Survival With A Pyne

[Cenric Marus]

[member="Mariya Pyne"]

Cenric wasn't about to argue the last thing she said, mostly because in that moment he happened to agree with her.

”Naboo?” That part didn't really make much sense to him at all. The planet was further away from them than Coruscant. It would probably take them a week to get there. He didn't know much about galactic navigation but he knew enough to make thay estimate. Besides, Naboo didn't have any Jedi and thus was useless for any sort of resistance. ”Why would we go there?”

Did she want to go somewhere safe? Well then Tatooine or another remote world was a better option. ”It'll be just as dangerous as Coruscant and they won't have the Jedi or the Alliance Navy to help.”

Meaning they'd be up against even more without any help at all, aside from what the Naboo defense forces could muster.

Cenric frowned, not really understanding her line of logic.

 

[Mariya Pyne]

Even as Cenric asked the question of why they would go there Mariya was already prepping the ship to take off. She spoke as fingers danced across the console.

"If they're attacking the core they must be confident the alliance will break. That means they wont spend this time attacking the fringe worlds. I need to warn them." The ship rumbled as the engines fired. The Sith controlled a lot of galactic space, seemingly unopposed by the other powers that be, yet Mariya was confident that there was no way that they could initiate a war against every sector of Alliance space, especially where Naboo was situated at such a distance, at least not all at once. There had to be time to prepare them, and to persuade her sister and the ministry to take action.

"Maybe we can broker some kind of assistance from the Confederacy before it's too late."

The vessel shot forward from the landing pad and out into space, throttle fully open as she began to charge the hyperdrive.

[member="Cenric Marus"]

 

[Cenric Marus]

[member="Mariya Pyne"]

Cenric barely had time to grab onto something before Mariya took control of the ship and pushed them off of Roche.

Confusion was still reigning within him above anything else, his expression going more and more perplexed as he read the panic coming from Mariya. The way she was moving, how quickly she spoke, and the slight fidget of her entire body were all screaming that she was concerned more than she was even letting on. His fingers tightened slightly as the ship rocketed from it's place, heading towards the edge of the system to make its jump to hyperspace.

Cenric shifted slightly, pulling himself into the copilots chair and strapping himself in. ”Okay but…”

He gave her another strange look.

”Why? Cenric enunciated the war more than he needed to, trying to get an answer from her. ”There's better worlds to get a signal out, I know some Alliance and Jedi Outpost.”

They could spread the warning much faster than Naboo could.

 

[Mariya Pyne]

"Because!" She shouted, her voice nearly breaking in a panic "I don't care about other worlds or your Jedi!" And her hand slammed down on the hyperdrive, launching them screaming into hyperspace almost before it was safe to do so. The flight from Roche to Naboo was certainly anything but direct and quick, that was for sure. It would take them roughly a week to make it there, but as long as the planet was not blockaded by the time she arrived there was still hope.

Right now all she could do was hope.

With the radio signals jammed coming out of Coruscant there was no way for Mariya to get word to her contacts on the surface, and it was simply too dangerous to attempt to offload the Isotope now. They were on their own, and the rebels would have to make due against the Empire for now. All of Mariya's attention was now entirely directly towards reaching Naboo and ensuring they were warned, prepared, and still safe.

[member="Cenric Marus"]

 

[Cenric Marus]

[member="Mariya Pyne"]

He blinked, and then a realisation hit him that should have been the first thing he'd thought of when she started acting like this. Before she had always been on the pragmatic side of things, saying and doing what made the most sense rather than following emotions. Now? Now it was the exact opposite of that. He frowned slightly and then slowly spoke.

”You're from Naboo.” Cenric said, stating the obvious.

It really made all the sense in the world.

Mariya didn't care about the Alliance, she didn't care about the Jedi, she only cared about her homeworld. It was selfish, but Cenric could understand it. He himself wanted to know how Lorrd was doing, whether or not the Sith had gone there. It was a pit in his stomach, one that he couldn't really get rid of.

Mariya had the same, except she was flying the ship.

 

[Mariya Pyne]

For several moments she sat quietly, biting her fingernail and staring out of the viewport into hyperspace lost in her own thoughts.

When she came to she flipped the headset onto the console without care and pulled her legs up onto the chair beneath her, rubbing her face before looking over at Cenric. "Yeah, my family is there. I need to get home." She turned to the astromech droid stationed behind her near the wall panel, "R7 we're going home a bit sooner than expected. As soon as Naboo is within broadcast range I need you to send an emergency signal to the RSF and use the 588th's callsign. Relay it in loop until it's answered."

The droid beeped a few times in response to the girl's request.

Standing up from the pilot's seat she started off down the ladder towards the galley, pausing as her head was just about level with the cockpit floor to look at Cenric. "I need a drink. Coming?"

[member="Cenric Marus"]

 

[Cenric Marus]

[member="Mariya Pyne"]

Drink? He'd never even had alcohol before but...it seemed wrong to say no right now. ”Yeah. “

The answer came with Cenric trying to make himself sound as self assured as possible. Today had already been a day of firsts. First time he had faced a true Sith and won, first time he'd given up on his principals, first time that he had lost any semblance of control. At this point he figured taking a dive and having his first drink wouldn't be the worst decision he'd made today.

He wondered what his father would say to that.

Without another word Cenric followed Mariya down out of the cockpit and towards the small common room that was located at the very back of the freighter. All the while he was wondering about Lorrd, about the New Jedi Order, and about the Alliance as a whole.

Anxiety wracked him, and he knew it'd be days before they would find out anything new.

 

[Mariya Pyne]

There were two glasses already on the countertop, and beside them, within a small aerator and cooler, two racked bottles of wine. Both featured clear, tall bottles. Within the first, a pale yellow liquid, a notable favorite among the Naboo, and also one primary export. The label was written in both her native language and basic, Blossom Wine. Within the other, a deep shade of green, similar to its namesake, Emerald Wine which was also a product of Naboo, but produced elsewhere as well. Both appeared roughly half full.

Mariya removed the two bottles, as well as a corkscrew, lifted the two glasses and proceeded to carry it all to the table in the center of the room. She sat opposite Cenric, and turned the two bottles to face the Jedi.

"Preference?" She asked, already reaching for the Blossom wine to remove the top to, though after the events of the day had unfolded, it was likely neither one of those bottles would hold up for the remainder of the trip.

It was the only way to force herself to forget the need to panic about what could be transpiring on Naboo right then.

[member="Cenric Marus"]

 

[Cenric Marus]

[member="Mariya Pyne"]

"Uhh." Cenric glanced at the two bottles, then felt an odd sort of pressure and pointed to the Emerald Wine. "That one."

Alcohol wasn't his area of expertise, in fact as the day was rolling on he was finding he wasn't entirely sure what his area of expertise was. To say that the last twenty four hours had been the most hectic and worse of his entire life wasn't an understatement, and with what was going on in the Alliance it might only get worse. He frowned slightly as he sat himself down opposite Mariya, watching the green liquid inside of the bottle slosh around a bit as she picked it up.

The young padawan tried to drag his mind from Lorrd, from the Alliance, from any sort of fight. "So..."

He began awkwardly.

"Why are you out here?" He asked, thinking that maybe talking about something would take both of their minds away from the chaos that was happening in the core. It was a long shot, but the only thing he could really think to do at the moment. "Isotope 5 is mined on Makeb, would be easier to get it out there."

Of course then she'd be dealing with Hutts, not Sith.

 

[Mariya Pyne]

Mariya paused mid-pour, the liquid halting in the bottle as she lifted her head to Cenric and raised an eye of confusion. Answering the second question first, "Do I look like a miner?" She had a rather fit, toned body, but hardly one stocky enough for throwing a pick-axe around for hours at a time. "I'm much better with my words, and my hands are better suited for dexterity than outright strength. To put it simply I'm better at lying and stealing than I am at swinging an axe, or fighting. It's also why I prefer a blaster to those beam swords you Jedi carry."

She finished pouring both drinks and slid Cenric's over to him before taking her own and pressing the corks slightly back into the tops of both bottles.

"My family are pretty well known humanitarians. They do a lot of work on impoverished worlds, or ones torn apart by war. They bring medical supplies, food, that sort of stuff. But what they do, and how they do it are a lot more up front and I guess you could say legal, but just as dangerous as smuggling. I prefer to let my family take care of that business and I do what I can to make sure those suffering have the equipment they need to continue fighting for their freedom against corruption or oppression. Stealing from the Sith is a better option than bargaining with the Hutts in my eyes."

She took a small sip to break from her dialog before continuing. "Stealing from the Sith also means I don't owe the Hutts a favor. And I think we all know the stories about owing a Hutt."

[member="Cenric Marus"]

 

[Cenric Marus]

[member="Mariya Pyne"]

Cenric took a sip of the wine, his face scrunching for only half a second as the cool green liquid slid over his tongue and down the back of his throat. Inwardly he thanked his upbringing for allowing him some measure of control over his expression, keeping his face straight as he drank about half the glass of wine in an attempt to just get it over with.

Afterward he put the cup down, the liquid sloshing about. "I see."

It made sense in a perverse sort of way. Stealing from the Sith was a better option than bargaining with the Hutts, but it was also a hell of a lot more dangerous. Dealing with the slugs was something Cedric had always told him was incredibly iffy, specifically because they couldn't exactly be trusted to always keep a fair deal. Still, it was safer than directly stealing from the Sith. Get caught doing that and you were going to end up either dead or stuck in some torture palace.

That Cenric knew for sure.

His lips thinned for a moment, wondering if Mariya had a thing for danger.

"Whose your family?" Cenric asked curiously. Naboo was a wealthy planet, he knew that much, so philanthropy didn't really stand out to him too much. Though he wondered if perhaps he'd heard of them before, especially if they were well known.

 

[Mariya Pyne]

She looked up from the glass as he asked the question, pausing for a moment. There were several avenues to approach the topic, but the one with least complications was to keep it as brief as possible. "That's a rather complicated subject." She said, tapping the glass a few times with her fingernail. "But my mother's name is Jesslyn Underhill. My step-father died before I really knew him. But I have a half sister on my father's side, so it's just kind of a really big mesh of interconnecting pieces that just gets more and more complicated."

Taking another sip of the wine Mariya looked up at Cenric and moved to change the focus of the discussion away from herself in a subtle manner.

"You never told me where you're from. Any family?"

Realizing only after she tilted the glass back to take another sip that it was empty she stared for a moment, unsure of how she had drank so quickly. With a low sigh she set it back onto the table and lifted the cork to pour more out, holding the bottle in gesture, as if asking if he wanted more as well.

[member="Cenric Marus"]

 

[Cenric Marus]

[member="Mariya Pyne"]

"Oh." He said somewhat surprised.

It was clear that she was trying to avoid the subject, which once again made him more than a little bit suspicious. Since they had met Mariya had avoided certain topics, certain things to say. It had lead to him screaming at her, and then eventually to her making him feel utterly awful about it.

This time he decided he wouldn't press the issue, he would trust her. Maybe he didn't want to get yelled at again, or maybe he just wanted to actually trust her.

"Lorrd." He explained. "My family is a bunch of nobodies."

That wasn't disparaging, just true. "Farmers for ten generations. Though my dad was a Republic Soldier for a little while."

Cenric sounded rather proud of that fact. His father had been a big part of why he'd become a Jedi in the first place, why he'd gone to the Temple. The stories of the Jedi his father had fought besides, how they had been good and honorable. It was silly and naive, but it had inspired him.

 

[Mariya Pyne]

"I see. So I guess the Force really is just a stroke of luck."

Her hand reached back, pulling free her hair from the clips that held it up in the bun she'd had going for the past few hours, shaking free until it fell over her shoulders. "Did you always know?" She pressed on, "That you could do things" motioning with her hands, "With the Force? Or was it an accident or something?" She was always mildly curious about how people discovered what they could do. For her sister it had been entirely an accident, brought on in a moment of panic.

Then again, she hadn't quite seen him do a whole lot...For the most part he swung the lightsaber around at the Sith until it was dead.

Effective, but she probably could have done the same with an equal distraction, really.

[member="Cenric Marus"]

 

[Cenric Marus]

[member="Mariya Pyne"]

For some reason Cenric couldn't help but grin. The question was one that he had to face before, though from fellow Padawans and younglings. He had sort of been an outsider among them, mostly because of his lack of talent. "Well."

The Padawan reached for the glass of wine, taking another sip.

"Not really." He reached up and scratched the back of his head, unsure of how to tell the truth of it really. It seemed silly now, after having faced the reality of what a Jedi had to do. Fighting, leaving others to suffer...he seemed so naive. "My father used to tell me about the Jedi that he fought with during the original Sith Wars."

A small sip passed his lips, followed by a sigh. "I grew up hearing those stories, and the more I heard them the more I wanted to be one."

He shrugged.

"When I turned eighteen I just...decided I would become one. Left Lorrd, headed to the Temple on Sullust...bothered everyone inside until they tested me. I had just enough strength to pass, but compared to pretty much every other Padawan I'm a joke." He looked almost embarassed at what he was about to say. "You were right. I'm not a very good Jedi."

 

[Mariya Pyne]

For some reason hearing him repeat her words made her feel oddly guilty and ashamed when earlier she had felt exactly what he had just repeated.

"I didn't know you could just demand to be a Jedi. It seems somewhat reckless that your master just up and left you to handle any kind of job that may involve Sith by yourself. It feels somewhat like if I told you after a week of sitting in the co-pilot's seat on the way to Naboo to fly us through an asteroid field now."

Not that she would ever let anyone besides her partner or R7 touch the pilot's controls of this freighter to begin with, but her point still stood.

"You Jedi and Sith really are a strange lot."

Though Cenric hadn't taken down her ship, held her captive and forced her through a swamp yet, so he was still on the up and up as far as she was concerned. Being a bad Jedi was still light years better than a Sith.

[member="Cenric Marus"]

 

[Cenric Marus]

[member="Mariya Pyne"]

"It's not like I'm entirely inept." The Padawan countered somewhat defensively. "I can't use the force all that well, but I'm great with a lightsaber. Even managed to beat a few of the Jedi Knights back on Sullust before I left."

Of course, that was when he hadn't been wounded. A part of him believed that the fight with the Sith back on Celanon would have gone better had he not already suffered that blast wound. Perhaps that was just wishful thinking on his part, but he really was good with a lightsaber. He'd been commended on it more than once. "Plus, I wasn't supposed to be fighting."

He frowned.

"Just..." Cenric looked at the glass in his hands, now empty, it seemed to be an odd sort of point of reflection. "Just looking around."

No one could have seen what had happened coming. The attack on Celanon had been unexpected, the assault on the rest of the Alliance? Unheard of. He doubted that anyone had seen this coming, and for some odd reason that fact just made him feel worse. "I don't think he would have sent me if he thought this was going to happen."

 

[Mariya Pyne]

Her hands lifted from the tabletop and she made a nonthreatening expression out of her face, pulling back from the table a bit. "Okay."

The smuggler picked up the glass and drank down the rest of the wine from her glass. "I just thought using the Force was really the focal point of being a Jedi, and that a lightsaber was your last resort sort of thing." It certainly was for her sister, anyway. Jamie rarely ever laid a hand on her weapon, and in fact, she had only ever seen her sister touch the weapon that one night at the estate when Vrak had attacked them. It was something unlike anything Mariya had ever seen.

There still wasn't a need to tell Cenric who her sister was, but if they were going to discuss all of this Jedi stuff she may as well at least tell him that she wasn't entirely ignorant of them.

She sighed, perhaps the wine was already getting to her, or the tiredness, or the lack of ability to care anymore, after what they'd suffered through already. "I suppose there's no harm in telling you that my half sister is a Jedi, or, sort of...She was trained by a Jedi, but she's not part of any of your orders. I've only ever seen her use her weapon one time. I didn't even know what it looked like when it was on until the night she used it. It was like a switch flipped in her, and I'd never seen someone move with so much purpose and grace in my life." She smiled mildly, "And this girl is clumsy. Anyway, it was like she instantly became a totally different person."

[member="Cenric Marus"]

 

[Cenric Marus]

[member="Mariya Pyne"]

"Oh." Her sister was a Jedi? That was interesting, and entirely unexpected.

Cenric smiled slightly, listening to Mariya describe the way that her sibling moved with a lightsaber. It was the exact way that he hoped someone would describe him, at least eventually anyway. He was far from the greatest bladesman at the moment. He could hold his own while sparring, but every single real fight that he'd been a part of had been far more messy than he would like to admit. Still, lightsaber combat was his art, it was his craft. Really the only part of being a Jedi he was good at.

"She sounds amazing." He admitted. "Who was her Ma-"

Suddenly, something occurred to him.

He was admittedly rather dim when it came to Galactic Politics. He knew very little about most worlds, but the big picture was something that he had studied intensely. Unlike other Padawans Cenric had always enjoyed reading, and much of his time at the Temple had been spent researching. When Mariya spoke of her sister as a Jedi, the breadcrumbs of clues she had dropped throughout their time together finally seemed to sprinkle together into a single sandwich. "YOUR SISTER IS THE QUEEN OF NABOO!"

The Padawan suddenly jumped up and away from the table, as if she had turned into a dragon.

"You're a karking princess!" It all made sense really. She was a Noble, her sister was a Jedi, she was from Naboo. There was only one person like that, one rather famous person.

 

[Mariya Pyne]

The brunette blinked several times, frozen in her expression.

Rapidly her mind tried to work out a means of swaying him out of this revelation, though the amount of word gymnastics she would need to do to convince him otherwise suggested more effort than patience she had to afford the subject. Her nose scrunched, arms folded beneath one another. Finally she shrugged, giving up the idea of even bothering to deny it.

"Yeah. Now you see why I need to go home."

She unstrapped the holster holding her blaster on her thigh and set it wrapped up on the table. "So I guess the secret's out. You can relax now detective."

Mariya had hoped to avoid the whole princess bit, given that she presented anything but a 'princess-y' image to the rest of the galaxy, even the word made her feel dainty and helpless and she was anything but.

"Job well done."

[member="Cenric Marus"]