Sing a Smuggler's Shanty (Open)

[Loki Ahmrah]

When the ship took flight, Loki stumbled and quickly pulled himself into his seat. The restraints clicked shut and he glanced across at Arya.

"Just something Threepio was telling me about. Said he'd been mulling over it in your absence and would apparently burst if he didn't tell someone about it."

He laughed. "I bet he gives you a hell of a time! Hence the Goldenrod, right?"

[Arya Ravenwing]

"Yeah, something like that." Arya pedaled the rudders and the ship turned more tightly than seemed probable and headed at full sublights towards their jump point. "When he's not telling me the odds of survival. Apparently I'm quite lucky."

She offered him a genuine half-smile for the first time that morning. "Something to be happy about - you've picked a lucky pilot."

[Loki Ahmrah]

"Well, from what I've seen, luck gets people far these days."

He leaned forward and stared out of the viewport curiously. The engines hummed powerfully, it was distracting at first but like with all space travel, the sound of engines becomes the natural background noise. He sat back in his seat.

"Let's hope it gets us all the way to Dathomir and back. It's no short trip. How long will take to get there in this ship?"

[Arya Ravenwing]

She eyed the star chart she had draped over one part of the console. "It's going to take about two weeks. Hope you brought your toothbrush."

Before he could say anything else, she punched it and the Wing of the Raven slid into hyperspace. As the swirls of another dimension mottled the transparisteel window in front of them, she undid her restraints and stood up. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get some more caf."

Arya walked a little unsteadily back towards the living area and beelined for the caf pot.

[Loki Ahmrah]

Loki followed her, already feeling restless.

"So, what do you usually do for two weeks?"

[Arya Ravenwing]

She made an exasperated face to the pot in her hand, but didn't turn around. "I usually keep to myself and don't talk much. And Threepio is great company." Arya poured the caf into her mug, and knocked it back like a shot of whiskey.

Setting it down again, she indicated the dejerrik board. "And I play that. But not with the droid, because he cheats."

Threepio sputtered, "Miss Arya, I must protest! I follow every rule to the exact letter!"

[Loki Ahmrah]

"Is that a Dejerrik board?" Loki frowned, and paced across the room. He sat down.

"You'll have to teach me to play sometime."

[Arya Ravenwing]

She snorted. "Yeah, maybe."

-------

"No, no, no!" Arya threw her hands up in the air. "I give up! You're quite possibly the worst dejerrik student I have ever taught!" She was imitating the inflections of an aged twi'leki martial arts instructor, and Loki was hard pressed to keep a straight face, let alone play the game correctly.

"If you use the Corellian Gambit, you lay open the whole left flank of your pieces, and I can simply do... this..." she moved a piece with exaggeration, "and I begin the Emperor's Solution that will ultimately decimate everything you have left!"

Loki eyed the board. "But can't I just -"

"No!"

" - Or could I move this -"

"No!" She looked horrified. "There is nothing you can do that I have not anticipated already! You might as well surrender!"

Threepio piped up, "Actually, Master Loki, you can unravel the Emperor's Solution in the thirty-fourth and fifth moves by placing your -" Arya threw her empty plastic tumbler at him, and the droid subsided.

[Loki Ahmrah]

"Let's just be thankful that it wasn't the hyperdrive that bit the dust."

From the dark opposite end of the room there came a grunt. Loki sat patiently on the icy floor and listened to Arya furiously at work: there was a buzzing followed by a few quiet blips, then a whirring sound which preceded a high-pitched whine. The ships lights came to life once more.

"Phew! At last!" Loki sighed and gave Arya a look of relief. Her face was was covered in dust, and her eyes had two huge white rings around them where she had been wearing her goggles. Her hair was brushed back haphazardly and her fingers were black with oil. She looked extremely nerffed off.

"Has that ever happened before?" Loki asked, slumped in a corner.

"Once or twice." Arya said as she threw her goggles to one side and ran a hand through her hair. She paused in shock. Loki's mouth hung open.

"Dren!"

She looked down at her hands, grabbed the closest thing to her and threw the hydrospanner across the room.

"Frelling Sithspit!"

"I see you went for the slick look."

"Shut up! Just..." Despite the quiet fury evident in her pink cheeks, she calmed. "... I need to hit the fresher."

A fountain of sparks then exploded from the panel next to Loki and he dived out of the way. The whining sound subsided and the lights cut out again. For a moment, they sat in silence until there came a quiet clinking of metal feet against the deck floor and in the darkness, appeared two bright yellow eyes.

"Oh dear! Mistress Arya, is everything quite alright?"

"Watch it, Goldenrod." She hissed. "There are some panels missing in the floor."

"Mistress Arya, I assure you my mechanical parts allow me to navigate such dangers with exceptional eeeeeeeeeaaaaaase!"

There was an almighty crash.

"Ow!"

"Master Loki! Oh my, I'm frightfully sorry."

"...my eye...."

[Arya Ravenwing]

Arya slapped the intercomm on the console. "Ahmrah, you might want to be here for this." She flicked it off with another touch, and took her feet off the co-pilot's chair as the timer clicked down the final minute of hyperspace.

Her employer, a bright eyed kid of barely eighteen, if that, appeared in the doorway. He was sharp, noticing the countdown right away. "I thought you said two weeks? We've only been in hyperspace for eleven days." He plopped into the seat her feet had vacated, and buckled in. She didn't.

"Yeah, well I padded the time, just in case. Luckily it was just the lights that went out two days ago, not life support or the inertial dampers." He paled a bit at the thought of inertial dampers going out while they were in hyperspace, but she kept talking. "So, we're here." Arya gripped the yoke with one hand as the timer stopped clicking, and hyperspace evaporated from around the Chevvette77 freighter. Ahead of them glistened Dathomir, like a green jewel set on a black velvet pillow that had been sprinkled with corusca gems.

She studied the sensors, and shook her head. "I thought Dathomir was pre-hyper - I've got readings on some pretty sophisticated eqiupment in the northern hemisphere*."

Ahmrah shook his head, "Shouldn't bother us, we're heading south. Can you put us down near this mountain?" He dialed a pair of coordinates into the navigational computer.

Arya eyeballed the digital cartograph the system brought up. "Sure, kid. Looks to be on the other side of the planet from our current position." She manuevered the steering rudders with her feet, heading towards the night side of Dathomir. "Something special there to meet us? Ahmrah?"

He was quiet, not quite tense, but intense as he studied the planet below them. Arya stared at him, and her minds eye flared, giving her a picture of the planet that overlaid the one she saw in front of her. It seemed to be a living, breathing entity - full of life and of the living. With a restrained gasp she shook away the vision, the Wing of the Raven slipping into the shadow of the planet.

Twenty minutes later they were in the atmosphere of the jungle planet, setting down in the deeper shadow of a large peak in a ragged range of mountains. The smuggler shook her head slowly, and turned to the kid. "Y'know that the people here are matriarchal, right? Like the Cizerack?"

*occupied by the witches in league with the Sith Order, unbeknownst to our heroes.