Private Don't touch anything.

[In Rhan]

There'd been a couple do-or-die moments in In's life. She'd been sick enough to nearly kill her as a child - one of her earliest memories had been her parents arguing constantly, a series of increasingly shabby-looking doctors, and the growing knowledge of her own young life spinning down as her body failed to work properly. Walking had become a conscious decision she'd had to make, then getting out of bed. Then, it seemed, even bothering to wake up. Do-or-die. Years later, her mother and a friend had gotten blasted out of their mind on something and decided to play a lethal game. One had died, the other had put a gun in In's face and screamed how she wasn't going to take the blame for it. In had managed to fight her way out. Do-or-die. There were more. She hated to think her life was flashing before her eyes, and discarded the memories. Do-or-die. Focus.

With the shields down, she could only take a few solid hits before something broke - and it might be what she needed to get out of this. There was no way of knowing if anything she hit was explosive or not until it exploded. She tightened her grip and locked in for a series of lose-lose decisions. Hopefully the shields being down would give Niysha enough room to start further dropping the heat. In opened the throttle as much as she dared, then about twenty percent more The Dancer screamed away from the blue star and through the field of half-molten wreckage, leaving a glittering blue trail of evacuated coolant and particalized pieces of the hull.

With a full berth, steering the ship was like trying to dance with somebody - but you had a two-second delay between input and action. The ship could not hairpin or halt, it was a victim of inertia and a subject of momentum's tyrannical law. In dipped the nose, weaving and swerving with her years of experience. Clangs of debris and impacts still rocked the ship, but she took the hits where it mattered less - the spine, the flanks, away from the engines and thinner portions of the hull. Every kilometer away from the angry blue star meant less heat, every drop in heat made it more likely they'd survive if they didn't get wrecked.

A particularly large chunk of wreckage skipped off of the top of the Dancer. A fuel tank older than most current governments reacted poorly, igniting in an explosion that doused the Dancer in chemical flame and ionized radiation. The sensors continued to squeal. They were both going to need thorough decontamination after this.

 

[Niysha]

Two full cans of fire extinguisher into the heat sinks and venting the cold storage pipes into engineering had turned the room from a sauna so hot Niysha's lips had cracked into something more akin to an open oven. Insanely, intolerably hot, but no longer an immediate health hazard to be inside of. The only thing stopping her from passing out from heatstroke was raw willpower and the sharpest desperation she'd ever felt in her life. As the second can ran dry, the ship rocked again from some kind of detonation.

Once again the heat held steady. It hadn't been enough.

For a moment, despair crept into Niysha's heart. Her frenzied panic hadn't accomplished enough to do the one thing she was given to help solve the problem. What else could she even do? Any attempt to get closer to the microwave-hot coils on the other side of the room would just result in more burns and possibly her passing out. She'd run through two full fire extinguishers and the entire coolant tank on this thing. What else could be done?

In that moment of despair, the young and quite keenly failed Sith remembered something from back in academy. Something that had been reinforced by Adekos and Ignus in their training sessions. Wresting control of yourself was the first step - and the one that Niysha struggled the most with - but control over other things was called "power." And power was what she needed. It came in many forms. Moving objects and flinging people around was one form, and a relatively easy one to get the hang of. Power over other living beings was another form, and Niysha had had plenty of practice affecting minds.

But one she'd almost never used, basically forgotten, was a fundamental technique for commanding energy. Not burning or freezing alive was the easiest use, and the one that Niysha had the most experience with... but right now she needed another way. A ship was a body just like hers. Just like hers, it had a heart, it had a circulatory system... and that meant that those things could be controlled. Whether or not she had the power to do that at the moment wasn't important; she needed that power.

Standing still in the engineering bay, hotter every moment, baking from being so close to radiation, Niysha focused. Furrowed her brow. She reached out into the Dancer's body, into its heart and spirit, and through frustration at her own failure, through desperation to survive, she took control. She ripped control away from the ship, away from the inevitability of burning alive in a nowhere starship graveyard.

And with a shriek of defiance that echoed through the ship, she tore the fire from the Dancer's heart.

Her skin baked. Her soul burned. She could smell her own flesh. The power needed to go somehwere, or she would fry herself apart. Idiot girl. What good was saving the ship if she was going to die in the process? Blinded by rage and acting on instinct, Niysha stretched out her hands and let the hellish, lethal energy flow from her body in a sparking storm of raw power.

 

[In Rhan]

That last big impact had knocked some things loose. In didn't need her screaming sensors to tell her that her port-side navigation was lagging slightly behind starboard, and they probably weren't sensitive enough to detect that anyway. Only years of experience with how the ship moved, how it felt in various states of weight, in crisis and health could give you that kind of information. Every knock, ding, and shot the Dancer had taken had informed In of the ship and her limits. Every step on the journey made the soul stronger for the next step.

Her paths diverged. To stand, throw her weight into the yoke and drive it up would pitch the nose down and avoid the lazily-floating battery banks she'd just spotted beneath a burnt-up bulkhead. Whether or not they were active, or volatile, she could not tell at a glance. To pull back with all of her strength would pitch the Dancer up and directly into the path if a pair of old fighter wrecks. Ancient, mummified corpses still sat in the cockpit seats of the two bulbous fighters. The fine details on their unrecognizable uniforms were discernible at this range. Locking up or trying to thread the gap meant hitting both. The ship was too wide, the yaw too advanced to make it past.

One more glance at her sensors. They'd gone berserk, it seemed - either she'd sprang a leak in the engineering bay, or things were cooling far too rapidly. But if the heat WAS dropping, that meant she might be able to flick the shields on, deflect the batteries, and make it through unscathed. In was already reaching for the switch. Only a minute or two of shields and she'd be able to plow through. Finally - an easy decision.

Something stopped her from throwing the switch. Turning the shields on would mean generating more heat. If the sensors were going berserk, she'd melt the heatsinks. If they weren't...

Too much hesitation. In abandoned the shields and pulled up, her shoulders and arms straining. The Dancer in Green groaned loudly at the effort, the engines blazing to life. Rolling yard to one side meant one of the ancient fighters skipped off of the belly of the ship. The second hit directly beneath the cockpit, slamming into the chest of the medium freighter. In felt her seat lurch as the impact breached the smuggling compartment and vented it, the floor of the cockpit bowing slightly at the unexpected decompression and structure damage. Half of In's view was taken up by the solar sail of the Ginivex-class fanblade starfighter now lodged in the front of her ship.

Shield had many definitions. Using the wreck as a plow, In identified a way out of the wreckage and punched it. shattered durasteel and powder in the wake of the Dancer.

 

[Niysha]

There was once a girl named Niysha. She was an absolute idiot. Fortunately, she wasn't present at the moment.

In the engineering bay, the electrical event and rapid dispersal of heat was losing any sense of control. The body of a foolish Miraluka who'd thought to touch a star sparked head to toe, outlining her skeleton in righteous, thunderous power as it served as a conduit through which heat could become power could become electricity. The whole thing was far, far too dangerous to control, and the meat at the center of the whole storm was becoming a bit unstable.

The Force, however, seemed to take kindly to her bravery. The Dancer wasn't built to handle so much electricity wildly flowing through its hull, popping the occasional light and blowing the least-important fuses that Niysha could reach. But when she was relatively sure she was going to be a charred mess on the floor between engineering and cold storage, a massive metal spike shoved itself through the hull.

Current flows into a position of equality. Niysha used what was left of her will to direct it into that spike, a torrential storm of lightning-that-was-idiot-girl-that-was-radiation all flying into an ancient wreck that, for just a moment, was part of the Dancer. The result was effectively a jet of pure electric force, blasting out through the solar sailor's archaic corpse.

That, it seemed, was enough to properly release the power she'd grasped. The far, far too much power she'd been fool enough to try to command with her weak, useless body. The last thought that ran through Niysha's mind before she passed out against the nearest bulkhead was that engineering was a little chilly, honestly. She could do with a jacket.

 

[In Rhan]

It'd probably taken less than three minutes to get free of the debris field and a safe-ish distance from the star they'd wound up in. This was helped by the inexplicable ion explosion that'd issued forth from the starfighter-shield lodged in the Dancer, though that burst of energy HAD shorted out the cockpit. With half of her console blown out, In had to rely on the older-fashioned tools to have any idea where they were. They'd been traveling lokaido. As best as she could determine, they were now out past the Tingel arm. Her stomach sank, which was useful in that she also wanted to throw up. How could they have been thrown across the galaxy in an instant!?

Niysha.

In located Niysha quickly and easily, because everything in the vicinity seemed to point to her. The dark-skinned woman had fallen in the center of a labyrinth of unnatural lichtenberg figures and weld lines burn into the bulkhead beneath her, the metal nearby still hot to the touch and glowing in places that made no sense. A glowing circle of molten metal still shimmered on the wall between Niysha and the smuggling compartment/impromptu starfighter storage - In had no context for what could have occurred. The air was still stiflingly hot, and reeked of ozone. Given how much power had surged, In suspected a fuse had blown somewhere critical and given the Dancer a stroke in the process.

In carried Niysha to bed and tended her wounds first. Critical repairs came second. The damage was severe, but aside from the heatsinks and the starfighter lodged in the hull? It could have been much, much worse. In was a little shocked it wasn't much, much worse. She suspected she'd find considerably more damage when she had the wherewithall and time to do a more comprehensive inspection - which she'd have, since the Dancer wasn't going anywhere for a few days while they patched the worst of the damage and performed a fighterectomy.

Perhaps more bewildering than anything else? The power surge had blown out nearly every small electronic - every light, every backup, most of the screens and consoles. It hadn't touched the hydroponics trays. Aside from the ones that'd been too close to the engineering bay and been roasted or knocked over and might die to root shock, every plant was more or less fine. Throughout the entire ship, the hallways retained a dim glow by the bulbs of hundreds of perfectly in-tact potted plants and hydroponics trays.

 

[Niysha]

Niysha waking up was, apparently, a slow thing. She didn't snap back to consciousness and thrash around like a caged animal; it was difficult to even tell she was awake if not for the quiet groan and gentle shuffle. After a moment, she was at least sitting, propped up with her elbows. Her vision came into focus after a couple of seconds, and she took stock. She was in her cabin on the Dancer, which meant that either they'd made it or death looked a lot like the rustiest mobile greenhouse in the rim. Dr. Cromslor was sitting right beside her cot, so either that orange tree was secretly a psychopomp or everything had worked out shockingly well.

Shocking. Bad turn of phrase. The first audible noise Niysha made was a wince as she grabbed her... everything, really. Her skin sizzled. She felt dry and leathery, but like the whole thing was being hit by pinpricks all over. Everywhere hurt almost equally, though she did notice a hell of a bump on the side of her head. Likely from falling during whatever had happened.

Her sight swam across the ship, looking for- In was fine. That much should've been obvious. It was clear that whatever had happened, In had come out the other side far better off than Niysha had. The Miraluka decided that that was the optimal outcome. In was plenty durable, but of the two of them, Niysha had had actual training in recuperation techniques. She couldn't really meditate right now, but all of the pain and stress would make it very easy to do so later. She might accidentally wind up swimming in a pool of dark side focus; it'd happened before.

And as far as swimming in the dark side went, she'd need to wait to figure out what she'd even done later. For now, she needed to find In. As she slowly crackled her way out of bed, Niysha grabbed the blanket from the cot and wrapped it around her shoulders, then wandered into the ship to where In was working.

 

[In Rhan]

In had been beside herself for awhile. She wanted to be beside Niysha, but with all the things broken or failing the best she could do for her most-important-staff-member was to carry her to her bed, dress the worst of her burns, and give her a painkiller. Then she'd had to go to work.

Most critical first. Life support wasn't doing hot, but that wasn't as much an issue for the Dancer as other ships. The hull was in pretty poor shape, and there was only so much she could do about that while underway. In had routed the coolant back into the proper channels, evaluated the condition of the still-shimmering heatsinks, taken stock of the water supplies, and concluded that they probably wouldn't die so long as they could get moving in a day or two and weren't too far away from civilization. Most of the damage to her flight systems and consoles had been blown fuses, capacitors, and screens. She had a box of the first two. She'd scavenged every still-working viewscreen from the rest of the ship (and a couple from the fighter lodged in the hull) and hooked them up in the cockpit, taping them to the walls and window. Somehow they'd wound up in Companion Grek. Karabast.

Speaking of least-favorite-crewmate. When she'd made relatively sure that the starfighter wasn't going to open any random holes due to settling weight, In had sealed the puncture around the fighter with emergency foam. Cutting it loose now would be a mistake - In didn't want to fire up the engines until they were ready to go, because she didn't want to risk repeated spool-ups in case there was hidden damage. The fighter might've just drifted back into the Dancer if she winched it out to patch the hole. This, unfortunately had meant there was a vacuum mummy staring judgmentally at her from the pointy bit that'd stabbed her ship. Least-favorite-crewmate. In couldn't just leave them in there. Having a corpse on the ship felt like a bad idea. Just pushing them out the airlock felt disgraceful.

How long had the corpse been out in that fighter, just drifting in the ruins? In carefully pulled the pilot from the cockpit, closed the visor on their star-bleached flight helmet, and laid them out on a hoversled.

When Niysha found her, In had that hoversled positioned in front of the molecular furnace and had carefully laid a tiny bouquet of a half-dozen flowers on the chest of the corpse. "I'm sorry - your arms don't have enough bend to hold the flowers." The Pantoran woman sighed, standing at the head of the sled. "I also hope that cremation isn't offensive to you. If you prefered being entombed in that fighter, feel free to haunt me a little. I understand." In carefully, respectfully laid a blue flower atop the hastily-made bouquet. "I read that it takes a kilogram of organic matter five months to completely clear the furnace. That means your remains will be spread across dozens and dozens of jumps, hundreds of systems. I think that kind of thing is beautiful, and I hope you do, too."

 

[Niysha]

Being able to see emotionally turbulent things through physical matter was one of those mixed blessings that came with the territory of Force Sight. Niysha could easily tell where In was - the engine room - but when she got within ten meters it was painfully obvious that there was a poignant scene taking place and she shouldn't interrupt. She made sure to wait her turn outside the room until In was at least done with her speech.

Niysha was quiet when she wanted to be, but right now she was physically unwell, in quite a bit of pain, and sneaking up on In would've been a terrible idea. Her movement into the room was casual and unsubtle, though she could only make so much fuss while barefoot. The Miraluka approached her captain from behind and placed one arm, still covered in a blanket, on her shoulder.

"The Jedi teach that every life becomes one with the Force after it passes," she offered as cold comfort. "All life comes from the Force, so if they're right, your friend here may already have lived a hundred more lives. Loved the stars a hundred more times." The Sith did not teach that. Niysha didn't know what to believe, as always. "She didn't think about philosophy that much" was one of the lies she occasionally told herself.

Niysha's touch was very, very tender. She seemed to be trying to avoid moving much.

 

[In Rhan]

"That was beautiful, Niysha." In was grateful for the light contact, and exceedingly careful in wrapping an arm around Niysha - more for her own comfort than anything else. She wanted a hug, but that'd have to be another day. They'd barely survived this, and In still wasn't sure why it'd happened. Her ship was a mess. Her crewman was injured. This was going to cost her loads of credit, both in repairs and the delays to deliver their freight. Given how they'd gone from one side of the Galaxy to the other, she'd probably have to take the hit to her reputation and default on the delivery, pay out the insurance to the commissioner. Selling the cargo might soften the monetary blow, but it'd still probably be a financial loss.

Things weren't as bad as they might've been, but they weren't great. A funeral felt appropriate. Morale was in the gutter.

The Pantoran woman then carefully pushed the hoversled into the molecular furnace, consigning the remains of the nameless starfighter remains to a slightly less eternal rest than floating in space.

"We're gonna make it, Niysha." In reported quietly, watching as the furnace broke the body down into constituent elements - flakes of carbon peeling away like flower petals. "Damage to the ship isn't terminal. I can get us moving again while you rest up. You're on lightest possible duty."

In took a deep breath, wiped her cheeks, looked away from the furnace. "I would be dead if you weren't there." She sighed. "Second time. Got myself a bonafide guardian angel."

 

[Niysha]

'Guardian angel.'

Niysha scoffed. She would have normally tried to stop herself, but couldn't quite manage it this time. "Since I've come into your life, you've almost died twice. My abject incompetence fried your electronics, blew out half of the lights on the ship, damaged your environmental, cost you medical supplies, robbed you of a good pair of hands when you sorely need them for repairs," she stopped listing and did her best not to pull back. "...And killed two plants."

Yes, negativity. Obviously, too much negativity. After a moment of wallowing in self-pity, Niysha squared up at least a little bit. "I know I'm being unreasonable or too hard on myself or both," she admitted freely, her touch very, very soft on account of the tender pain that came from what was probably a full-body blister at this point. "But for a moment there I was doing something that was helping, and that means I could have helped from the start, and I could've done more if I was stronger or had... basically any clue what I was doing, really."

She let out a very audible sigh, slumping slightly but not abandoning the hug she'd been pulled into. "I'm sorry I couldn't do more."

 

[In Rhan]

"You saved our lives and the ship." In promised. She wasn't going to correct Niysha - the Miraluka knew that she was being unkind to herself, and it wasn't In's place to sort her out. Specially not now. "I'm glad you were there. Thank you Niysha."

She couldn't hug more than she already was. So she didn't. They held each other and existed in the moment, each miserable in her own way for her own reasons. Maybe she'd be haunted for hijacking least-favorite-crewman's funeral for her own pity party. It was probably deserved.

After a couple of minutes, though, In did pull away a little. "I left some painkillers by your bed. I administered while you were asleep, so your next dose'll be in about ten hours." She explained. "There's a succulent in your room. It makes a gel that's nice for soothing and treating burns - snap off a tip or a slice of it and just rub it on like lotion. It'll help - promise. Just toss whatever's left in the pot so it can re-absorb it."

Easier to focus on tasks. She had to get moving again. Wallowing wouldn't help.

 

[Niysha]

With a single, detached nod, Niysha stood up and away from In. Both of them had things to do. "I appreciate it," she answered earnestly. "I do know some techniques to recover more quickly, but I've found that medical attention speeds up the process considerably." She needed to reinforce In's contributions. Both of them were at a loss right now, and In particularly needed the morale boost.

Niysha was very used to being worthless and weak. None of this was anything new to her, apart from someone else knowing the scope of her failure. While her mental state was tender and negative, it wasn't much worse than normal. This wasn't the first time she'd almost died because she couldn't protect herself or anyone around her, and there was no way it would be the last.

"I'll focus on recovery, but if there's anything I can do to help, you need to let me know," she insisted, making sure to turn her full attention - as well as her body - to face In Rhan, captain of the Dancer in Green. "You are short-staffed right now, the Dancer's badly damaged, and you'll need all the help you can get to get us up and running again in time to make that delivery."

 

[In Rhan]

In replied with a firm nod. "Absolutely. I'm doing just enough to get us safely in motion again. Jury-rigging things more than I have to'll just hurt us down the line - we need repair facilities and parts." She explained. "And when we get them, I'll need every drop of your help I can squeeze out, because we both know Cromslor's not going to carry her weight."

In nodded towards the front of the ship. "I don't know if you'll have better luck seeing anything on the viewscreens I've replaced- some of them are pretty old, and they have higher voltage. That might help." She didn't know how Miralukan sight worked, but she'd picked up on 'living things' and 'electricity' as stuff Niysha could perceive. "If not, just hang out near the cockpit and let me know if any of the alarms or sensors start squealing. We've got the proximity up right now, so anyone comes by we'll know it. Didn't want to light the distress beacon this far afield."

She then jerked her thumb towards the engineering bay. "I'm gonna do what I can to un-fuse the heatsinks. Let's get to work.

---

All told, it took three days of repair and patching to get The Dancer in Green back into a shape it could safely fly. After salvaging raw material from the starfighter they'd run into and a few expensive-looking parts, In cut it loose and patched the hole it'd made in her hull. The Besaid-Class relied on an intricate three-layer armor system - having a puncture was a serious compromise of the ship's security.

From there, they were able to limp their way half-blind back towards civilized space, eventually winding up in a podunk SH waystation with less than a dozen staff. The amount of credit In dropped for more comprehensive repairs likely doubled the net worth of the sleepy old Bothan who ran the place. Even with a local mechanic and her helpers, Niysha and In spent two more weeks docked and doing dedicated repair shifts.

During which time they heard about the nearby Youth Festival coming up, and sought buyers for all their newly-purchased freight.

Oddly enough, the components In had pulled from that starfighter had a couple very eager collectors trying to snap them up.