Dark Forces

[Romi Jade]

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DIAB 6​

The Prism​

WITH: [member="Cotan Sar'andor"]​

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Spoiler

[youtube]

Spoiler

https://youtu.be/KVlNrmSlavw[/youtube]

A single step was enough to carry her off the platform and on to solid durasteel plating. She latched onto her hair, planting her hand just atop her head in hopes to stall it's franticness in the gusts of wind. She proceeded forward a few steps before stopping entirely.

A pivot would allowed for the flexible motion of her body to turn and look for Cotan. The crackling boom in the background put on by the electrical storm produced and eerie feeling over an already large and dilapidated structure.

She waited to match his pace before anything else, "This was as far as I got in my investigation...before--" She nodded. Romi had been investigating Taeli prior to their encounter on Mon Cala...and her last clue ended up here. War took her away...but it was probably best she hadn't come alone anyway.

Before she'd been picking up some sort of back end transmission through the Praxeum from this location. On further observation it was assumed the mass shadow signature likely pulled something from hyperspace. Common to those phenomenon, was collision with astroids. A scan proved tricky...but she was able to conclude the signal itself had been specific coming from within this structure.

Now that she was back...she wanted to figure out what this was and its relation to recent events.

Getting back would be tricky, but if anyone could fly through she figured Cotan could. She did still have her emergency beacon on her person too...

She followed the path leading towards the structure, absorbing the view of burn marks and discarded metal strips...she surmised this place had seen a lot.

"Just what is or was this place?" She mused, "I don't remember seeing anything on record of a structure in this system. From the Praxeum Archives anyway."

The path ahead of them started to grow smaller, angling inward as it went on; it was leading to exactly one spot. On both sides of them were large pillars that cut the sporadic light from the electrical storm in half.

The door had already been opened...

She looked towards the terminal on the side, it seemed as if it hadn't been activated in years really. The warm and old air from within called out to the pair, the maw of empty darkness staring them in the face.

Nostrils flaring...

"Alright. Lets check it out..."

 

[Cotan Sar'andor]

Cotan quickly caught up to Romi, his eyes taking in every detail of the structure he could manage. Behind him, he heard the engines of his ship as his droid flew off to surreptitiously orbit the moon that the station was around; all the old external landing platforms were too dilapidated to be safe to stop on. Judging by the wind, it seemed that whatever generated the fields that retained atmosphere around the platforms were going the same way. "Electrical storms are playing havoc with the force-field generators, eh?" he commented, though he doubted Romi heard him over the wailing gusts.

He listened carefully to hear her over the noise when she started talking, though his attention was split between the conversation and the look of the place. Blaster scoring along the outer hull, in some spots showing far heavier signs of damage, with the underlying scaffold structure of the station being visible. The place had taken quite a beating some time in the past...but how far in the past was impossible to tell.

But there was one thing Cotan knew, if he remembered some of his old studies as a Padawan correctly. This station was old.

"I'm surprised you managed to track a signal here," he said to Romi after a moment. "Or even that it made it out of the system. These electrical storms would be enough to make the Sith Emperor jealous!" A statement that Cotan didn't doubt for a minute, even though he was one of the beings in the galaxy who had been given first-hand knowledge of Darth Carnifex's love of throwing lightning around. He stepped over to the terminal, searching for a way to activate it.

"The archives on Coruscant had information on places like this," he said, quickly giving up on the search. Bloody centralized power systems. He stepped back, looking to the opening. "I wasn't necessarily supposed to read up on it, but my master was fairly lenient at times. If I had to guess from memory, this was an old prison." He squinted, looking deeper into the darkness of the doorway. "Emphasis on was...hopefully, at least." He wouldn't like to walk in and find the remnants of any prisoners left behind, but that would likely be better than running into any prisoners themselves.

He unclipped a glowrod from his belt, clicking the button to activate it. Inside the darkness was simply an empty hallway...leading to more darkness. Frowning, he started walking forwards, expecting Romi to match his step. "Just what sort of signal did you pick up that led you here, anyways? Emergency beacon, some sort of message, or was it covered over with too much static from Diab for you to be able to tell?"

[member="Romi Jade"]

 

[Romi Jade]

"Or even that it made it out of the system. These electrical storms would be enough to make the Sith Emperor jealous!"

Heh

"Tell me about it." She joked "An old prison you say?" Well that made everything just a bit more ominous, but interesting. "Why wouldn't you be allowed to read up on?" She was wondering if there were any implications to that. She casually leaned in with a wondering eye, standing just behind him as he searched for a possible way to activate the power.

Shrugging and throwing her arms, "Well...it would make sense for a prison to be out here. Things could come in...but weren't coming out."

Starting back for the opening, she sought her glowrod.

Click.

The orange-ish flare was stark contrast to the dark cutting across her face, and just a foot or two in front of her was Cotan with his own. Together they illuminated the proximity around them...but it'd only reach so far. She caught up to him after sating some of her curiosity.

"Well, there was so much static it was hard to decipher in the beginning. We originally thought it was an emergency beacon, we've had some scouts come to nearby systems before on assignment, we just thought maybe they got knocked out of hyperspace or something. But the code didn't match any of our own and the rest of it I couldn't decipher. It was the faintest most abnormal thing on a background frequency..."

Hmmm...

She continued down the dark corridor, only seeing whatever they're light would cut into.

"This place is probably too large to explore...there's got to be a way t--"

She'd somehow gotten a step or two in front of Cotan, and her foot suddenly was hovering over nothing. Almost falling forward into nothing, her words were cut off.

She curled her off hand around anything she could find that was sturdy to keep herself from falling over, but her glowrod would take the fall and plummet several meters after meters until it disappeared into nothing.

"Well...how unfortunate for my glowrod."

[member="Cotan Sar'andor"]

 

[Cotan Sar'andor]

Cotan quickly reached out when he noticed Romi's near-fall, though she caught herself before he had to do anything. So, he watched the glowrod fade into darkness, before landing with a faint clunk somewhere far enough below that the light itself couldn't be seen. "Not to worry," he said cheerily, despite the oppressive darkness surrounding them. "If all else fails, we have lightsabers!" He patted his, where the hilt hang from his belt, for emphasis. Every Jedi (or Sith, or...non-mainstream lightsaber wielder)'s favourite emergency lightsource.

He stepped up next to Romi, holding his glowrod out over the hole. The light from the device was too faint to see very far into it, but he could see the look of rent metal around the walkway. It wasn't just decay, in this case. Something had shredded open a hole here, in some way. Thankfully, it didn't completely block off the walkway, though the space around it was fairly narrow. "Well, time to keep pressing onward?" He said after a moment, walking over to the left of the hall, grabbing onto whatever handholds he could find while he started across the very narrow strip of floor remaining.

Once they were both across the gap, Cotan took the lead this time, shining what light he had ahead of them. "As for why I wasn't allowed to read up on things like this, it was probably because they were worried Padawans would be inclined to run around and explore in places they shouldn't. Old prisons, ancient tombs, things like that. They didn't want us to get ourselves killed, or find artifacts that we shouldn't, or anything like that." He fell silent for a moment, trying—fruitlessly—to peer further into the darkness.

"There was probably a lot of sense behind that, honestly. Padawans or young knights going missing or getting turned was always a worry, after all. It was already worrying enough that it might happen on sanctioned missions, from the council, without people going off and running around on their own." He kept walking forwards, falling silent again. The last time he'd been wandering around in some sort of semi-ruined structure like this, had been with his master on Atrisia.

And those were memories he wasn't very fond of reliving.

Before long, the pair came to a closed off blast door, blocking their further advance. Cotan quickly glanced around for an access panel, but this door didn't have one anywhere. "Looks like some security measures got triggered a while ago," he observed. "Well, nothing better to do but cut through it, eh?" He holstered his pistol, pulling out his lightsaber and activating it into the center of the door. Unfortunately, due to the thickness of the metal, it wouldn't cut as easily as a normal door. So he had to wait for a large portion of the locking mechanism to melt before he could force it open.

"This might take a while."

[member="Romi Jade"]

 

[Romi Jade]

"B-but I just got that glowrod." She rolled her eyes, and stomped in a slight bout of irritation. It was kind of funny in hindsight but...she peered out over the hole with Cotan, using his light to find the one she'd thrown away several meters down.

"Well, time to keep pressing onward?" He said after a moment, walking over to the left of the hall, grabbing onto whatever handholds he could find while he started across the very narrow strip of floor remaining.

"Cotan...I like the way you think." She commented after she came to the realization of what he was doing. After him, she reached out for some leverage and when it was a hit, she started across in the same fashion. Noting what he was saying while also keeping her concentration of what she was doing, "Well...that Padawan who was inclined to run around and explore in places they shouldn't, almost get themselves killed, or find artifacts that they shouldn't was definitely me." She landed across.

Hiss-crack

She'd called her lightsaber to life, producing a scarlet sheen over the area.

"Yeah it makes complete sense, when you put it that way. My experiences lacked quite a bit of structure in comparison, these were the sort of missions I was inundated with...when not being sheltered in someone's palace or traversing hyperspace. It was all over the place." It really was all over the place.

"Here" She grabbed for the glowrod to free his hands, and held her lightsaber up to illuminate the area around them.

"This place..." She started to fidget with her comm, "Is too big." She started to tweak with the frequency controls. Tracing down that same wave she'd gotten at the Praxeum. They'd probably be able to follow it to its source and thus identify what it was exactly. "There...it's not the best but it'll help us narrow our search a bit."

[member="Cotan Sar'andor"]

 

[Cotan Sar'andor]

Most of Cotan's concentration was embroiled in the door that he was trying to open. Ancient, thick, made of heavy metal, and with a far more heavy-duty locking system than most, breaking it open was slow going. He didn't even want to imagine how it looked on the other side, but a significant portion of the side he was on was already glowing red hot. Cotan was having to draw on the Force fairly heavily just to keep redirecting the heat away from himself; after all, he didn't much feel like getting cooked.

"That's good," he grunted in response to Romi after a moment. "That'll cut down our time dealing with this place considerably. Finding a central control room might still be a good idea, though." On the other side of the door, he heard a large portion of metal slough off and crumble on the floor. With it went a large portion of the friction keeping his lightsaber blade held in strength; straining, he forced the blade to cut through the central seam of the door, where the bottom and top portions connected; quite a bit of the individual pieces keeping the halves locked together began to fail, and the door began to crack and groan under the tension.

Then, with a loud snap, the locking mechanism as a whole fell apart; the bottom half fell into its recess in the floor, revealing a pile of half-molten metal on the other side. Cotan quickly used the Force to push it all out of the way, crouching down to look under the top half of the blast door. "Maybe if we find a control room we can reactivate some power and get rid of anymore of these," he grumbled. With a sigh, he rolled underneath it, coming back up to a standing position...

In a hallway full of more empty darkness.

"Good news, it's clear," he said back to Romi, on the other side. "Bad news is there's still nothing interesting."

[member="Romi Jade"]

 

[Romi Jade]

Metal slapping metal never got pleasant on the ears, no matter how many times you heard it; her face showed it all.

"With any luck, we'll find both at the same time." She shrugged casually, "Either way, I'm all for finding power." She ducked down and slid underneath, digging her heel into the floor to propel herself up "Ugh...still?" She responded. She stepped ahead for this one, her arm hovering just out in front of her as she followed a makeshift path depending on when the signal was at its clearest.

"How goes things on the Outer Rim?" She'd stopped, and flailed her arm too and fro in order to pick their trail back up. Now, she was heading east-ish. "It's been so long, wondering if I missed out on anything..." Her lightsaber illuminated the corridor, basking what it touched in a red hue.

They'd come into some sort of care ward...

She heard the crunching of glass under her boots, turned to one of the windows blown out and the room within a mess. Several feet later was a turbolift cluster; four of them were in the center with various other rooms surrounding them.

"Seems like the medical facility..."

"What happen here?" she'd thought these words while examining scuffed up equipment and the like.

[member="Cotan Sar'andor"]

 

[Cotan Sar'andor]

"The Outer Rim is the same as it's always been," Cotan replied. He held up his lightsaber, reactivating it for a bit more light. "Definitely a medical ward." He walked around the broken turbolifts, examining the rooms around. Coming from one of the broken windows, he could smell...

Ew.

Rotting bacta wasn't the worst thing that he'd ever seen or smelled, but it certainly wasn't nice. "Don't walk near that room," he choked out, covering his mouth and nose with his free hand. "You won't like the smell. Trust me." He walked further past, moving to an area with cleaner air. "That stench is exactly why the galaxy should've stuck with kolto. It gets stale, but it doesn't go bad like that." He looked around further, coming around a bend and facing a door sitting ajar.

Glancing in, he saw another terminal. Thankfully, unlike the last one, this one was a bit more accessible. He might not be able to power it, but since it wasn't recessed into the wall like the one at the entrance, he could at least rip out the memory core. "Just the thing we needed." He walked in and crouched down, tearing off some highly-corroded access panels. Then came the disassembly; no more need for a power supply, multiple useless wires to tear away, a few parts that he didn't know what they were. All to get to the hard drive and the memory.

Pulling out his datapad and a couple extra cables, he hooked the various pieces together, his datapad sending out enough power to get what he needed from the old computer terminal. "Corrupt file," he muttered, clicking to the next. "Corrupt file...data corrupted...unreadable...Ah, here's something!" The file was unnamed, but once he was able to open it up, that didn't matter.

"Finally! A map!"

Completely three dimensional, with a marker showcasing which terminal they were at. Not that that would prove particularly useful once they got moving from the medbay, but at least it gave them a clue where they were at in the massive structure. He glanced over it quickly, marking out the location of the central control room, as well as how to get there.

"Oh Romi, you're not going to like this," he called out of the office in a sing-song tone. "In order to get where we need to, it looks like we're going to have to climb through these turbolift shafts!" He looked down at the pistols on his belt, and frowned. Neither of them had a fiber-cord grapple attachment.

"Do you have a grappling line? Otherwise this might be difficult."

[member="Romi Jade"]

 

[Romi Jade]

"The Outer Rim is the same as it's always been,"

"Ha, makes sense." A quick pivot allowed for her to change the trajectory of her walk path, going the opposite direction around the broke turbolifts. A thrust of her arm moved her scarlet shade from one location the next, this time illuminated some sort of side room. She paced inward, but could feel the closure of the room itself -- it didn't lead anywhere else.

What sliver of light there was crept in and around aged metal. Kneeling she snatched it up, tugging only to find there was way more to it; it was a droid...or what remained of one at least. She could tell what kind, based off where they were and how it was constructed "Old observation droid..."

Ew.

She perked up, peeking her head out "What is it?" she continued down the circular corridor over to his side stopping just short of the next room, but it was too late.

Ugh

"Don't walk near that room,"

Masking her face with her hand, she sped forward.

So they'd found a map? Good.

She peered over his shoulder while they traced through the feed, finding where the trail picked up after using the terminal as a marker. Her comm picked up some brief interference, and she looked away for just a split second before hearing Cotan,

"Oh Romi, you're not going to like this,"

"Oh kark...what is it?" She responded, and after finally realizing she'd frowned up... "Ughh, really? There's no other way?" she turned around to look over their surroundings again, only to feel more disgust.

"I can't eve--ok, lets just do it." she'd seen and done worst...but was much less inclined when it wasn't based on impulse.

"Yeah, I have one." She pulled it from her belt. "How far is it looking from here?"

[member="Cotan Sar'andor"]

 

[Cotan Sar'andor]

"Fairly," he replied to the last question. He took the grappling line, tying off one end of it to a sturdy piece of exposed conduit that he saw. Yanking hard against it to test it, he nodded after a moment. "Alright, looks like this should hold. Should be enough line here to get us down a few levels, yeah?" He grinned, grabbing firmly onto the line and hooking it onto a rappel device on his belt.

"I'll go first. If I scream in pain, I probably hurt myself. If I scream in pain and it sounds like I'm saying don't come down, it's probably dangerous. If you don't hear anything, it's definitely dangerous." With a cheery wave he stepped backwards over the edge of the shaft, quickly dropping down before stopping himself at the next level. He stopped, attempted to glance in, and saw the door was closed; with that knowledge he shrugged and continued on down.

The next was open, but the space beyond it was empty; moreover, after checking the map again, it wasn't what he was looking for. His goal was right before the next full level down, a smaller opening, which led to...

"Perfect!"

A maintenance/droid access tunnel. There was an interconnected web of such tunnels all throughout the station, enabling the droids to travel around far more quickly than anybody being kept aboard in the event of any equipment failures. And with the map, he'd hopefully manage to navigate the tunnels properly. And, thankfully, no need to bother with turbolifts; these maintenance tunnels were designed to be fully functional even without power. For the humanoid droids, this meant ladders; for the astromech and utility droids, there were a lot of ramps.

While it wouldn't prove nearly as straightforward as the normal routes, it would prove far more reliable.

"Alright, you're good to come down," he called back up to Romi. "It'll be a tight fit, but this should get us around a lot easier, so long as we don't get lost."

[member="Romi Jade"]