Ghosts Come When Called

[Ben Merasska]

FOLLOWING THE EVENTS ON JUNCTION (https://theholo.net/forum/showthread.php?56414-Showdown-at-Junction)...

Hello, I'm desperate to get you to notice...

"...Me!" Ben hummed along with the song, a big band number fronted by a human crooner. The little musicom box buzzed a bit as it retrieved the subspace signal, but the music was more of a background noise to the work he was doing in the port mechanical room (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ByKQlgWeRm2DVq85_9nOqSJUDT8DWBAGIuL-T128bFk/edit?usp=sharing), repairing blown circuits and arrays that had suffered the most damage in their escape from Junction. He grimaced on opening a panel; smoke puffed out and small sparks arced away from the overloaded unit.

"Damn. This didn't come cheap. SHUVIN!"

"Yah, mine Cap'n!" she shouted back in a cheesy accent.

"How're the power systems looking? I'm getting a lot of shorted and overloaded junctions here."

"Hold ooon~" the teenager sang back to him, and he could hear Cerie yelp and swear as something fell with a metallic clang. "Oh, Cap'n, looks like we've got black on a lot of the shielding network. Life support is fine."

Ben sighed in relief. At least they wouldn't have to worry about essential systems shutting down or cycling while they repaired them.

"Looks like hyperdrive systems are good too, but they weren't kidding about tryna git us. We got a lot of damage round the engines."

A tone sounded; Ben glanced at the blinking light just behind him.

Ben closed up the panel and walked back to the entryway, wiping his hands with a mostly clean rag. Shuvin was singing along with the music, rattling around loudly in the reactor core.

"Keep an eye on those hyperdrive systems," he called back to her. "We're coming up on our stop."

A hand stretched out from the core, a thumb extended up.

"And try not to make out with your friend."

The hand turned, pointing the thumb down and shaking a few times for emphasis.

Ben climbed the ladder into the cockpit and sort of flopped into the pilot's seat, sighing the checklist to himself under his breath.

Hello, hello? I'm right here, please look...​

[Cerie Moreau]

Leaving Shuvin to her own devices, Cerie - now nursing a tender elbow - shambled through the short corridors until she came to the ladder that led up to the cockpit. It was ascended with little fanfare, and the blonde let herself fall into the copilot's chair.

Ever since Junction, she'd been a lot less quick to start conversations. Or do much of anything, really.

Now though, as they were approaching the drop point, she pursed her lips. Her eyes stayed forward.

"Were you singing that song again?"

[Ben Merasska]

"Hey, it's catchy," he defended himself, feeling slightly awkward. "I dare you to try and not sing it."

He glanced over, and was relieved when he didn't see her sporting any of her Alliance digs. It was an odd thing to be especially relieved about, since he'd no problem with them before; he knew she was only playing at being Alliance.

"Listen," he started. "I'm sorry for... yeah. Sorry. I've got no call to tell you what to do, and it ain't like you can control what features you were born with. Those circumstances weren't the best place to air any grievance, much less the one I had."

[Cerie Moreau]

She gave a sniff, then reached up to scratch an it onn the underside of her jaw.

"Don't apologize," she sighed.

Their narrow escape had rattled her, and she'd not quite recovered. Regret was always a sorely uncomfortable thing once the adrenaline wore off.

Silence hung in the air between them, equal parts awkward and comforting.

Finally.

"If you want me to leave off at this next drop, I won't be mad or blame you or anything."

[Ben Merasska]

Ben stiffened slightly, but only let out a small breath.

"As long as you want, you have a place on my ship," Ben said finally. "Whether you leave or not, that's up to you. Even if you do though, you're one of the crew. Least that's how I see it."

The tone sounded, and Ben pulled back on the throttle. A rattling sounded through the ship as they exited hyperspace. Directly in front of them was a bulky dark object, only dimly visible in the this black, sunless void between stars.

"SHUVIN!" Ben shouted.

"WORKIN' ON IT BOSS!" Shuvin shouted back, through a clatter of metal on metal.

The flashes were lit, and the object was illuminated, if only slightly.

"Well I'll be damned," Ben grunted. "It's a beacon."

[Shuvin Undhi]

"Come on, baby!" Shuvin grunted, pulling on the massive spanner she was holding. "Just a little more and I'll be done!"

She laughed breathlessly and shot Loki a grin. "That's what she said!"

With a muted screech, the spanner turned slightly, and Shuvin disengaged the spanner.

"Whew! Thought we'd never get that damn thing to turn," she gasped, dropping the tool and replacing the access cover over the section of the reactor core they'd been maintenancing. She sighed and wiped her face with a rag, grateful she'd shed her jacket and shirt before getting to work, and for once equally as grateful she wasn't as blessed as Eluna in the boob department. As nice a pair as she would have preferred to sport, it was a truth that sometimes big titties got in the way in cramped spaces.

Besides, the looks Loki shot her made her quite happy with what she had presently.

With that in mind, she stretched luxuriously and picked up the tool with a small huff.

"Fer bein' a droid guy, you're pretty handy with the structural stuff too," she said in appreciation.

[Abarai Loki]

Loki glanced at Shuvin, whose skin shimmered like unearthed treasure beneath the modest lights, and returned his attention to the half-empty toolbox. He was getting better at stealing stealthy glances when she wasn't looking - there was an art to it - and it wasn't like he was some leering creep, after all. Scattered about the floor, there was a hydrospanner, a servodriver, and an impact wrench, they were gathered up and returned to their rightful home. Besides, this was Shuvin, one of the most sexualised people he'd ever met in his life, with the singular ability to turn almost anything dirty. Who was she to object to his attention when she looked like that? Her compliment was met with a shrug.

"I've spent enough time on damaged ships to know where to poke my tools."

Dear stars, it was spreading. Like a disease of the tongue. His amusement was buried inside the toolbox, with the rest of his secrets. It was closed with a squeak of battered metal, and he rose with it in his hand. While he did his best to police his thoughts, and carefully choose his words, for Shuvin, innuendo held no fear. She dived, with wild abandon, into the murky depths of her mind, and surfaced to present him with some shameless bauble, like a puppy with a stick. It was refreshing. Hours felt like minutes, with Shuvin around; when it came to conversation, Loki was content for her to do most of the heavy lifting, which she managed with ease, and he enjoyed her company. She was a light that kept the shadows at bay.

"It's the least I could do," he said. The rest went unspoken. His time on Junction had come to a dramatic end, and there was nothing to be gained from tripping over ill-chosen words, while the memory was still raw. Instead, the encroaching gloom was dispersed with a smile.

"You have got to show me that trick with the heat regulator. You're an artist with a macrofuser."

[Shuvin Undhi]

"Flattery will get you everywhere," Shuvin said through a lascivious grin at Loki's 'tool' remark. Her expression became more genuine than flippant. "Thanks. It's really nothing much, just knowing where the heat goes and how to get it to go where you want. Ain't easy, but once you got a feel for it, it's not too difficult. An' nothin' gets you more practice than when you ain't got the parts to replace somethin' but it still needs fixin'."

She led Loki out to the back of the ring corridor surrounding the reactor room, to their little mechanical/engineering room that had replaced one of the economy berths of the stock 720. It was a shrine to mechanical prowess at a discount price in all respects: there was a staggering array of tools, but were the bare minimum necessary for the ship's maintenance, obviously got at cheaper rates or used given the looks of some them, and they were organized haphazardly, sometimes placed in groups by function, or otherwise by size (due to space constraints).

Shuvin was a bit embarrassed by the state of her mechanical storeroom when the door opened; while she was quite comfortable in her own skin, she'd mostly taught herself about mechanical repair and while proud of her achievements, she was also aware of her lack of proper learning and the mish-mash manner of she'd put everything together. She pushed aside the uncomfortable feeling and focused on the task at hand.

"Now we can't fix too much of the damage while we're out here 'less the Cap'n feels like puttin' us in vac suits and tellin' us to go nuts. Course, he prolly knows better'n telling me to go nuts," the Togruta said with a satisfied grin. "Not after the last time."

She put the big spanner back on its wall hook and directed/helped Loki in finding the rest of the places to put her tools, and picked up a small pad and a stylus.

"Time to go check on the engines," she said, stretching again simply to enjoy the feel of airflow on her skin, causing her to shiver from the cooling effect of her sweaty undershirt.

"Hey, Shuvin, mind coming up here? Got something for you to take a look at," Ben's voice echoed from the onboard comm.

"Or not," she said, cocking her head and grinning at Loki. "Lessee what Ben's got fer us, hey?"

[Ben Merasska]

Ben had maneuvered Alderaan closer to the thing, the spot-lights still trained on it. It was a bit eerie, seeing the beacon only by those small beams of light.

"Whatcha got for me, Cap'n?" Shuvin asked as she clambered up into the cockpit. He could hear Loki's own entrance a moment after her.

"Looks like an old hyperspace beacon," he answered. Shuvin 'oohed' and stepped between him and Cerie to get a closer look.

"Damn," she hummed. "That's ancient. Real piece of history there."

"D'you think anything's worth salvaging on it?" Ben asked.

"Dunno," Shuvin answered. "Most everything'll be outdated by hundreds of years at least even if we can somehow get it to work fer Alderaan. Does it even still work? How would we check?"

"Well, lessee," Ben murmured, leaving the pilot's seat and settling into the communications and sensor console's chair. "If I remember right, these things were activated by sending telemetry to 'em. So we feed it a signal and see if it lights up."

Ben typed away at the console for a short moment.

"Holy— looks like this thing is still kinda active."

"Kinda?"

"Well, it's not sending any signals to us, that's fer sure. These things worked by storing coordinates and hyperspace routes to other active beacons. Ships would stop by, get the astrogation data, and whoosh — off you go, right? Navicomputers made these things obsolete, save for those really difficult routes like that one in the Tapani Sector, y'know? Well, this thing isn't transmitting, but it's still got some power left in it."

Shuvin looked thoughtful, as did Cerie and Loki. Everyone stared at the derelict beacon in quiet for a moment.

"So basically these things were like pit stops?" Shuvin asked finally. Ben grinned.

"Got it in one. Even if we can't find anything we can use for the ship right now, chances are we might find something useful on it. These things were basically like tiny Jovan Stations way back when. It gets even better when you think that no one's probably stopped by this thing for at least a century. Prolly longer. No system, no light, no traffic. No reason to be out here. Funny though. The coordinates were in the navicomputer. I'm guessing you pillaged some of the older ships for data dumps back at the yard?"

"Yeah. Didn't think any of 'em were this old though." Shuvin smiled. "I wanna turn it on."

Ben's brows raised as he glanced first at Cerie, and then at Loki, before looking at Shuvin again. He took a satisfied breath.

"Y'know, I'm bettin' you say that fairly often. Most of the time about boys though."

Shuvin snorted and started laughing.

[Cerie Moreau]

Pursing her lips while giving a healthy roll of her eyes, Cerie let her head angle away, away from Ben and Shuvin so that her line of site landed her vision (once her eyes came back from their vacation at the back of her skull) out the side-viewing transparisteel window.

One edge of her lips curled up though, in a crooked, lopsided half-grin. It was hard to stay mostly serious anyway, with Shuvin injecting any manner of innuendo into anything and everything that she could. Idly, the blonde wondered if it was a contagious thing. She hoped that it wasn't.

She heard the other one come up after Shuvin, but paid him no real mind. Honestly? He creeped her out somewhat with his bizarre staring and nasty looks and generally shifty attitude whenever he talked to her.

One of these days she'd lay him out with a good right hook.

[Abarai Loki]

For Loki's part, he remained silent throughout the exchange, absorbing the information about hyperspace beacons - he'd never even heard of them, before - and the potential salvage opportunity they presented to Captain Ben and his crew. Crew. Loki turned the word over in his mind, inspected its shape, its heft, and then he considered the humble congregation before him: Ben, Cerie, Shuvin. Whatever they were, it felt different. In function, he supposed, they were a crew, taking care of Alderaan, and each other, in the bleak void of space. That made them a crew as much as any other, but, in Loki's experience, captains did not make lewd jokes about their engineers. Crews didn't bicker, they obeyed, and they saluted, rather than hugged, and there were no discussions, only orders.

Perhaps, that was what made it difficult for him to ascertain his place in all of... this. In the military, there was a hierarchy, with ranks, and protocol, and order. When a lieutenant reported for duty before his captain, he saluted, and found himself briefed, and assigned new orders, which he carried out diligently, and without question. It was a language he understood. But, on Alderaan, there was no such pattern to follow, just one uncertainty after the other. They seemed like decent people - each, a little odd, in his or her own right - but they had a language that was entirely their own.

He smiled at the joke, because it was the polite thing to do, but not too much. Laughing at a remark like that, with people he scarcely knew, was just asking for trouble. Short of being able to deliver on small talk or witty remarks, Loki elected to contribute by making himself useful.

"Can I help?" he said, stepping forward. It dawned on him, immediately, the unfortunate timing of his request. He was quick to clarify, "With the beacon."

[Shuvin Undhi]

Shuvin smiled widely as Ben glanced back at their passenger, the droid technician Abarai Loki.

"Well, nothin' against it, I suppose," Ben answered, just as Shuvin jumped up.

"There's a hatch right there! See? Look, look, looklooklooklooooooook!"

Ben jumped and drew back with wide eyes.

"Stars, Shuvin, settle down!" he grunted. "I see it. Don't think it's standard specs though. We'll have to use the—"

"EXTEND-O-TUBES!" Shuvin gasped, turning around, grabbing Loki by the shirt, and pulling him to the access ladder. "I call dibs! C'mon Loki!"

She only let go of the boy to slide down the access ladder to the main deck, and tore off into the back of the ship, in the starboard cargo bay, where the vac-suits were stored. At the moment the cargo bay was empty, save for a few storage containers and small tool boxes, which underscored its size and highlighted the colored deckplates that indicated where the walkways would be when the bay was full, and a ladder well that was situated in the center-rear of the open space. Shuvin tossed Loki a vac-suit (obviously an older design, of a dark green color and somewhat bulky) and clambered more than a bit awkwardly into her own.

"We haven't used these in a while!" she said excitedly, pulling out a helmet especially designed for Togruta, with two holes that would seal to her montrals when attached to the suit. She entered the ladder well and climbed up, pushing the access button which activated a door with a hiss of air and a mechanically resounding crack of metal. When Loki entered the docking fin with Shuvin, the door closed again.

The docking fin's interior lit up, some of the lights blinking and sputtering before fully coming to life. A blast door and hatch sat at the end of basically a tube, with a walkway suspended slightly above the inner hull. Along the hull's length in uniform distance were stacked rings that encircled the entire fin. On the walkway near the hatch and blast door was a small console with a joystick and a set of controls. Shuvin walked to the console and pressed a few buttons; with a hiss, the air and pressure in the compartment were shunted into the rest of the ship.

"Okay, Cap'n! Starboard fin."

"Right." Ben's voice issued in a hissed tinny rush from the suits' comm speakers. "So, we're in position. Should be visible through the hatch."

"'Kay!" Shuvin answered, opening the hatch and blast door, leaving the fin open to space. She glanced at Loki. "I'm pretty proud of this part."

There was a resounding sound of locks being released, and slowly the rings that encircled the fin's tube began to slide, and the fin's docking arm extended, bringing them closer to the hatch. The docking arm's floodlamps activated, allowing them to see the hull of the beacon-station that they'd found. There, some four meters away, was a hatch. With a deft twist of the joystick and a few twists of a dial on the console, the docking arm adjusted itself, the tube making a gentle curve to the hatch, allowing Alderaan to remain in its somewhat protected position rather than needing an adjustment to allow for docking.

"Came up with this design myself!" Shuvin boasted, her expression clearly visible through the helmet's faceplate.

[Abarai Loki]

When the platform gave a gentle lurch, ushering them into space, Loki steadied himself with a hand on Shuvin's shoulder. She was steady, grounded, with her hands at the controls, wholly preoccupied by the procedure; surgical in its precision, the docking arm altered course, and reached out for the ancient beacon. While its spotlights gave the hull of the derelict vessel a soft white shimmer, it also served to plunge them both deeper into darkness. Where it not for the gloomy green of the vac suit, it would have seemed like the entire universe had been reduced to shades of black and white. Loki blinked forcefully, once, twice. No, it was not tunnel vision he was experiencing, he was just inside a blasted tunnel. He took a breath.

Perhaps he should have told Shuvin he'd never been out in space, before. That he had never once worn a vac suit, or carried out a salvage operation. He checked the display on his forearm: his vitals were fine. Oxygen was fine. He looked up, beyond the rings, beyond the tube, and saw nothing but blackness. Oh, krast. What if he needed to pee? Another breath. He could hold it in. It was just a salvage operation. Ahead, the hull of the beacon loomed so large now that it consumed his entire view. And right in front of them, the hatch. Suddenly, there was a deep thunk, and the platform came to an abrupt stop. He removed his hand from Shuvin's shoulder and adjusted his weight from foot to foot, a laborious exercise, his legs were filled with lead.

"I've never seen anything like this, before," he said, as his brain finally caught up with his mouth. He gave the tube and the platform another cursory inspection, to humour Shuvin and her pride, but was careful this time not to look up. He threw a thumb over his shoulder, back to Alderaan, a clumsy gesture in that bulky suit. "If I had to guess, it looked like that space was once occupied by an escape pod."

He glanced at Shuvin, "Right?"

[Shuvin Undhi]

"Talkin' about the docking fin?" She asked, as the lights within the docking tube flickered on, signaling that a successful magnetic seal with the beacon's hull had been created. She glanced over to him and smiled widely, though her breath fogged the glass of her helmet. "Yeah, stock 720s have escape pods in the fins. No use for 'em while she was in the scrapyard though, so Feerreii—the guy that used to own me on Syragor—sold 'em off. No replacements while we were fixin' her up after Ben bought her, so my designs for the extend-o-tubes got the okay. No real point to the escape pods really when the whole cockpit can detach, and if the cockpit's out there's not much chance of the rest of the ship or crew bein' in any shape to get to an escape pod."

Shuvin looked over the seal on the beacon's hatch.

"Ben, you reading?"

"Yeah, Shuvin. Loud and clear."

"Seal on the hatch looks good. Really good. Shut tight. Old Republic design, but I'm not recognizing it. It has to be pre-Clone Wars at the youngest."

"Look around the hatch. Usually Republic designs have a panel to the side or off a bit that'll allow access to the bypass systems. If not, we'll just have to look for another way in or cut through to the handle."

She ran her gloved fingers around the hatch frame, and found the panel quickly enough; it had already been jarred off, though the lever within had not been pulled out. She twisted, and the hatch rang out with a metallic screech as the manual control for the door, a wheel, disengaged from the frame and jutted out. Ice crystals that had been forming on the shell shattered and dusty white flakes floated to the floor of the docking tube.

"There it is," she breathed. "Got it. Help me open this thing, Loki, before it starts sweating."

[Abarai Loki]

Loki moved in, at once, and braced himself against the hull of the beacon, facing Shuvin. After standing and gawking while she did all the work, it was a relief just to be of some use. He gripped the frosted metal tight, at opposite ends of the wheel, and put his weight into it. Nothing, at first. He repositioned himself for better footing, thankful for the artificial gravity of the docking arm. With a grunt, he squeezed an inch of rotation out of the wheel. That was the hard part done. He tried again, and this time, the wheel started to turn, catching occasionally on something inside, like some great decrepit beast shaking off the lethargy of a hundred year slumber. With a chorus of painful mechanical grinding, and a long mournful groan, the hatch yawned open.

The rumble of metal was swallowed by the darkness, ahead. And then, silence.

"I'll take point," Loki said, with a glance to Shuvin.

There was something she'd said that had lodged itself stubbornly into his mind, about her being owned by someone. A throwaway admission, dispensed with nary a care in the galaxy. He had to know, but... later. For now, his attention was fixed on the path ahead. From his waist, he unclipped a torch, and fastened it to the loop on his shoulder - he'd seen that on a news report, once. It was the first thing he'd noticed about their cumbersome vac suits; something for him to cling to, so he appeared to at least have a clue about what the blazes he was doing.

"So, what exactly should I be looking out for?"

As he approached, he spotted a dead terminal on the wall inside. He had a feeling most of the technology on this thing would be useless or outdated, but maybe Shuvin, with that imagination of hers, could force a retrofit or two. Any kind of power cells would be a blessing, even salvage metal for repairs. Tools, too. Actually, he could do with some new tools. It was the spark that fired up his advance, across the threshold of the hatch, and... into the air. It was as if the entire beacon repositioned itself, gently falling away from his feet. He drifted upwards, rotating sluggishly through the air until he met the top of the corridor, face down. With a muffled thump, he rebounded softly, and lost momentum a few inches from the ceiling.

"Shit."

[Shuvin Undhi]

"For gravity inside," she said, laughing slightly while underneath him, her face lit up by the lights surrounding the glass helmet she wore. She unraveled a length of cabled rope and tossed it up to him. "Grab hold, I'll pull you down."

She started pulling, bringing the young man closer until he was almost face to face with her, floating in the darkness. She smiled at him.

"Get your feet 'neath you," she said, "and don't blink."

She pressed the command on the wrist of his vacsuit for the magnetic boots. Loki was pulled down the last bit of distance to the deck with a strangely muffled thud.

"Right, Cap'n. We're in. Awful dark in here."

"Cerie and me are on our way to the cargo bay. Don't stray too far. We'll do a standard sweep in shifts, but the thing's not that large. Should be able to find a control center in an hour or two."

"Always loved and hated doing space salvage," she breathed, looking around. "Going into old ships and stations, the mystery and discovery of it, you know? But then I remember that someone lived here once, and there's a reason they're not here now, and I ought to be careful or I'll end up like them."

[Abarai Loki]

"There's quite a pragmatist, in there. Buried beneath all of that optimism," Loki said, with a frown of contemplation. His nod was stifled by the clumsy helmet. Then, he cleared his throat, "Thank you for the assist."

Shuvin took the lead, this time, which suited him fine. It afforded him a moment to acclimatise to the magnetic seal of his boots; he pulled, the resistance was not unlike being stuck in mud, except the release was sudden and precise. He took a step, then another, enjoying the firm reassuring thud underfoot. The rest of his body felt like it was treading water, and when he wasn't concentrating, his arms were compelled to float to the non-existent surface. Ahead, Shuvin was approaching a junction. Before he took off, he bounced at the knee like an excitable toddler, first finding their feet; the grip was secure.

As he attempted to catch up, wading through the soup of zero gravity, his thoughts lingered on the story of that place; nameless people, unknown events, a forgotten time. Silent and adrift, what had happened to the beacon, all those years ago? And, if there had been inhabitants, what became of them? His head turned left and right to compensate for the restricted field of view, but he could see nothing, no carbon scoring, no hints of battle, not even any superficial systems damage. Krast, Shuvin. She might be a pragmatist, but a motivational speaker, she was not. Perhaps the answers lay deeper within.

"This place reminds me of The Challenger," he said, studying first the floor, then the place where wall and ceiling met, "It's a Venator-class destroyer, from the Clone Wars. It has the same spartan aesthetic."

It would be easy to assume there had been a shortage of imagination, during the days of the Old Republic, but he knew better. He'd seen the holos of lavish ships and and buildings of monstrous decadence. This was a design choice. Utilitarian. Perhaps even military. It made sense, he supposed, if these old beacons were designed to be reliable, and to last. He wondered, then, if anyone had ever lived there. It was not a stretch to imagine a place such as this being remotely operated from some distant station, where all hyperspace traffic was monitored.

His silent reverie came to an abrupt halt in time for him to avoid bumping into Shuvin. She was standing before two sealed doors, on either side of the corridor, to her left and right. From his hip, he unclipped a cylinder and thumbed the switch on its side: twins shafts of metal sprung from the top and bottom, tapering off to a fine point at one end. The familiarity was a comfort.

"Okay. You're the salvage veteran. Which way, first?"

[Shuvin Undhi]

"I don't know," she responded brightly. "No way to know, unless we get power up and access to systems to build a map or something."

She'd noticed the barrenness of the design herself while getting here. Their torches illuminated circles in the darkness of the station, and aside from one or two doors, both shut and sealed, there wasn't much else to look at. No scoring on the walls or panels where wiring and junctions were obviously running, no trash or refuse left behind by either other scavengers or those who left the place behind. People leaving a place usually left things behind, sometimes a mess, especially if they weren't coming back. A neat space like this, locked tight and clean, usually meant people were coming back and someone wanted it neat; but people who were coming back to a place usually left the central power grid online, and the ice buildup in and around the station was a clear indication of no power. So either the reactor or power source broke down, or it was shut off.

More questions and no real answers, yet.

"We don't have the tools to really open these up. We'll need a microgenerator and some multimeters and probably a couple readers so we can input commands. If we can input commands. The coding language may have changed since this place closed down. We'll just have to wait for—"

A clang of metal on metal, muffled and yet strangely echoed, sounded behind them.

[Cerie Moreau]

Scowling, Cerie followed the two. She had at least been mindful enough to bring a small mechanic's satchel with her, which seemed to lose a hydrospanner at the wrong moment. Didn't they always, though?

"My bad," she mumbled while reaching up to grab the tool. She'd seen the slight jump that Shuvin made, and giving her Togruta crewmate an apologetic wince, the blonde followed it up with a shrug. Then, it was a strange slow-motion affair to grab the slowly spinning thing, only made more ponderous by the limitations of the suit she wore. There was a glare on the glass front of her helmet, but she ignored it as her gloved hands closed around the spanner.

She was better at figuring out blueprints, but she'd opted to accompany Shuvin and Loki on the off-chance that they might need help for... some reason. The carbine that was strapped across her chest was testament enough of that, as it tried to float free of the metal hasps that held it fixed to the leather strap across her front.

[Abarai Loki]

The more Shuvin spoke, of microgenerators, of multimeters, and coding language, the heavier and more unwieldy crowbar felt in his hand. It fell limp at his side. He might as well have brought a bicycle to a pod race. Being out of one's comfort zone was considered a catalyst for growth, or so they say. Indeed, part of the reason he left Ossus, in the first place, was to live a life beyond the Jedi experience. In competence, however, there was reassurance, and it had been a long time since he'd felt either of those things.

The dull thump of metal dredged him out of his thoughts, at once. He turned, crowbar aloft again. Cerie. Now his disappointment was two-fold. As if it wasn't bad enough that he was about as useful as an underwater X-Wing, he now had to find it in him to make nice with Loklorien s'Ilancy's stunt double. She got a nod of acknowledgement, and that was it.

Whatever cruel fate had made of her a doppelganger, and to that face, of all faces, he did not care. Nor was it any of his business. Of course, intellectual distance only went so far; there would always be something unsettling in having her near. And there she was, haunting his footsteps, in the dark, in space. It was not her fault that she looked like that, and it was not fair of him to judge her for it. But then, life wasn't fair. She pretended to be someone she was not for a whole day, and he judged her for that, too. What did that mean for someone who had pretended to be something they were not their whole life?

There was a deep thunk, as Loki speared the seal that ran down the centre of the door, and wrenched it apart with a single tug. The crowbar was driven in further, and worked at the doors, clanking and grinding, inch by inch. His hands did the rest of the work, affording him enough room to shimmy in sideways. Before he disappeared inside, he offered Shuvin an apologetic glance.

"Sorry, I forgot the microgenerator."

[Shuvin Undhi]

Shuvin laughed.

"Just be careful next time, yeah? There might not be another side to that door and then you're floatin' off into space. Or, the doors'll be sealed better and you'll look a fool." She grabbed the aforementioned tool and plugged it into the panel beside the door and pushed the button to start it up. "By the by, how's it look in there?"

Lights flickered on, and she pressed the 'open' command. The doors almost slammed open, the echo reverberating through the mostly black and lightless interior.

"Never mind, I'll just take a look myself," she said impishly, lightly punching Loki's arm as she walked past. "Looks like we found an old maintenance hatch. Normally air locks open into one corridor, right? But this looks like a systems maintenance corridor to me."

She shined her torch around, illuminating pipes both above them and below the grated decking underneath, and cabling running along the walls.

"Wonder what was down the other door? But this'll do. Maintenance shafts like this usually have maps or quick orientation markings painted on the walls. At least, all the ones I'm familiar with have 'em."