Private Know when to fold 'em

[Raphael Gallustrade]

On Osadia, a single swoop bike sped through woodlands, a man in his mid twenties seated on it, rear of his jacket flapping in the backdraft of the speed from the bike. Dust kicked up from behind it as he sped across the ground, heading for a small house sheltered in an almost orchard of trees. The place had been intentionally chosen by Raphael because the trees blocked sightlines from above and was largely ignored by the relatively few patrols.



In fact he'd actually chosen Osadia on purpose. When the Sith had taken Coruscant, and had set up the new government there, Raphael hadn't trusted it. He'd still been a few planets away when he saw dramatics and newsreels of the purge. Ever since that day he'd broken his lightsaber down, and had tossed his force imbued blade into the sea, hoping to be rid of the implications. Now he only had a blaster pistol and his lightsaber in several pieces, his bike, this hut and a bunch of parts.



When he finally came to a stop, the swoop bike roared once more, before he finally put it in park, got off and lifted the crate that was on the back onto his shoulder. No patrols on swoops of their own… no aircraft… He let out a deep sigh. Osadia was both a good and bad place to lay low. It was good in the sense that very few people lived there, but bad in the sense that very few people lived there. It was good to stay low, fine for that, but what it lacked were parts. He'd barely managed to salvage the skeleton of his original ship, but he couldn't even really steal parts that he'd need to fix the damn hyperdrive…


Finally entering the shack he looked around and pulled a level turning on the lights. An annoyed grumble resounded from far above him in a hammock and a young wookie in robes poked his head out form the hammock. Clearly irritated at having been woken up it let out a barking growl at him.


"Hey, don't look at me. I'm not the one that decided to sleep in until noon. I'm also the only one getting the parts. AND the only one making food." The wookie let out another irritated grunt and Raphael sighed, shaking his head as he grabbed a few parts from the crate and walked back outside, and pulled the tarp back to reveal a ship. "Seriously, you'd think that the wookie had walked right out one of those trees. He's lazier than I am and… by the Force that is amazing…" And he set to work on the ship. The sooner he could get it finished, the sooner they could get out of Sith space. The two were in dangerous territory and had to get the hell out as soon as they could…


"And that would be easier…" Raphael muttered, grunting as he struggled with getting a part into place, "if I wasn't the only one working on the bloody ship...!"

 

[Arris Windrun]

Raphael Gallustrade
​

A large warship lazed across the black, moving into low orbit above the blue jewel - Osadia. It had been patrolling the system for some hours, now, under the command of Arris Windrun. Such a task was beneath her, really. A Sith Lord and Triumvir of the Covenant. But the last several months spent surrounded by ex-Alliance officers, since incorporated into the new Sith Covenant military, had been an enlightening experience for her. So, she decided some more 'field experience' would help her better understand the necessities of command beyond 'go here' and 'attack that.'

Besides, Mercy wanted the cyborg out of her hair while planning the final stages of Abregado-rae. If only because Arris was lousy and unhelpful at the meetings. Actually uncharacteristic of Arris, oddly enough.

She stood on the command deck, pacing impatiently from her position above the enlisted officers and bridge crew. Her attention was pretty lax until she caught wind of a rather interesting conversation between two ensigns.

"There it is again."

"What?"

"Something on the FST, planet side."

The more skeptical ensign pulled up the data feed. "Probably a false positive. There's nothing down there."

"I've checked!"

"Check again."

"I've triple-checked."

Arris stopped and loomed over the two, her voice breaking their back-n-forth. "Explain." She asked, rather calmly despite how utterly intimidating she was by reputation and appearance.

The ensigns paled. Simply talking with a Sith Lord had a way of adding pressure to the workplace. It didn't help that this particular Sith Lord had a reputation for being trigger-happy. The rumors of Vestra Tane 's death were grim, as was the cyborg's involvement during the Imperial Purge, and at the Sith Academy they called Arris 'Captain Beanbag' behind closed doors, after what happened to Kirie and some other acolytes... if you believed that sort of gossip.

One swallowed her throat. "A-An object. Something with complex electronics... A ship, maybe."

The cyborg remained silent for a few seconds. Then... "Send the coordinates to my shuttle. I'll go check it out."

Without even waiting for their confirmation, she turned and departed the command deck and made her way towards the hangar.

The skeptic groaned. "Great. Now we're gonna get executed."

An imperial shuttle broke through the clouds, descending into a clearing not far from the house hidden in the trees. The ramp fell with a hiss, and out stepped Arris. The cyborg scanned the treeline as she walked through it. Being a technopath had its advantages. For one, she could sense technology as if it spoke to her, because in a way, it did. And it was even easier on a world like Osadia, where so little technology existed. Were she on Nar Shaddaa, it would be difficult to pick out a blaster from a blowtorch, but in the wilderness? She could pick out the tiniest sensor hidden in the thicket.

 

[Raphael Gallustrade]

Rifle (please lemme know if this one won't work since it's old sub style) Lizzity-lightsaber
Raphael worked slowly, methodically and, in its own way, semi-religiously. This was one of the places that made the most sense to him was the whir of the tools, the twisting of parts the replacing… He sighed. He still remembered when he'd warped in shortly after what had happened. The faces of several Jedi that had been arrested during the purge of the New Jedi order still flashed through his mind, as he recalled the memory. He sighed and shook his head as he kept working.


"Karabast… karking capacitors shot again…" His tried to solder something together, only to jump back, when a spark shot out causing him to shake his hand back and forth, before putting his finger into his mouth to cool it. "Drek… Least it's almost done… Maybe, once we can get the hell out of sith space we can finally relax…" He sighed and leaned forward over the old freighter that he and Wy'ruuk, the wookie initiate he'd managed to save, had pulled from out of the deep forest. An old wreck, but something that was still salvageable. He'd wished the planet had a larger footprint…or that his old ship had still been active. The planet was so vegetative that he had been far more careful than he otherwise would've been about collecting parts and fixing the ship.


But… all good places, and things, had to eventually come to an end. As he was mid work, he stopped. The feeling of a sith had gotten…concerningly close... That's when he finally looked up, and started hearing the loud beep of his sensors. Kark. Big ship. Worse still, landed ship. Possibly? He sighed, and reached over grabbing his rifle, the only thing he'd kept beside his lightsaber. Small and compact, long ranged and with plenty of stopping power, it was one of the reasons he'd survived in the beginning.


He walked slowly, creeping towards the edge of the forest, but not close enough to reliably reveal his own position, and flipped up the scope and looked through it. A single… person. Kark his life, his choices and everything in it. He slowly crawled away from the tree he'd been hiding nearby, and stood, once he was certain enough that he could at least reliably get away from her. A comms device came into his hand.


"Wy'ruuk." A wookie cry burst onto comms a second later, something about five more minutes. "No, you get your fuzzy butt out of that bloody hammock, now. We need to go. Get in the ship." Another cry. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a karking sith. You need to get in the ship and get it ready for takeoff." A war cry, this time. "No, you are NOT getting involved you are getting yourself on the freighter. It's repaired enough to be able to at least let us fly and get the hell off of this planet. We might have to do a few jumps." One more, more guilty bark. "Thank you!" He lowered the comms. "…you've gotta be kidding me. Nearly a year and never found and today, it's just a single sith. Least it isn't Adeline. Force, we're in trouble."

Arris Windrun

 

[Arris Windrun]

Raphael Gallustrade
​

Arris continued onward, drawn by the ship's energy, which the technopath sensed in the Force. She came to a point where the building itself was now visible, just past the final ridge of trees ahead.

But then she stopped, just as the rifle's scope sighted her. It may've been hard to tell how related the two events were. There were any number of reasons the Sith may've stopped moving, and her gaze remained ahead on the house in the orchard...

...Until the comms device lit up. Then, her attention snapped to the Jedi's direction. As soon as he lowered the device, another voice crackled through it.

"Now who are you?"

If he still had her in his sights, then he might've noted that her mouth never moved. Arris could speak subvocally through comlinks and other communication devices.

She turned in his direction next, marching towards him at an unhurried pace. Only two weapons were visible on her person. A pair of heavy handguns, one in each holster, jangling at her hips.