Breaking the door (PM for Invite)

[Coren Starchaser]

The fun in that was that Planet Farm Starship Insurance was not going raise his rates and deductible. Sure, he was on the Event Horizon and she was partially covered by the Frontiers Corps, but they were out beyond the borders and working for a private company. He knew that it was all fine, but the truth of it? He wasn’t wanting to write letters of regret to families of blue skinned cadets who may or may not have lied about their age. He wasn’t sure.

Now it was a bit of wait and listen. He wasn’t suspecting anything wrong. Not like there were Reapers, nor Reavers, nor Rebel Alliance Pony Play Parties, but he didn’t know. Coren could get out there, he was a master of all things space, but he really preferred to not get in a vac suit. Though, if it came down to it? He’d do what was needed, and help out the cadet. As much as the Starchaser man was a bit of a ‘I don’t care’ to most, he was going to help students.

“Be careful in there. Black box should be able to be downloaded, if its there.”

[member="Boo Chiyo"]

 

[Zak Dymo]

Be careful?

He was doing a Superman in space with only a thin layer of armorweave and a string of prayer beads between him and the empty vacuum of space. If he was being careful, he wouldn't be out here at all. Especially when he didn't even know what the feth was going on, going down, or gone wrong so that the pair were here in the first place. As the youngling pulled himself up to the transparisteel windows at the head of the shuttle, the boy got his first look inside the mystery machine.

Light reflected on metal objects -- bolts, bits of scrap, pens -- suspended in mid-air as they drifted through the interior.

"Gravity's off-line, but I don't..." the Pantoran reported, pausing as a trick of light and shadow made him do a double take. "...wait a minute," the boy uttered finally, allowing the comlink to go silent as he moved across the bow of the ship to the other side. Traversing down the side of the shuttle, which was slightly turned away from where Coren's freighter was positioned, the youth investigated a theory.

"Port airlock's open," he announced a minute later, as he stood silhouetted between the heavens and the inside of the Silk manufactured shuttle. The safety protocols ought to have never allowed both the interior and exterior blast doors to be opened while the shuttle was in operating mode. A fact he knew only because of tricks he'd picked up for how to slice and trick exterior doors on ships or stations of this kind.

As the child pushed off from the edge of the door frame, a muted click could be heard as the grav-lock at the bottom of his boot anchored him down to the deck. Stepping fully inside, the boy turned to regard the control panel on the wall. The door to space slid shut a moment later. Pale illumination followed, as the shuttle seemed to be awakening from a slumber. "I'm inside," the young agent announced, carefully lifting up his foot and placing it down before he took another step. Behind him, the interior airlock door slid shut as well. "Emergency batteries are still functional."

A chill traveled down the child's spine. A momentary gasp escaping his lips, as fleeting images of the ghostly apparition they'd encountered on Korriban sprang to mind. Without knowing why, the boy turned his head to gaze over his shoulder. But there was nothing, or no one, there. "It's strange... the Pantoran uttered softly, reaching up a gloved hand to tap the side of his helmet, as though to test the readings coming in over the HUD. "Zero life readings, but I... sense... something."

Something was right. It was almost like being back in the presence of his former master.

As he entered the small cockpit, the small cadet knelt down beside the technician's console. A maintenance hatch was removed, floating in the air by the child's head as the blue-skinned agent reached out to connect a small datapad to an ubiquitously designed black box. "Flight data recorder appears intact. I'm transmitting the data to you now."

[member="Coren Starchaser"]​

 

[Coren Starchaser]

One would think that Coren Starchaser, a man with such an intimate knowledge of space and the Force would understand what was going on right now. He had no idea. The crews understood they were doing missions through the Unknown Regions, to break a new hyper trail in. That had its own share of difficulties. Not only being the fact it was a new hyperlane, but the Unknown Region tossed a whole new factor into play.

He knew that part of this was training for the real world, but he knew that [member="Boo Chiyo"] was a Force user. That meant he had a whole new game to play. Coren and most of the LAA staff encouraged working without the Force, and he was glad to hear that Boo was taking the studies seriously, reaching the air lock without first going for the Force. He did head there after, but that was fine. “Sense something?” He closed his eyes, falling into the Force.

What did Pint Sized Vader sense? Coren wasn’t grabbing anything unique, anything pressing, but there was something.

He looked at the computer and nodded. “Receiving data. Good work, Cadet.” Yeah, even if Boo starts learning from Coren, it’ll be ‘cadet.’ No need for some fake religiousocity here. If anything, Coren was a gunslinger of a Force user. And a spacer. "You able to figure out what you're feeling?" Don't turn away a tool.

 

[Zak Dymo]

What he was feeling?

Closing his eyes, the blue-skinned youth tried to focus his mind as he stood in the front of the derelict shuttle. There were traces of something. Familiar, and yet different. Indistinct, as though echoes of a presence. The reflection of a ghost. It was definitely the work of the Dark Side, but many things were. The Host Lord's illusionary magic. His lightsaber crystal.

His lightsaber crystal.

It was a uniquely Sith ritual. A technique he'd been forced to learn by a Sith, his former master. That was the echo that was familiar to him. "...SiiiiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIiTH!"

Fact: 11 year old Pantorans screamed like little girls.

Seriously, he just skipped about nine octaves to hit the note that he'd just hit. Through the comlink, the motion sensor on Boo's rescue suit registered something behind him just moments before the sound of the boy's lightsaber being ignited could be heard.

Then a garble of static.

And the sound of silence.

- - -​

The motion sensor had been his only warning.

Whatever it was, its presence was completely concealed. Shrouded by the Dark Side.

Grabbing the cylinder from off his belt, the young witch-boy rotated his body back as he brought the red blade to bear. The zero gravity and magnetic boots made the movements halted, constrained. In fact, forgetting that his right heel was literally anchored to the deck, the boy felt pain lance through his knee and ankle as he twisted unnaturally. He felt the blade connect, and pass through, flesh and bone.

As the sweep of his blade went high, the boy's amber eyes beheld a severed arm spinning in zero gravity.

There was no blood. Merely coagulated globules of black seeping from out of rendered flesh. Necrotized.

A burst of Force Lightning was a familiar feeling, overwhelming the electromagnetic locks in his boots and sending him flying backward. Colliding with the pilot console, the boy bounced painfully off the controls and into the transparisteel windows. Somewhere in mid-flight, his lightsaber went spinning from out of his grasp. The HUD on his suit went dark, as the electronics were fused by the residual energy coursing through his durasteel clad body.

Most concerning of all, the only sound echoing in his helmet was his own labored breathing. Not the mechanical click of the respirator.

Struggling to orient and right himself, the boy stared out through a helmet which was beginning to fog from his breath. Before him, unfazed by the loss of limb, was a man in a Frontier Corps uniform. A specialist or mission commander by the looks of him. Or what remained of him. Exposure to vacuum and extremes of cold had left the flesh desiccated and the fabric tattered. The man was clearly dead. And just as clearly mobile.

And even more clearly tossing Sith Lightning around.

[member="Coren Starchaser"]​

 

[Coren Starchaser]

They were everywhere in this fething galaxy, weren’t they? He heard the call from the Pantoran, and no, Coren was not about to tease and taunt the cadet. Stuff was going down and his mind was jumping from social-Coren to at-war-Coren and, trust me, those two were vastly different when it came down to it. The tracking data on the cadet’s suit had jump strange and Coren got on the comm. “Cadet? Chiyo?” He called, right, that was going to be the best he could do, watch the channel and reach out to the Force.

And that was when he felt it, the lightning, the darkness, the hunger.

Prey.

He felt prey in the Force. Coren looked to the astromech. “Forward the comms to my personal unit.” He ran to the back of the ship, he was going to need to do something about this. He tapped the code into the armory locker and the door slid open, revealing his scatter gun and Vanguard armor. Someone who had trusted him and relied on him was out there.

The helmet of his armor clicked in and the familiar hiss of the equalizing pressure was a welcome feeling. Lightsaber? No. Coren Starchaser didn’t need that. He had other tricks up his sleeve. “Don’t move the ship, captain moving out.” He called to the droid as he opened the airlock and stepped into vacuum.

[member="Boo Chiyo"]

 

[Zak Dymo]

How refreshing.

The young Pantoran hadn't experienced pain such as this since he'd slipped a knife into the throat of Darth Scorpius, the Sith Lord who had 'liberated' a street urchin and pickpocket from off the streets of Coruscant. And then plunged his hands into rivers of blood. His body was continuing to convulse, as muscle spasms caused him to experience mild seizures as the Force Lightning lingered in the tissues of his body. His knee was hurting in a bad way from how he'd twisted earlier, and his ankle was alternating between white-hot, throbbing pain and complete numbness.

All he needed now was to be Force Choked whilst being levitated in mid-air and this would almost feel like a family reunion.

As he struggled, laid out across the flight console of the Niathal that was now drifting derelict, the boy stared out through the fog of the visor's glass to see the Sith Undead lumbering toward him. Its severed arm was still spinning in the air, knocked aside as the zombie-like creatures stretched out its remaining hand and approached the Pantoran.

The flash of something metallic caught the boy's eye. Stretching out his arm, the young witch-boy harnessed the pain. The Dark Side of the Force swelled around him, as the floating lightsaber suddenly ignited -- the red blade whirling dangerous as it snapped back across the shuttle to the Pantoran's waiting hand.

The head of the undead, or part of it anyway, floated away from the rest of its body. Which was now drifting lifelessly as well.

Panting, the boy labored to breath. The room was starting to go out of focus, prompting him to blink his eyes in an attempt to clear his vision. In the back of his mind, his Levantine courses in zero-gravity 'diving' were telling him that he was breathing the carbon dioxide that he'd been exhaling into the helmet. With his respirator and rebreather damaged by the Force Lightning, there wasn't enough oxygen to keep him conscious for more than mere minutes.

He needed to get out of this shuttle.

With a sweep of his arm, the lightsaber cut into the transparisteel canopy. The windows shattered, allowing the boy to float free of the inside of the ship, and toward the Corellian freighter that was pointed at the shuttle. Even as he reached out a hand toward the freighter, the boy felt his body starting to grow numb.

Was this what it felt like to die?

To die. To sleep.

To sleep, perchance to dream...

[member="Coren Starchaser"]​

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Pain. Coren knew pain. He knew loss, he knew success. The pilot knew a lot of different things. But what he didn’t know was how intimately that the Pantoran child knew pain. He didn’t want to begin to try to comprehend that fact. He didn’t need to. It was between [member="Boo Chiyo"] and his own past. Coren had former teachers, one was a Sith, who had taught him that being forged in the fire was important. It was what allowed the dark side to survive. It was like tempered steel. And those that fought against it? They needed to be something stronger al together.

He had learned to use the Dark Side as a weapon, not a means of torture and needless violence, but as a means to an end. To take down the Jedi, initially, and to help take down the rogue dark siders when they got out of hand. Sith, Krath, Dark Jedi, anyone who had the power to begin subjugating anyone else. He got out of the ship and saw the lightsaber start. Moving in that direction, the Corellian, master of all things space related, was expecting panic, but the kid was barely hanging on. Reaching out, when he got close enough, he wrapped his hand around the kid’s forearm.

Boo was part of the LAA. His first concern was getting the kid in oxygen, and back to the Event Horizon. After that? He’d send a team for the shuttle. Good hardware was needed to be recovered, it was the job of it. Getting to his ship, home sweet home, made the quick order for Arsix to return them to the Horizon.