Over Your Shoulder

[Allyson Locke]

[SIZE=10pt]Traveling to Coruscant was something she really didn’t enjoy doing. With Coruscant being the way it is and under the One Sith control, it was hard to get on and off the planet especially with stolen goods from the One Sith. Allyson had finished loading the YT-2400 she had recently put back together from parts she had scrapped up during the time of her travels. Nothing special was attached with the ship, but soon enough she would get help from a professional droid maker to make the ship something special.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Getting clearance, she finally took off from the planet and jumped into hyperspace as soon as she could. The fastest she could get away from Coruscant the better. The ship thrust into hyperspace and her small BB unit quickly took over the piloting. Looking over her shoulder she spoke quickly to the droid. “Make sure to send Henry our coordinates and let Kaili know that we’re okay. You know how she worries if we don’t check in.” A smile spread across her face as she plugged in a small data card into the droid. “Upload those videos as well and file them away, I have to edit through them to send them to her.” The droid beeped a few times. “No I can’t show her that I almost got my head taken off by an Acolyte, we’re trying to not worry her.” Frowning, Allyson shook her head. “Yes I’d like to view them before we send them, like I said let’s not worry her okay?” Shaking her head again she wandered out of the cockpit and into the disc-like structure of the ship. She headed towards her room to clean up. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Time passed and she bathed and cleaned up. A few burn marks were on her forearm from getting too close to a few lightsabers. Groaning she sat in the living suite and began to clean up the wounds. The last thing she needed was to arrive on Borleias with burn marks and Kaili freaking out. Sighing softly, she finished and she pulled out her drop off point for the equipment she had stolen from the One Sith. It was nothing important just a few bits of materials that were easy to obtain, but to steal it crippled the One Sith for a day or so. “Bait make sure you set course for Republic Space, I know I hate it too but still” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]After she went over business, she decided to pull out the toy that Kaili had given her. The putty was on the table and she began to run through shapeshifting it with the Force into different geometrical shapes. [member="Emil"][/SIZE]

 

[Emil]

1) He was warm. 2) He was comfortable. These were two things that hadn't occurred to Emil as possibilities as he left his home-world for the first time. Space was cold. Therefore he'd be cold. However, the YT-2400's primary heat exchangers were aft, under the main decking, and provided (in all likelihood) better heat than the main cabin. Comfort was subjective, but Emil had imagined that interior room would be at a premium, and even more so for a stowaway... but he was small in stature, and slight, and found that he had more than enough room -- hell, there was more room down here than in his room on lvl 929. The woman (A simple slice had revealed her to be 'Locke, Allyson', F18) had been gone the better part of the day, which had given him time to make himself at home, string up a simple hammock, and provision himself for their trip. (to where? It didn't matter.)

He had done a thorough check of the hyperdrive and sublight engines, and found them to be at above 88% of operable parameters. Some quick hacks and downloadable upgrades brought the ship's engines up to 92%. Erasing his data-trail had been easy enough, as well. All things being equal, there should be no reason in the 'verse for 'Locke, Allyson' to open up the floor grating and remove the rad shielding on the deck-side of the heat exchangers, thus exposing his hiding place.

His thoughts drifted back to home, and the life he left behind. Onward and upward, right? He glanced to his datapad, currently showing a view aft as they ascended from Coruscant.

[member="Allyson Locke"]

 

[Allyson Locke]

Despite Allyson being unaware of her stowaway, there was another who was rather in tune with the ship and its innerworkings. Her first mate and BB-Unit Bait. The small droid was busy editing videos of their adventure on Coruscant. He noticed something weird going on with the ship and quickly tapped in. If droids could frown he would have. Disconnecting from the ship the BB-Unit started to roam the ship tapping everywhere searching for where this data leak was coming from. He continued to beep, but Allyson brushed him off.

Finally she had stopped messing around with the electromagnetic toy and looked up towards the droid that was buzzing about. Frowning, Allyson force the toy back into its typical triangle shape and got up from the table. She followed the droid around and he did his best to imitate jumping. His little boosters were able to raise him up enough and then suddenly drop him. Allyson tilted her head and soon figured out how he was trying to do. “Jump? Why would I just jump?” A shrill beep echoed and she groaned. “OKAY I’LL DO IT” She wandered after him again towards the floor grating near the deck side of the heat exchangers.

“Here?” The droid whistled with glee. “Okay.” Finally, Bait was getting what he wanted and Allyson started to jump and stomp around as the droid instructed. Still she had no idea why Bait wanted this to happen. [member="Emil"]

 

[Emil]

Sure enough, it didn't take long to discover that one of the hatch clasps was sprung. It was a small thing, not normally noticable in the regular run of things, but it was unusual, and after jumping a few times on the selected floor grating, there was an obvious vibration and clanging from the grate that had sprung. Visually, it didn't necessarily mean anything was amiss, latches spring all the time, the 'verse is an imperfect place. There were a hundred reasons it may have come loose. But the fact that Bait seemed interested was enough to delve a little deeper.

OK, so the grate opened easily enough (though it was heavy.) Underneath were the mag and rad shielding above the heat exchangers. It wasn't typically recommended to remove those while the ship was in motion... but Bait still seemed to be pressing for more. Further investigation would reveal that in fact six bolts from the mag shield and two of the retaining clips from the rad shield were undone or missing -- again, nothing that would normally be noticed... but this was starting to seem premeditated... Removing the panels required getting half into the compartment. Swinging her legs into the gap in the grate created by the removal of the flooring, Allyson was able to easily enough lift off the mag shield, which caused a few blinking red lights to appear on the Hyperdrive, but nothing catastrophic.

Inside was a sight that left her dumbfounded. There was a small area, about 4' square and 3' deep, in which hung a small hammock, a backpack which was open (she could see a few well-thumbed books, and a few electronic gizmos) and around the base of the compartment, packaged protein rations littered the floor. A small flashlight hung neatly from a protruding screw in the manifold, and a few articles of clothing -- including a battered coat and a few t-shirts, hung from clips on the hammock. It was painfully obvious -- someone had been here. Very recently, judging from the half-eaten protein ration on the hammock.

And then, a voice from behind Allyson and the BB unit.

Please... don't make me use this...

[member="Allyson Locke"]

 

[Allyson Locke]

Making her way into his little hiding place, Allyson pulled her blaster just in case whoever decided to stowaway unwelcomed on her ship wanted to do something more than just hide away. She could feel him, her affinity to technology echoed with his cybernetics and she wrinkled her nose. Bait on the other hand quickly sent a distress signal to anyone in the area, just in case. Seeing everything that was laid out in the little hiding spot she grew angry and cursed under her breath. She knew she should have let the officials check her ship out, but this had never happened before.

She held the blaster and when the voice echoed she quickly turned and pointed it towards him. There was no sign of hesitation, if he decided to be violent she’d send a point blank shot straight through his forehead. It would be a short life for whoever this was.

“Don’t make you use what? You realize you’re on my ship. Also a distress signal was already sent, so anyone in the area is on their way already. If you don’t start talking, you’re going to be spaced or handed over to whoever shows up.”

Stepping forward she kept the blaster leveled at his head. “Start talking now. Also, if you wanted off Coruscant all you had to do was ask coward.” [member="Emil"]

 

[Emil]

When she turned to face the source of the voice, she'd find he was up on the floor plating of the ship, while she had ventured down into his warren. Like any good mole, he had two or three ways out of his little subterranean shelter, and so when the droid had begun jumping, he simply crawled fore to the port workshop and sprung a hatch there. Creeping up on her as she focused on getting into his hiding-place had been relatively easy. It was the droid he had been more concerned with. But he needn't have been.

That said, his actual weapons (such as they were) were packed into one of the bags in his little den, and he hadn't brought any of them with him when he left. So the tarnished silver spoon, the neck and handle sharpened to a point -- making for a fine shank, but a terrible opponent to a blaster, suddenly felt very inconsequential when she turned to face him.

Holding his hands out to the side, and slightly aloft, the spoon held between thumb and forefinger, he let out a sigh of resignation. So close, so far...

This, er... spoon. And begging your pardon, miss... but booking passage off-world usually involves payment, or papers, or, you know... permission. None of which I have. If it's any consolation, I picked your ship because it was the best one...

[member="Allyson Locke"]

 

[Allyson Locke]

The blaster lowered as she listened to his story. This meant that he was trying to get off Coruscant for one reason or another. He had nothing besides whatever he brought with him, he didn’t have permission, he didn’t have money, nor papers. So this meant that Allyson was stuck with an illegal and probably someone’s slave or something along those lines. A hand went to her face as she sighed and tried to think about what she was going to do about this situation.

“So, you could have just asked really. I mean I’m a pretty compassionate person, would have let you work your passage off and let you stay in one of the rooms.” Shrugging, she shook her head slightly and put the blaster away on her leg. The same hand ran through her brunette hair as she tried to buy herself some sort of time to even work out this situation.

“Alright, Its not like I’m the type to ship you off into space, so how about you move your stuff into a room and we’ll meet up on the bridge and talk about how you’re going to work off your trip to…” Allyson pressed her lips together and sighed. “Where are you trying to go?” [member="Emil"]