Private Mining the Horizon

[Gren Blidh]

Rinn didn't know where he was going, but wherever that somewhere was, it wasn't here. That was all that mattered.

The smuggler pulled his long trenchcoat closer to his neck with a tight hand around his collar and meandered down the transport corridor as the ship prepared for takeoff. Lights flickered above the corridor as power was routed to the sublight engines - obviously an older craft. There were surely more luxurious passenger liners in Coruscant these days, but Rinn would have hitched a ride aboard the most ramshackle cargo freighter if he needed to. Coruscant had proven to be less than he'd hoped in terms of laying low. It was easy to blend in and get lost in the sea of the planet's billions of inhabitants, but there was too much technology here. Every move he made was traceable.

He'd spent the last of his credits, paid in cash, on this transport ticket. It would leave Coruscant and make a few stops along the way to the Outer Rim. Rinn didn't exactly have a plan as to which of those planets would be his new home, but perhaps it was better that way. If even he didn't know where he was going, there was little chance his moves could be anticipated by bounty hunters.

His hair fell across his face as he sat in one of the seats in the ship's vast common area, readying himself for takeoff, which would be a mild affair. He became acutely aware of the emptiness of his stomach at that moment. He didn't remember the last time he'd eaten - it could have been days ago, at this point. With not a single credit to his name, Rinn would have to steal if he was going to find sustenace on this journey. A prospect that didn't thrill him, but one that he would undertake willingly if he had to.

Below his feet he could feel the calm hum of the ship's sublight engines kicking up. They were taking off. Soon Coruscant would be a distant memory.

 

[Honey Hallowell]

There was an old saying: all hyperlanes lead to Coruscant.

Something about the ecumenopolis made it attractive. People flocked to it, businesses invested in it, and governments invaded and fought over it. Honey Hallowell didn't quite understand it; from a strategic standpoint, it was a terrible place to house a bureaucracy. It couldn't feed itself, it couldn't recycle all its own waste, and it was highly susceptible to damage and ecological disaster when its city blocks were wrecked. But from where Honey Hallowell stood in the queue to the ticketing kiosk, observing the bustling corridors of the departures terminal, it seemed that another truism was just as valid, if not more so: there was a time to come to the city, and a time to leave it.

Funny, Honey thought to herself. No idea what I'm doing here. No idea if Honey Holllowell is a real name -- sounds fake as hell -- but I can remember not one but two trite cliches.

By the time she reached the ticketing kiosk, Honey had just about gotten over the sense of all-consuming panic that had been absorbing her since she woke up, fully clothed and seemingly quite unharmed, in a nearby travel hotel room, empty save for a wallet, a dead man, and a lot of broken furniture. The ID card in the wallet, combined with the mirror in the hotel room's 'fresher, filled in the blank of who she was, but there was nothing else to suggest what she was doing on Coruscant, what had happened to the man in the hotel room, or why all the furniture and windows were broken. She couldn't remember going there, and she didn't recognize the man.

In fact, she couldn't remember anything before waking up. Since then, she had been possessed of a single-minded obsession: find a way offworld, somewhere safe, and figure out what the hell was going on.

Honey followed the on-screen instructions, fingers jabbing nervously at the screen to navigate the menu. The young woman glanced over her shoulder every few moments as she completed the transaction, then fed the credits to the machine to purchase the first ticket to anywhere else. The screen flashed a warning: the ship for the voyage she had just booked was on its last call for boarding. Honey took off like a shot, racing across the concourse and arriving just in time to hand the porter her ticket.

The ship was old; it creaked as it lifted off, and the lights flickered and dimmed as if the exertion was too much for it. Honey knew the feeling. She found her way to the tiny cabin she had booked and sat down in the chair to watch as Coruscant shrank below them. She should have felt relief, but all she felt was a growing sense of unease. What if someone came looking for her -- someone who could help? But then again, as she stood and started to shrug out of her jacket before catching a reflecting of the bloody splatters on her pale blue shirt beneath, she considered that perhaps anyone looking for her would be the police.

Better to know whether I'm a murderer before I let myself be caught, she told herself, and closed her jacket tightly around herself, cinching the trenchcoat closed around her trim waist with a tight knot.

 

[Gren Blidh]

As the ship hauled into the sky, Rinn lurched forward slightly in his seat. Around him, the common area of the ship was bustling with activity. Some didn't even feel the need to sit as the transport took to the upper atmosphere of Coruscant, though they would be instructed to before the ship went to lightspeed. In his genetically modified mind, Rinn knew exactly which hyperspace route they would be taking, and he could see the other planets and asteroid fields relative to it, from behind the patch in his eye. These thoughts distracted him only for a moment before the woman sat next to him.

He glanced over for a moment, only long enough to take in her most general features before settling his gaze in his lap once more. Her light brown hair obscured some of her face and her body was hidden behind a trenchcoat, but it seemed like she was just as eager to leave Coruscant as he was. He wasn't much interested in finding out. But he was interested in pickpocketing her.

The pangs of hunger were beginning to grow more severe as Rinn could smell the warm scent of savory food filling the air around the common area. Droids began their rounds, needling between aisles of seats and tables, taking orders for drinks with enthusiastic chirps. Meanwhile, a voice over the intercom instructed passengers to find a seat. RInn waited for the moment the ship would prepare to make the jump to lightspeed. Knowing an old craft like this, it would tumble into hyperspace rather ungracefully.

Then the moment came, a sharp but brief jolt that announced the beginning of the voyage. The droids in the aisles flew forward several feet, their servomotors grinding in protest, while the passengers were bucked in their seats. Rinn let himself be flung to the side, bumping shoulders gruffly with the woman next to him. He didn't fight the momentum at all, rather using it as an opportunity to stealthily find his hand in her trenchcoat pocket and withdraw from it a fistful of credits in a quick snap.

"Terribly sorry," He said to Honey Hallowell, before clearing his throat and retreating from his encroachment. "Hardly a first-class flying experience."

 

[Honey Hallowell]

The cabin was less private than previously expected, and Honey found herself jostled by another scruffy-looking passenger as the ship lurched into hyperspeed. She suppressed the urge to snap at the clumsy man; it was probably for the best that she was distracted -- no, consumed -- by the anxiety of her situation. She lifted her arm as if to ward him off and shove him back towards his own seat, more out of instinct than anything, but he soon was extricating himself without the need for her to help him along.

She offered a brief, sidelong forced half-smile in response to his apology, but didn't speak. To tell the truth, although she thought full sentences in Basic, Honey didn't quite know how to express the words in a spoken language. Had she ever, or was this yet another thing she couldn't recall? She was distracted yet again by the man next to her when he continued to speak.

Honey glanced around the cabin dubiously, her cool blue eyes taking in every flaw in the cheap, ancient transport before turning her gaze back to his one uncovered eye and offering a half-shrug as if to say: We get what we pay for. She reached for a magazine in the pocket in front of her chair. It was a celebrity gossip magazine, with a salacious photo and headline describing the tawdry affair some pop star was having with a shockball player, neither of whom Honey could ever remember hearing about.

A few moments later, a service droid came through offering drinks and snacks for a fee. Suddenly ravenous, she jammed her hand into her pocket in search of the credits she had leftover from buying her fare, but came up empty. She tried the other pocket. Nothing. Her eyebrows knit together in confusion, retracing her steps from the kiosk mentally, trying to think where she might have lost the money. Honey was still mulling it over when the droid prompted her, having noticed her movement. She lifted a hand and waved dismissively, frowning apologetically before slumping back into her seat and looking back down at the magazine that hung open on her lap.

 

[Gren Blidh]

Rinn promptly excused himself from the seat, using the awkward encounter with Honey Hallowell as an excuse to make his retreat. She would expect nothing more than a man recusing himself from a potentially awkward situation of having to endure a transport ride next to a woman he'd accidentally groped.

Meanwhile, with her money in his pocket, Rinn made toward the service droids.

His blood sugar was running dangerously low; he desperately needed carbohydrates. It was tempting to go for the glasses of tsiraki that wobbled along the tray-head of one R-unit, but Rinn knew a wiser choice would be something with actual caloric density. With a coin from Honey's pocket in hand, he picked up a baguette with Sullustan jam.

Looking sidelong across his shoulder, he could see the woman fumbling in her pockets for her cash, looking for the coins Rinn had stolen, before slumping back in her seat defeatedly. Lowering his head, Rinn sighed. He wished the Sullustan jam tasted better than the guilt.

Before the droid with the drinks departed, Rinn stopped it. Against his better judgment, he deposited a few more credits into the droid's tray, enough for two glasses of tsiraki, which he carried back across the common area to the seat he once occupied.

"For your trouble," His voice announced his presence from behind Honey's shoulder, where he held one of the drinks out for her. "Least I can do, after nearly knocking you into the Outer Rim with that bump."

 

[Honey Hallowell]

Honey was relieved when her fellow traveler got up and moved away. Not that she was unfriendly -- well, she had no way of knowing what she had been like before that day, but she didn't have an instinctive dislike that she could tell. She just worried that any moment she would move wrong and expose her bloody blouse, which would surely result in some kind of law enforcement intervention. Honey couldn't imagine an I can't remember defense getting her off the hook.

So it was an unwelcome surprise when Rinn Bledh came back and got her attention once more, this time offering her a tsiraki. The young woman narrowed her eyes skeptically as she half-turned to face him, then reached out to take the proferred beverage. She studied it for a moment, then lifted it to her mouth to take a sniff. Was it a smart choice to accept a beverage from a stranger? Still, she was rather parched. And she had no reason to suspect that he had bad intentions.

She nodded her thanks and smiled over the rim of the glass before lifting it to her mouth, but before she could take a sip, the ship lurched and abruptly dropped out of hyperspace. Honey could see fire through the hazy window, and a moment later alarms began to blare. It was a few moments before Honey realized the jolt had emptied the glass across her chest, and she made a noise of confusion and fear that didn't quite translate into words. She looked up at Gren Blidh in surprise, as if his approach had somehow harkened this event. A droning announcement to remain calm came blaring across the loudspeakers but she couldn't make it out over the rush of adrenaline pounding in her ears as a planet she didn't recognize spun in and out of the viewport.

 

[Gren Blidh]

Honey Hallowell didn't look all too pleased to see him again, which he couldn't totally blame her for. His move felt more appropriate for a hazy bar than a stuffy public transport ship, and he fully recognized that it could be construed as such. Unfortunately, being driven only by his guilt, she couldn't know that. He might as well come clean. The drink wasn't really a flirtatious or even a kind gesture; it was actually hers to begin with.

"So listen, I-" Rinn began to say as his hand fumbled in his deep coat pocket for the coins that really belonged to Honey, yet he was cut off by the sudden lurch of the ship that made him reach out to the nearest seat to catch his balance. Grimacing, he knew that feeling meant the ship had come out of hyperspace for some reason.

"God dammit," He muttered, seeing half of the contents of his tsiraki strewn across the floor. Meanwhile, an intercom message interrupted his thoughts.

"Attention passengers; due to technical issues with the sublight engines, we are making an emergency landing on-" The intercom cut out abruptly.

It was then that Rinn looked out the window and noticed the flames. Pushing past Honey, he saw that the ship was approaching an unknown planet, verdant and oceanic by the looks of it - much too fast. He looked back over his shoulder, unpatched eye open wide in horror.

 

[Honey Hallowell]

From where Honey sat, to call what they were experiencing an "emergency landing" was being charitable in the extreme. Her mind raced as she tried to piece together where she might be -- and where she might end up. But under the stressful circumstances, she couldn't force her mind to process what little information she could see through the viewport, even as the planet grew larger and larger. The alert chimes grew ever more insistent as the emergency oxygen masks dropped en masse from the ceilings.

With trembling hands, Honey pulled her mask towards her and strapped it around her face. The oxygen flowing smelled of chemical and stagnation, but she inhaled deeply. The ship hurtled planetward and begun to spin -- no, not spin: tumble. The droids restrained themselves and their carts as best they could in accordance with their emergency protocols, to avoid glass bulbs and metal parts from flying about the cabin.

The glow of the fire burned brighter out the viewport as the ship slammed through the atmosphere, tumbling end over end with the kind of violence that shocked Honey. Her body tensed, fingers curling into the tattered underside of the armrest as the ship plummeted. The last thing she saw was a flash of blue and tan before the ship splashed down in the shallows of a lagoon, which managed somehow to cushion the blow enough that Honey Hallowell, Gren Blidh , the other passengers and the ship they were on weren't all vaporized on impact.

 

[Gren Blidh]

If the sublight engines had malfunctioned, that would make a controlled landing difficult. But it seemed to Rinn, based on his knowledge of piloting, that the sublight engines had failed completely - which meant a controlled landing would be impossible. Had he escaped the clutches of his captors only to die, like this? After all he had been through to stay alive up to this point, with the faintest promise of hope on the horizon, had fate been so cruel to resign him to death all the same?

The forces behind the galaxy were mysterious and cruel, Rinn reasoned. Even a Jedi couldn't make sense of it.

A briefcase from a nearby overhead storage compartment hit him on the back, startling him. The former smuggler turned around, as if to notice the containers for the first time - after all, he had brought nothing but himself and the clothes on his back aboard the flight. Wi;d-eyed, he suddenly leapt into it, pulling himself upwards and struggling momentarily to pull his legs in, shutting the container door behind him. The tight, padded space would hopefully shield him from the intense turbulence that was to come.

Fortune found him finally, for all he experienced of the yacht's crash landing were bumps that shook him in his tight crawlspace, but sounded like a city collapsing just outside the compartment door. Rinn closed his eyes, absorbed by the blackness of his confines, until finally he heard no more noise and felt no more jolts. After a few more moments spent in silence, he dared to open the compartment door. It fell open with an unceremonious thud, revealing a hazy atmosphere where there once was the transport's common area, the smoke in the air hiding muffled groans of pain.

Honey Hallowell

 

[Honey Hallowell]

The world returned to Honey in its increments.

First, she felt pain. Then she felt wet. She heard the gentle lapping of waves on a beach, which would have been pleasant but for the accompanying sound of fire and the occasional groaning of metal groaning and settling and tearing. Next came the smell of burning and then, finally, the glaring light as her eyelids fluttered open. A pair of birds flew across the sky above her before disappearing from view.

Honey tried to sit up but found herself blocked. She craned her neck and looked up to find that a man was draped across her chest, face-down. Blood gushed from a wound in his wide. She grunted and pushed him off her, discovering that he was a man that had been in the next row over. She had some scrapes and cuts, including one on her shoulder. Her coat was torn open and her blouse was soaked with blood. More soaked with blood than before, she silently amended.

She struggled to her feet and peered out at the lagoon, where the ship sat in pieces, burning. Against all her better judgment, Honey waded out into the water, looking for survivors. She pulled bodies from the surf, checking for signs of life before discarding them to move on to the next. Surely she wasn't the only one that had survived...

 

[Gren Blidh]

The latch to the luggage container jiggled only when the tumultuous noises from outside had faded, long after Rinn had ceased feeling any motion.

Unfortunately, the door had become stuck in the malaise and was locked from the outside. Either that, or the darkness inside the small container had successfully prevented him from feeling his way toward the right latch to pull. The tight, padded surface inside had prevented him from experiencing the turbulent collisions that no doubt occurred on the outside, but Rinn could still feel he was heavily disoriented, and his head and arm were in pain.

Outside, the lagoon was silent, the bright blue skies above foretelling none of the gruesome conditions that had just occurred, while the transport lay submerged in a pathetic hulk nearby, sad plumes of smoke the only thing to signal its presence now. The latch jiggled once, then twice, then the full force of Rinn's arm busted through the door, light from outside finally washing over his face. Rinn sat up, a drip of blood falling from his scuffed forehead, craned his neck to see Honey Hallowell , and blinked.

 

[Honey Hallowell]

Honey turned a body over, groped for a pulse, and, finding none, dropped the body back into the water. She turned another body over, repeating the process. There was a preternatural silence across the lagoon, broken only by the rumbling of the wreckage of the ship settling in the shifting sands of the lagoon. She stood, her trembling lower lip the only outward appearance -- well, aside perhaps from the blood that covered her and swirled around her in the water of the lagoon -- that she was on the verge of a significant emotional overload. Surveying the scene, she saw not one twitch of an arm, not one gasp for breath.

Nothing.

She was the only survivor. Somehow.

But just then there was a thump, and then another thumb, and then a fist burst through a hand-luggage compartment door. Honey was not surprised to see Gren Blidh sit up like a vampire in a coffin. He looked at her; their eyes met, and Honey's widened slightly as she began trudging towards him through the thigh-deep water. She helped him open the door fully and then offered a hand to get him up and out. No, it wasn't exactly a surprise that he had survived the crash.

In fact, to Honey, she thought it was basically inevitable.

 

[Gren Blidh]

Were it not for the horrific smoldering remains of the vessel that marred the landscape, this planet would perhaps be picturesque. The smuggler looked up from below his bloody forehead, seeing palm trees swaying calmly beneath a vibrant blue sky. Not far off, he heard the calm lull of waves lapping against a shoreline. And as he reached to find his bearings, he saw that even the lagoon water he ended up in was a clear blue, and he was perfectly able to see the sand below. He marveled at the lucidity of it all in silence for a few moments, looking down, only to soon find the same woman's hand peeling the door back further with a groan of metal on metal, and then offer him an outstretched hand.

He took it, his dirty hand grasping hers to pull himself up. Once on his feet, he wiped away strands of hair from his face.

"I'm Gren," He introduced himself to Honey Hallowell plainly.

Without much of a moment's hesitation, the black-coated smuggler began trudging off through the water towards the nearest shoreline, looking over his shoulder. He was fairly certain he could trust this one; if she were after him, she would have tried to kill him already.

"It's best we don't wait around to look for survivors," He said over his shoulder bluntly, and then looked at the sky, guessing it was some time in the mid-afternoon. "We should try to get a fire going."

 

[Honey Hallowell]

Honey helped Gren out of the cabinet, then stood back and put her hands on her hips, casting her gaze around the crash site. He was probably right, she thought as she followed him towards the shoreline; if these people were alive, surely there'd be some sign of it by now. She'd checked a dozen so far, but the thought of encountering another corpse was too much, and she couldn't bring herself to do it again.

She nodded at his introduction and frowned in response. After a moment, her eyes brightened and she reached into her pocket, drawing her wallet. She produced her ID chit identifying her as Honey Hallowell and showed it to him, smiling vaguely. She didn't know then whether she had ever spoken. Had she simply forgotten how? Lost the ability in some accident? Had she never learned how? Was she born without the ability? As with everything else since she had woken up in that hotel room, she had more questions than answers.

She nodded her agreement with his suggestion and tucked her belongings away, then climbed onto the shore and started walking towards the treeline. There would be kindling there. She shucked out of her wet coat and gathered sticks and fronds by the armful, carrying them to the beach to start them in a pile. She looked from the pile to Gren Blidh with a question in her eyes; do you know how to start a fire?

 

[Gren Blidh]

Taking the ID chit from Honey Hallowell , Gren observed it with his functioning eye. Before handing it back to her, the smuggler gave her a narrow-eyed glance. Too shaken up to speak? Gren didn't seem to care at this moment in time; his main concern seemed to be getting as far away from the crash site as possible. He didn't even particularly care who she was. Honey Hallowell was as perfectly good a name as any, as long as she wasn't trying to kill him.

"The pilots would have sent a distress signal to the Commerce Guild before the ship went down," Gren said over his shoulder as he started off into the woods, barely waiting for Honey. "That is, if the crash was an accident. We'll have to wait and see who shows up."

Brushing leaves and branches away from his walking path, Gren produced a blaster pistol from within his trenchcoat and held it in front of him as he continued on. After a few more moments of silence, he turned on his heels to face her.

"So what, are you some kind of mute or something?"

 

[Honey Hallowell]

Honey looked at the pile of brush and kindling she had brought, then back to Gren, then heaved a sigh and trundled after him into the woods again. When he stopped, she stopped, and catching sight of the blaster in his hand she immediately took a step back, then promptly tripped over her own heels and fell onto her rear end with a defeated "Umph!"

When she was reasonably clear that he was not about to shoot her, she put her hands behind her and pushed herself up into a standing position, brushing dirt and detritus from her bottom. She looked defensively at Gren Blidh and nodded cautiously, shrugging with her neck to add a note of uncertainty. Her eyes narrowed at him, suspicious of his intentions and dubious as to her abilities to communicate.

Honey frowned thoughtfully; there had to be some way to communicate, or he might decide she was too much trouble and leave her there to die -- or help her along the way with that blaster. After an awkward moment in which she stared at Gren intently, she raised both hands palms-up in a show of ignorance, then bent to begin gathering more firewood for their proposed bonfire.

 

[Gren Blidh]

He waited for an answer, and when Honey Hallowell finally gave one, Gren heaved a sigh and craned up towards the spotless blue sky, wiping stray strands of hair out of his face.

"Great." Somehow he had found himself partnered with the only known survivor who also lacked the ability to communicate. This would complicate things.

If Gren was somehow incapacitated, that meant they were both likely never to leave this planet. Ascending higher, the rough smuggler placed his foot upon a rock and pushed himself up. From this vantage point, he could see the crash site much better; the smoking wreckage of the transport was just visible above the tree line. Still, they needed to climb higher to see the whole picture. He turned to Honey.

"Look, I've worked with some strange ones before. I don't need your whole life story, but I kind of need to know what I'm working with here." He held his blaster up between his face and the woman's. "Can you use one of these?"

 

[Honey Hallowell]

Honey's nose wrinkled at the man's evident disdain. She wanted to say that he had some nerve talking about strange people given the state of his face, and to ask what kind of person ran around the galaxy with an eye patch and that she had managed to survive just the same as he had so what business did he have to judge her?

But she couldn't.

So she didn't.

Instead, she simply framed him with a glacially indifferent look and raised one eyebrow, as if to indicate her level of interest was waning. When he waved his blaster in her face, rolled her eyes. Child's play, she seemed to be saying. Of course, I know how to use a blaster. I'm a grown woman. So she nodded and gestured with her hand for them to continue up the ridge. As mute as she was, even she recognized that it was critical to reach higher ground. She was taciturn, not stupid.

 

[Gren Blidh]

The wrinkles in Honey Hallowell 's cheeks conveyed her inaudible words. Shrugging, Gren turned and continued up the mountainside.

"Good, then you're not completely useless." He thrust the blaster back into his coat pocket.

As they reached high ground and Gren began forming sticks and underbrush into a pile, he thought perhaps he had been too hard on the girl. Perhaps his anger was more with his own luck; first being on a derelict transport that could barely make it to the Mid Rim before sputtering to a crash, then being the only apparent survivor along with a woman who couldn't even talk. The cards of fortune had granted him survival at least, and for that he should be thankful -- but not much else.

There wasn't anything to eat here, but at least a fire would help with drinking. Pulling a vibroknife covertly hidden within his boot, Gren set to work cutting the thickest branch of the nearest bay tree. Once he had cut a cylindrical shape from the thick branch and tossed the rest aside, he began hollowing out the punk wood inside to create a makeshift bowl.

"You may be mute, but you can still think in words, right?" Gren said as he moved closer to her again while his vibroknife was busy. "Why were you on that transport?"

He gestured to a stick near the dirt, where she could write her words.

 

[Honey Hallowell]

It was by this stage that Honey was beginning to wonder whether she should have left him in the luggage compartment and went about this on her own. He was -- what was the phrase? She groped in her memory for something, but it eluded her, on the tip of her metaphorical tongue, so she filled in the blanks herself: a prick.

She followed his gaze towards the stick and dirt and sighed indignantly. She picked up the stick and crouched, brushing the surface flat so that she could write in an elegant print: STUPID QUESTION - TO TRAVEL. When he had had a chance to read her response, she smoothed it with her boot and wrote another phrase: WHAT ELSE TRANSPORTS FOR?

Something moved out of the corner of her eye; a lizard of some kind darted around the trunk of the tree. She took her pencil and flipped it around, using it as a club to whack the lizard. It didn't move fast enough, and fell to the leaves, wriggling. Honey repeated the gesture until the lizard was dead, then picked it up by the tail and carried it back towards Gren Blidh . She used her boot to smooth the ground again and then carved: DINNER??