Private Somewhere Between Here and There

[Iandre Athlea]

Iandre caught the lightsaber easily, closing her fingers around the unfamiliar hilt before giving it a brief inspection. Ti'sonta's assessment wasn't entirely wrong. The weapon was crude, its construction favoring function over refinement, but there would be time enough to examine it later. For now, she deactivated her own blade and kept the captured weapon safely in hand, removing at least one danger from the equation while Ti'sonta attempted to convince the remaining boarders that continuing their attack would be a profoundly poor decision.

Her attention returned to the Zabrak just in time to hear the beginning of another name. Darth Ke... Iandre's grey eyes shifted toward Ti'sonta for the briefest moment before returning to their prisoner. She had heard it. More importantly, she suspected Ti'sonta knew perfectly well that she had heard it. Between the man's earlier use of Kelis, his reference to someone named Infekt, and now the beginning of a Sith title, the pieces were starting to form a picture that was considerably more complicated than Ti'sonta had ever suggested. Iandre said nothing. Whatever Ti'sonta had once been, she had shown Iandre no reason to believe that person was who stood before her now. Questions could wait until they weren't being boarded by armed slavers.

"Preferably something that doesn't involve executing him on your cargo deck." Iandre replied when Ti'sonta called back to her. There was no condemnation in her tone, though the glance she gave the shotgun pressed against the young Zabrak's temple made her preference clear. He had attacked them, attempted to abduct Ti'sonta, and apparently served a Sith. None of that made killing a wounded prisoner necessary.

She moved closer, keeping the captured lightsaber away from its owner while maintaining awareness of the breach behind them. The other pirates hadn't yet committed themselves one way or another, and Iandre wasn't prepared to assume Ti'sonta's threat had frightened them into retreat until she heard the ships actually separate. "Do you have a brig?" she asked, looking toward Ti'sonta. "Or somewhere aboard we can secure him until we reach Naboo? If he's been sent specifically to find you, I'd rather have him restrained somewhere he can't cause trouble while we decide what to do with him."

Her gaze dropped toward the Zabrak, studying him for a moment before returning to Ti'sonta. There were questions she wanted answered now, and the interrupted Sith title sat rather prominently among them, but she deliberately left it alone. "First we make certain his friends actually leave. Then we check on SH1-FU and secure our prisoner." A slight pause followed. "After that, I suspect all of us are going to have quite a few things to talk about."

Ti'sonta

 

[Ti'sonta]

"Unfortunately my ship isn't big enough to have a brig." Ti'sonta commented to Iandre, her eyes firmly locked on the Zabrak under her knee. "And I'm not locking him up in the privy for the next few days, that'd just be cruel for everyone."
Ti'sonta let out a weary sigh. Her eyes were burning and the dark bags under her eyes were not going away any time soon. Taking the acolyte with them was simply out of the question. The chances were certain that he would blab her true identity out of sheer spite if she took him with them. She needed to get him out of here quickly. "Lucky for you, I'm not particularly keen on killing people just for being led by a temper tantrum-throwing moron, either. So against my better judgement, I'm gonna let you go back to Boy."
Ti'sonta fished around a pouch on her belt and tossed a chit over to the ragged-looking pirates. "That chit's got one thousand credits on it. Should be enough to make this trip not a total loss for you bilge-swillers." She growled. "And as for you. young Acolyte, I would take a good long think about whether all the torture and pain of becoming a sith is worth it. Especially when you're being taught by a weak man-child who sent you out to get a poor little slave girl instead of going himself." she spat on the decking in disgust. "I mean seriously, he called himself Infekt of all things. And when you've decided for your self what you want to do with your life, come find me in the black. Now, sweet dreams."
Ti'sonta flipped the shotgun around in her hand and swiftly clubbed the Zabrak across the back of the head, knocking him unconscious before standing back up.
"You lot, get this kid back to a safe port. Now Piss off and don't touch my ship again!"
The smuggler backed away from the entryway as the pirates gathered themselves together and dragged the unconscious form of the acolyte back into their squalid ship.
"...Iandre, you still got some energy left in you?" Ti'sonta asked, keeping the facade of grim determination and anger despite her condition as she watched the pirates moved back to their ship. "We'll need to patch this hole those whoresons cut in my poor ship and I'm not keen on being vented out into the black while we fix it."

 

[Iandre Athlea]

Iandre watched the exchange without interfering, though her attention lingered on Ti'sonta more than the young Zabrak beneath her knee. Letting him go wasn't without risk, particularly when whoever had sent him had apparently been searching specifically for Ti'sonta, but killing him was unnecessary and keeping him aboard wasn't practical. The thousand credits surprised her somewhat, as did the advice that followed. There was something almost personal in the way Ti'sonta told the acolyte to decide what he wanted his life to become, and after everything Iandre had heard during the attack, she suspected she understood at least a little of where that sentiment came from.

There was something else as well. The pressure she'd sensed around Ti'sonta throughout the confrontation had changed. Iandre hadn't been reaching into her mind earlier, despite the accusation, but she had felt enough through the Force to recognize someone working very hard to keep something contained. Now, as the immediate danger receded and the pirates gathered their wounded, that impression faded with it. Iandre's grey eyes rested briefly upon her friend. Darth Ke... A Sith named Infekt. A young acolyte who apparently knew Ti'sonta by another name. And something about Ti'sonta herself that felt considerably less ordinary than she had presented it. Later.

Iandre watched until the last pirate disappeared through the breach before turning toward the decidedly more immediate problem on the side of the ship. "Enough for that, yes." she answered, clipping her lightsaber back onto her belt while keeping the captured Sith weapon with her. She approached the ragged opening carefully, studying its dimensions rather than pretending she knew anything useful about repairing starship hull plating. "You'll have to handle the actual repairs. Unless you want a lightsaber involved, I'm considerably more useful at keeping the atmosphere on this side of the wall."

She planted her feet and raised one hand toward the breach, allowing herself a moment to settle before reaching into the Force. This required none of the violence of throwing someone across a room or tearing machinery apart. Instead, Iandre concentrated on the opening itself, spreading an invisible barrier across the damaged section of the hull and anchoring it to the surrounding bulkhead. The pressure difference would become considerably more troublesome once the pirate vessel disengaged, but she didn't need to replace the hull permanently. She only needed to give Ti'sonta enough time to make the ship airtight again.

"Go." Iandre said once she was satisfied with the barrier, glancing toward Ti'sonta. "I'll hold this while you patch it. Just don't take all afternoon." A faint smile briefly softened the instruction before her attention returned to maintaining the seal. There would be time afterward to check SH1-FU, recover from the fight, and perhaps finally get the lunch they'd been discussing before someone cut a hole through the ship.

And then, when Ti'sonta had slept, and Iandre wasn't literally holding their atmosphere inside the vessel, they could have a conversation about why a Sith acolyte had almost called her Darth.

Ti'sonta

 

[Ti'sonta]

Ti'sonta merely grunted as she rushed to a nearby durasteel cabinet marked "EMERGENCY". Wrenching it open, she took out a large stamped steel crate and dragged it over to the opening. Her mind was thinking about nothing but the task at hand.
She needed to work quick.
Opening up the crate revealed a set of maglock winches that she hefted out of the box with a grunt. With practiced ease, the twi'lek lifted them into place at the upper corners of the breach with a clang as the electromagnets powered on. It was only then that she saw the yawning void of empty space looming before her, the junk-pile Gozanti-class the pirates had used to board the Dolly Dagger drifting away from the hole they had cut in her ship. Ti'sonta fought back the rising panic of being only a few feet away from the yawning nothingness before her and simply placed her trust in Iandre's abilities.
Besides, she had other things she needed to do.
First was fixing the hole in the ship. She spooled out the durasteel cables from the winches and hooked them into the underside of the cut-out hull. Then, with a press of a button the winches began to groan with effort as they hoisted the hull piece back into place. With a few final shoves to get the hull in properly, Ti'sonta hefted out long pieces of hull patches and began to mag-lock them into place.
"Can't believe how many times I've had to do this..." Ti'sonta grumbled as she pulled out the cannisters and injected copious amounts of sealant into the cracks. "This is so much easier without the vac-suits...Right, that should be void-tight for now. You can relax now, Iandre. We'll just let that cure and in about ten minutes I can get to welding those patches."
A grind of complaining servos snapped Ti'sonta back to reality as she spun around, seeing SH1-FU bracing himself against the wall as he attempted to stand up.
"Oh dear, I seemed to have been forced into a system reboot. Is everyone alright?"
The ancient droid let out a whir of surprise when he felt a pressure wrap around his torso and arms, only to look down and see Ti'sonta hugging him tightly.
"...Force take me, I'm glad you're okay Shifu..." Ti'sonta let out a shuddering sigh before reluctantly letting the droid go and helping him to his feet. "Are you injured?"
"Apart from a hip actuator that needs realigning, I am quite operational, Ti'sonta." SH1-FU reassured his friend as they made their way over to a nearby repair bench. "Judging by the presence of that repaired hole in our ship, I take it we have survived another pirate raid? How is everyone faring?"