Private Solid Idea

[Kiran Arlos]

Geonosis
1700
Deanez
​

The controls flickered again just long enough for Kiran to swear under his breath. Warning lights pulsed amber across the console as the hum of the starfighter's engines faltered, a sputter breaking through the steady rhythm that had carried him through hyperspace. He eased the throttle back, coaxing the ship to hold together a little longer, but the response was sluggish, uneven. Power readings dipped dangerously.

"Come on." he muttered, tapping the stabilizer readout. "Just hold."

Through the viewport, the ochre sphere of Geonosis loomed larger with every second. The planet's arid surface stretched in endless ridges and canyons, glittering faintly in the light of its twin suns. Not where he wanted to be, but the nearest world with an atmosphere thick enough for a controlled descent.

The left engine coughed once, then again, before sputtering out entirely. Kiran sighed, adjusting the flight vector and rerouting what power he could to the repulsorlifts. The ship groaned but obeyed. He wasn't going to crash not today.

As the fighter cut through the upper atmosphere, heat shimmered along the hull. Red dust clouds rose to greet him, swirling like specters below. With a steady hand, he guided the vessel down toward a plateau between jagged spires of rock, the engines whining in protest until the moment the landing struts touched ground.

Silence followed tense, heavy, broken only by the tick of cooling metal. Kiran exhaled slowly, scanning the horizon. Geonosis. Of all places.

He unbuckled the harness, checked his blaster, and muttered dryly, "Let's hope the locals are friendlier than the landscape."

 

[Deanez]

LOCATION: Outer Rim — Geonosis, Surface Perimeter Scan Sector 4-Delta
UNIT: Diarchy Intelligence / Recon Detachment (Unregistered)
OPERATIVE: Tenge'deanez'zoza, alias Sable Talon
MISSION STATUS: Active / Observation Protocol

[BEGIN FIELD ENTRY – ENCRYPTED TRANSMISSION LOG 02.07 — EXTENDED]

Visual confirmation achieved.
Starfighter class: Aurek-variant interceptor, Republic-made, distress signature intermittent. One pilot. Damage consistent with hyperspace destabilization and atmospheric drag failure — not sabotage. He landed with skill, not luck.

Atmospheric interference minimal; wind speed negligible. Geonosis' surface temperature is rising. I established observation perimeter 1.2 klicks east of the plateau. No immediate hostilities detected, though seismic sensors indicate subterranean movement consistent with dormant hive structures.

The pilot exited his craft unarmed for approximately seven seconds — long enough to confirm he's either confident or reckless. Possibly both.

"You chose a graveyard for a landing site, pilot."

He startled. Not fear — alertness. Reflexive scan of the horizon before locating me. His stance adjusted smoothly, as though the survival instinct had not dulled. That interested me. Most pilots relied too heavily on their ships to live long outside them.

He did not reach for his weapon immediately. A mark of either trust or calculation. Both are exploitable traits.

I remained at the ridge for observation. Visibility was partial through red haze and particulate dust. His silhouette cut sharply against the ochre plain — tall, armed, posture rigid but composed. The kind of control that comes from experience, not training. The Diarchy would find use in that, if he survived the night.

"State your designation and purpose. You are trespassing in a restricted Diarchy jurisdiction."

He hesitated, not in uncertainty but in evaluation. The way his eyes tracked my position betrayed a mind running contingencies — evasive routes, cover density, possible bluff. He was analyzing me even as I analyzed him.

I allowed it. Sometimes, information is best gathered from what others assume you are not hiding.

Internal sensors registered a shift in thermal signature — mine, not his. Elevated by 0.3 degrees. Adrenaline response is minimal, yet present. Recognition of danger, not fear. It had been some time since an encounter in the field warranted that distinction.

He spoke then, his voice tempered, the cadence not of a civilian but a soldier out of uniform. His answer mattered less than the fact that he gave one at all.

Assessment (provisional):
— Combat-experienced.
— Former military or paramilitary alignment.
— Displays adaptive composure under duress.
— Intent: pending.

I disengaged the partial cloak—enough to be seen, not enough to be targeted with precision. The wind carried the sound of sand against durasteel — a quiet shroud between us.

First contact initiated.

[END LOG – ENCRYPTION SEAL DELTA/BLACK]

Kiran Arlos

 

[Kiran Arlos]

Deanez
​

Kiran's gaze tracked the shimmer of movement along the ridge too deliberate to be a mirage, too disciplined to be one of Geonosis' wandering scavengers. His hand hovered near the side holster but didn't touch it. The air here carried the weight of memory battles fought, lives buried beneath red dust. The Force pulsed faintly under it all, whispering of things that had crawled and built and died here long before either of them had arrived.


"Restricted jurisdiction." he repeated evenly with a laugh, eyes narrowing through the haze. "Didn't see any beacons marking it."

His voice carried calm, but his stance spoke readiness. He shifted a half step to the side, the sun at his back, hand relaxed near his belt where the faint gleam of a multi-tool not a blaster caught the light.

The figure above him half cloaked, half shadow remained motionless. Kiran could feel her gaze; clinical, assessing, weighing him against whatever measure the Diarchy used for worth. He exhaled slowly through his nose, letting the desert heat settle on his shoulders like armor.

"Name's Kiran Arlos." he said at last. "My fighter ran into trouble coming out of hyperspace. I put her down clean and quiet. Didn't mean to intrude on anyone's territory."

He gestured slightly toward the starfighter still cooling behind him, its hull streaked with heat lines and carbon scoring.

"Just need a few hours to run diagnostics and get her flight-ready again. After that, I'll be out of your sky."

The wind shifted, carrying dust between them, and he caught the faintest reflection of crimson optics under the observer's hood. Whoever she was, she wasn't simply a sentry. Her stance carried the precision of someone who had seen battle, and survived it.

Kiran's expression didn't waver. "Unless," he added quietly, "You plan on making that a problem. If so, that's not going to end well for you."

The red sands of Geonosis waited between them, silent witnesses to a negotiation neither had quite defined yet.

 

[Deanez]

Dean stepped down from the ridge with the quiet precision of someone who had long ago learned how to move without announcing herself. Red dust swirled around her boots as she approached, settling into small depressions in the terrain that hid the faintest prints. The folds of her hooded cloak obscured her expression, but the faint gleam of her eyes tracked every detail of the starfighter and the figure before it.

"You're going to tell me whether you can actually handle repairs," she said evenly, voice low but sharp, carrying a weight that made the air feel heavy in the thin Geonosian atmosphere. "Or am I standing here while you fumble around like an idiot?"

Her gaze swept across the hull, noting scorched panels, heat lines, and the faint glow of malfunctioning systems. She catalogued each imperfection — which sections were critical, which were cosmetic, which would fail first if he made a mistake. Every instinct she had told her that the human before her was capable of skill… but reckless, impatient, and occasionally entirely unaware of his own limitations.

"I'm Dean," she added, clipped, precise, letting the name settle in the air like a warning. "I'm not touching your ship, but you should know who's assessing the situation. If anything goes wrong while you're here, I'll know exactly how and why it happened."

Her eyes flicked to the cooling engines, then back to him. Every movement he made, every shift in posture or weight, she noted. He was competent — that much was obvious — but he lacked discipline, the small grace of anticipation she had trained herself into by years of necessity. A ripple of the Force from him hinted at focus, but impatience bubbled beneath the surface.

A quiet, fleeting thought tugged at the corner of her mind, half-amusement, half irritation: he is older, technically, but he moves like a child testing boundaries. She filed it away, smothered it beneath her usual clinical restraint, and let it linger only long enough to make a mental note to tease him later. Not now — now was assessment, calculation, preparation.

The desert wind shifted, carrying the faint scent of ozone from the starfighter's engines and lifting fine clouds of red dust around her boots. Dean's presence was deliberate, measured — a shadow moving in calculated steps toward the hull, a warning and a promise both. She did not reach for tools, she did not approach with soft words; she observed. She waited.

Kiran Arlos

 

[Kiran Arlos]

Deanez
​

Kiran leaned a shoulder against the starfighter's hull, the heat from its scorched plating radiating through his jacket. He didn't flinch under her tone — if anything, the corner of his mouth ticked upward, just enough to hint at a smirk that wasn't quite amusement.

"I can handle repairs." he said, the words steady, pragmatic. "If the stabilizer conduit hadn't half-melted itself during re-entry, I'd already be gone."

He crouched beside the access panel, fingers brushing over the warped edge before prying it open with a metallic groan. The scent of burnt circuitry mixed with the sharp tang of ozone, and the faint blue glow from inside the compartment pulsed irregularly a heartbeat on the verge of stopping.

"You know." he added after a moment, glancing over his shoulder at her through the haze, "Most people start with 'hello' before assuming incompetence."

Her silence in response wasn't defensive it was evaluative. He could feel her measuring every movement, every inflection. The way she watched wasn't casual; it was methodical, tactical. A soldier's scrutiny. He turned back to the open panel, hands moving with careful precision. The faint hum of the Force guided him through the adjustments enough to sense the currents of energy, to redirect, to ground what little power remained stable.

The dust curled around them like smoke. Geonosis was too still, too quiet. Beneath that silence, something deeper thrummed a buried vibration he could feel through the soles of his boots, the dormant heart of a world that remembered wars.

When he spoke again, his tone had lost the wry edge, replaced by something quieter, more deliberate.

"You're Diarchy." he said. "Or close enough to it that you're not here by chance. I thought this was High Republic domain."

A beat. The wind carried the faint metallic rattle of his toolkit.

"I'm not your enemy, Dean." Kiran continued, eyes flicking briefly to meet hers. "Just a pilot trying to leave this graveyard in one piece. But if you want to keep watching, be my guest. Maybe you'll learn something."

The last words carried no arrogance, just the calm certainty of a man who'd survived too many crashes not to know his own limits. The light from the starfighter cast a thin reflection in her eyes red and blue mingling in the dust as the engine's dying hum began, faintly, to stabilize.