Warp Whistle

[Amea Virou]

[member="Runi Verin"]

This other woman was a warden, she was a technically adept warden at that, and she got through the security with an ease that was impressive. The fang that had dug into Amea’s lower lip sunk deeper at the thought. To witness someone else with an aptitude for not just her line of work but her own abilities as well hit that one particular soft spot for Amea. Here she was with Runi, and all she could care to think about was whether or not the time to move forward had come or not. It felt like such a long time ago that she had separated with her ex, yet at the same time it ran rampant on her mind as if it had happened just the other day.

Amea let go of the console as Runi slapped against her shoulder with an oddly peculiar sense of excitement. Isotope-5 caught her attention once her mind began to register the conversation on a delayed uptake which in turn made her all the more excited herself.

“Isotope-5…” Amea seemed taken aback almost for a second. Not by the Isotope-5, but by the seemingly genuinely cheerful air that wrapped around her newfound friend. “Hell yeah, let’s go get it.”

Yet as she got off the ground she felt her balance fail her. A heavy hand smashed against the console to catch herself from falling over as another covered her eyes and brushed against her eyebrows. A heavy inhale passed and a slow exhale swept away before she got herself back into the game again.

“Data overload.” She groaned and took a step towards Runi. “Acting as a proxy for a whole system is inadvisable. Remind me not to do it again.”

“Onwards!” Her finger pointed towards the exit. “We have no time to waste.”

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Amea Virou"]​

​

There were few things in this galaxy that genuinely made Runi Verin feel alive like the prospect of unique, undiscovered and hopefully untarnished salvage. An experimental prototype utilising Isotope-5 definitely qualified under that heading. Throw in the added bonus of stealing it from under the noses of their would b rivals, and it was just icing on an already delicious cake. Not even the throbbing pain in her head and sight of her own blood could bring her down form the sort of high that surged through her veins. Reminding her why she loved this line of work.

Days like this was why she got out of the bunk in the mor---

"Steady!" She jolted forward as Virou wavered, grabbing her arm with her free hand to try and stabilize her. Her excitement now tinged by concern at the other's suddenly bedraggled looking appearance. Reflexively and without thought, she reached out and cupped the other woman's face with her cybernetic hand, those cold black fingertips carelessly and roughly marking her fairer skin with the distinctive scarlet of Runi's blood as she brought their gazes into alignment. "You good? Because I'm not carryin' you if you pass out. You drop here, you stay here, tayli'bac?"

With that, concern/threat delivered and out of the way, she stepped back and wiped her hand on her flight suit, creating a matching the bloodstain for the one on the opposite thigh. Shaking her head disapprovingly. "We could've jury-rigged somethin' just fine to do the same. Might have taken us longer, but not as long as it'll take tryin' to explain to your folks why I had to leave your copikla shebs behind 'cause you were too much of a di'kut to know her limits."

She cast her another look to make sure she had heard her, or perhaps just to make sure she was still counted amongst the standing portion of the room, before turning and heading out without another word. Earlier exuberance somewhat mellowed, but resolute not to let it completely spoil her day. Not when the winds of favorable salvage were finally starting to turn her way.

Deck three awaited and so did her prize.

 

[Amea Virou]

[member="Runi Verin"]

Oh this didn’t help. Amea stood with her face cupped with her eyes staring into someone else’s. If those thoughts on the passage of time had weighed on her before there really was no saying for what was going on in her mind this very moment. On one hand she quickly discovered the fact that the cybernetic had smeared blood on her, but on the other she also knew that the cybernetic was not getting sufficient input compared to what was expected of it. Out of all things she could have thought or dreamt up in that very moment, that was the only thought that she could seem to comprehend in the moment.

And then she was reminded of the woman’s temper from before as she threatened to leave her behind if she went down again. Amea gently nodded her head up and down in understanding of the situation.

“You said others might be coming, and I knew we needed to save time.” Amea explained herself and grabbed for a power pack on her belt. “I always come prepared, this is only a temporary setback. Wouldn’t have taken that risk if I wasn’t ready for it.”

She put the powerpack in a small cylindrical container. There was a slider on the side and a button to go along with it at the top. In reality this was a training device for the assist with exercising an apprentice’s ability to absorb energies with the force, except it had had been modified. The slider would upon closer inspection would show signs that it wasn’t meant to be there, and the button much more so.

Amea boosted the cylinder to the max, pushed the button to lock it in place and then opened the lid of the cylinder to expose what looked like a small plug. Her extended thumb hovered above the metallic plug as she let in a few deep breaths to center herself.

Thumb to the plug she felt her entire arm begin to shiver from the coursing energies. From the skin on her thumb to the meat on her bones. Everything burned same as it always did when she did this, but what was small amounts of pain in the greater picture? The energy from the battery was repurposed into something else; an influx of energy that she herself could draw power from. Something to keep her running at optimal speed.

“Okay, now.” She sighed in relief and emptied the device of the power pack. “Good to go.”

The device found her belt and she looked over at Runi.

“... Got any plans for the isotopes?” Her brow perked at the other Warden. “I mean, I will be honest with you, I don’t have much of an idea what I would do.”

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Amea Virou"]​

​

Those lines of concern that marred her qukuuf deepened with disapproval as she watched the other woman fiddle with her container. It might not have been as obvious as spice or another form of stimulant, but Runi had been around enough addicts in her life to recognize a crutch when she saw one. The fact that the Force was being used to achieve the desired effect somehow made it even worse in her eyes.

"Beyond snatching it out from under our pateesas back there?" She gave an absent shrug of her shoulders, turning her attention towards their surroundings as they pressed further back into the bowels of the aging wreck. Finding it easy to navigate now that the readouts and deckplans were freshly ingrained in her mind thanks to the data they'd been able to retrieve from the terminal. "Not really, no."

In truth, she already had a potential contract with Arceneu with the substance in question sitting on her 'desk' back on Kol Atorn, just waiting to be drawn up and confirmed before Stellarwind could proceed. Spoils of victory from the floor of the auction house. That and certain holocron she still wasn't sure what to do with.

"I guess the Boracyk could do with a new power core. Or maybe I'll finally get around to buildin' my own ship now that I have the yards in the Belt of Arah at my disposal. A little bit of isotope-5 in the mix would go along way." It would feel strange to finally trade up, however. For all its faults, and the list was only growing larger by the day, the Boracyk had been with her since she'd first started salvaging solo. It was as much apart of her as her own arm. Err, the real one that was. Not the cybernetic replacement. "Gotta find the stuff first though, I guess. Speakin' of..."

She slowed them to halt outside of a set of turbolift shafts. The doors broken and slightly ajar from the impact of the vessel crashing down on the surface of the planet, offering a barely visible glimpse at the gloom that lay beyond.

"You up for this?" Again she made it seem like another of her blasted rhetorical questions, already planting her cybernetic hand between the grap in the doors and hauling it open with a grunt and an effort. There was a genuine note of concern in her voice this time around. Having watched her almost faceplant the deck while standing was one thing, watching her drop potentially a hundred or so feet was another. Then again, it was dark. Chances were she'd only have to watch the other woman fall the first two dozen or so. Small mercies.

She reached for for ascension grapple on her belt, yanking it several times to give herself enough cord to work with so she could start to spin it up for a throw. Slowly at first, but increasing in tempo until the grapple became nothing more than a spinning flash of silver. Those dark, brown eyes narrowing before they locked on the perfect spot to hook on. "I ain't scrapin' you up here any more than back in the command room."

With that she released, already stepping off and into the empty shaft before the hook had even caught. Falling those very same two dozen feet she had estimated for Amea before the line abruptly snapped and stopped her descent.

The brunette might have had her power cell, but it seemed Verin had her own method of eliciting a rush.

 

[Amea Virou]

[member="Runi Verin"]

Crutch or not it had achieved what they needed of it, hadn’t it? It was a reckless use of the force, but it achieved the exact result they needed of it. Amea followed along, listened to Runi’s rhyme and reason, and in reality it seemed they both had no idea what to actually do with it. Kay would have taken it in case she needed it later but Runi seemingly just wanted it because someone else desired it as well. Once again she wasn’t one to judge, not really. At the very least they had roughly same goal, so there was always that.

Wait, she owned shipyards? Amea would have stopped in her tracks if drama and time allowed it. It amused her to a degree, made her want to come clean about having been an entrepreneur at one point too, but that wasn’t really the truth. At least not to Amea, and at what point was the pile of lie too big to come clean about? All things considered it was nice to have absolute certainty that the person you were talking to had no knowledge of who you actually were or what your story truly was.

No, the lie was comfortable at this point.

Amea grabbed at her belt to allow herself to hook up to a solid looking beam within the turbolift shack. She threw a quick glance down the void that lurked down below and suddenly the remark from Runi made all the more sense.

“Well, I don’t plan on having to rely on one of those packs again.” She said and tugged at her line. Just in case. “That is, uh, to say… You know.”

Why was she fekin’ up now?

“I- uh, I am not passing out. That’s what I am trying to say.”

“No, wait, what are you- ?!” Her heart stopped and promptly proceeded beating again two seconds after Runi had thrown herself down the shaft. As the woman’s line straightened out in a tense, well, line Amea began to lower herself towards her destination. “‘fek.”

So that was contagious. Amea turned her torch on and eased herself down the shaft.

“What the feth was that?!” She seemed genuinely worried. “I ain’t scraping you- no that ain’t true, but-.” She clutched her hand by her chest and grasped at her shirt. “Don’t do that!”

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Amea Virou"]​

​

Runi snorted softly as she glanced up at the brunette, shielding her eyes from the glare of the torch with a hand. The intensity of the light causing her earlier bump to her head to come throbbing back to the forefront. "Relax will you? You're good with computers, 'lek? Well, this is what I'm good at. I do this stuff all the time."

Well, she used to. In truth, this was the first time she'd been in the 'field' since Utapau. The last few months since that fiasco had been spent recuperating and building up Stellawind's assets and client base. This little job wasn't just about getting her out from behind her workbench-slash-desk, it was to prove to herself that she still had what it took to do this job. That she hadn't gone soft.

"Ain't none of my business if you wanna use those packs, though." Runi murmured as they continued to drop further and further down the shaft, eyes fixed on the cord as she controlled the rate of descent with her cybernetic hand. Opening and shutting it at regularly spaced intervals. A lot closer together than she would normally have them. Not that the other woman was getting to her. She wouldn't let her have that satisfaction. "I ain't your mother. I ain't your friend. Kark, I barely even know you."

And yet for reasons beyond her, Runi found herself trusting Virou to watch her back all the same. Out of simple necessity first, forging a temporary bond for the sake of a shared foe, but that trust had somehow persisted long after the blaster bolts had stopped creasing the air around their heads. For someone that grew up on the streets, tasting abandonment after bitter abandonment, faith was a commodity Runi rarely had any stock in.

She could dress it up as a sort of Warden based solidarity, put the fact she trusted Virou so easily bothered her just as much as getting shot at earlier by rent-a-thugs or feeling that she'd lost her edge.

"You gotta do you, I gotta do me. As long as the former don't affect the latter, I figure I ain't got the right to tell you what to and what not to do, 'lek?" She shrugged and slowed her descent again, "We don't owe each other nothin'. Soon as this job is done, we'll likely never see each other again."

She jerked her head towards the closed shaft doors, gesturing for the brunette to do her party trick.

"This time you really can do the honors."

 

[Amea Virou]

[member="Runi Verin"]

This constant back and forth threw Amea off unlike anything that the woman had experienced before. The way the remarks seemed to imply she did something wrong most of all as if she had done something wrong to begin with, and if she did Amea in all honesty could not see what it was. But what threw her off the most was the fact that Runi didn’t expect them to meet again. While she could understand why, there was just something about it that made Amea… Well, she wasn’t quite sure what it was.

“It wouldn’t have to be.” She frowned and rolled her shoulders. “I mean, there is no rule that says Wardens couldn’t know or become friends with one another.” She glanced at the ground, or rather the abyss below their feet as her hand waved towards the door. “Or rather-” Why was the door not moving? “We could keep-” She tried again with no result. “Well, that is new.”

She forgot what she was even talking about. The door became her priority as she swung herself over towards the small ledge between the endless darkness and the doors. Her grip on the surface beneath her feet was uneasy at best but she found balance in prodding her fingers against the surface of the cold metal of the door.

Eyes closed for a second.

“Something's keeping this door shut on the other end.” She sighed in frustration and looked over at Runi. “Welding, maglocks, or something like it.“

Her mind seeped through the mechanism.

“This could take a while to unravel unless there is an alternate path.” Amea banged her forehead against the door. “The plans mention any staircases or such?”

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Amea Virou"]​

​

Runi shifted uneasily as she tried to find a sense of balance within the interaction she shared with Virou. By comparison, danging precariously above what seemed like a bottomless shaft was simple child's play. She knew what the variables were, how the outcomes would play out should the worst case scenario arise. The same couldn't be said about the woman beside that hung beside her. She didn't know how to react; how to be herself around someone she had just met and yet found herself trusting. Falling between the gruff facade of the 'don't kark with me' spacer routine she reserved for strangers (read: most of the galaxy) and something more genuine, if rarely seen.

"I'm not so sure." She replied as she watched Amea work on the door. "Probably a reason why we tend to train and ditch each new generation, right? Maybe its why our order has outlasted all the others combined. We don't stick together long enough to mess it up."

Jacaro, the man who's name and clan tattoos she wore as her own, had certainly seemed to operate under that mentality. Abandoning her as soon as their points of view began to diverge. Leaving her to walk this path alone. Something she had spent years resenting him for, but now she wondered if maybe he was doing her a favor. Forcing her to become independent, self-sufficient and beholden to nothing and no one but herself.

"That'll take too long. Let me take a look at it." The Kiffar twisted and leaned across the gap, forgoing any attempt at trying to land on the thin, lip of a ledge that Amea currently occupied, and instead opting to activate the magnetic coupler in her boot the moment her foot touched the doors. From there it was a simple case of bending her knee, bringing her beside the other warden until her hand was next to hers. She might not have been powerful enough to juggernaut her way through durasteel door with her telekinesis, nor the ability to affect the mechanism quite like Virou had displayed, but that didn't mean Runi wasn't without a few tricks of her own. "You just concentrate on openin' the door. I'll sort the rest."

She closed her eyes and let out a slow, drawn out breath. Letting her telekinesis flow out from her palm like a water web, gently lapping over the surface of the door and flowing into the cracks and imperfections. Her head tilting slightly as she sought out the source of the obstruction, running her mind across the smoother edges until she located the welding joints that sealed the doors. Someone had obviously wanted to keep people out of this level - someone that had been in a rush if the rawness of the weld was to go by.

Too unprofessional to be a security measure surely. Just what were they up to?

The answer to that question, she supposed, would only be found the other side.

"I've found the problem. Give me a second and then try pullin' them open." A feat, of course, that was easier said then done. If it had been ages since Runi had been on a salvage run like this, it had been even longer since she had last tried this particularly trick. More of an accidental discovery, really. Her head dipped forward as she switched tactics now that the issue had been found, switching from telekinesis to the techniques she had unsuccessfully mastered during her initial misadventure into alchemy. An acrid, charged smell like rancid battery acid and ozone began to fill the air as the seals around the door let off a groan and a slowly spiraling column of smoke. A gelatinous, metallic like substance drooling out of the cracks a few seconds later. "Now."

 

[Amea Virou]

[member="Runi Verin"]

Train and ditch the new generation? Amea still had contact with her mentor, and sure it was sketchy, but not all Wardens trained people and then ditched them. Runi was giving the impression of a woman who had been ditched a lot, and the more she spoke it grew harder to not be convinced otherwise. The hard approach to life, the somewhat cold demeanor… Maybe the Mandalorian wasn’t a factor, but some part of Amea wanted to believe so. There was a story there, but quite frankly Amea knew it wasn’t hers to know. Yet.

As Verin got to work on the door Amea would let her take the lead. She seemed more aware of what was going on. Yet again she found herself looking on as the other warden surprised her with her skill. Amea was not quite sure what she did, but whatever it was it had worked and in the end that was all that mattered, right?

Amea prepared herself to help at Runi’s command. Her fingers parted from the doors and she let herself fall back into a sway above the abyss again. It was as terrifying as it was exciting, but more the former. The darkness obscured the rest of the fall. Could be long, could be short, and Amea had no real desire to find out.

At Runi’s command Amea swung the door open. The welded metal poured down the corner of the metal that made out the shaft’s door, and with another swing Amea would see herself through to the other side and unhook herself.

“What you said isn’t true, you know.” She said and turned around towards Runi. “My mentor still keeps in touch with me, and so is their mentor in touch with them.”

“... Then again, family…” Amea shrugged. “Look, I am just saying that life as a Warden can be both immensely rewarding and lonely at the same time and I just…”

“It would be nice to know more people in the business is all.”

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Amea Virou"]​

​

So it was just her that was abandoned? Nice to know.

"The life is what it is." Runi replied with a touch more curtness than she meant. She meant to imply what she implied, but that didn't make it sting any less. Not when she had survived this life on her own, struggling every minute of the day, doing things that... To suddenly hear that there might have been an alternative to that? Salt in a wound she didn't realize was still open. Her defenses automatically began to slide back in place. "Sooner or later, we all end up out here alone and fendin' for ourselves. Maybe I was more the former than you, but I notice you ain't ou runnin' with anyone else right now, 'lek?"

​She disengaged her line, falling half a foot before catching her hand on the jam of the now open doors and hauling herself through. The cord automatically retracting and returning to its spool on her belt. "I can't really see how knowin' one more Warden is out there, somewhere in the black, is gonna make any real difference in the wider scheme of things. I mean, you expectin' to, what, drop everythin' and come runnin' anytime I need a hand? For me to do the same?"

Another snort.

"Look, I 'preciate the offer, I do. But what's the point?"

She let the words hang there for a second, fixing Amea with a look that almost wanted her to have an answer, those hard dark eyes wavering before she turned and brushed the brunette aside. Practically stalking down the hallway with her spacer's gait. Already putting herself back behind the facade she'd worn when they'd first met. "Whatever, we got work to do. The bay should be a straight shot down this corridor. We get in, grab the prototypes, get out. I go back to the Boracyk, you go back to whatever piece of osik brought you here, never to darken each other's engine bays. Sound good?"

 

[Amea Virou]

[member="Runi Verin"]


Yes, that was exactly it! Amea wanted to roll her eyes at the remark but restrained herself from it. Runi had some kind of act going and tried to deny herself somehow through an act that was well-practice for what was most likely a very long time. But that excitement and joy in the bridge and the way that she could have left Amea behind at any point or told her to shove off spoke of something else that lingered beneath her tough exterior.

She could pretend that she wasn’t enjoying it, but something about what they were up to told her that Runi was probably enjoying this more than she had expected that she would. Maybe not Amea’s company, but having someone around. Her facade had softened up ever so slightly yet here she was, denying that she could see the benefits of what they were doing.

No, Amea was not having it.

“Oh come the fek on!” Amea exclaimed and stepped up behind Runi. “Don’t tell me you truly believe any of that.”

“Friends, acquaintances, colleagues, whatever we call ourselves. What you ask is exactly what I propose. You call me, I come fight your battles with you, or maybe you just need someone to talk to.” Amea shook her head. “You can keep going about life alone, but sooner or later there will be a time when you need someone to come help you out.”

“You will have a use for me sooner or later. Be it as a friend or just an ally.”

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Amea Virou"]​

​

"You're tryin' to convince me, but you're only workin' to prove my point flappin' that copikla mouth of yours." Runi glanced over the back of her shoulder as she spoke, effecting a rough approximation of a mirthless, mocking smile as she mimicked part of her sentence. The distinctive clipped tones of Kol Atorn and a lifetime on the Outer Rim making the impression about as accurate as your average stormtrooper. "Have a use for you. Use, like you're some kind of tool. Is that what you really want people to see you as? To see me as? Thanks, but no thanks."

The attempt at the smile faded as quickly as it had appeared, leaving behind only the mocking derision that colored her tone as she came to yet another aggressive and abrupt stop. Turning much like she had earlier, but at least this time holding herself in check not enough to all but push the other woman into the all once more. A feat that felt much harder the second time around. "I've been down that path before. Only it got me was a set of scars, some bloodied hands an' a whole lot of sleepless nights. Ain't set on walkin' it again, tayli'bac? I'm no one's tool but my own."

"Sorry if that burst your plan to spin us some friendship bracelets, Mesh'la, but as I said. This life is what it is. Sooner you accept that, the better for everyone. Yourself included."

 

[Amea Virou]

[member="Runi Verin"]

There it was, the truth exposed to the world like a festering wound. While the response would take Amea aback some she wouldn’t let up just yet. The picture was right there, open and bleeding through the rest of what Runi had said. She had her mask then, much like Amea had her own. The conversation wasn’t over, but for the sake of their continued cooperation there was little to gain by pushing the point. Couldn’t force someone to love you if they desired to die alone, or whatever the fek the saying was.

“Alright.” Amea backed off, for now. “Have it your way, burc’ya.”

Yeah,no, maybe not the smartest of moves.

Their feet continued to bring them further down the hallway. The tunnels winded and it would seem that the route just twist and turn the further into the dark they stepped. Amea’s torch pointed ahead of them. One errant, quiet sigh blew threw her nose. It had been worth a shot though.

The further into the ship they got the more warped it started to feel. A faint signal was there in the force and despite their argument Amea would stop dead in her track to look at Runi and ensure that she too felt the same disturbance that Amea felt. The sensation that something big, menacing was up ahead was hard to ignore the closer they got to it.

Brows furrowed and Amea gave the room a wide berth. It slumbered, hibernated, waited for something that was hard to tell what it was. Why had they not felt this until now? She prayed deep down that it was a fifty-fifty situation.Either it was harmless or anything but.

“Did… Did you see any dead bodies?” She turned to Runi to ask and then promptly looked back at the door again. “I have a bad feeling about this one.”

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Amea Virou"]​

​

"It's pronounced BOOR-sha." Runi corrected almost absently as they resumed their journey. Clearly far more comfortable with Amea giving her attitude than she was with the seemingly hollow overtures of friendship she had previously offered. She knew where she stood with that. She just wasn't quite sure if that was necessarily where she wanted. "Pronounce it like BOOR-shah and it sounds like you're tryin' to call me a bucket while swallowing marbles."

As they pressed further down the corridor, Runi found her hand drifting closer and closer towards the tomahawk on her belt. The hairs on the back of her neck raising one by one with each and every centimeter they traveled. You didn't need to be force sensitive to realize that something bad had happened here. Something awful that extended far beyond the normal negative imprints that you'd find on salvage wrecks like this.

"Fear." The word tumbled past her lips before she even realized she was talking, her gaze slightly unfocused as she tried to make sense of all the echoes and ripples that had been frozen in the force. The final moments of the crew, trapped like insects in amber by the raw emotion they felt at the time of their passing. "Whatever happened here, whatever happened to the crew, they were afraid.... More than afraid.... They were terrified... They could feel their deaths coming.. They knew they couldn't get out.."

"And it centers on whatever is in there." The Mandalorian snapped back at that, focusing on the door before them, taking an involuntary step backwards and the attempt at a second before she managed to catch herself. To force herself to realize that the fear welling up in her throat wasn't hers. Kark, after her speech about letting no one use her as a tool, she'd almost let herself become slave to the figments of the past. Her teeth gritted, glinting in the low light cast by Amea's torch. "Fierfek, the sooner we grab that prototype the better. This isn't the type of place we wanna hang around in."

The kiffar planted her tomahawk between the doors, using it to wedge them open enough to gain purchase with her fingers. Her cybernetic arm whirring gently as she yanked it the rest of the way, being greeted by nothing but a cold, almost bottomless darkness inside. She stepped aside to allow Virou to take the lead with her torch, following the brunette through to start the search behind her at one of the workbenches. Finding nothing but dust, debris and the broken remnants of a probe droid that had be older than the two of them put together. "If its got isotope-5 in it, it could be fairly small. I'm guessin' they've got it shielded, too, otherwise we'd be able to pick it up. That much energy isn't exactly subtle."

"I imagine it's probably only a couple of centimete---" Whatever estimation she was about to make abruptly died on her tongue, the spacer's eyes going wide as they settled on a massive looking object at the far end of the room. A metallic sphere with nodes inter spaced on its surface at irregular angles, wires connected at even stranger ones, all feeding off further into the darkness and into the walls themselves by the looks of it. Her mouth went dry at even attempting to calculate how much I-5 you could store in a device that large. Enough to power a droid, an engine, a goddamn ship and more besides. "Or I could be wrong and it could be the karkin' motherload."

As if reacting to her excitement, the core itself abruptly jolted back into life. Lights flashing around it's edges as it became a whirling ball of energy that surged through the device and into the ship itself. Breathing new life into the vessel once more, and after decades of inactivity, it gradually began to thrum and vibrate. Even the lights began to turn on, starting with the room in which they stood and filtering out further as the energy continued to travel outwards.

Yet even with all that light, the shadow that seemed to press down heavily on this section of the ship only seemed to intensify. That ehcoes of fear becoming viscerally palpable as a door, a previously unseen due to the gloom, opened just behind the pair.

"UNIT ONLINE. RESUMING PRIMARY OBJECTIVE; PROTECT THE GALACTIC REPUBLIC INTELLIGENCE PROJECT AUREK. USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED UNDER ARTICLE NINE DASH ONE DASH EIGHT POINT FOUR. ELIMINATE INTRUDERS."

"...Well, fierfek."

So that solved the mystery of what happened to the crew.

 

[Amea Virou]

[member="Runi Verin"]

Runi wasn’t wrong, the fear that lingered in this place was nearly palpable the longer you stayed. Yet Amea threw a quick glance at the door and quickly came to the realization that whoever had been here before them had seen it fit to seal whatever was on this level off from the rest of the ship. The tracks left behind by the security team on this level had been facing this direction which meant that whoever had sealed the doors had no intentions of letting themselves or those around them escape.

Yet where were those bodies? There was minimal blood splatter, potentially worn down by nature’s due course, but even then there was sure to have been some kind of bodies left behind. Amea continued to shine her torch around them and yet there was just empty hallways and rooms. Something was wrong here. Something was so very wrong about all of this.

Yet the fear didn’t phase her. She threw a look over at Runi as they approached the door and the way she stepped back for a second before they entered the room. It seemed that the fear wasn’t just Amea’s then, which truly begged the question what was locked within those doors. As the tomahawk pried against the door she felt the first pangs of true fear crackle through her body. Though she remained standing, albeit just a little bit more stiff and slow to move.

The doors came open and Amea took the lead with her torch. Whatever it was they hoped to find in here she couldn’t help but feel like things weren’t going to be as straightforward as they’d hope. Things rarely seemed to be in situations like this.

“Come on, stay with me Maila.”​

No, not now. Not here, not in this situation. The ground began to bleed, the sound of hissing mandibles seemed to call from the shadows and in that moment Amea would begin to erratically glance around the room not quite looking in the directions that Runi might have wanted her to.

“Wh-ere… Did you… Go?”​

The sound of children coughing blood, the same blood that began to spread on her cheeks, her hands and her arms, her legs and chest. The blood that poured onto the floor with each step that she took as her entire being began to shake with terror.

“No. Maila, please no.”​

But the beast was angry. Loud snapping noises, sounds of hunger and anger roared around the room as from the center of the room the droid that was starting to come to life was mistaken for one of those creatures. A hallucination of fear that at first caused Amea to freeze up until fantasy and reality became hard to separate.

“Run or fight?” She muttered at Runi and readied herself for whatever came next. “I suggest we run.”

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Amea Virou"]​

​

"TARGETS IDENTIFIED: TWO INDIVIDUALS; NEAR-HUMAN; FEMALE." The War Droid stomped heavily out of its alcove. At eight foot tall, thickly plated and armed with what Runi could only describe as a set of rock crushers in lieu of hands, she faced the very real possibility of doing something she had thus far managed to elude entirely. That was to say, agreeing with Amea's assessment. The droid's red photoreceptors flickered and shifted in rapid succession as it sought to bring them into focus, hard drives whrrring as it struggled to identify them against its out dated records. "CONFIRMED: BIO-METRICS DO NOT MATCH ANY AUTHORIZED REPUBLIC PERSONNEL ON RECORD. TARGET DESIGNATIONS WILL CHANGED TO INTRUDER. PROCEEDING WITH ELIMINATION."

Runi was already throwing herself backwards by the time had started to draw its hand back, grabbing hold of the back of Amea's jacket and hauling them both out of the way the fist that bisected the air they'd only just previously occupied. Crashing into the deck plating with a thunderous cacophony that could only arise from metal on metal, the impact vibrating through the floor as the panel bent and gave away from the shear force of the blow. The War Droid seemed merely perplexed at having had its attack evaded; clearly it hadn't played out that way for the previous members of the crew unlucky enough to be trapped her with it.

"Tok'kad." The spacer barked, shoving the woman towards the door as she made to do the same. If putting its fist through the deck had barely phased it, alone scratched the paint work on its mauler fists, she doubted her akaa'gai would achieve much. At least the mercenaries had been flesh and blood, easily broken and subdued. A colossal war droid was a whole different and new opponent entirely; one she wasn't looking to get better acquainted with any time soon. Least of all in the cramp close quarters of a machine room where there wasn't enough room to swing a loth-cat, let alone two Wardens. "Iviin'yc tok'kad! R u n !"

Fortunately for them, with the Isotope-5 core active once more, the corridor was well lit. There was no need to slow their pace of fumble in the dark this around. Unfortunately, it seemed that the War Droid wasn't the only occupant of the ship roused from its slumber. As Runi practically slid out of the Machine Bay, the door opposite opened to reveal a considerably smaller, yet somehow just as intimidating twin to the droid they had just left behind. The mass produced version? Definitely a question for another time, another place, assuming they managed to make it out alive from this one.

More doors began to open to reveal upon similar sights.

"Kark, back the way we came." Runi yelled as she increased her pace, ducking beneath the lazy grasp of one of the bots and kicking off from the side wall without losing velocity. Grasping hold of the force to guide her movements and help with the quick shifts of inertia she would need to get through this mechanized gauntlet. "Through the shaft and up to the command deck again, if we're lucky the droids should be confined to this floor."

If they weren't, well...

"TARGETS WILL BE ELIMINATED. RESISTANCE WILL BE MET WITH FORCE. CONTINUED FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN TERMINATION."

It might have a penchant for the redundant proclamations, but it seemed they could nevertheless count on old War Droid #01 to be ever on hand to summarize the next llikely outcome should they need a refresher. Assuming that second explosive crash behind them was the Machine Bay door, it felt safe to say it didn't need any such reminders itself.

"Move! Move! Move!"

 

[Amea Virou]

[member="Runi Verin"]

Teeth gritted and almost gnashed as the anger within Virou grew all the more palpable. She had run away from this one the last time and suffered the consequences. She was always stuck here, she was always brought back when the fear became too real. That they were in a ship didn’t matter, but at least she was spared the experience of seeing her home be turned into a quite literal blood bath before her eyes. The walls bled like a crimson waterfall and the drips that dropped from her hands were much the same. She watched them impact against the water-like surface on the ground only to be torn out of her state by another Warden pulling at her jacket to make her go.

Amea wanted to close her eyes but knew better than to do it. She wanted to sink into the floor and let the world take its due payment for her survival at the cost of so many others, yet she refused to let it. Her feet splashed against the pooling blood with a haste that gave her away. She was terrified, and the closer the beast got the worse the feeling of dread got. It was as if something inside of it was projecting it for her.

As they went sprinting into the hall they would that find their approach was hindered by smaller drones. Or rather, droids with their shields out and weapons drawn. Bipedal, frightfully human looking yet cold as the metal that made them. Their features swapped to that of the two women as holograms began to envelop their shapes and forms to steal their identity.

Though their voices were metallic in their clang there was something wrong with the ones that looked like Runi. They were speaking with a barely modulated pattern around them as if they were trying to synthesize her very being into something else.

Amea kept quiet. She saw her own mirror images and could only assume that to a greater extent they were all projections of her mind. The way their eyes bled tears, the way that her friends stared at her with a crooked, lifeless stare no matter where she turned. Her heart was beating at a pace that was hard to manage, but she needed to.

From behind the big one had finally managed to smash its way through the walls. Heavy pangs of metal piercing metal echoed through the no longer deserted hallways as Amea started to speed up for the elevator shaft.

Maybe they should have brought the grenades after all.

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Amea Virou"]​

Runi let out a stifled oath as a Amea-faced droid lunged to intercept her, its outstretched claw like digits tearing through the edge of her jacket and out the other side as it shot past her, only narrowly missing flesh by the Kiffar's last second twist of her torso. Her hand tightened around the shaft of her akaa'gai, the grip weathered and worn through years of brutal and effective use, now reduced to nothing more than a creature comfort as they continued to weave, duck and dodge their way down the corridor. Wardrobe woes aside, whatever good fortune she had stockpiled for a rainy day had to be running dry at this point with all the narrow escapes today. By comparison, their mechanical assailants only had to get lucky once.

And yet that wasn't the most troubling realization of the moment.

She might have lacked any proficiency or even inclination towards the mentalism aspects of her force, somewhat ironically so given her lineage, but even in the midst of all this she could pick up that there was something wrong with Amea. And not just in a 'we're presently running for our karking lives' manner. Her presence in the force was a chaotic, swirling miasma of grief, anxiety and fear that went above and beyond what even the current situation should have posed.

The girl might have gotten on her last nerve, but the last thing she needed was her death on her conscience.

She gritted her teeth, scarred lips curling back into an almost vicious snarl that warped and distorted the lines of qukuuf. A look that was quickly replicated a dozen times over in the faces of their droid foes, because it wasn't enough to simply attempt to kill them, they had to apparently mock them, too. The force-be-damned Republic.

"Nar dalshy'a, mesh'la! Get your grapple ready!" Runi yelled between strides, hoping that the other woman was still with her enough to hear it through the haze of whatever was going through that fething head of hers. The turbolift loomed ahead of them, doors still gaping open on the pitch black shaft. That once oppressive and foreboding gloom an almost welcome and familiar sight at this point. She thrust her akaa'gai into the looped holster on her belt, hand yanking out her own grapple on the return. At this pace it was gonna be tight, but it wasn't as if they had much choice. It wasn't as if the homicidal droids barreling after them were going to let them take their time with this.

The last few steps were an almost imperceptible blur as the Warden surged with the impossibly enhanced speed and coordination of the force, her movements transcending grace as she leapt forward and twisted in the air, threading the needle of the turbolift doors as she crossed the threshold shoulder blades first. Her hand whipping out just as she began to fall backwards down the hole, her grapple rippling out almost gut wrenchingly slow to her increased perception rate, genuine fear flashing through her veins before it finally caught and halted her descent.

With a grunt she crashed into the side of the shaft, the impact jarring her bones and setting her teeth on edge.

 

[Amea Virou]

[member="Runi Verin"]

This wasn’t the first time Amea had seen this. The hallucinations were generally the same, yet hard to tell apart from reality as it was. It was like existing in some kind of place in between at this point. Like going to a familiar dark hole just to dwell for a bit. It had been so many years now, yet the trauma never seemed to let go.

Yet she wasn’t that far gone. She knew that what she experienced wasn’t real no matter how real it could feel. Yet her brain wanted to buy into it too out of guilt. When Runi called for her to ready her grapple she readied her grapple, and when the time came to get perhaps a bit faster she obliged as well. The shaft was their best bet, there was no doubt about that.

Amea lunged into the shaft and fired her hook to get herself attached to whatever piece of metal was the closest to her at the moment. The line snatched to something and she felt it grow stiff with the pas of a single heartbeat before it swung her face first into the wall. A loud groan parted her lips as the cartilages in her nose decided that now of all times was the best of moments to break open.

Blood poured from her nose. Her eyes shut and she pushed from the wall to let out a pained grunt and groan. When her eyes opened she found herself in, well, an elevator shaft. Yet it wasn’t as she had expected. There was no blood pouring here, no shadows reaching out for her or dead bodies. All there was around here was another woman, herself, and a steady drop into what seemed to be a bottomless abyss.

Her breathing calmed under the stream of rushing blood.

Worse for wear, but not out of the game.

“Up? Down?” She coughed up against the wall. For the first time that evening it was actual blood pouring down the walls. Albeit in small measures. “Cut our losses? Leave?”

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Amea Virou"]​

​

Runi winced with sympathy at the sound of fracturing cartilage as Amea unceremoniously faceplanted the wall behind her. The force had helped mitigate her own impact, but she was sure her ribs would be feeling the effects for several days to come. The thought of taking that same level of blunt force trauma to the nose... Well, she supposed there was another layer of irony to the mesh'la nickname the Kiffar had temporarily bestowed upon her.

Her gaze shifted up towards the open doors they'd passed through, narrowing a the sight the droids just looming like skeletal phantom specters of death, watching them impassively with their expressionless eyes and those eerie holographic generated faces. Clearly trying to assess the best way to kill them without resorting to simply throwing themselves down the shaft like Corellian lemmings.

Good, the longer they took working that one out, the more time they had to get the kark out of here.

"You can go back up if you want, but I'm headin' in the other direction." She murmured, twisting around on her wire to face Amea. That wince only intensifying as she saw the damage to the woman's face, but it was the haunted look in her eyes that truly troubled Runi. There was something frantic and wild about them. Unfocused by more than just the blow to the head she'd just received. The Kiffar frowned and reached out for the brunette, grabbing her utility belt to haul her closer for a better look. Her organic hand reaching out once more to cup those bruised features. "You with me still, cheeka? I told you before, I ain't haulin' your shebs around if you go down on me."

She hated mentalism, the thought of someone digging around in her head turning her stomach, but right now she needed Amea to be present and correct if they were going to have any shot of getting out of this place alive. Already the droids above them were starting to disappear one by one, no doubt sauntering off to the emergency stairway accesses that wove throughout the ship. With that War Droid active and on the prowl, they would make short work of any obstructions...

Kark.

"Don't hate me for this, 'lek? The headache is gonna be bad enough for both of us."

She closed her eyes, bringing her head forward to rest her forehead against the other woman's. The skin on skin contact far less intimate than what she was about to do. With a reluctant breath, she opened herself up to the force at first, letting it fill her and clear away all the worries and background noises around her. Voiding everything around them until she was just left with her own sense of self. A flickering, quavering ball of energy that prickled and spiked sporadically in her minds eye.

With a concentrated will of effort, she then pushed that pulsing ball outwards towards Amea. Casting it out like a tentative lifeline for the other woman to hopefully hold on to and, perhaps more importantly, drag herself out of whatever hole she was currently tumbling into.