The Sky Above - 10.312

[Ben Merasska]

Ben Merasska was thinking.

This, in itself, wasn't an uncommon thing. Ben Merasska thought often, and a lot. But normally his thoughts were sane affairs with little care for insane plots or getting himself into trouble knowingly. This time, however, was different. What he was thinking about was how to break several laws, and was certain to have the authorities after him far more intensely than they had been up to the moment. But more than the laws, was the person he wanted to see.

He was sitting alone in the cockpit of Alderaan, his Ghtroc-720 freighter transport. There was one other person on the ship with him, but he left her alone when she wanted him to, and this was one of those moments. His erstwhile mechanic, Shuvin, a sixteen (or was it seventeen now? He always lost track of that) year old Togrutan female, was visiting Sarin, who had indicated his willingness to help her free her family from slavery.

He'd have to tell them both about his plans, and give them a free choice as to whether they'd stick with him through it.

His mag-lev train of thought was derailed when a sensor pinged a solitary ship floating in the black, which caused him to frown. They were hiding near Corporate Sector space, which was still as yet unclaimed by the Alliance, but had been abandoned by the Empire. With the defection of its main military commander around a year back (a Gossam whose name Ben was unfamiliar with), and the subsequent treaty and movement of Imperial forces, the Corporate Sector Authority found itself floundering without a firm hand. The companies and corporations which had given the Authority its money and provided it with ships and personnel had also mostly fled the sector, leaving behind a lawless and chaotic situation which had been seized by smugglers and pirates and all sorts of unsavory folk alike.

"What eez ze alarm for?" she asked, causing him to jump and give her a wide eyed look of shock. She tittered softly at his reaction and then focused her attention on the pinged ship.

"There's... a shuttle?" he paused, frowning. The sensor wasn't giving him a positive read on the ship's make, but he could tell it wasn't a larger ship than Alderaan. "Just floating there. Looks dead to me."

"Eez it a trap?" she asked, sitting in the co-pilot's seat. He glanced over at her, before looking back at the display.

"We're on the border of Corporate Space. A bit far out for these traps, but there's sure as the hells no real freight being hauled in or through there at the moment. So it's possible. But there's no planets or asteroids close enough to serve as hiding spots, and the ship isn't a freighter. It's too small."

"We should take a closer look," she said firmly. He raised an eyebrow, and she mirrored the expression right back at him, leaning back in the chair and flipping one of her head tails over her shoulder. He sighed and nodded.

"Closer. But I'm not sticking around long enough to get caught, even if it's a good chance to salvage something."

She shrugged, but looked satisfied, while he brought Alderaan closer to the seemingly derelict ship for a closer look.

[Wyl Staedtler]

Everything was quiet. The silence had become a heavy inversion of itself, so deep that it was almost a parody. As he stared at the morose control panel in front of him, Wyl registered a building pressure in his chest that lilted just shy of being painful. It took a moment for the Jedi Padawan to identify the sensation of needing air. He hadn't even realized that he'd been holding his breath, subconsciously trying not to disturb the surreal stillness of drifting aimlessly through the glittering canvas of open space. Probably there ought to have been a measure of anxious unease growing beneath the stretch and pull of his lungs but the boy was remarkably complacent, even mildly optimistic, about the predicament that was taking shape, measure by measure, minute after minute. A good deal of his levity came from a confidence that the chances of dying for any predictable reason in the near future were slim. He was one body of modest bulk and even on a ship of this small size, the emergency life support capacity was more than likely enough to keep him going until a) the primary mechanical failure could be fixed, b) the primary mechanical failure could be ignored in favour of a bit of luck and spit that would carry him onto a main shipping route, or c) some other daring soul happened upon him.

In hindsight, bringing along a long-range transmitter would have been an intelligent scrap of planning. Communication systems were unreliable at the best of times and in moments of power cell emergencies, they were one of the first casualties. Wyl had spent years living on ships, picking the brains of mechanics and pestering his way into know-how. Such a basic oversight on his part was unforgivable and he felt foolish for it, but none of this venture had been planned. Not all of the blame could lie on his unprepared status. It had all kicked off with a simple, familiar itch to let loose, to be cut free of ties to solid, unmoving soil, and when skimming across the atmosphere of Ossus hadn't settled the rolling pitch of his stomach, Wyl had gone a bit farther. One hour turned into several, which turned into an excessive knot, and then -

Well, Morgan had always told him that doing a blind jump was an act of desperation. Now Wyl had firsthand experience to support that theory. It was frustrating to realize that once again, older and wiser had been in the right. Just once, youth and inexperience deserved a notch in the victory column.

"Hang on, then," Wyl straightened, a bright flicker of interest catching in the corners of his eyes. Unable to rely on warning sensors, the boy found the slow looming presence that brushed up against his senses - admittedly not as sharply focused as they ought to be (and really, he wondered, ought he to have been depending so heavily on mechanical assistance so heavily in the first place? Was that a sign that this abandonment was meant to be? He was a Jedi. It shouldn't have taken him so by surprise to notice the trickle of life thrumming just beyond his reach) - and the fraction between his eyes making a visual correlation out of the viewport to be a strange sensation. Not startling, per se, but for a moment Wyl blinked stupidly, unsure if what he was seeing was actually what he was seeing.

Within the gap of his indecision, the approaching freighter had gained enough distance that Wyl was fairly certain that it had spotted him. "Lucky break, Steadtler," he breathed, a twinge of relief scrunching his features as he reached out and manually vented a little coolant from the engines. He hoped the cloudy burst of frozen liquid that resulted fell more to the inviting side of things rather than the creepy, abandoned ghost-ship angle. He wanted to prompt help, not incineration. Without much else at his disposal, this was his best shot.

[Ben Merasska]

“Coolant. It would be dangerous, but the engines seem to be out. Well, let's just move on, then."

But Palara grinned at him and he finally just sighed and moved the freighter closer to the stranded vessel.

“I think zere eez someone aboard eet," she murmured sitting up straight and giving the dead ship a much more intent look.

Ben frowned and felt his conscience start to prickle at the thought of leaving someone to die there. It veritably stung when he continued to consider the option of just leaving. This was none of his business, not his concern, just go and go.

“Let's see if they want any help," the Alderaani captain said reluctantly. Palara immediately set to, and a few minutes later, they were standing at the umbilical, staring at the closed hatch into the shuttle. With microgenerator in hand, it was the work of seconds to get it open.

“Hello? Anyone alive in there?" he called into the shuttle, remaining on his side of the tiny bridge that connected the two ships.

[Wyl Staedtler]

The answer that came was a bright laugh. Not the best advertisement for sanity, really, but Wyl thought that was an unreasonable expectation for anyone willing to pick up stragglers to have. Besides which, sanity was a relative term and he was happy because at least now there was a bit of forward momentum. Whether or not it was of the sort that he would live to regret remained to be seen but that indecision, that flickering uncertainty that lapped against his skin like sea-foam, was something that Wyl had missed. It made the charity of life feel more valuable.

"And keen on staying that way, at least for a little while longer," Wyl's head appeared from around the corner. His eyes swept over the figure framed by the narrow lining of the gateway that spanned from the freighter to his humble chunk of space debris, a furrow of concentration rising between his brows. After a few seconds his expression cleared and Wyl grinned. "You're definitely not pirates. Not dangerous ones, at least. That's one less complication to worry about. As for me," he pressed a splayed hand to his chest, the other rising to grip the top of the hatch as he leaned out a bit.

"I'm Wyl. Only soul on board and nope, not because of some dire epidemic that wiped the others out. S'grand of you to stop. There's not much traffic out here." He frowned. "Incidentally, where is here, exactly?"

[Palara Iscandar]

“On ze bordair of ze Alliance and ze Corporate Secteur," the twi'lek responded, amusement coloring her accented tones. “Such as it is. You are alone?"

Ben wasn't nearly as good at being subtle.

“How old are you, kid?" He asked. He almost asked, she knew, about the boy's parents, but both he and Palara knew the galaxy was far from a kind place. Any number of things could have happened to them which would result in a teenage boy being out in the middle of nowhere in a dead shuttle.

“My name is Palara. And zis is Ben, capitain of ze Alderaan. What is your name?"

[Wyl Staedtler]

Alright, well. That wasn't quite as bad as it could have been. With a rough idea of where he was (and everything that wasn't strictly seamed out with coordinates was only a rough idea by his thinking), Wyl's mild concern dissipated and was replaced wholly by the growing sense of self-satisfied curiosity that had been drifting about his dark and lonely cockpit. He gave off a short nod, forehead creasing as he mentally calculated an estimate of how long it would take him to get home. If he went home. Which, he realized with a stitch of surprise, had only occurred to him now out of a sense of obligation. Huh. That sort of seemingly absentminded reluctance didn't bode well for a quick shuffle back to Ossus.

The furrows in Wyl's forehead deepened. Tak was already going to kill him for being selfish enough to flicker off without so much as a tip of the proverbial hat in her direction, especially now when they had so newly rediscovered one another. She'd go utterly supernova if he abandoned her entirely for the sake of unpredicted fun. It wasn't so much the leaving, of course, but the leaving of her behind while he scouted for adventure. That was a pursuit which had always belonged to them in a heavily plural application.

"It's Wyl. Wyl Staedtler, if you want to get formal," Wyl addressed the Twi'lek first, almost off-handedly. He didn't mind repeating himself; he'd once met an old Bothan trader who had asked him where he came from no less than eight times in thirty minutes, forgetting again within a few sips of firewhiskey. The other question was slightly more volatile and had he not been so cheered by his rescue and the subsequent opportunities it could potentially provide, Wyl might have taken offense at the insinuation that his age had anything to do with his proficiency to survive (all evidence to either side of that argument notwithstanding.)

One shoulder hitched up in a shrug and Wyl looped a casual hand through the air. "That's a broad question. It depends on what unit of measurement you're using. By standard galactic record, I'm 12. If we were on Mhlamyatii IV, I'd be courting 64 and clearly aging gracefully." He grinned. "Whichever answer makes you more likely to not doom me to drifting aimlessly for another few hours is the one we're gonna go with. Deal?"

[Ben Merasska]

“If I was going to leave you here, I wouldn't have stopped kid," Ben said grumbling-like. Palara muttered something about believing the boy had been saying he was well. If he had been toying with leaving the kid behind, seeing her the least bit embarrassed would have changed his mind.

“Well Wyl Staedtler," the Alderaani freighter captain said. “I've a mind to take you back to your own. But this isn't a pleasure liner. You'll be working for it, or I'll take you right back here and leave without a second thought or the least bit of guilt on my heart. You understand me?"

He ignored Palara's look of amused disbelief.

“The first payment will be letting me an' Palara here take a look about your little boat for anything that might be of use. I say letting, but we'll be doing so regardless of your opinion."

He fixed Wyl with a not unkind look, while Palara gracefully moved past them with a couple empty bags and some tools on a small hoversled.

[Wyl Staedtler]

Free reign to loot was a reasonable trade in exchange for not being left to crest listlessly between the stars. The offer was one that Wyl likely would have made himself, had he been forced to play a hand and bid for his salvation. It was nice to avoid the tedious process of negotiations - he'd always hated lessons on the flowery art of diplomacy - and cut straight to the chase for once.

The boy stepped to the side with an agreeable nod, allowing passage aboard the dead vessel.

"Not to be rude or anything, because she's beautiful and all, but m'pretty sure you don't have to worry about anyone confusing your ship for a vacation cruiser," Wyl chirped, beckoning the pair to follow him. His own personal items were sparse and any delicate belongings were already on his person but Wyl wasn't overtly concerned anyway. If Captain Ben and Palara were harboring any ill-will, they were doing a good job of shielding it. Beyond a low hum of reluctance, like static on a lazy commlink connection, he couldn't sense anything troubling. "At any rate, knock yourself out. It's an older model but the carbon bindings are all new. Techs replaced 'em a couple months ago, which is probably why she held out through the jump instead of kicking it during, thank all stars."

[Ben Merasska]

"Don't see how the stars had anythin' to do with it, kid," Ben remarked, suddenly a lot more cheerful at the mention of new carbon bindings. "But we're scouring her from top to bottom, outside to inside, so it'll be some time. Might be faster if you pitched in, now that I think about it."

Palara laughed from inside the cockpit, where she was digging into the control panels willy-nilly and pulling out circuit boards and wiring and memory cores and tossing them lightly into a bag. Ben made his way to her, and began helping. The next two hours were filled with shouted questions and answers. Would they be able to rig a coil from this to that? How many of these did they have? What the hells is this?

In that time, they had scoured the little shuttle completely, down to its skeleton hull and framing. There were plenty of pieces and parts that were left on the floor or — when the gravity controls were pillaged — floating about; parts too busted and broken to even loot for salvage prices, parts too big for them to move onto the freighter. But those were few compared to the sheer amount of odds and ends that the human and the twi'lek did take. Ventilation covers and controls, fusion-cutter fuel, even the rubber coating on the wiring was stripped off for use later in a jury rigged boot sole maker. Working parts for sure, but even the buttons and switches were pillaged in some cases. Ben even donned a vac-suit, and taking a fusion-cutter and some crates made his way over the shuttle's exterior, extracting nodes and cylinders and antennae and every sort of useful thing there was to be had from it.

In all, it was three hours before Ben set foot on Alderaan with the last bit of loot from the doomed shuttle. As the cargo hatch sealed, Ben hurried to place the parts in a corner and made sure the crate was magnetically jacked in; there'd be no tumbling cargo damage this time, thank you very much.

"Has Palara shown you around Alderaan yet?" Ben asked the kid (Wyl, have to remember that). Palara shifted, looking a bit guilty. Ben assumed not.

[Wyl Staedtler]

Wyl didn't consider himself a sentimental person. That was a luxury that hadn't been granted enough space to take root and he'd witnessed enough of his comrades making swift sacrifices to understand that in order to survive, one needed to learn the difference between appreciation and attachment and then moderate accordingly. Still, he found that line more given to blurring when it came to ships. The shuttle was nothing much to look at, a simple loaner, yet a twist of guilt pinged against Wyl's conscience as the dismantling began. She'd served him well and he respected the mechanics of any vessel, for they bore the responsibility of protecting life and opening up new worlds. At least her parts would be going to good use, though, and not left alone to grow brittle from the razing, cold pressure of space.

Bidding a silent apology to the shuttle, Wyl patted a bit of paneling gently before tugging his shirt wsleeves up and setting to. The work of stripping the ship clean was a welcome distraction after so many hours of quiet thought and as they settled into a rhythm of metal scrapes and muffled grunts of effort, Wyl found himself relishing the physical labour. It gave him the opportunity to observe his rescuers, to note their interactions with one another and watch the way they worked - efficiently, all told, although with a concentrated air that reminded him that out here, in transit, one had to be stark and sure about seizing whatever opportunities one stumbled across, lest they disappear like strata dust.

Most of the obvious salvage work was finished within an hour or two and as he hefted a carton of angled connectors into the main ship, Wyl made the executive decision that his help wasn't needed anymore. It was funny how executive decisions depended largely on the intensity of tricep pain.

Instead, he settled himself helpfully in the corridor of Alderaan (sentimental, sentimental, sentimental) and cheerily chatted away to Palara, who hummed distracted snippets of noise at him in response. The arrangement was pleasant. Neither one of them had to commit to an actual conversation and Wyl was able to wander a little, scope out his new surroundings in snatches and grabs before loping back to helpfully watch the Twi'lek lug some other bit of hardware aboard. By the time the captain came back in and set about putting himself to rights, Wyl felt less like a blind man groping about in a large, open room. Not comfortable. Just better.

"Nope. That pleasure's all yours, Captain Ben," Wyl said. "Where are you headed, by the way?"

[Ben Merasska]

"Just call me Ben," the Alderaani replied, stretching and pulling off the vac suit and hanging it in a recessed spot along the hull of the cargo bay. A push of a button, and the recess was closed. "Call me Captain every time, an' both you and I will get tired of it."

He gestured to Wyl, and spoke with Palara quietly for a second. She gracefully walked off and out of the cargo bay.

"Well, let me show you around then, and we'll talk about that when we get to it." Ben's hand waved about absently. "This is the cargo bay. Or cargo bay one. There's a second on the other side of the ship. Cargo bay two, if you couldna guessed that."

The cargo bay was utilitarian, sporting no real decorations or personalization. Ben led him to the back corner, where a small set of stairs led to an open doorway. Ben showed Wyl the repair bay, which was much more personalized, though not much decorated. Shelves and cubby holes were scattered about, all neatly organized with parts and labelled. Several particular kinds of parts were numerous, and these were helpfully designated 'Good', 'Serviceable', and 'Shit', respectively. On numerous hooks on the walls were manuals and diagrams of all kinds, showing how to fix any number of problems or replace any sort of part on the ship.

Ben showed him the escape pods, or what would have been the escape pods, but those had been exchanged. One had been outfitted to hold a heavy duty speeder with a hover sled attached to the wall on the side, and the other...

"You don't need to know what's in there, kid," Ben said, leading him into the common area. The common area and the galley were positively home-like; most of the utilitarian aspects remained, but a thin rug covered some of the floor and the table was a wooden top, which wasn't standard configuration in any light freighter. Bulbs and tubers hung on racks in recesses in the galley, and there were some pictures and art pieces, mostly of Nubian ships, hung on the walls. Instead of the standard grey or its many darker and lighter shades, the dominant colors in the common area were green and brown. Painted, obviously, by Ben himself, given his look of satisfaction.

There was a jolt at this point, and Palara's voice echoed from the internal comm.

"We are away, Ben."

There wasn't much point to answering her, so Ben didn't. Instead, he led Wyl to the bunks. There were four of them; one them was a repurposed refresher.

"Each bunk has its own 'fresher, see. Saves room. If we ever need to share our bunks..." Ben pulled at a handle on the wall, and a bed folded out. There were four handles in the bunk Ben was showing Wyl. He walked over to a small indention on the far side of the bunk which sported a solitary lonely mirror, and pulled at another handle. A toilet folded down, and he pushed it up. Another handle, a sink. A small lever was pulled, and a shower head popped out. Pushing the lever back into place caused it to return to its former hidden position. "There's a divider that can give you some privacy. The showers are water. Odd, yeah, but nothing beats a water clean. We conserve by having the water timed. Lather up, five minutes at most to rinse off, and done. Recyclers are the newest and most efficient ones on the market, so we can do it. Expensive, but worth it."

He led Wyl up a ladder to the cockpit, where Palara was setting coordinates into the computer. She glanced back, smiled, and went back to work.

"I don't care if you're the best pilot the galaxy's seen since Skywalker," Ben started once they were in. "You touch nothing in here 'less I tell you, yeah?"

He sighed, and gestured to Wyl and Palara, and led the two of them back into the common area to sit at the table.

"Now, we may not be able to get you back to your own right away. There's a livin' to be made out here. But where're you from, and where'll we need to be taking you? And we'll probably need to be getting in touch with someone to let them know you're livin' and not frozen to death out in the vast black."

[Wyl Staedtler]

Rather like a scolded cat trying to appear casual, Wyl slowly drew his hand away from the toggle he'd been about to rotate. It appeared innocuous enough and the boy was confident with his knowledge of flight mechanisms to presume that it wouldn't have disrupted their current momentum, but apparently Ben knew all too well the temptation to fiddle when presented with a shiny, new-to-you array of instruments. Of course, there were times when it was alright to feel up another man's cockpit. This wasn't one of them. A sheepish expression pooled onto Wyl's face and he gave the back of his neck a rub, embarrassed that he'd lapsed on such basic etiquette. At least neither Captain Ben - er, Ben - nor Palara seemed particularly enraged. Either they'd not noticed his near-slip or they'd chosen to let it fall upon their good graces and excuse him.

"She's a treat," Wyl praised as he trailed along between the two into the mess. He wasn't just blowing smoke at them, either. Alderaan had clever modifications that were practical, too, and interesting. Wyl was already itching to meander back into the repair bay and lose himself in the treasure trove of whatsits and thingamabobs. There was beauty waiting to be forged in that humble, brilliant space and how Ben managed to get anything done rather than just holing away and creating was a testament to the man's industry. Or maybe it was simply proof that he was an adult who prioritized in an adult manner (read: stale and claustrophobically) rather than letting the whims of the universe and his soul take precedence. Or, you know, maybe Ben was more the wandering soul and Palara was the tinkerer. Wyl gave her a sidelong glance as he flopped bonelessly into a seat.

He cleared his throat. Lifted one shoulder in a loose approximation of a shrug that he was trying to perfect before he became an official teenager. It didn't quite work, not with the open lines of his expression or the wide honesty strung in the blue of his eyes.

"M'from Ossus," Wyl said. His mouth twisted thoughtfully. "Well, I mean, now I am. Most recently. That's where we settled. It's all very complicated and yetnot really at all, that's just something people say when they don't want to get into it, but yes. You're right. At the very least I ought to shoot out a transmission to let the hangar crew know I cost 'em another shuttle. Aw, hells. That's just not the sort of long-range greeting a guy wants to send."

[Ben Merasska]

"M'from Ossus," Wyl said. And he continued to speak. Ben grimaced and glanced over to Palara, who gave him a much more subtle glance — not much more than a flick of her irises in his direction, he was jealous beyond belief — and looked back at Wyl, who had just finished agreeing to the idea of sending a message back there.

"Hold up, kid — Wyl," Ben said. He was looking at Wyl now with an expression of anxiety. "You're a Jedi?"

Wyl nodded, his brow creasing, and Ben let out a gust of air and leaned back with a groan.

"This is great, just great," he moaned. "'Let's lay low. Keep off the scanners of the Alliance.' Can't very well do that with a kid Jedi on board!"

Palara was frowning slightly, but that's all she was doing.

"I 'ope zis does not make you uncomfortable, but we aren't on ze best terms with ze Alliance right now. And if you're a Jedi..." she paused, and there was a glimmer of suppressed curiosity in her eyes, sharp and pointed. But she didn't say anything else except, "...zat means zey will be looking for you. And when zey find you, zey will find us."

"Alright. Alright," Ben said, sitting forward again. "We can let him off on New Alderaan. He can shoot his folks or guardians or whatever it is those Jedi do with kids a message and we'll be long gone by the time they get there."

Palara shook her head.

"Zey are probably looking for 'im now," she said much more controlled and calm than the captain. "Alliance channels. Zey are probably..."

Ben's eyes closed and he frowned.

"The shuttle."

He stood and tore off into the cockpit, scrambling up the ladder as quickly as he could.

"As we planned," Palara shouted as the ship's engines warmed up. "Syngra, Lianna, Belderone, Trogan, Sy Myrth, Boonta! Use one of ze decoy transponders. It will work as long as we need for it to work. Maybe not long, but we are on a tight schedule, no?"

Ben didn't reply, but the sound of the hyperspace generators and dilation arrays warming up answered for him.

Palara turned to Wyl, her expression strained, but sympathetic.

"Stay 'ere," she commanded, and made her way to the cockpit, climbing the ladder much more gracefully than Ben had managed.

[Wyl Staedtler]

On the whole, Wyl was impressed by just how quickly things escalated. He wasn't really sure what was going on (being at the mercy of unknown details left a lot to be desired) but before he even had time to take Ben's reaction to the Jedi personally, the man was buying a first-class ticket on the Panic Express. One way, with no refunds and full dinner service. There was a fluid grace to the way his thoughts sprung forward and the milling energy beneath them lapped at Wyl's mind like a particularly anxious and trembling Khala Hound, all purpose without a solid goal to aim towards. Before the padawan could even weigh the potential disaster behind 'not on best terms with the Alliance', a statement which had variegated shades of meaning, the kitchen was assaulted with a flurry of motion and he found himself left with only his own raised eyebrows for company. The resulting silence seemed louder by comparison to the hubbub that had preceded it. And lonelier.

"Uh," Wyl said, staring at the space where Ben and Palara had disappeared through. It took him only a few seconds to make up his mind and follow after.

Taking the twi'lek's words as a suggestion rather than an order, the boy abandoned post and made for the cockpit. There was a bustle of activity waiting there. He had to admire the procedural efficiency with which Alderaan's two-being crew approached freaking the frell out. All of it was completely unnecessary, of course, but it was unnecessary with style.

Standing back, Wyl cleared his throat. "'Scuse me," he started, "but I think you're making a rancor out of a maulrat. Nobody's gonna be looking for me yet." The words didn't seem to have any effect. "This is sort of par for the course. I'm missing more than I'm present and - well, okay, they're possibly irritated about the shuttle being out of approved range but they're used to that, too, and they're more likely to be working up a good speech about protocol than sending out a retrieval party. That'd just be frivolous. Captain Ben? Hello? No, see, this is me trying to tell you that the chances of being ambushed by Alliance forces on my behalf in the next few hours is probably pretty low. This really can't be good for your blood pressure."

[Ben Merasska]

There was a pause, and Ben and Palara looked back at the teen in unison. It appeared the boy's words had finally pierced the haze of panic that had gripped them. They shared a small look, Ben frowning now and his brows pulled low over his eyes while Palara just seemed relieved, before Palara went back to inputting hyperdrive coordinates, and Ben spun around completely in his seat to face Wyl.

"Hold on a second there, kid," he said, appearing much calmer, if irritated. He opened his mouth to speak a few times, but he was obviously wrestling with himself over something. Finally, he settled with, "How long do you think it would take for them to start looking for you?"

[Wyl Staedtler]

That was difficult to pin down in exact terms. Wyl's brow creased thoughtfully. Now that the initial rush seemed to have ebbed into something manageable, the boy didn't feel reluctant to take his time in considering the matter. Luck had been on his side when he'd become stranded, for he'd not been drifting too long before Ben and Palara had stumbled upon him. Had that been fate? The galaxy was a large place and the odds of jumping blindly and then being rescued in good time from a limping ship weren't as high as the holovids liked to make out. Maybe this was all actually supposed to be happening. Maybe the entire reason Wyl had been feeling itchy all week, loose and slate-shambled beneath a flimsy veneer of concentration, was that he'd known that somewhere out there in the great wide world, there were two people who needed to find them. The Force had whispered stranger things to lesser men.

- But, yes. Time.

"Dunno," Wyl answered elegantly. He supplied Ben with an apologetic look. "Not exactly. But I got lost for months when I was much younger than I am now and let's just say..." the padawan paused, mouth tensed slightly as he felt the shape of the words in his mouth to see if they were right, "this probably won't come as a surprise. My being gone, that is. The implication's been hanging in the air for weeks now, I just finally acted on it."

Wyl glanced at the array of controls. Palara was still punching in commands and as he watched the fluid dancing of her hands, he found himself aching to know what that felt like. That sort of familiarity with being cannoned into action with your pulse drumming a ragged beat in your ears all the while.

"Scramble your comm and let me send official word that I'm not coming back straight away," Wyl suggested. "I'll give them coordinates for the shuttle in case they want to retrieve what's left, and by then we'll be long gone. Nothing to worry about."

[Ben Merasska]

"Kid," Ben's voiced wavered. "How long?"

But Palara reached up above his head and flicked a switch, distracting him from his altogether deepening anxiety. She shot him a small little grin out of the corner of her mouth.

Ben's eyes found Wyl again, and he once more wrestled with himself. He sighed.

"Were you under the care of Jedi back then, kid? They don't have a lot of ships, I'm guessing. If it's Alliance, or — please don't tell me this — or Cizerack, they might be already on their way here. And you're asking me to steal you?"

There it was, just more evidence to him that the galaxy had flipped its lid, gone bonkers, had mynocks in its atmosphere, was absolutely and completely crazy. And the worst part of it was that he was considering it. He tried picturing explaining the situation to the Alliance while they were carting him off to the most out of the way prison they had. He didn't like the image he was making up, and wouldn't like the reality even more, he suspected.

"You know how much trouble I'll get in for this, right?" he asked Wyl, dropping his head and running his hand through his hair. "Even if they weren't already looking for me. This would be it."

"Ze coordinates are prepared, Ben," Palara said. As if those words held her opinion, Ben seemed to take strength and a cue from them, and moved from the pilot's seat to the comm station, scrambling the comm transceiver and then leaving the rest to Wyl with a wave of his hand. He still obviously wasn't happy with the situation, but from his actions it was clear he'd decided not to take the boy back just yet.

[Wyl Staedtler]

"It's not stealing if I'm a willing participant in the act," Wyl grinned. "If anything, it's the opposite. It's an act of generosity. This is a gift, Ben, and you are the benefactor and the beneficiary because you are giving me to, uh, to your...self, er," he winced and paused. That had followed a much more logical line of reasoning in his head. Somehow putting voice to it had lent a slightly skeevy, criminal air to the situation. Translation really was a study in losing all intended meaning, wasn't it? The fact that beings actually managed successful communication at all was frankly astonishing, a minor miracle when you thought about it.

Since there was no use in attempting to salvage the mess, the boy let the awkward silence swell and then snap into nothingness. He gratefully turned to the comm station with a ruffled clearing of his throat.

Now that he was actually presented with having to compose a message, Wyl's mind went treacherously blank. He wasn't sure if it was the reeded sense of reluctance seeping off of Captain Ben or something that belonged to him that made droplets of words, burning away in the high desert sheen of possibility. The sound of Palara weaving their future together over at the control board registered lightly in the back of Wyl's mind as he breathed out slowly, following the slow deflation of his lungs with his mind as he stretched out and called upon the Force to ground him a little; there were enough stars out there for the time being, his feet needed to be tacked to firmer ground right now.

With a pursing of his lips, Wyl tapped a hand against the comm controls and changed the transmission source to accommodate a written message. The first line was simply a string of coordinates, directions to the husk of the shuttle, just in case anyone were interested in retrieving it. He knew that he could trust the recipient to figure out what they were and who to give them to. That business finished, Wyl quickly punched in a few necessary words:

Fang,

Needed to stretch my legs. Would you be good enough to let the others know not to keep dinner warm for me?

I'll bring you back something from far away.


Pilot


With a small twinge of regret (he could see her face, the exact stillness of it as she read the message and took in his meaning, and it was a pure and unrefined guilt that hooked into his chest and pulled sharply), Wyl double-checked the frequency and reread what he'd written a few times. Satisfied, he sent it. Good. Done. That was that, then.

He wished the captain was a little more enthusiastic. Ben's grimness was really harshing his vibe.

"So, where are we going, exactly?" Wyl asked, perhaps more loudly than necessary because he had the gnawing sensation that he needed to fill a void. "And more importantly, did you remember the ration bars while you were pillaging my ride?"

[Ben Merasska]

Wyl's exuberant justification trailed off, and Ben only looked at the boy with anxious eyes. As the teen bent to his task of letting people know he lived, Ben turned to Palara, who merely nodded at the navicomputer display, and Ben squinted slightly while he read off the coordinates and their displayed planet. He let out a gust of air and glanced at the twi'lek, who only smiled in satisfaction and continued prepping the ship for a jump to hyperspace.

"Palara, if you weren't so high maintenance, I'd ask you to marry me," he said, collapsing into the pilot's seat.

"Good zing you did not, or I would 'ave to say no," she replied haughtily, turning a knob and glancing out the viewport. "You are not rich enough to support my lifestyle."

Ben huffed a laugh. Wyl had finished sending his message, and was looking at them. As a Jedi, the kid was empathetic and then some, so his expression of unease was probably because of Ben's own uneasiness. Ben allowed the question to sink in before responding.

"We're going to a place called Rhen Var," Ben said. "Sit down, strap in, and I hope you brought a warm coat."

He didn't say anything about ration bars, but the moment the ship entered hyperspace, Palara was gracefully sliding down the ladder from the cockpit and into the galley. A moment later, she was back, tossing Ben and Wyl two foil-wrapped ration bars and a small sealed package with a twist-off cap: nutrient water, filled with amino acids and minerals and other vitamins that ration bars either didn't have in them, or were short on. She sat down, opening her water packet with deft fingers, and glanced at Wyl curiously.

"What eez it like," she asked, turning the chair so she faced Wyl fully, her curiosity broadcast from her face and if the boy was a Jedi, Ben assumed he was reading her emotions through the Force too, or however they did their wizard mumbo-jumbo. "Ossus? What are ze Jedi like?"

[Wyl Staedtler]

Rhen Var.

Skipping a painful beat, Wyl's heart punched him in the ribs just to make sure he'd been listening. The Outer Rim was no foreign territory to the boy but the closest he'd ever gotten to the Tobali system was in history class with Rev Solomon. Though he was hardly a model student, Wyl enjoyed such lessons immensely. They were rich and riveting, the sort of thick stories one could really chew on. For a boy who'd cut his teeth on Captain Coruscant holovids, the thrill of blowing back the dust from real-life legends was absolutely intoxicating and fed his rabid imagination, giving him space to spread the web of his throbbing wanderlust out upon. Now there was an opportunity for that canvas to shift from a theoretical longing into something sharply tangible. It made Wyl's blood sing.

"I didn't bring anything," he said absently. The excessive ambition of his jaunt had been wildly spontaneous - though if he were to be honest, there was some small part of him that had known when he'd taken the shuttle out that morning that it wasn't just for a routine fly-by; otherwise, why would he have bothered to tidy up the mechanical minefield that were his quarters beforehand?

Wyl flopped into his seat and did up the crash webbing with the ease of familiarity, a dreamy expression on his face. Great wars and lost artifacts, Sunriders and Siths, clamoured for attention in his thoughts and he got lost in the thrill of them, recalling the various dates that they'd so recently studied.

Ration bars, as it turned out, made effective projectiles. Wyl jumped out of his private world as his face was assaulted by the tiny, rock-like rectangle, and it was a credit to his trained reflexes that he managed to catch the nutrient water before it beaned him, too.

"Huh? Oh." Wyl rubbed at his forehead. "Ossus is pretty and tame, I guess. Lots of terrain to explore. If nature's your cup of caf, you'd not ever be bored. The Jedi... " the padawan trailed off, his expression creasing faintly. He felt a bit as though he were about to throw pebbles at a retaining wall; there was an overwhelming bulk to the proper answer, and he had only a pittance to offer. "They're -- uh, we're... sturdy. Even. As a general group, I mean. Everyone's different, s'all relative to who you happen to be with at any given moment, but for the most part things are very, mm. Steady?"

[Ben Merasska]

""Kid, if your transmission hadn't been sent to Ossus, I'd think you were lying," Ben said, flipping a couple switches above his head and turning to face them. Palara only seemed amused, far too amused than the situation called for, at least, and she drank her water and leaned back. "We've got about an hour or so before we get to Rhen Var. Since you don't have any coats or jackets, you'll either have to make due with something of mine, or stay on the ship."

"Shall I stay 'ere zen?" Palara asked archly. Ben stopped, sweating a moment before he squinted at the twilek and sighed.

"You are too good at deliveries, Palara," he said finally. Palara grinned and took Ben's seat in front.

"'oo said I was joking?" she asked, causing Ben to almost slip down the ladder from the cockpit. Ben could almost feel her amusement following him to his bunk.

"Come on, kid," Ben said. A moment later he added, "Wyl."

Ben's bunk was an understated affair, its walls covered with holostills and paper pictures of ships of all kinds save for military craft, a single bunk with the other spaces for bunks being turned into shelves holding datadiscs, datapads, holobooks, and more than a couple starship models. Ben palmed open a small door along the far wall from his bunk, and began rifling through clothing drawers and cubby-holes. Some thick jackets and coats were tossed out onto his bunk, before he pulled one, a thick yet still trim beige affair with a banded collar and several discolorations and tell-tale burn scars on it. On the left arm was a single brevet line of a colored tiling, and on the left was a patch of an X-wing with engine trails and lasers firing. 'Red Squadron' was printed on the top of the patch, and below it was twenty five stars all neatly arranged. Ben looked at it for a long moment, before tossing it onto the bed as well.

"All of 'em will be big on you," the freighter captain, still looking through his clothing. "Just choose whatever fits best I suppose."

[Wyl Staedtler]

Wyl certainly wasn't a fashion icon but he was definitely above wearing the collected detritus of a molting frigate hawk. The boy's eyebrows rose in judgmental speculation as he eyed the knee-length feathered piece, unsure if it was the ruched layers of balding down that gave it an air of freakish tragedy or if it was the rolled velvet collar that made it unsalvagable. Why did Ben even own something like this? He seemed normal enough - though stars knew that was a term served up on a grand sliding scale - and his current wardrobe, in the muted shades of a white-washed desert, didn't hint at some deep love of attending extravagant operettas in opulent halls while dressed as a wealthy, eccentric grandmother, which was just about the only appropriate use for this garment that Wyl could come up with. Maybe it was a novelty item.

Or maybe it was his special occasion coat. Wyl suffocated it by dragging a thicker, modest black number over it. The world was a better place for his mercy.

"Hey, astral!" Like excited children, Wyl's hand darted over to the flight jacket and hauled it closer, the slip-squeak noise of fabric rubbing against fabric punctuating the quiet. It was low-lit in the room and with an absent care the boy flicked his hand toward the wall, nudging the dimmer dial up so that he could see the fine seamwork better. Wyl whistled lowly, a wolfish grin stretching across his face as he traced the battle wounds on the battered coat. Now this belonged in a captain's wardrobe. Awe brightening the seafroth hues of his eyes, Wyl twisted to Ben. "Man, were you - "

And then he saw the tail end of the expression that lingered on the man's face. Caught the edge of things left behind and something like regret, only more deeply worn, and the way it tightened Ben's jaw for a fractured second.

Some things were better left in closets.

"This is cool," Wyl said softly, giving the jacket a little shake before setting it aside with a touch of care. He grabbed instead a thick parka, charcoal grey and lined on the inside with a soft shell of tightly-woven fleece. It had a hood with fur and was probably meant to hit mid-thigh, though it would settle somewhere nearer his calves, but it was the zip cords along the inside that sealed the deal. Hopefully he'd be able to cinch the coat a little closer to his body and keep in more heat.

Hefting it in the air, Wyl nodded at Ben. "Thanks." He started to shrug into it, testing the fit. "So, how come you're running hot? Did you kill someone or something?"

[Ben Merasska]

Ben tossed the other coats into the closet space before looking at the flight jacket for another long moment. Finally, he shrugged it on and fastened it quickly and smoothly, while giving Wyl a look that was somewhere between a constipated grimace and a stern frown.

"What if I did kill someone?" he asked, fishing a scarf out of another cubby-hole and closing the closet. He couldn't keep up the pretense though, and walked out of his bunk back to the cockpit. "I didn't kill anyone, kid. But people are ending up dead anyway, and at the best of times the Alliance and I aren't on the best of terms, yeah? I'm trying to figure out who's doing the killing so I won't end up sentenced to some prison station out by Bespin or something. And right now, I'd get less'n two words out before they'd have me in binders and gagged."

He figured that was a good enough explanation for current events. If he got around to talking about Uncle Den, planet killer missiles, and Cirr, they might miss their stop at Rhen Var and end up out in the Unknown Regions or something. Really, it was the missiles that scared him the most. Those were secrets the Alliance would stop at nothing to keep from getting out, and even Wyl as a Jedi might not keep some of the more unscrupulous Alliance agents hunting him from gunning down the ship.

He ascended the ladder and smoothly traded places with Palara, who winked at Wyl before sliding down the ladder and heading off to her own bunk.

He frowned.

"Me runnin' hot doesn't bother you?" he asked, checking how long they had until they reached the ice planet. "Cause it scares the hells out of me."

[Wyl Staedtler]

"Being bothered and being scared are two entirely separate things," Wyl pointed out, shifting awkwardly to one side as he came up the ladder so that Palara had room to pass. She was the sort of woman that Wyl liked, one who knew the span of her own skin and filled it completely, and while she was ultimately just one more name in the long list of empowered women who seemed to litter his life, she was one of the few who hadn't seen him as a scrawny eight-year-old trucking about in novelty pajamas with furry Ewok feet and thus her wink had a bit of added moxie. The boy blushed faintly and lifted a hand, then seemed unsure of what to do with said appendage and quickly withdrew it to rub at the back of his neck. Thankfully, the twi'lek was gone before he had to resort to some other nonchalant diversion and Wyl felt the relief of that escape flood his belly, loosely unfurling so that he swanned to the vacated co-pilot's spot with liquid ease.

The boy's chestnut hair tumbled across his forehead as he shifted his weight onto one hip and pressed his cheek against the seat. Outside was a peaceful shroud of black space, the glittering islands of stars reflecting in Wyl's eyes as he stared out at them. He'd missed them, he realized. The quiet, lonely reach of their company and the endless hope that their distance provided.

"I haven't killed anyone either, for the record. Not yet. But we were on the lam for a long time," he didn't glance at Ben, though his legs were sprawled in the direction of the man. "You'd be surprised how common it is. Most everyone's got something to run from, seems like. Keeps the galaxy interesting."

[Palara Iscandar]

"Kid — Wyl — interesting out here usually translates to running scared for your life. I don't ask for much. Truth be told I'd settle for a life less frightening."

Palara re-entered the cockpit and cocked an amused eyebrow at the sight of Ben and Wyl talking, with the latter sprawled in her usual spot in the copilot's seat. She thought it was cute, and idly wished she had a holocamera to capture the moment. Ben hadn't noticed her, though he did when she threw a pair of thick gloves at him and tossed an identical pair at Wyl.

She took a seat at the comm unit, and simply watched them talk about small things, like the ways to tell if a hyperlane was beginning a slow shift to a different direction, how to calibrate sensor arrays in the Alderaan, and about flying starships. Ben had lots of stories, and she listened to him as he regaled Wyl with tales of flying huge Action freighters through old Clone Wars minefields while fleeing pirates to stories of almost flying Nubian starships on three different occasions. It was still a dream of his to sit in the pilot's seat of one of well known starship manufacturer's designs.

He told his stories with a verve that she realized defined him, and she was happy to have details to fill out his personality. He was a likeable person, once one got used to his anxiousness and penchant for emotional distance. He always cast himself as the survivor and coward in an absurd and danger-filled galaxy, too. She was almost irritated with the alarm indicating they were approaching their destination, and watched while Ben coached Wyl through the procedure of pulling Alderaan out of hyperspace.

Rhen Var appeared to jet into their field of view, going from nothing to full size in the matter of a second, white and light blue dominating the planet's surface. Palara immediately scooted over to the scanning station and began searching out their destination.

"'ere it is, Ben," she said. She sent him the landing coordinates, and Ben pulled them down into the frozen planet's atmosphere. They coasted, the ship bucking and trembling through turbulence, before dipping lower and skirting monstrously tall peaks and weaving through snow crusted valleys. Thankfully it wasn't storming, and they came upon a blotch of dark shapes along a plain by a range of shorter mountains. Ben set them down gently, and powered down the ship.

Ben pulled on his gloves, and adjusted his jacket, tying his scarf and tucking down into the front, and undid the crash webbing.

"Let's get out there," he said seriously.

[Wyl Staedtler]

It occurred to Wyl that he ought to consider being alarmed. There was a natural ease to the way that he and Ben fell into conversation, a rhythm that should have been suspicious and might have been had the boy been the sort to exercise an ounce of caution. Perhaps that was why the last few weeks had struck him with such unforgiving force. Despite the raucous twists and turns that had populated the last five years, Wyl remained almost obstinately optimistic. Any worries or apprehensive uncertainties were squashed beneath an earnest, stubborn belief that the worst couldn't happen simply because everything would be okay, everything had to work out. It was an arrogance that he had no right to possess.

As the ghostly winter hues of Rhen Var appeared, Wyl had to push aside a wave of disappointment. He'd been enjoying just chatting with the captain, getting to know him and learning the particulars of his ship (they were all unique, all had their own temperaments), and landing had never been his favourite part of flying. There was something less gracious about throwing down anchors than there was in the thrill of taking off toward some great unknown.

Still, once the technical routine of descent was over, the prospect of venturing outside brought back the appeal of the venture. Wyl was out of his seat before they'd properly set down. He tugged Ben's spare jacket on and busied himself with fastening it up. Within the shelter of the cockpit, the coat was far too warm but he took that as a good sign that it would serve him well outside in the harsher terrain.

Although...

"What exactly are we doing here?" Wyl asked as he pulled the hood of the jacket up and over his head. It flopped down low, obscuring his vision. He tipped his face back. "You sound like we're about to march into the trenches. Wait - we're not, are we? Is this why you're on such awful terms with the Alliance? Because if this is us going once more into the breach, we are really, really, really ill-equipped."

[Ben Merasska]

Ben was first down the ladder from the cockpit, followed swiftly by Palara and Wyl.

"There's a really long story involved in explaining that," Ben said. "And I don't really feel like telling it, so I'll settle with saying that I don't expect we'll be fighting here."

Wyl looked to be asking another question, but Ben cut him off:

"I'll answer any question that don't have to do with me being all serious back there. Otherwise, I'll just not answer, and if you get too annoying, I'll take you back here and leave you in Alderaan."

He glanced back at Wyl, and caught Palara's slight frown as she looked at him. Even when caught, she didn't look away, but continued to give him a reprimanding look that made him feel guilty. He didn't like it, and his annoyance, which he knew was a direct effect of his anxiety of what was coming, grew. They reached the exit ramp, and the door slid open with a hiss of air and a quick loud crack of metal as the locks opened, and the ramp extended slowly down onto hard packed snow.

Rhen Var's white vista opened out before the three like a holodocumentary. A mountain range rose majestically before them, dwarfing all other sights due to their position just below the massive piles of stone, in a rather deep valley . There were, surprisingly, trees; large doughty conifers with nearly black needles stood in the distance along the rockiest foothills, extending to just beyond the camp along their right. The forest had a heavy sheen of fog in it, the moisture hanging low to the ground.

The camp was a standard long term research set up; low, squat one story buildings were arranged alongside a roughly straight avenue leading down to a large ruin built into a hill. The ruin was nothing more than a large arched doorway with two misshapen statues on either side. There seemed to be no one around, and in the absence of a guide, Ben simply led them to the nearest building, a good five minutes' worth of walking away.