Mama I'm Coming Home

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Alna Merrill"]

The Gypsymoth -- repainted and bearing the telesponder Kalleia -- tore through hyperspace at a brisk point-two past lightspeed. After so long without the Force, this trek burned in Jorus' bones, as vital and new as the rest of what had transpired in Wild Space. He still found himself glancing down at young hands, glancing over at his equally rejuvenated wife. By choice, she looked far different than she had for their years together, but it was still tangibly her.

He'd gone to the deep Outback looking for a last-ditch solution to his Force severing. What he'd found had been something else entirely, and even in the days of flight since then, he hadn't fully caught up with reality.

Realspace filled his vision, blue-white turning to pinpricks on black, and he released the controls. Tension drained from his shoulders and neck.

"Been too long since I did that." Before them was a stormy, habitable-zone planet he didn't recognize. He squinted -- Force, it was good to have real eyes again -- but nothing familiar appeared. "Where, uh, are we?"

 

[Alndys]

[member="Jorus Merrill"] without the Force had been like a bird without a sky to fly in. Sure, he could learn to content himself with walking, hopping, going through the motions and maneuvers of the sort of flight that had once been as natural to him as breathing. But it'd taken about half a second for Alna to decide that in Hyperspace, of his own volition and power, was where her husband belonged. Whatever remaining doubts she'd had about their procedure were banished swiftly.

All that Hyperspace had given them both plenty of time to get accustomed to each other and themselves, too, which'd been nice. She might not be able to swing a wrench like she used to, but Alna had rather enjoyed the ease with which she'd climbed up and squeezed into some of the less accessible corners of the Gypsymoth. She'd also been surprised at the amount of junk her daughter had stashed back there over the years, including a bracelet Alna hadn't seen in years, and one of her old reference manuals. At least Mara had good taste.

The navcomputer caught up with their inflated speed fairly quickly, thankfully. "...way out in the middle of nowhere." Alna declared vaguely, sounding a little impressed. "WAY out. Jor, you almost took us out of the gorram Galaxy in this old boat!" A funny thought, really, but less so given how the Gypsymoth was superlative for just about any task BESIDES lengthy void exploration.

Her lips a thin line, the strawberry-haired engineer glanced up from her screen and at the stormy planet below. In the far distance hung a single, lonely star and a rocky planetoid that her map told her was only small in distance - it was comparatively huge for a non-gas planet. "We're out by Knojur." Alna reported, doing some spacetime speed calculations to satisfy her curiosity. Jorus' speed, as ever, mostly calculated out to 'disgusting.'

"Knojur itself has some... inhabitants, but we should maybe avoid it." She mused. "That little gray ball, though? Reported uninhabited, but it looks like there's a settlement on the far side. Civilized enough for a starport and a town-sized population."

The ginger knew he'd draw the same conclusion she had fairly quickly. A merchant meetup, a smuggler's den, maybe a pirate base - they'd found an unregistered, hidden Shadowport at the edge of the Galaxy. Why was it here? They wouldn't know until they investigated. And they HAD to investigate.

"We're still outside their detection, I figure. We going in cloaked?"

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Alna Merrill"]

In answer, Jorus tapped the cloak, and the Gypsymoth's hibridium bubble generators stuttered to life. Hibridium cloaks were double-blind, hence the periscope. A passive sensor/camera pod projected out through the bubble, relaying its information to a repurposed panel to his left.

"Knojur's not a system I know. I've heard it's a place to avoid. There's something gravitically weird about that world -- fething huge, only one gee on the surface. Maybe a density thing, maybe more. Either way...yeah, that smaller planetoid looks more welcoming. The periscope DER's picking up a few transmissions, nothing official, nothing panicked, nothing weird. Think you're right."

His stomach growled. Once upon a time, he'd subsisted on tomo-spiced Karkan ribenes right out of the package, but they didn't seem to agree with his new self. They didn't even taste quite the same. Ideally, he'd find a new favorite ration pack. In the meantime, he was craving some real food, even shadowport street meat.

The Gypsymoth looped around the smaller rock and turned to keep its dorsal periscope aimed at the place where the settlement ought to be. "And there we go," he said, ignoring the blank blackness of the hibridium bubble outside the cockpit. "You nailed it. I'm not reading much of an atmosphere or a magnetic field, but it looks like they've dug a small port and a few settlements into lava tubes for radiation shielding. Smart move. What you think: hail for docking rights, or land nearby and space-suit in?"

 

[Alndys]

[member="Jorus Merrill"] presented her with an interesting choice, but it only took Alna a moment to decide. "I'll hail them." She decided, fingers flying across the console. "We'll go with the ol' broken wing strategy, make sure they can't say no. Take the cloak down?" Not the most glorious of plans, but undeniably effective. Alna ran her hands under the console to collect some dust and miscellaneous fluid, and carefully applied some to her cheek, brow and neck, making it look more like she'd just come from working in an engine room.

Then she keyed in the directional comm. "Unidentified starport, this is the Kalleia, starport, do you read?" Alna pleased into the microphone, breathless.

The comms crackled a moment. "Port Authority to Kalleia, permission to feth off and die granted." A woman replied in a saccharine tone, sarcastic as all hell.

"Please, Port Authority, our life support was taken out by a radiation spike." Alna lied, sounding like she was near to bursting into tears as she very calmly adjusted the ship's oxygen levels. The air quickly began to taste slightly stale. "There's no habitable surface to land on in this system, we won't last much longer..." As the Port Authority had no doubt seen then heading directly for them by now, the implication was of course that the Kalleia was coming down as an invited and grateful guest or a ghost ship at terminal velocity, aimed right at them.

Alndys D'lessio was a successful saleswoman, but nobody had dared accuse her of being subtle. Or especially honest. She HAD been a pirate once, after all.

"P-port Authority?"

"Sending you credentials now, Kalleia." The woman on the other end replied a few moments later. "Proceed to hangar nineteen." She didn't sound happy about this, and mumbled something about 'and you'd better buy crap' and 'stupid kids' before the transmission cut out. Presumably somebody with authority over her had a softer heart.

Alndys rubbed her hands together proudly. "Take us down, stupid kid." She ordered cheerfully, standing from the co-pilot chair. "I'm gonna go stick the DS9 filters on the hyperdrive for a couple minutes, in case they get real curious and decide to take a peek."

They'd be ruined, sure. Ionization filters were very delicate, and having yours go was a surefire way to throw the life support for a loop, make the air stink like hell... But your life support would be fine for months after that, which just about any idiot with a little spacer experience would know. Fortunately, they were also dirt cheap and available basically anywhere.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Alna Merrill"]

"Nicely done. Fry them DS-nines. Maybe we'll get lucky and find some B5's; the DS-nines are apparently just a knockoff anyway, or so Miktik keeps telling me. Always worked fine as far as I'm concerned, o'course..."

The Gypsymoth bore down on Hangar Nineteen, which turned out to be two blinking pylons, a horizontal blast door set in the rock, and a subterranean lava tube. The hangar floor had been leveled, for fairly broad definitions of the word, using plasma torches. The '929 squealed in protest as its landing gear adjusted to the uneven slope.

"They're closing the blast door," he called back, "but they're not pressurizing the place. I'm not even sure it can pressurize. Air's at a premium here. Looks like they've got a cofferdam coming out to link up with our port hatch." That was the one he'd rebuilt after a Dark Side egomaniac got percussive. Jorus had spaced him and hyperjumped away. Good times.

He finished postflight powerdown and opened a maintenance hatch just aft of the cockpit. One of the transverse sensor lines unscrewed easily enough, and a harmless vapor puffed out. In short order, most of the ship smelled of stale air. He tightened the clasp again, resealed the hatch, and headed aft to where Alna was cooking the DS9 filters. She'd crouched over the hyperdrive manifold, flight suit snug, and for a long moment he was reminded that distraction could be a serious problem now that he was young again.

The Gypsymoth's deck trembled. "That's the cofferdam sealing," he said, forcing his attention back to other aspects of the here and now. "I'll go say hi."

He fully expected some kind of customs shakedown, tender hearts or not. Worse could happen, too, in obscure ports, so he slipped a stun gun into his belt, at the small of his back. Better than nothing, not enough to incite something through ye olde security dilemma.

 

[Alndys]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

Jorus was met by a Weequay woman in rudimentary-looking military fatigues, the sort of nondescript gear that simply suggested a bit of experience. "Hold up, slim." She barked, raising a hand as Jorus stepped into the cofferdam. From her voice, this was clearly Port Authority. "Just gonna make sure you ain't lying, or carrying surprises... can't be too sure out here. Routine inspection." Port Authority stood on the bridge with Jorus as her two unarmed associates squeezed past. She clearly intended for Jorus to stick put, though. "You watch much Huttball, skinny?" Port Authority asked flatly and without enthusiasm, tucking a punch of some dark, sweet-smelling herb under her lip.

Alna spent as much time as she needed to 'cook' the ionization filters, exposing them to the mildly radioactive hyperdriver until the sensitive material turned an ugly, vibrant shade of purple to indicate that it'd been compromised. She had just enough time to slot them back into the air distro loop before a grouchy-looking Weequay and a Dug clambored into the engine room and pushed past her, messing with things. HER things. "Hey!"

The Weequay went right for the DS9's, pulled one out, then groaned loudly and dramatically. "THIS is the problem?" He complained loudly, practically thrusting the colored filter in Alna's face. "Air started to smell and you panicked - This's completely HARMLESS!" He 'informed' her sternly. "Who 'as a ship like this and loses cool over a DS9?! Didn't nobody teach you NOTHING?"

The Dug was too busy howling with laughter and loped out on her knuckles, crowing to Port Authority about the embarrassing mistake of a rookie Spacer. Alna endured an 'educational' lecture from the Weequay in the engine room, who finished by heavily suggesting that her welcome was commensurate to how much credit she spent at the Bazaar, and suggested that she upgrade her ruined filters with B5's, or just overhaul the system with an outdated but serviceable SG Model.

It honestly wasn't bad advice, Alna knew. It improved her opinion of the man, even though he only quit talking when she was practically pushing him out the door in politese. Port Authority declared them safe dockers and issued a 24 hour resupply pass for a surprisingly small fee, before the trio ambled back down the cofferdam, chatting among themselves in Huttese.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Alna Merrill"]

...and leaving Jorus in the airlock, minus his overpowered stun gun and a lot of preconceptions. Even in places that didn't know his face or name, he'd always been the kind of muscled, scarred, weathered spacer you just didn't cross on a whim. A small, shameful, annoyed part of him wanted to tell those people who he was, show them what he could do-

He put it to bed. Good for the soul, a little humility.

Rubbing tension from his neck, he got a small blade-resistant pack out of the storage compartments. Basic bug-out stuff, trade goods, enough wupiupi to make a critical purchase but not enough to hurt if he lost it. He slung it overhis shoulder; it felt heavier than it once had. A good bit heavier, really.

"Note to self," he said, half grumbling and half chuckling at himself ruefully. "Invest in protein. You good to go? Figure if they've got some SGs, we could look into that. Been a while since I used'em, but I always got good results outta the original model, before they tried branching out with the model ones and type A's. Not that they're bad filters, just...well, serviceable is the word, far as I'm concerned. Even the modernized type U -- some folks loved it, some hated it, I just found it good enough. You know who had the strongest feelings on the SG line? Ayden fething Cater, can you believe it?"

He cycled the airlock and headed through. Shadowport number 423662 beckoned...but he had to remember that a port wasn't the same experience for a young, thin man as for an experienced spacer with some muscle to him. Exchanges, interjections, glances, chance encounters: everything had that much more of a chance of going wrong. He slipped a lower-profile, lower-yield blaster into his belt.

 

[Alndys]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

"Yeah, well, you know how I feel about Corellian engineering." Alna piped up, having equipped herself in a similar fashion. She didn't carry near as many weapons as her husband - namely a tired old blaster rifle that was more deterrent than effective armament. But markedly more dangerous in Alna's hands was the weathered and well-stocked tool belt hanging off her hips, jangling quietly with each step. Most of the tools in there - the plasma cutter, igniter, gravometric sensors - were more designed to work in zero G. But others, like her hydrospanner, were just as effective planet-side. And the classics, like her flatbar and chalk, were terribly effective in nearly any situation. "I never met Cater in person, but his preference is well known. I'll make my own judgements on SG models when I see 'em."

Alna adjusted the strap of her bag again, sighed, and stepped into the lonely shadowport. Virtually carved out of the volcanic stone, Alna noted that the great deal of granite - known for being quietly radioactive - Would likely shield the place from most cursory scans. Without the keyed-up sensors on the Gypsymoth, they might not have even noticed the port existed. Despite that, the port was fairly busy, which suggested that it was less a capitalist endeavor and more a hideaway for a local pirate fleet that had grown over the years. Now THAT was interesting. Most of the species milling around then were Weequay or Duros. Alna couldn't help but wonder at the story behind that - she'd seen maybe a half-dozen humans so far.

A Weequay clipped her shoulder and grumbled a curse. Typical shadowport nonsense, though Alna was surprised that it nearly knocked her off-balance. The street tough growled a warning and rather than snarl back like she might have before, Alna gave him a dour look and verified that nothing had been lifted. They went their separate ways.

"Think I might need to get a bigger rifle." Alna mumbled to Jorus, turning into a loud, bustling merchant quarter. "Deterrence was a lot easier when I was a foot taller..."

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Alna Merrill"]

"Tell me about it. Know what we need? A big fething droid." A sidestep, then another one, put Jorus between a pair of kiosks as half a dozen Klatoonians wandered through the space he'd just occupied. Wherever Weequay could be found, there you'd find Nikto and Klatoonians, inseparable as Rodians and Gran. Most humans couldn't even tell Weequay, Nikto, and Klatoonians apart. Anywhere Coreward of the Mara, they were 'those brown guys who work for the Hutts.' One more little reason why he hated visiting the Core.

He stepped out from between the kiosks and found himself in a shopkeeper's sights. "Purebred bedjie spores, kid," this particular Weequay growled. "Best ship rations you'll get. Grow'em off anything, off any world. Cram'em full of local fodder and out comes fresh food that'll cure anything you've got."

Bedjie spores were refugee fare, known for their ability to turn cesspools into cleanish water, a thin layer of mineral sludge, and unutterably bland foodstuff. "Got a sample?" Jorus said.

The Weequay, affably enough, pulled up a white plastoid bucket from beside his chair. He sloshed around in it and removed a plump green-and-tan bedjie. A quick rinse from a canteen, and he tossed the bedjie to Jorus, who snagged it out of the air by its stubby tendrils. Throwing caution to the winds, Jorus popped it into his mouth and chewed. Yup. Definitely a bedjie. And yeah, it actually did taste pretty decent. "Needs salt," he said with his mouth full.

The Weequay blinked and laughed. "Salt's extra."

"How much?"

"Three for a pack of spores, one for a salt can."

Not a bad price, not a bad taste. Jorus shrugged and forked over seven wupiupi. "Two packs and one salt." Some ports got offended if you didn't haggle; some got offended if you did. Apparently he'd guessed right. The Weequay gave him a brisk nod and his rations. Two packs of bedjie spores didn't go a long way toward getting the lay of the land, of course, but it didn't hurt to buy local and affably. You never knew who might turn out to be whose cousin.

"Hey," Jorus said, as in an afterthought. "You know anyone who's got some life support filters? DS9's, B5's, SG's, anything like that?"

"Four stalls down and turn right. Ask for Brek."

 

[Alndys]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

There were easier ways to keep yourself fed on a ship, honestly. Why Jorus had developed such a fixation on bedjies - tomo-spiced or otherwise - was beyond her. She imagined that he picked up the habit playing white knight on so many backwaters where bedjies were equal parts ration and water purification. Maybe eating them out here helped him feel connected to all those old causes and friends.

Put that way, it was even a little sweet. But not sweet enough to keep her attention. Jorus was chewing thoughtfully on a pseudo-shroom, Alna had already wandered a couple stalls down, lured by a box full of rusty old tools and a couple huge tanks of fluid. Coolants, mostly. They created quite a spectacle.

Alna fished through the box and came up with what looked like a soldering iron, but with a nearly foot-long needle on the point. She turned it over in her hands, grinning broadly. It wasn't QUITE a treasure, but close. Brushing dust away, Alna could just faintly make out the words 'test model' in official font.

"You know what that is, kid?" A voice asked from above. Alna glanced up at a Dug hanging from the roof of the pavilion set up over the tables, a cigar as thick around as her wrist dangling between his toes.

"This is an old Czerka etching tool." She replied smugly, carefully setting the tired old model down. "It has to be ancient, though. They haven't produced anything with a circuit board in centuries." The ginger grinned up at the shop keeper, a hand on her hip. "It's a nice novelty, anyway. Be nice for a collection."

The Dug sighed, sounding long-suffering. "And you don't look the sort to wanna start that collection, yeah?" He guessed, smoke billowing from his snout.

"Don't have room for a collection." Alna pointed out. "But an old piece like this deserves better than the bargain bin. If you polished it up, it could be worth something..."

The Dug gave a barking laugh and swung down from his makeshift monkeybars, loping across his stall to retrieve a canteen and take a heavy swig. He and Alna continued to go back and forth, jovial as they explained the merits and flaws of various bargain bin items.


Meanwhile, back in the spaceport, a sleek and nearly silent ship seemingly made of knives had just... appeared. The cofferdam was extending, Port Authority was in a tizzy, but she and her escorts were mostly curious as to what manner of ship had managed to land without any of them noticing it. The cofferdam connected, and the Daisya Infiltrator opened up to reveal a skinny, looming Givin in simple black clothing. His face practically a white mask, the Givin considered the two Weequay and the Dug before him, before posting a terse greeting.

"x ={q + [q2 + (r-p2)3]1/2}1/3 + {q - [q2 + (r-p2)3]1/2}1/3 + p"

Port Authority frowned and waved her hand dismissively. "Whatever, just need to make sure you ain't got no weapons, skinny." She explained impatiently, stepping forward to continue the inspection. While strange, the Givin wasn't carrying a rifle or anything.

The Givin, nonplussed that his warning had gone unfounded, produced a lightsaber and sliced the inflatable cofferdam to ribbons around him in a single smooth motion. While Weequays and Dugs had issues living in a near-vacuum, Givin did not. And as they rapidly asphyxiated, the skeletal Sith stepped over their bodies and into the rapidly-sealing spaceport, savoring the howl of alarms, distant screaming, and hiss of pressurized oxygen leaking out of ask those doors he was leaving carved open behind him.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Alna Merrill"]

A veritable anthology of enviro filters bulked out Jorus' pack: a threadbare B5, an SG-U in decent condition, and an SG-1 starting to show its age. Brek, Klatoonian brother-in-law of the Weequay bedjie-vendor, had proven a found of both filters and information. Klatooine, he lamented, was a Silver Jedi protectorate, its most sacret artifact mined and mass-produced for an uncaring galaxy, its Jedi watchman a Padawan of Jorus' apparent age -- no offense. None taken, Jorus assured him, and Brek went on. The Silver Jedi technocrat billionaires were giving the simplest possible agriculture and water reclamation tech to collaborators in exchange for the venerated substance wintrium. Never before had Klatooine's traditions been so violated, but the Silvers had come and taken a little piece at a time, then offered bribes and gifts and compliments, then simply ripped open a sacred site and buried a monstrous factory there.

Jorus did not find it wise, at this time, to self-identify as Jedi, or indeed to defend the Silvers. They had their better people -- he'd given Boolon Murr's holocron to Thurion and Coci Heavenshield -- but that whole end of space had gone to shavvit after the Levantine Sanctum fell under their consent-based feudal coloniality. Parts of Levantine space had been simply forgotten: the entire Kyrikal system, for starters. That hadn't been the deal. No, he felt no real desire to place the Klatooine Jedi presence in context-

Half a dozen mismatched decompression alarms blared as one. Different pitches, different patterns: atonal cacaphony that set him on edge. Wind kicked up -- wind, in the lovechild of a space station and a bunker, was never a good sign. Old spacer instinct made him glance first in the direction the wind was going, but a mess of people and kiosks and right-angle turns kept him from picking up anything but screams. His second glance, the only conscious one, was for Alna. Suddenly four kiosks away seemed like a parsec. He tried to shove his way through the crowd and failed immediately. With a grimace, he dug deep and called on his navigational instincts. His new body's nimbleness and low profile let him slip through the churning crowd, taking only the occasional elbow to the skull.

 

[Alndys]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

The tenacious Dug vendor - Who Alna was starting to build quite an opinion of - laughed as she took a brutal dig at Nabeese durasteel and spoke of her own preference. Namely, reclaimed and properly forged metals, which while not necessarily the strongest stuff, came for the low price of free. While he hadn't convinced her to buy that old etching tool, Alna hadn't been able to resist the urge to pick up a couple condensed magnesium cores for her alloy welder. If nothing nothing else, it kept the conversation flowing and genial. Even the friendliest vendor wanted to walk away from the time invested in a conversation with a profit.

Both she and the Dug merchant went on-point as alarms started going off all over the place. Alna opened her mouth to ask what exactly that racket meant, only to have her hair flowing towards the port answer the question. Suction on this scale usually didn't happen in a planet, but...

Alna bit back a curse. The atmosphere on this little rock had been destroyed by constant volcanic activity. There was barely a KPA to speak of. And the inhabitants were well aware of it: in the couple of seconds it took Jorus to seemingly materialize at her side, the crowd had been whipped into a panicked frenzy. Worse, more and more people were pouring into the bazaar, as though fleeing something. The leak, maybe?

Alna grabbed Jorus' forearm to avoid being jostled away by the frantic mob, her eyes slightly wild. "Plan!?" The ginger asked her husband, nearly shouting to be heard over the noise.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Alna Merrill"]

A Shistavenan bowled into him, crushed him against the side of a street-meat stand, and Jorus barely kept his grip on Alna's arm. Tough thing to do without digging in his fingers too hard, but he managed -- probably. The stampede continued to rush by them, going in at least three directions. All of them away from the hangars and airlocks. All of them away from the Gypsymoth.

"First thought? Find somewhere with a pressure seal. But nobody's got a reason to look for us after things settle or go all bad. Plus a long walk in soft vacuum, the local atmo, doesn't appeal to me much. I think we've gotta risk it if we can-"

Screams.

"Feth. I think I just heard a lightsabre that way. Feth. Okay, new plan: run wherever the rest of these people are running." He caught his balance on the kiosk, narrowly avoiding rat-oil spatter, and searched her face for agreement, disagreement, anything other than that hint of alarm. Alarm that he felt too. "What you think?"

 

[Alndys]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

Alna's face hardened, her jaw settling stubbornly. The crowd was stressful enough, but knowing that some yahoo with a saber was MOST LIKELY the cause of it? All too familiar. Combined with a fear of getting spaced and a keen awareness that mobs were stupid, easily frightened beasts? It was testament more to Alna's reduced profile than her agreement that she hadn't been rendered immobile, considering her heels were dug in.

Calm. Talk. Roughly shoved aside by a brawny Duros, Alna pulled her husband out of the stream of people and into a recessed doorway, raising her voice to be heard over the screaming and rushing wind. She could hear the no-doubt ramshackle life support groaning, trying and failing to keep up with the rate of suction - that, along with the motley collection of klaxxons blaring gave her the sneaking suspicion that the mob wasn't heading for a designated evacuation point or fallback zone, they were just going AWAY from the problem.

"Going with the mob'll get us killed!" Alna summarized, fishing around through her tools for... something. Anything. She was hunkered between Jorus and the wall, using his somewhat reduced frame as shelter so she could think.

Alndys spat a curse. Of course she'd taken her emergency o2 off her belt to save space. The fear instilled by Void Station had had over half a decade to dull. "We need to plug the leak!" Alna decided loudly, glancing past Jorus to quickly survey the bazaar.

She had an idea. A stupid, dangerous idea. Just like old times.

"You saw those old Nautolan fathom grenades by the front, right?" Alna asked loudly, her red hair whipping around then furiously. Not terribly effective outside of water - especially salt water, but she didn't need the explosive parts. She recalled vaguely that they had a tiny core of immensely concentrated hydrogen peroxide, a curio she'd picked up from Qae Shena back in the days of Vagrant Fleet. She wasn't a chemist, but there was at least one thing Alna could try... "I need to get to 'em! Can you cover me?!"

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Alna Merrill"]

Jorus drew and eyed his blaster, a generic model that sacrificed stopping power for precision. He'd generally gone the other way in his choice of guns, over the years, but it would do. Only problem -- all right, two interconnected problems -- was that they'd need to swim upstream, and in the direction of that lightsabre. But the crowd was thinning down at that end of the promenade, and he still hadn't caught much of a glimpse of the sabre apart from light reflected around corners.

"Sounds like a plan to me, long as we go fast. I'll get behind that barrel across the way." And pray the Force there was nothing flammable inside, but it was the only decent cover with any kind of sightline on the bend where those grenades hung in a kiosk. "You keep that rifle set to full auto. Anything nasty comes at you, you hose them down. Lotta Sith can't handle automatic fire, especially if there's a second shooter plinking away."

He sucked his teeth, saw his opening, and went for it. A handful of precisely timed dodges and stutter-steps took him across the promenade between running spacers. He skidded to a halt in cover behind the barrel and braced his pistol on the top, sighting down toward the bend. The barrel was full of reactor coolant, by the smell and the stains. Mildly toxic but not flammable. The Force was with him, apparently. Now it just had to be with Alna.

Alna, who had far more experience at running hijinks than he did -- but who had a whole new body, no armor, a fairly poor weapon, and a rapidly decreasing distance between herself and a potential Sith.

 

[Alndys]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

Alna wasn't TERRIBLY familiar with the (quite frankly inconsistent) ways the Force worked, but over the years she'd developed something of a knowledge on how her husband handled it - and to a lesser extent, her daughter. Even as Jorus mentally allowed that Alna was more experienced with hijinks and chicanery, she relied upon Jorus' ability to be set on a target and unerringly find his way to it. Causes, destinations, objectives, it didn't matter; those who knew Jorus Merrill knew him to be a torpedo in the shape of a man, which was why she'd pointed him towards what she needed.

And then she'd watched as he wove upstream against a panicked mob with insulting ease. Far too soon, out was her turn.

Alna broke from cover maybe five second behind Jorus, but the path he'd carved had already begun closing behind him. Without the raw strength and height of her previous form, Alna saw that gap widen work increasing dismay. After nearly getting run down by a pair of Weequay ava shoved aside by a frankly massive Gand, Alna stumbled into the kiosk with a treasure she'd picked on the way - a large, heavy bucket of some sloshing green syrup she'd lifted from the alcove they'd been hiding in to begin with.

Once in the kiosk, Alna started fishing around for the old aquatic grenades, tearing the casings apart to reach the chemical core. Her eyes darted around rapidly as the pile of loose durasteel bits around her started to grow, and she had nearly a half-dozen little vials of silvery fluid tucked into various pockets.

The sudden, crisp snap-hiss of a lightsaber blazing to life QUITE near her nearly startled a shriek out of Alna, who bit down on her tongue to keep silent. She searched for Jorus' eyes to confirm what the humming thrum rattling in her bones told her was true - the (now confirmed) Sith was less than a meter away from her, on the other side of a flimsy fold-out display.

The Givin paused as he entered the bazaar, taking a moment to appreciate the chorus of screaming panic and primal terror. He raised his lightsaber towards the fleeing crowd, robes billowing around his skeletal form, impressive face ALMOST smiling.