliffs. There was no hesitation from Munin, he immediately pointed them towards the small dip within the rocks and sent the speeder down the winding natural road.

As soon as they crested the small hill Munin let out a gasp.

He had known that the canyon was a starship graveyard, but the sight that lay before them was beyond anything he had expected. There were dozens of capital ships, star destroyers of all sorts, old CIS vessels, half a dozen different types of ships Munin didn't even recognize. They were spaced out for miles, stretching to the entire horizon and in between them lay hundreds upon hundreds of smaller vessels, so many that Munin couldn't even identify half.

 

[Spark Finn]

[member="Munin"]

The sky surrounding them and overhead roared like a raging wildfire. They had seconds. #seconds

Mentally, she withdrew from the ship. Wild-blue eyes searched the landscape. Visibility was rapidly declining. Fingers dug into her own scarf, to keep it from slipping off her face. Arm pointed at two o'clock.

She didn't know the make or model of the semi ship left. It was small. It would hold their speeder with maybe a ten or so square foot spare space. #asqueeze

"There! We won't," the roaring intensified cutting off all chance of speaking or hearing anything. The black and orange wall of sand began to crash over them. An invisible force bubble immediately surrounded them and the speeder, careful to match their movements.

Muscles tensed and she gritted her teeth as the hurricane-like storm began to swallow them whole.

 

[Munin]

[member="Spark Finn"]

Munin turned the speeder on a hairpin.

There wasn't any time to think about safety anymore, there wasn't any time to think about anything in fact. All that was on his mind was getting into that hangar, all he could think about was getting them to a place where the storm wouldn't swallow them alive. They drifted for half a second in the air, then they shot forward once more. Through half a dozen crashed fighters, over a half buried capital ship, and then suddenly into the hangar that Spark had pointed out.

The sand whipped and world around them, the darkness of the storm overtaking them just as Munin pulled the speeder into the hangar bay.

"Clos-" He began to scream as the sand flooded into the hangar. "Close the doors!"

The Slicer half jumped, half fell out of the speeder, scrambling through the wind and dashing towards the manual controls of the hangar bay. He moved as fast as he possibly could, rushing, tripping half a dozen times before he finally managed to find the controls that he was looking for. Munin pulled on the mechanical lever once, then twice, screaming as he found it stuck. "Spark! Help!"

 

[Spark Finn]

[member="Munin"]

The second they got inside, the protective force bubble transitioned to cover the hangar's entrance. Sand and wind managed to get in along the edges. But they weren't dead.

#yourewelcome

Gritting her teeth, her arms raised as she stumbled from the speeder. The scarf whipped off her face. Her hair went wild. Gangly-limbs carried her closer to the entrance. She was barely keeping the shield up.

Neck curved to Munin. "The bubble won't hold!" He would notice that the barrage of sand and wind was running into an invisible wall. #wizardstuff

But she knew they didn't have a choice. "Here goes!" Half her concentration spun into the ship's hangar doors. Munin would find that the levee would suddenly respond to his touch. There was a metallic groaning as the doors began to extend.

The force bubble began to crumble. Wind and sand whipped in and just as quickly, she was blown off her feet and back into the hangar's walls.

 

[Munin]

[member="Spark Finn"]

There was a loud, shrill CREAK as the hangar doors fell shut.

The sudden and solid thunk that sounded out when the metal doors slammed together was almost overbearingly loud, but also perhaps the most comforting sound he could have heard in that moment. For a second more, perhaps out of some odd sort of odd desperation he slumped against the handle. Munin hung there for a second, half looking back towards Spark before speaking. "That was clo-"

He cut himself off as he saw her leaning slumped against the wall.

"Spark!" The Information Broker cried out as he quickly rushed over to her. "Hey hey hey."

He came to a sliding stop besides her, hand gently cupping her cheek to lift her head so that he could look at her eyes. "Are you okay?

 

[Spark Finn]

[member="Munin"]

Chin bobbed against her chest. She heard Munin's voice as if from far away. Blue-eyes threatened to roll back into her head. The back wall hadn't been kind to her body. #ouch #bruised

The door. Did they get the door? She wanted to look but she couldn't concentrate. She pushed against the blackness that threatened to consume her. He asked her something?

She frowned, her body further slumping forward. Into Munin? There was blackness for a second. Words. She had to use words. "My head...hur--," blue-eyes rolled back once more, lids closing like the hangar doors just had. Flopping like a fish on dry land, she was out.

 

[Munin]

[member="Spark Finn"]

Munin caught Spark as she collapsed into him, arms wrapping around her so that she wouldn't fall into the sands. He let out a quiet curse, quickly running his hands over to make sure that she wasn't bleeding. Fingers threaded through her hair to very gently run along her scalp, coming out of blonde locks clean. The Information Broker breathed a sigh of relief, letting him relax at least for a moment as he gently tugged her a bit closer away from the wall.

His hand slipped to her neck, fingers settling on the vein within her throat. He felt a steady throb there, her pulse still going strong. A short nod and Munin slowly stood up, slipping his arms beneath Spark to lift her off the ground. For a moment he surveyed the hangar that they now found themselves in. The bottom of it was of course covered in sand, though aside from that the place looked relatively untouched. He couldn't recognize exactly what kind of ship the hangar belonged to, though he saw a door on the far side of the room. For now however he simply wandered to the center of the hangar, gently placing Spark on the ground before running to the speeder.

She was okay, for now at least, though he would have to watch her to make sure.

The Slicer retrieved both of their sleeping bags, laying one of the ground and opening it up before placing the other at it's head. He took Spark and slipped her onto the makeshift bed, gently placing her head on the pillow.

The wind just outside the Hangar Bay doors was picking up, the ship around them creaking and groaning as Munin began to set up a makeshift camp within the center of the Hangar. He took equipment from the speeder and set it up, using some of the crates and placing his datapad on it then setting up the stove he had brought along as a source of light along with two of the lamps. Eventually Munin managed to craft quite the cozy space, sitting down next to the unconscious Spark as he waited for her to wake.

 

[Spark Finn]

[member="Munin"]

A sharp-shooting pain turned into a dull-ache in the back of her head. Blue-eyes flew open and stared at the ship hangar's ceiling. It took her a moment to remember the last few moments. And the sounds outside only fueled that memory.

#deadlystorm #shutthedoors #ouch

Sawyer, was he okay?!

"Sawye-ahhhhh!" She sat up - a little too quickly. A wince of pain eclipsed her pale face. Fingers gingerly rubbed the back of her head. "Are we, are you okay?" Pain filled eyes finally focused on his face. Just seeing him close and seemingly okay made her calm down a little. Just a smidge.

She couldn't lose someone again.

 

[Munin]

[member="Spark Finn"]

Munin was sitting right beside her, datapad in his la, stripped down to just a shirt and some shorts. As Spark got up his eyes instantly pulled away from the screen and towards her, he reached out and gently touched her shoulder. "We're fine."

She had taken the brunt of the damage from the storm, in fact nearly all of it. He had a few cuts and scrapes from the sands shifting through just as the doors closed, bu the gust of wind had really caught Spark far more than anything else. Luckily she hadn't been hit by any debris, and thus didn't have any wounds besides the knock on her head. It was a string of luck really, Munin had little to no medical knowledge and would have struggled with pretty much any injury.

"The storm threw you against the wall." He explained quietly, gently pressing at her skin so she would lay back down. "You've been unconscious for a few hours."

Four hours to be exact.

The storm was still raging on outside, and from what he could tell it would last at least another few hours before it dissipated.

Munin had tried sending out one of the drones he'd brought along quite some time ago, but the little droid had been swept up and into the storm almost immediately. He had gotten some telemetry and information from it, but ultimately the drone had been completely destroyed when the winds had thrown it against the side of a nearby capital ship.

 

[Spark Finn]

[member="Munin"]

"Hours?" She murmured. It didn't take much of a nudge from Munun to get her lithe frame back to lying down. Hand remained at the side of her head as she looked up at her traveling companion. Even with a throbbing head, she was a little restless.

"Do we have any freeze packs or pain killers?" There were those bags you could shake to activate the freon. She wondered if Munin had gotten any in supplies she hadn't even thought of. "And tell me something I don't know about you. Distract me?"

Even though she probably looked like a hot mess, she didn't care. Speckled-gaze only broke away from Munin's face when the throbbing got to be too much and she would squeeze her eyes temporarily closed.

#storytime #sandstorms

 

[Munin]

[member="Spark Finn"]

"No Ice pack." He wouldn't even begin to know how to keep something like that cold here. "We do have some pain meds though."

Again he'd thought of that.

They had an entire advanced medical kit in fact. He stood up and wandered over towards the speeder, pulling the kit free and unzipping the large canvas bag. He ruffled around for a moment and then pulled out a small clear bottle of white pills. He took a bottle of water from the speeder as well, wandering back over at Spark before stopping mid-step as she made her other demand. His eyes went wide for a moment, lips thinning before he slowly put his foot down.

It wasn't too strange of a quesiton considering their relationship and what they knew of each other, but...well it had caught him off guard. He walked back over to her and sat down, pulling two pills from the small bottle and offering them to Spark along with the water. Munin put on a pensive face as he thought for a second, trying to recall any interesting details about himself.

Eventually he spoke up. "I'm not really that interesting."

The admission was half shameful.

"Don't have much of a life." Not apart from work anyway, he shrugged slightly and then offered a small token...something that would hopefully satisfy her quesiton. "I can't swim."

 

[Spark Finn]

[member="Munin"]

"Thanks," fingers brushed against his as she took the offered water and pills. Sitting up much slower, she crossed her legs and took a swig of water, downing the drugs. #plzwork

She frowned at his first admission. Did he not trust her? Or did he really think that way?

At his second, she gave a small smile. "I don't think we have to worry about that here." She didn't know much about swimming. Just enough to survive. In theory. She'd actually never done it. Just watched a bunch of self-taught holovids on it.

"Did you know I got kicked out of or ran away from almost every boarding school my parents put me in since I was about two standard years old?"

 

[Munin]

[member="Spark Finn"]

Swimming had never really come up. On Spira there had been plenty of water, but...well they'd never really let him go very far from the Orphanage and the one time he'd run away they'd caught him before he could even make it to the Ocean. Since then he'd never really made it all that close to water, mostly because there had been no need. About the closest that he got was when he and Huginn visited their datacenter, but that didn't really count since the place was frozen.

"I didn't know that." He said with a smile, stating the obvious of course.

"So you knew your parents?" For some odd reason he had been under the assumption that Spark was an orphan just like him. Of course from her words it was pretty clear that her parents had tried to do away with her, or at least hid her from themselves. A decision like that seemed odd to him. As a kid he'd always assumed that families were...happy. Anything else seemed wrong, after all every orphan wanted to be adopted, to have a mom and dad.

Munin had been the same.

Of course he was beginning to think that his own orphanage had never actually allowed anyone to be adopted, but that didn't change his thoughts on it.

 

[Spark Finn]

[member="Munin"]

She looked down at the sleeping bag. Fingers ran across the material. She finished off the water and placed it on the floor. Fingers continued to trace an invisible outline. "Not really. I kind of remember their faces from breaking into my own file once. I thought getting kicked out or running away would get their attention. After that, I kept doing it because it's what I knew best how to do."

Fingers stopped suddenly.

"My mom visited once. I think when I was seven. That was the last time I ever saw her. I can't even remember her face. I think she was on her comm the entire time." Bony-shoulders shrugged. She finally looked up. "I didn't think it was weird until I noticed that other kids went home during holiday breaks. Or their family would visit. Sometimes I wonder if it would've been better to never know them at all."

 

[Munin]

[member="Spark Finn"]

He watched her for a moment. It was easy enough to extrapolate that her parents were likely wealthy, and that they didn't particularly care about her. Why that was he couldn't say, but boarding schools implied quite a bit of money, the fact that she went to multiple? The same. He frowned for a moment and wondered exactly what kind of parent would abandon their child.

Munin wasn't naive enough to think it never happened, he worked in the underworld after all, but still.

For a brief moment Munin didn't respond to her, mostly because he didn't know how. Parents had always been an odd, almost abstract thought for him. He'd never known his real parents, he didn't even know what species they had been. Even his own file at the orphanage hadn't told him that. For all he knew he was just some sort of genetic experiment that had been thrown out from a test tube in some laboratory. He shook the thought, pressing it out of his mind.

"Well." He began with a smile, scooting a bit closer to where she lay. "You turned out alright without them."

Munin offered her a smile. "Take it from me, parents are overrated."

 

[Spark Finn]

[member="Munin"]

"So you say." She smiled timidly. And leaned into his side for a moment. "Thanks. I know it's not easy for you either."

She left it at that. It sounded like the storm was letting up a little outside. That was a good sign.

#Iwillsurvive! #songs

Speckled-gaze caught the glow of the datapad at his side. She leaned over him, slender neck stretching to get a better view of the screen. Blonde-brows furrowed. "What were you working on before I woke up?"

 

[Munin]

[member="Spark Finn"]

"Oh." Munin said as he reached over and pulled the datapad off the crate. The machine went plopping into his lap, and he allowed her a better look at the screen.

What she would see was a topographical map of the canyon, a layering outlay of pretty much everything within the area. "It's a map of the area, actually, more like two dozen maps. I took a bunch of satellite images, pre-drawn maps, and some data I got from two drones I sent out and kind of mushed it together. When you layer them like this and put it all together we get a more accurate picture of where everything is, and what it actually is."

He pointed to one of the spots on the image.

"This is a Valor Class Cruiser. You can tell from the outline, they're ancient, more than four thousand years old since the last one was even built." He moved his finger and pointed to a slightly less blurry figure, though it was much, much larger. "This is a Palleon Class-Star Destroyer. They're only a couple of centuries old."

A tinge of excitement entered his tone. "We can rule out that the base is in any of the newer crash sites, so by process of elimination we can extrapolate that the base is in one of these twelve ships."

He punched in a few keys on the keyboard, twelve vessels being highlighted within the map as he did so.

 

[Spark Finn]

[member="Munin"]

"I understand imaging and mapping." She laughed. Blue-eyes squinted down at the screen. Fingers hesitated for a moment but reached down to pluck the datapad off his lap, looking even closer.

"This is a ship graveyard. Just these alone could take days - weeks to explore. But...," head cocked as her fingers tapped against the screen, zooming in and out of those twelve sections. As much as she could before the imaging pixels. "Sounds like the storm is about gone outside. This is great, Sawyer."

#impressive

And exciting. Exploring anything technology was fun. Almost reminded her of that time she and Coren and a bunch of other Outback and Alliance members made some new specialized hyperdrive systems with Jorus Merrill. She frowned suddenly, wishing she could control more where her thoughts strayed.

"We should get our stuff rea--," standing, she wobbled on her feet and swayed violently to the side as the room spun.

 

[Munin]

[member="Spark Finn"]

"Hey!" He said as she began to stand. "Relax."

Munin jumped up and caught her, moving in one smooth motion.

His arms quickly wrapped around her to stop her from tumbling over. She was probably still rather unsteady on her feet, he suspected that she had a concussion, if not worse, and that meant that she was better off resting for a little while longer instead of running around all night. "It'll also be dark by now."

Munin said quietly as he held her.

"Running around in the dark won't help us any." Especially considering what was out there. "With the storm gone we can send out the drones again, let them search these twelve ships and narrow down our options even more. We don't have to run off and get ourselves hurt."

He couldn't fault her for being excited of course, he was equally tempted to get a look at what was out there. This had been his life for the last several months, and he was finally on the cusp of actually being able to achieve everything that he wanted. The prospect was amazing in it of itself, but he also knew that things like this couldn't be rushed. They had narrowed it down to twelve ships, but this ships were massive. They would take time to search, and it was easier to let the drones do it.

 

[Spark Finn]

[member="Munin"]

She felt something stronger than gravity keep her up. The black spots began to fade and she stumbled against Munin as he came more into focus. "I...thanks." She winced. "Too fast. I hate....being like this."

Palm pushed against her head.

"Weak," she admitted quietly.

#mousy #thin #notstrong #klutz #injured

She adjusted her glasses but remained leaning against his stronger frame. The black spots along her vision were fading into little specks now. The room was steadying but she still somehow felt, weightless. "We'll see what the droids find tonight and go out first light." She tried to look very serious. "But don't go out without me."

She didn't know if Munin was one of those guys. If he thought he could scout on his own and let her sleep and get more rest, she wondered if he'd take the risk. She would've done the same thing if they were in switched positions. But she didn't want him to take that risk.

#doublestandards

Stomach rumbled.

"I'm starving. What do we have for rations?"