"Mmm," Tansu sounded thoughtful and then shook her head. "Nah."
Trinkets and do-dads would probably be useful at some point in her life, but she couldn't shake the miasmic feeling of the ship and the sheer oppression of the vault itself. She had no desire to touch something and involuntarily go to a dark place. Like with
Dax
’s lightsabre.
The Ravening was a beautiful sword, even in the dimness and eerie red lighting it seemed to shimmer. She shuddered. Partly from the frost, and partly reacting to the blade.
Again the ship vaulted, and her magnetic boots pushed themselves to their limit.
Wide eyed behind her visor, she noticed white starting to creep along the seams of Tydeus' suit. She glanced down at her own to see the same.
"We're outta here." She announced, and took the first step. Then several more, as if wading through a blizzard. Icicles coated the walls they'd just travelled, and the ground became slippery and precarious. The ship they'd arrived in seemed impossibly far away.
"We parked too far to keep goin' like this." The blonde deduced as a chatter teased her molars. she swallowed past it. "We passed a corridor marked for the hangars partway down, reckon it's worth the risk."
No protest seemed to come from her companion or his pocket pig, and so they risked it.
Gratefully the hallways were empty of adversaries — the droids likely stiff jointed from the otherworldly chill — and making it to the hangar came with relative ease.
But the hangar itself was a disappointment. Picked over and ancient, it looked like a ship graveyard.
Tansu made a noise of discomfort that travelled through their commlink as her pace quickened, ducking under the bellies of parked bombers and gunships to assess if anything was flyable as best she could. Hope seemed so close to lost until —
"—Hey!" A hazmatted arm waved. "Here! This one!"
Tansu's boots clanged hard against the durasteel deck as she sprinted toward the indicated craft. The hull was dust-caked and battered, but the lines were solid, the engines looked intact, and the Republic markings were still faintly visible beneath decades of grime.
Without hesitation she bounded up the boarding ramp, glow rod clenched in her fist until she slapped it against the bulkhead to free her hands. The controls were coated in frost, ancient but recognizable enough to a pilot's eye. She slid into the chair, fingers flying across dead switches until the board sputtered and hummed beneath her touch.
"C'mon, darlin'," she coaxed the ship, flicking toggles and overriding safeties with the quick confidence of long practice. "Ain't askin' for much. Just one more run."
Panels lit one by one in answer. Engines coughed. The deck beneath them vibrated with a low, promising growl.
"Oooeey! She's wakin' up! Ty, get that ramp sealed and strap in! We're takin' this bird out before she remembers she's supposed to be dead."
The hangar filled with the deepening roar of turbines spooling up, the battered gunship trembling like a predator ready to leap. Tansu's gloved hand wrapped tight around the yoke, eager, steady, utterly in her element.
"The hangar's more my kinda vault anyway. You get the spooky sword 'n jewelry, and I'll go with the spooky ship."
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Tydeus of Tion
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Tamsin Starfall
