<PARTY COLLABORATION>
All across the deck of the Phoenix, her passengers scurried and made themselves busy to make her space-ready. The engineer and his helper tinkered and toyed as they made sure the drive and engines were warmed up and operational, patting themselves on the back for a job well done. The pilots on the bridge tested their systems and played their music, while the droid co-pilot swiveled around on the actuator in its waist and blinked one of its photoreceptors to face Baarsuth and give him a thumbs-up and a wink. The others downstairs were preoccupied with their own matters and squaring away business where it was needed. The vessel was alive and bustling with activity. From the outside, the pilots' activities could be seen as they exercised the spoilers, ailerons, the rudder, and warming up the stabilizers, maneuvering jets, and the attitude and lateral thrusters. Heat distorted the light as the repulsorlifts began whirring – any minute now,
the Phoenix would be ready to take off.
The sound of static buzzed across the ship, until the sound of Zekha's familiar voice blared across the separate decks, "Attention crew; it's your engineer speaking. Our brave and noble vessel is prepared for departure from a mechanical standpoint. The bridge is yours, captain, take us to the inky voids of space and to a land of cheap liquor and women if you would."
The speakers crackled a bit, before a different voice began to speak, one which belonged to the apathetic twi'lek mercenary who the crew had met in the cargo bay, “Pilots, set a course for his mother's house.”
“Ah, I do miss home cooking.”
Crackling ensued once again as the agitated voice of the captain came alive through the speakers, “Keep the ship's channel clean of gabbin’. Baarsuth, Bo – make preparations for take off. Engage inertial compensators and artificial gravity generators. Light up the afterburners.”
B-0 listened to the chatter over the intercom with quite a bit of confusion. Were they really charting a course for a place with cheap liquor and women? If that was the case why would they not stay on Alderaan? But wait...now they are going to the captains mother's house? That seemed like a strange choice as well. B-0 certainly wasn't a creation built for jokes or sarcasm, luckily she was only the co-pilot on this trip. So it came as a relief to the droid when the captain came over the speakers, giving real instructions.
Baarsuth sprung into action. His hands flew across the control panels as if the ship were his. While he turned on the ship’s artificial gravity and engaged the inertial compensators, B-0 activated the navigational software.
The droid worked efficiently. Her arms reaching across the controls in front of her while her head swiveled, taking in the various meters above them. After a few moments of button pressing and toggle...toggling...B-0 turned to face Baarsuth. She let out a series of beeps and trills that could loosely be translated as:
Let's do this thing. Baarsuth smiled and turned the music up. A new song was playing, one with a thrashing, tank-like guitar that almost sounded like an engine revving. The music player’s screen revealed the song was “Hyperdrive” by Starfleet Cru. Baarsuth’s hands rested on the primary controls, his finger hovering just above the button to engage the thrusters.
A few moments later, Zekha was entering the cockpit, looking around for any obvious deficiencies. Other than the general wear and tear of such an old heap, it wasn’t a death trap, so that much was comforting. “So, droid, who made you?” he asked, climbing up onto the back of B-0’s seat to get a better look at the bird-like head of the co-pilot. “What is your function?”
“Stop distractin’ my droid, Zekha,” Baarsuth shouted, glaring at the engineer. “We’re workin’ here.”
“It’s a
droid. Droids don’t get distracted, isn’t that right pal? You can process information faster than our squishy brains ever could. Don’t let Baarsuth tell you you aren’t better than him in every conceivable way.” Zekha retorted conspiratorially towards B-0.
B-0 had tried to ignore Zekha's pestering. She was trying to work, and the sooner they got this ship off the ground the sooner she could continue her search for the Force. He had asked her some, frankly, personal questions. She did not want to give him the satisfaction of an answer, that was what he wanted her to do. She tried to get back to work, her motors whirling a little louder than before. It only got worse as Baarsuth joined in.
Droid. Droid. My Droid. Droid. She suddenly slammed one of her metallic hands onto the control console, dragging her hand off of it with a grating screech.
"Bo." She said. Her voice remained jittery and robotic, her facial expression permanently neutral, but her body language read irritation.
The ship lurched a tad, catching everyone slightly off guard, and Shai especially as she was climbing the flight of stairs up towards the bridge, but she managed to keep her footing when she lunged for a tight deathgrip on the handrails beside her. She felt a large hand that was suddenly and firmly set against her back.
“Careful now,” the crew could hear the captain say from behind her, “if this piece of junk has got one thing going for her, it's her afterburners. They're practically brand new since the old ones were blasted off. They've got enough kick to them in just warming up to make the Phoenix jump on her landing gear.”
As the two stepped onto the bridge, Varen gave an appraising look over the bickering crew surrounding with an unsympathetic countenance. With a sigh he grumbled, “Among all of us fleshy sacks of shit, Bo is the only one who was built for space travel and won’t blow up like a bloody balloon inside a vacuum. Can you brats
please not piss them off? Baarsuth, start taking us up.”
“Aye, cap’n.”
“Where’s Liak’ykam?”
Liak’ykam had been taking her tour of the ship’s mess hall, which was a rather flattering term for a glorified pantry. The cooking equipment was pretty minimal, and most of it quite foreign to Liak’ykam. Fortunately, despite the Basic she did not know how to read, the majority of it seemed fairly intuitive. It had been quite some time since she had prepared food -
truly prepared food, with proper materials and everything. She chuckled at herself, at the feeling of giddiness she got looking over the different spices (labels were useless; she identified them far more easily by smell) and the various foodstuffs. Most of it smelled synthetic, factory-made, the exact opposite of what food could be.
Perhaps this is for the metal one. There was a supply of real ingredients, and not nutri-paste or something equally abominable. If it wasn’t too much of a bother, she might ask the Captain Varen Kray to stop at the next spaceport and pick up some actual food. Surely they could barter something worthwhile for it, and she was certain everyone would feel better and do their jobs better with Wookiee-sized portions to sustain them.
Liak’ykam took her hood off for a moment, feeling a bit warm in the cramped kitchen. She supposed if the next planet had wildlife - and she certainly hoped it did - she could go hunting while the others did whatever it was they were doing. As she perused the various stores, attempting to plan some sort of fresh, coherent cuisine from the mismatch of ingredients designed to last until the heat-death of the universe, she felt an itching of sorts. She could not hear the Captain Varen Kray ask,
“Where’s Liak’ykam?” from the bridge - could she? She heard it in her ears, like an echo from far away, and in the pull of her feet in that direction. Liak’ykam thought she felt something deeper, as well, something like a tarentatek waking from slumber, but she could pay that no mind. Liak’ykam walked onto the bridge, feet falling silently even for such a large Wookiee, her walking stick held gently in her hand, as the Captain finished asking where she was.
“Here, Captain Varen Kray,” her translator warbled. She placed her hood back up and gave them all a polite nod of the head. The ship rumbled to life beneath them and Liak’ykam - for a moment of childlike panic - braced herself against the wall, steadying herself with her walking stick as the afterburners thrusted them forwards. She chuckled. “Forgive me,” she said, smiling. “This is my second flight. What do you need for me to do…? “ she almost called him little one, because the Captain Varen Kray was quite small, and so young, too, but she did not think he would appreciate that on his ship. The other young ones had been fighting. Nothing serious, like kath pups snapping at each others’ legs, but fighting nonetheless.
The pilots took the ship up, B-O and Barsuuth handling the controls with practiced ease. Under Kray’s watch, they input the coordinates as they took the slow route out of the atmosphere, building up speed as they broke the pull of gravity and hit open space. The coordinates for Tatoooine were punched in, the ship lurched, and rocked, then made the jump to lightspeed. Liak’ykam braced herself against the wall with one hand and with the walking stick in her other, feeling the rush of speed low in her stomach.
The ship dropped out of lightspeed and Tatooine was there in the distance, a brown desert hanging in empty space. They’d come in at the edge of the system as the captain preferred - it was better to arrive with a little room for maneuvering, should something less hospitable than a welcoming party ever be waiting for them. Varen Kray looked over his pilots idly, everything on the
Phoenix having worked just as it should -
Then the comm system burst with static for a moment, drawing their attention. It warbled, the connection weak, then finally came through. The pilots adjusted the controls for a moment, attempting to get a stronger lock on the signal. It repeated itself every few seconds, a short burst set on automatic repeat. It wasn’t far away from where they were.
“A distress signal,” the captain said. He nodded to the intercom and told Barsuuth, “Get everyone up here to the bridge. We have matters to discuss.”
Following Barsuuth’s relay, the crew assembled in the bridge. It was cramped and they were slightly too close to one another for comfort and the distress signal kept repeating automatically. “Nothing discernible or special,” the captain announced. “A standard distress call, just far enough from Tatooine that their port officials wouldn’t pick up on it. Anyone jumping right to lightspeed out the docks might miss it as well. No telling how long it’s been going.”
“Is it just me or is that distress signal getting closer?” Woo’rah commented sardonically, glancing toward the captain with a knowing look. “Maybe they’re politely informing us they’re coming to
kill us all.”
Liak’ykam stayed quiet - it was not her place to speak in affairs of which she knew little. The taller hairless one seemed quite convinced it was a trap. Liak’ykam was in agreement - she had seen it before, in Kashyyyk, when they recorded the screams of the little children to lure them away from the village. She drummed her fingers against the walking stick, limbering them up. At the same time, she did not know how these distress signals worked. Perhaps it was legitimate. If they were looking to prey on those who would help others, they might deserve justice. Perhaps it was not their place. She stayed quiet and listened.
