Tracing a Path Through Space [EVAD]

[Lief]

OUTER RIM TERRITORIES​

AURUM​

​

A place lying at the bottom of the Galaxy, far from anywhere she had ever been before. Aurum was a shrouded world, which lacked any real activity. Once there had been an Order there, then another. It had peaked the interest of a few factions, but they had since retreated or died. Now it was silent once more, save for the vast array of native wildlife that prowled and roamed in the undergrowth.

Yet Jyn was no botanist, she was no biologist... She was not here for research of that kind. In fact, for the first time in known history, Jyn had transported herself somewhere... Albeit with a vessel and droid which had been abandoned. But that didn't matter - this was her life they were talking about, her survival. She knew she would die if she ended up stranded once more. She simply hadn't the place to store supplies. In fact she had no way to get supplies!

Until now, that was. With this... acquired vessel, and a droid to pilot it, Jyn was free to roam the Galaxy. Which had, undoubtedly, led her here. This was it, the end of the trail... Yet hopefully the start of a new one. Jyn did not know exactly what she was hoping to find here, but she knew that without it she would be lost once again, forced to wander the stars without purpose, without reason.

No, she needed to find more. She had to.

Trudging through the forest landscape of the mark she had found upon a planetary map - the only one in existence, or so she had been led to believe - Jyn released the flap from her satchel and stared down, waiting for her furry little friend, Fuz, to leap out and bound into the trees. But it didn't happen. Because Fuz was gone.

A void emptied within her at the reminder, and she closed the satchel with a sinking feeling in her gut. She had to give herself time to explore and search for... Something. Anything. Jyn truly did not know what. Rubbing her neck as Aurum's dense heat rained down on her, the young girl sighed and took a sip of fresh water from the flask at her hip. She had to get her mind off Fuz. She had to focus.

She double checked the slugthrower holstered at her side and nodded her head just once. Everything was in order. Now to reread what had been written. Taking out the datacron, Jyn halted in place and refocused on the words. Mountains... She had to find the mountains to the East, beyond the forest. She checked her location, direction... and pressed on. Hopefully she was headed in the right direction, and her heart felt weighed down as if it was made from stone.

 

[K0VA]

The Path of Least Resonance

Understanding had come at a cost, a dividing line that had separated familiarity with the necessity of survival. At one time an all too patient entity conglomerate would meditate and muse in patterns that would span most sentient's lifetimes in order to concretely decide on a course of action or principle. Now, such thoughts were done in fractions of a second, so momentary that the notion that thought entered into the decision was both aghast and fascinating. Such fascination though was heavily mitigated by the complete and unknown territory currently driving the relatively new quadrupedal existence of Thirty-Thirty. Ever since the 'event', that existence was seemingly without purpose or direction. What does a weapon do if not wielded by a warrior? Does a weapon dream, does it learn and seek out knowledge - or does it stagnate and become a wasted memory on the planes of time? Thankfully Thirty-Thirty was not in the position to simply dissolve into obscurity - for it determined early on to make use of what fate had handed it, and find answers to questions it had long since wondered on while being integrated into the circuitry of this droid shell. In the least light of optimism, it had indeed found full mobility with a communication pattern that was at least preferred among a great many sentients - despite his learned trust issues.

The journey to Aurum had not been an easy one, nor had it been met with a great deal of actual planning. Without the live uplink to further coordinate efforts, and introduce new data to the onboard computing power of the central brain, the Shard within K0VA was able to freely manipulate the programming and direct the course of action, though often the logical systems would steer away from a less emotional response. This made discourse at best, unnerving with most he encountered. All Thirty-Thirty understood about this less than symbiotic relationship was that it was both necessary and obligatory. Originally the trade planet of Arcadia-N-30 was where the vessel in question made birth, though it's route to curve around the wild space and into the deepest pockets of the southern rim was met with plans that went awry. As the traders were not so well equipped to deal with such a menacing and conditioned fighting force - K0VA seized opportunity in the only way it understood how to; with force. A litany of corpses numbering in the baker's dozen of lifeforms was both systematically dispatched and then drug and stacked in a storage container for ease of access around the vessel. Blood stains clung to the armored wolf-like form of the droid as it navigated the controls with the built in tail that could interface with the onboard systems.

That self-same trade vessel now lay several clicks due west of a large deposit of cavernous jungle laden alcoves within the dense forest of a mostly untouched landscape. Very few data records had made it from the planet itself, but there were some readings that indicated a deposit of crystalline growths that were apparent in the area. In a simplistic search for classifications that would spark interest, the Shard had found itself drawn to this planet for the sole purpose of understanding if he could find another world like Orax that would hold the key to reuniting himself with another hive mind. Orax was still on the map, but there was no way fuel deposits in the craft were going to make it anywhere near that level of travel. This seemed like a far more reasonable venture. Having trekked from the vessel's landing site and through the foliage and fauna, K0VA was currently situated among the glittering stones of the copious caves that surrounded a lush mountain range. Humidity notwithstanding, the droplets of dew that formed over his exterior barely registered while the infrared light and electromagnetic spectrum played upon the natural formations within.

:: Scanning for frequency emissions ::

:: Registration of emissions below point ten hertz - negligible ::

The snout of the metallic wolf flashed at the synthesized voice registering the readings from the crystals within. The range of sensations and senses now at the command of Thirty-Thirty was still a massive amount of data it never had within the hive mind collective on Orax. He'd never seen his family, or truly knew anything about them other than the collective mind, and the resonating patterns that gave both himself and them a solitary name. Thirty-Thirty, given only from the resonating frequency that was unique to his particular brand of Shard was one of twelve collective crystals - that while he didn't know their fate, he couldn't imagine that it was more complicated than his own. Without understanding the visual sense, any crystalline formation could certainly hold the group he was searching for, and yet this had been so far a futile expedition. K0VA stilled itself, drawing it's form into a motionless state as the prehensile tail also barely waved back and forth. Thirty-Thirty drew inward on it's own resonance before letting the connection it had that seemed to be more esoteric take over. There was life here, not perhaps in the cave itself, but something was pinging on his internal radar that the machinery encasing the Shard simply did not yet detect. K0VA may have not discovered a new collection of the Shard's kin, but something was uniquely alive and within a fairly sizable proximity.

[member="Jyn Sol"]

 

[Lief]

Reaching the depth of the forest where it was impossible to tell whether it was day or night above the canopy always brought about a strange feeling within Jyn; her abandonment on Teth had allowed her to slowly adjust, but each planet was different and it was almost impossible for her to say for certain which celestial body dominated the sky.

Trudging on in this perpetual state of twilight, the young girl could not help but feel as though there was a multitude of eyes set upon her, leering from the darkness. Scrunching up her face in disdain, her feet unintentionally picked up their pace and it was all that she could do to refrain from breaking into a sprint to get out of this nightmarish forest.

Without her sole companion to aid in her relaxation, and with her mind running as rampant as it was, Jyn's heart rate picked up dramatically and her breathing became more of a labour - something she had to consciously control. Yet being well aware of what was going on, the girl did her best to fight back against the sensation and instead she began to hum. The tune was consistent with a lullaby from her youth, when she still had a mother and father to speak of.

But when this failed to help, she began to murmur the lyrics to herself under her breath, casting her gaze from left to right and right to left. Was someone there?

"Hush little baby, don't say a word... Papa's gonna buy you a shimmerbird... And if that shimmerbird won't sing... Papa's gonna buy you a red ruping... And if that red ruping won't fly... Papa's gonna--"

A rustle in the undergrowth forced the young girl into silence. Standing still, and rooted in place, she continued to cast her gaze left and right, her eyes widening substantially. Was there someone else here? Surely not... Perhaps her muttered song had attracted some of the native fauna..? Even so, she presumed that would not be a good thing and so refrained from continuing the lullaby.

Hurrying ever onward, and praying she was heading east, Jyn remained silent for the remainder of the journey.

So it was that when light began to break through the treetops, and a clearing came into sight, relief spread through Jyn like wildfire. Ahead of her spread a vast mountain range, yet it would still be several miles of a journey before she reached their foot. By this point her upper brow was drenched with perspiration, and the very prospect of trekking through indefensible fields was depressing at best.

"Come on, Jyn, the sooner you get to those Mountains, the sooner you can rest and figure out where to go from here..."

Reaching into her satchel she took out the first piece of food her hand touched and ate what turned out to be an energy bar from one of the ration packs she had managed to take from 'her ship's' cargo hold. It had proven to be one of the more useful items she had managed to acquire - yet all the same she knew that she would find a buyer for the rest given time.

[member="K0VA"]

 

[K0VA]

From the wide mouth of the cavern entrance light spilled in a fractured pattern through the leafy canopy and into the depths. Feint rays of the moon casting it's luminescence upon the first few steps within the darker natural and rocky maw, but quickly becoming swallowed up by the shadowy depths inside. With such low-level light, the incandescent muted tones of jade and sapphire plotted the ground from K0VA's onboard visual cortex charted each inch of the terrain. An artificial grid plotted the ground in one foot squares capturing every pebble and uneven ground to further categorize the topography. On occasion some skittering shadow lit up like a miniature flare on it's sensors, before ducking back into into another fold of the long and winding path. Noise echoed back and forth of the semi-circular structure that descended deeper, soon coming to amplify a hollow dripping sound that carried through the deeper parts of the cavern proper. Gentle plops ricocheted left and right, bouncing around the cavern in a soft but recognizable estranged echo of the source.

Resting in the stilled position, movement came in a slow amble as the metallic limbs and claws trod into the cavern itself. The droid frame itself moving on instinct alone to identify the source of the liquid splash that it detected. Thirty-Thirty however pondered something entirely different, but did not dissuade the droid from the investigation. Certainly his own collective family was lost to him, as either they were still on Orax, or they were also uprooted as he had been. Still the chances of finding them were already calculated by K0VA's processing, and the bleak outlook was a disservice to the drive to find family. What was more contemplative for the Shard was the fact that he may never find another collective to belong to, or what's worse, someone would find use for K0VA and program it to continue it's earlier endeavors. He certainly couldn't do much to stop that, and even with this freedom of movement and communication, he still felt like a prisoner. Freedom was both an working illusion and a fantasy at the same time. Thirty-Thirty didn't remember dreaming, or day-dreaming as he heard it called. He simply remembered a brief time where hew as one with the mind of the collective. That memory however was getting more feint by the passing day - while the sound of the water was growing louder and more prominent.

Twenty meters down the winding tunnel spilled into an open expanse where a round portion of the cavern sunk into a pool of crystal clear water. A fresh spring from below the planet's surface drawing the sparkling water into a collection that continually rippled out, off center and to the right. Penetrating the actual rock-bed and water was difficult for the sensory array, until an infrared scan skipped the refraction of light and lit up the cascade of water the was being naturally piped in from an underground levy and into this basin like bowl of stone. Vegetation collected at the bottom, but no river life was making it through the narrow passage, and thus it was pristine and without aquatic life within the underground spring. Certainly smaller microbial life lived within, but nothing of note or consequence. The light however that illuminated the water and cast it's nearly cerulean visage on the rock dome overhead came from a single shaft of light that cut through the darkness and reflected upon the water's surface. Moonlight from and overhead tunnel that wound upwards. Stalactites forming around it's exit indicating that passage of rain water that collected on the rocks overhead gave evidence of how long this place had gone undisturbed.

:: Structural formation natural, three meters long and one meter wide. :: The synthesized voice of the dark wolf like droid echoed in the chamber. The crimson light flashing on it's snout with every syllable. :: Mineral deposits above the surface offer nutrients compatible with crystal growth. Conclusion - investigate. :: The decision was made, and in a matter of three swift movements, K0VA leapt forward, slicing it's claws into the rock wall and leaping to another ledge before locking it's powerful front legs onto the tunnel above, to pull itself into the tunnel itself and exit through the top shelf of the mountain range. Bits of rock fell into the pool below before the machine was able to make it's way top-side into the lush growth of the forest like residence atop the mountain itself. A rocky plane spotted with soil deposits where a glade grew around the hole in a circle sentried by a thicket of trees that focused that moonlight overhead into the beams that reflected in the pool meters below. A view of the jungle depths below that swept around the mountain range itself now visible and sprawled out for miles and beyond.

[member="Jyn Sol"]

 

[Lief]

With nothing to win, and nothing left to lose, it was with some numb excitement that Jyn approached the towering mountains; in awe of what they offered, considerably larger in both height and range than those of Teth, she felt minuscule beside them, dwarfed and insignificant in a Galaxy of greater powers and beings. What was she doing here, amongst the wilds of a world she had no business disturbing? Following the writings of another? And how did she know if she could trust this source or not? It did not make sense, but she had already lost so much on this quest. There was no sense in backing out now.

Peering right up at the mountaintop, Jyn took in a long breath of fresh air and closed her eyes. It was times like these that she realised how foolish she had been in resisting Tirdarius' Force teachings. It was so difficult for her to reach out and grasp at it now that it was almost an alien action. It caused her body to tense up, her heart to palpitate, her breath to quench. But if she could only find that medium, perhaps she could be guided onward. Was the Force all that she had left now? Or had that too abandoned her as she had it?

There was a subtle flex in the atmosphere around her, a faint flicker of hope amidst the darkness, and she grasped onto it with all of her being. Her core sang and the fleck of light grew until it and the darkness were at odds with one another, each fighting for dominance yet neither gaining the upper hand. She let out a shuddered breath and did her best to focus, feeling it grow and expand within her until her entire being was consumed with the battle.

And then she released it.

The resounding result left her head pounding, she could hear the blood flow against her eardrums and when she opened her eyes she felt blinded. A pain behind her eyes gripped on tight and intensified for a moment, and Jyn found herself upon her knees on the ground. Her head was bowed towards the darkness, gaze lit up with a blinding light. And then it was gone. It was all gone. Instead she knelt there, panting and out of breath, her hands upon the top of her thighs for support.

A slight whimper escaped the girl before she forced herself up to her feet. It seemed as though nothing had changed, although something within her had come alive. Fear gripped the core of her being, anxiety overruling logical thought as she worried over whether or not it was a thing she could control. She could not become as the others were, the Sith, the Inquisitors, that was not her fate. She would not permit it.

Taking several uneasy steps forward, Jyn began the ascension of not only her physical state of being, there upon the mountainside, but also her metaphysical core. There was nothing guiding her, she had not managed to muster up more than a basic re-awakening within herself, yet she was driven by impulse and irrational thought. She had to reach the summit by nightfall. She had to find what lay on the other side, what happened when the light of day and the dark of night met in place.

She had to decide her own fate.

[member="K0VA"]

 

[K0VA]

Replacing the echos of the cavern below amplified by the pool of water to distort and reverberate the sounds of nature - the grassy knoll casting it's expanse upon the mountain side was in stark contrast. The sounds here were crisp and clear, combining the movement of tree branches with insect life forms giving off their own ubiquitous presence in a light din that was almost soothing. Hearing was another radically new sense that he'd had to come to grips with, and with the precision of K0VA's sensors, Thirty Thirty was not missing a single beat. Feint illumination sprung around the droid with every shift of metallic paws in the circular trail it plodded around the rocky well where he'd emerged from. The source; a collection of fireflies creating their soft amber glow to pair with the moonlight. Catching a few of them in scope sight, the magnification drew in the miniature glow inducing winged insects, studying them for mere moments and then dismissing them for other potential interests. Despite the mineral deposits as noted earlier, there was no sign of additional crystal growth atop the mountain, which was a disappointment to the Shard, but he'd been use to that for sometime now.

While the droid brain would search for things that were quantifiable by the array of sensors built into function as they would senses - it was the Shard that was taking stock of the more esoteric notions that surrounded him. Beauty of the natural world, harmony of the objects he saw and passed by. These thoughts were unable to share or mix with that of the droid's programming, and thus there was no communication on that part. The sheer dichotomy between the two intelligence housed in the metallic frame did offer a sizable disparity and yet could work together to further either one's goals. Course corrections were being plotted moments after scanning the terrain and moving from the small thicket of trees to further inquire about the mountainside when a pulse wave of energy cut through the landscape and brushed through the force sensitive Shard. Thirty-Thirty paused his movements, as the resonating blast acted like a reverse radar, pinging from the source. Thirty-Thirty drew on that presence, attempting to reason the creation of it, or the intent. Neither seemed to be inherently identifiable, but at least the source could be tracked.

Various lenses of vision swept through casting an image of the forested area of the mountain into clear perspective of heat hues. Infrared vision watching the heat signatures from various plant and animal life paired with the Shard's own conscious searching while it mulled over some questions of it's own. Was the source calling to him, or warning him? Was this a path he was meant to find, or was he moving into a trap of some kind? The Force was still a strange mystery to the Shard, and though he has some acknowledgement of it's brevity and scope, he was still relying on instinctual reasoning rather than hard empirical or experiential data. He was two minds with one soul, and neither was completely sure that the other was a benefit or a hindrance. All Thirty-Thirty could make of this absurd union was that he would make use of the situation as a tool to assist him rather than a weight to burden him. That decision alone seemed to give a better personal outlook than to worry about a demise he had no control over.

Pairing the feeling of the wave that passed over him with telemetry in the droid's mapping system, a harmonic pulse of his own was pushed out, letting the electromagnetic waves that slipped unseen through the forest bounce in direction he'd nearly seen the wave earlier. The ripple came from without this time and decreased smaller into a ring and then a pin point of moving light. Crimson and white hues bled over the figure in the distance shaping it into a rough approximation until the trajectory of their path could be intercepted. Claws dug into the soil beneath as Kova moved into a sprint, dodging trees by mere inches all the while keeping track of the target. Then in an instant of sound judgement, the droid leapt like a dark wolf high into the air, cutting through foliage to land a half a meter from the girl, in a cracking thud, clinging to a large boulder half sunken into the mountain side. Red light from his snout flashed on, while the constant coiling and prehensile motions of K0VA's tail sashayed back and forth at his rear.

:: Identify yourself, and state purpose. :: The synthesized voice ebbed out from speakers mounted within the maw of this mechanical mut. Thirty Thirty didn't often like to start conversations himself, as he'd seen too many untrustworthy sentients moving about the Galaxy. They'd mistreated him, lied to him, and made him kill. The droid could handle introductions, and it seemed to do it in the most effective and straightforward manner. Even though her image was not a threat so far acessed by the droid brain, the Shard was still suspicious as he'd already learned a valuable social lesson. Never judge a book by it's cover.


[member="Jyn Sol"]