Private Gotta See a Man About a Ship

[Nadi]

Nadi eyed the 'fresher's sonic shower with a grimace as she peeled out of her clothes and opened a fresh pack of chem-wipes. She'd tried using a sonic shower once, and that had been three times too many. The memory alone almost made her flinch. The chem-wipes were better, but took longer and didn't give you the satisfaction of a good water shower.

<You take what you can get, I suppose.>

It took her several minutes to get clean enough to satisfy her own standards, and about the time she finished getting dressed she felt the deck rattle beneath her feet as the ship transitioned back to realspace and the sublight engines kicked on.

It had been several days since Golrath, and her and Til had managed to acquire a ship and make it off Rugosa without incident. Or at least with little enough incident that it was very unlikely they were being tracked.

An expanse of yellow and brown greeted her through the viewport as she stepped into the cockpit, and she held a hand up to stave off the glare of a pair of suns; both of them only a few degrees off of casting the planets shadow over them. A short minute later, the two stars disappeared as the ship pushed into the shadow, and she got a good look at Tatooine's night side. It wasn't an overly populated planet, and the smattering of lights that she could see were all fairly isolated, save for only a couple larger population centers.

It was to one of these population centers, Mos Espa specifically, that they were headed. She'd been planetside looking for cargo contracts when the tac squad had jumped her, so it was possible the Ronto was still where she left it.

<Possible, but not likely.>

She dropped into the copilot seat and glanced over at Til.

"So, once we get the Ronto back, what am I helping you with?"

She didn't like owing people, so the sooner she could square herself with Til's offer of assistance in finding her ship, the better.

Til Melarr​

 

[Til Melarr]

Til sat hunched over the control console, casually using the tip of a small pocket knife to scrape dirt out from beneath his fingernails as Nadi walked into the cockpit. He didn't mind the company but he could tell that she was a lone wolf much like himself. There was no point in forcing some kind of big friendship when the chemistry just wasn't there.

He glanced up from his nails, squinting past his boots at the dry, ugly rock filling the viewport. Tatooine was an absolute dump in his opinion, a giant dust bowl full of sand, sweat, and bad decisions, and he wouldn't be caught dead here under normal circumstances. But it was their destination, much to his displeasure. He folded the knife shut, tossed it onto the dashboard and spun his chair around in a full circle to get his creative juices flowing.

"Right down to business. I like that," Til said, letting his swivel chair come to a rest as he crossed his arms. "Since we're stopping on this dust ball to grab your ship, I figure you owe me a hand with my next score." He leaned back, resting his hands behind his head and nodding out toward the dark horizon of Mos Espa glowing in the shadow of the twin suns.

"There's a black-market medical facility on Rishi hoarding a few cases of pure Exonium," Til explained, his voice dropping into a smooth, easy pitch. "Stuff is worth a small fortune to the right buyers in the Core, but the local syndicate keeps it locked behind heavy blast doors and automated turrets. I need someone who can take a hit, draw their fire, and give me five quiet minutes with their main vault." He kicked the sublight throttle forward a notch, bringing the ship into a steady descent toward the glowing grid of the spaceport below.​

 

[Nadi]

"Blast doors and turrets I can do."

Her chair squealed as she leaned back, eliciting a wince as her feet rose to rest on the console before her.

<I really need to get another dampening field.>

The galaxy and its noises were bad enough with the gorram thing, and now that she'd been without it for weeks it was getting harder and harder to grin and bear it. Til had been surprisingly accommodating in modulating his volume since her first, ah... meltdown, after their escape. She'd locked herself in her cabin for almost a full day when it all got to be too much, trying to adjust to the multitude of noises on the unfamiliar vessel with unfamiliar company.

As a partner in crime, she could do a lot worse than Til Melarr.

"Thank you. For leaving me be earlier."

She drew a long breath in and slowly released it. They were a difficult thing, apologies.

"And I'm sorry I snapped like I did."

They were also part of her self-prescribed anti-paranoia regimen. Them, and pretty much anything else that might help build trust.

Gods, she really hated this sithspit sometimes.

<I miss the days when I could just not give a kriff.>

But They had taken that away from her. Forced her to change the way she thought in order to avoid her own mind turning against her. Avoid losing control.

Becoming useless.

Helpless.

She'd been all of those things before, and she hated them a lot more than she hated forcing herself to be kind. And it wasn't like she'd never been kind before. She'd had friends and colleagues she got along with well enough, but They'd taken away the choice. It was....

<A kriffing nightmare.>

She abruptly became aware that her teeth were grinding together hard enough to be audible, and it yanked her out of her little trip down memory lane. She glanced over at Til again.

"So... how long til we touch down?"

Til Melarr​

 

[Til Melarr]

Til mused to himself that he wasn't a licensed therapist, but he put up with her changing moods on account that it was easier than shoving her out the airlock to freeze in space. After all, he couldn't judge her when he had his own issues from years of dealing with his demanding mother, who always reminded him of how much of a disappointment he was to the family.

He felt a mix of disgust and fear as he realized he had actually matured, and the idea of losing his living legend status if he continued to be polite scared him. He reached out to the sublight controls, adjusting a small toggle on the console to make a slight course correction as they entered the upper atmosphere.

"Don't sweat it, darling," Til said, waving a hand casually in the air as he answered her truthfully.

"I've dealt with worse than a little shouting. My mother used to throw ceramic plates at my head when I brought home bad marks from the academy. You locked yourself in a room. Frankly, I got off easy." He leaned forward, watching the heat tiles on the nose glow a faint orange through the viewport as friction hit the ship. He tapped a couple of buttons on the readout panel to check their landing clearance, keeping his eyes on the blinking green landing vector.

"We've got about five minutes before we hit the pad at Mos Espa," Til told her, his fingers flicking the switch to lower the landing gear. A heavy hydraulic thud could be heard through the floorboards as the struts locked into place.

"Just enough time for you to pull yourself together and for me to remember why I hate sand." He turned his head toward Nadi , resting his cheek against his palm as the ship broke through the lower cloud layer, revealing the sprawling, dust-choked spaceport spread out under the night sky.​

 

[Nadi]

Nadi was about as much a fan of Tatooine as Til was, though for her it was the suns, rather than the sand. Well... okay, it was also the sand. But mostly the suns.

A job's a job, though, and this was where her client had wanted to meet for the drop. Ended up turning out that sometimes paranoia actually is justified, which wasn't exactly great for her composure.

<Karking nerf herder.>

She had a very strong suspicion that if her ship did turn out to be missing, it was that double-crossing sithhead that was responsible.

True to Til's word, it didn't take them long to get planetside and she was waiting at the ramp as she felt the ship settle onto the landing gear. The gunbelt she'd co-opted from one of the two guards hung a bit loose on her hips, but the tightest notch managed to keep it more or less in place and the shirt had enough extra fabric to pad out the rest.

She waited until she heard Til rising out of the pilot's seat to hit the hatch release and inhaled sharply as the ramp began to lower, catching the familiar dusty, dry scents of Tatooine as she did.

It smelled like death that couldn't rot, and she hated it.

She'd get used to it though, and there was no sense putting it off. One foot in front of the other, she descended the ramp until her borrowed too-big boots crunched into sand.

<Note to self: Now that you're not on the run, get a new wardrobe.>

"Come on, the Ronto should be parked about half a klick from here."

She didn't bother looking at Til as she moved, heading out of their berth and into the city proper. She could hear him easily enough, and knew he was following.

"You gonna keep that rust-bucket once we find mine?"

Til Melarr​

 

[Til Melarr]

Til caught up with her at the bottom of the ramp, wincing as his feet touched the dry, hot ground. He paused just long enough to pull out a pair of old leather boots from his duffel bag, slipping his feet inside without fully tying the laces. Sand was already sneaking into the heels, causing him to grit his teeth.

"Keep that heap?" Til asked, spitting out a bit of dust from his mouth as he walked alongside her. "Darling, the whole reason we dumped the prison ship back on Rugosa was to stop flying around in a giant target. The scrapper ship we bought to get here is clean, but it's still a slow piece of junk. Once we get your Ronto back, we'll use that to head to Rishi."

As they left the landing bays, the heavy night air hit him hard, bringing with it the unpleasant smell of cooked bantha dung and the odor of unwashed people passing by. Shadows seemed to lurk at every doorway, with eyes watching them from the street corners.

Til kept his eyes alert, scanning the flat rooftops for local thugs who might be looking for an easy target. His hand hovered just above the stolen guard pistol at his side. He hated this place. The dust was already settling into the gold tattoos on his face, making his skin feel tight and itchy.​

 

[Nadi]

It didn't take them long to reach the berth.

The Empty.

Karking.

Berth.

<I am going to kriffing KILL Dereem. Karking MOTHERKRIFFER!!!>

Outwardly, Til may have been able to hear Nadi's teeth grind, but that and the sudden extreme tension in her bearing were the only external signs of her rage. Her skin would have flushed silver with the emotion, but it was already permanently there so it only got a shade darker.

"We're leaving. Need to get to The Wheel."

She knew he had a residence there, and he was a smug enough motherkriffer to think his little double-cross was foolproof and that she'd never have a chance of coming after him for it. Which means he wouldn't have vacated like any sensible traitor.

"Motherkriffer took my ship."

The good news was that they weren't going to be spending much time on Tatooine, which helped console her a little as she stalked back to the ship. A pair of Nikto tried to block her on the way there, and she didn't wait for them to speak before she shoved them hard enough to crack bone without breaking stride.

It felt a little too good.

At least, that's what her rational brain would have been telling her if it was in charge right now.

Til Melarr​

 

[Til Melarr]

Til slapped his forehead, groaning at the empty landing berth. All that flying, all that choking dust, and a shoe full of sand, just to find out her associate had stolen the ship. He could see Nadi was ready to explode, which was fair enough, but he was just as frustrated about the rocks grinding into his left heel as he was about the betrayal.

"Great. Fantastic," Til muttered. He turned on his heel, trailing her back down the dusty street. As they walked, he spotted a sun-faded plastic bobblehead sitting on a scrap crate. He snatched it up and flicked its helmet with his thumb, making the cheap speaker crackle out a tinny line about the dark side's power.

He chuckled and shoved it into his pocket. He was still messing with the toy when Nadi moved past him. He didn't even see the two Nikto standing in the alley until she slammed right through them, sending both thugs crashing hard to the ground.

"Whoa—" Til said as the two thugs scrambled back to their feet and started spraying wild blaster fire down the street. Bolts shattered the wall right above Til's head. He didn't stick around to fight it out. He took off in a full run past Nadi, sprinting straight toward the scrapper ship waiting in the distance.
​

 

[Nadi]

One of their bolts hit her in the back, and she stopped only long enough to draw her own weapon, half-turn back to face them, and put two bolts into each man. She barely even registered the three additional burns in her back and leg as she turned to continue stalking toward the ship.

<I do not have the kriffing PATIENCE for this.>

The anger blazed undisputed through her mind, wiping out any attempted thoughts of rationality before they really had a chance to form. Was it a good idea to assault a pair of Nikto strangers in a city controlled by galactic gangsters known to employ hordes of them? Might it be possible that the violence would attract attention she didn't want and couldn't afford? Should she have been, perhaps, a bit less violently direct in her approach to those who had nothing to do with the source of her anger?

Maybe. Probably.

But none of those thoughts had the chance to gain footing in the torrential flood of unreasoning rage that scoured her mind.

She'd picked up a few more blaster burns by the time she reached the ship, several dozen seconds after Til had. The engines were already warming up and she stormed up the ramp and hit the control to close it, the force leaving a significant crack in the housing.

Only then, when she was (reasonably) alone and (relatively) safe did the pent up inferno find an exit.

She screamed. Long and loud and at a volume that hurt her own ears.

Once it was out, she felt the tension begin to ease and slumped against the bulkhead, the fire draining from her mind only to be replaced with fear.

<Where the kriff did that come from?>

That wasn't normal. She'd been completely out of control, and it scared the kriff out of her. She'd been dealing with paranoia for years, but this was something else.

She sank slowly to the deck as the ship rose out of the berth, desperately searching for any kind of answer that didn't come right back to "They're controlling you again..."

Til Melarr​

 

[Til Melarr]

Til sat in the pilot's seat, slapping the pre-flight toggles into place as the scrapper ship lifted up from the sand. The muffled, furious scream echoing from the hold behind him made him freeze for a split second, his hand hovering over the main throttle. He winced, pulling his shoulders up slightly before shaking his head and pushing the levers forward to clear the spaceport's upper boundary.

Once they hit open sky, he locked the heading toward orbital transit and unclipped his harness. He walked back to the main ramp, finding Nadi slumping against the cold metal bulkhead with fresh, smoking blaster burns scattered across her clothes. "Nice shooting back there," Til said, leaning his hip against the wall and gesturing toward the shattered ramp control panel she'd slammed.

"Though the door mechanism didn't do anything to you." He reached into his pocket, pulled out the plastic Sith bobblehead, and set it down on the deck next to her knee. The cheap speaker gave off a faint, static chirp as it settled against the metal floor. "We're clear of Mos Espa," Til said, tapping his boot against the deck. "I'll set the course for The Wheel once we clear Tatooine's gravity well."
​

 

[Nadi]

"Though the door mechanism didn't do anything to you."

"Neither did those men."

<Not until after I hit them, at least.>

Sure, they might have been about to do something nefarious, but they also might have just been.... okay, so it was probably nefarious. They were in hutt space and they'd physically blocked her path, and there were very few non-nefarious things you could infer from that.

Still.

<I lost control, and I need to figure out why.>

Glancing down to the deck by her knee, she reached out a hand and tapped the head of the little toy, absently watching it wobble back and forth. It was kinda nice. A little distraction from her racing thoughts.

Her breathing grew slower and more even until she was more or less back to normal, but she didn't move from where she sat. For the moment, she was content to remain as she was and not worry about next steps or uncontrollable emotional outbursts.

Til Melarr​

 

[Til Melarr]

Til gave Nadi a nod and decided to leave her alone, knowing that pushing her while she was in this mood would only make things worse. He wasn't interested in getting his head bitten off over a little casual conversation, so he headed back down the corridor and settled comfortably into the pilot's chair as the ship finally cleared the planet's gravity well.

Once they were clear, Til reached for the hyperdrive levers and pulled them back. Through the cockpit glass, the stars stretched into a bright blue tunnel as the long journey to the Wheel officially began. With nothing but time ahead of him, Til pulled out his pocket knife and flipped the blade open, looking for something to occupy his mind.

He started a little game, using the tip to tap against two knobs on the dashboard. The left meant the Ronto would actually be waiting for them. The right meant this whole trip was just another wild goose chase. Left, right. Left, right. The blade bounced between the two knobs with tiny metallic clicks as his thoughts wandered.

The more he considered it, the more he figured he should probably be charging Nadi extra for all the unnecessary running around. He tapped the right knob three times in a row before letting out a short sigh and sinking back into the worn leather seat.
​

 

[Nadi]

She wasn't sure how long she sat there, unfocused eyes regarding the little toy while her thoughts wandered.

Given that she still seemed to be in control of herself it wasn't likely They had caused the outburst, despite her initial paranoid instinct. If her inhibitor implant had been reactivated she was entirely certain Til would be dead and she would not be heading to The Wheel. Since neither of those was the case, she was still in control of herself.

<More or less.>

Yet there was still a sinking pit of fear in her stomach at the thought of losing control so completely. If it happened again and there wasn't a conveniently villainous interloper to draw her ire, she could seriously hurt or even kill someone she cared about and not even consider regretting it until far too late.

She glanced in the direction of the cockpit.

<Not that Til qualifies.>

Though he was being very helpful and accommodating, and putting up with her long past the point most had given up. It was... almost endearing.

She shook her head clear and let out a heavy sigh, then pushed herself to her feet to go find some food. She always got especially hungry after getting shot.

Til Melarr​

 

[Til Melarr]

Til heard the sound of soft footsteps coming up the passageway behind him just as he tossed his pocket knife into the air and snapped it shut. He didn't turn around right away, keeping his eyes fixed on the blue light of hyperspace swirling past the glass.

He could hear Nadi rummaging through the storage lockers in the galley right behind the cockpit, looking for whatever pre-packaged rations hadn't expired three galactic cycles ago. "Find anything that doesn't taste like dry cardboard, save me a pack," Til said, resting his elbows on the armrests and finally swivelled his chair around.

"My stomach's been making noises since we left the atmosphere." He watched her grab a ration bar, taking in the fresh, dark singe marks covering her vest. The smell of burnt fabric and copper was still on her, but at least she looked like she wasn't about to blow a gasket anymore.
​

 

[Nadi]

"Then perhaps you should listen more."

Her attention never diverted from the collection of ration packs they still had in the small galley, and she skimmed through until she found several packages of dried, tightly wrapped meat. Tossing one to Til (without looking), she settled onto a bench and leaned against the wall while she ripped open one of the couple she kept.

"Probably won't taste like cardboard, but you may learn what particularly appetizing boot leather tastes like."

But it wouldn't kill him, and even had a better than even chance of helping stave off starvation and death.

She took a bite. Or tried to... She ended up having to tear a piece off rather than bite cleanly through it.

<Ok, not the worst thing I've ever eaten.>

That would probably be the ration packs they'd had on the trip out of Golrath.

Til Melarr​

 

[Til Melarr]

Til caught the pack out of the air with one hand, almost dropping it before getting a proper grip on the plastic wrapper. He turned it over and squinted at the faded print on the front. Whatever it was, it looked like dried bantha meat that had been sitting in a storage crate since the Core Wars.

"Boot leather builds character," Til muttered, tearing the seal open with his teeth before spitting the piece of plastic onto the console. He bit off a chunk and immediately had to work his jaw to break it down. It tasted mostly like salt and dust, but it was still better than an empty stomach.

Til chewed in silence while watching the hyperspace lanes shift outside the cockpit glass, barely noticing when the navigation computer began its final approach sequence. A chime sounded twice from the dashboard, signaling that they were about to drop back into realspace.

Til swallowed the last of the meat and reached forward, pulling the hyperdrive levers back with a heavy click. The swirling blue tunnel faded into white streaks before disappearing completely, leaving a blanket of black space ahead as the Wheel came into view.​