Now Departing (open)

Mallis rearranged some last few components of the hyperdrive together and hooked it up to the engine and she quickly replaced the panel as Nik called her back to the cockpit. She prayed that they weren't actually going to use it very often, or for long durations.

She slouched against the wall beside the engine for a moment and reran the events that had gone down since she had boarded the vessel. There was no way to face what she had and not think about life in general. Her perspective had changed on quite a few things. She had almost died trapped in one of the machines she had learned about- just like her father, who had died when he crashed his speeder. The one she had been repairing. It was before she could remember, but the occurrence was what made her interested in machines- she felt that if she could learn to be a mechanic and rebuild his speeder, she would be following in his footsteps. She just wouldn't race in it- he had been a great mechanic, but a sub-par pilot- and Mallis knew not to repeat this mistake.

Mallis and her mother had fallen out over her interest in machinations and it had been years since they had talked. Her mother consistently liked to drive home the point that his mechanic-fascination was one of the two mistakes her father made. (The other was being given the final decision of naming his daughter, unable to choose between Marissa and Melissa. The truly absurd part being that in forming a combination of two, he dropped the 'a' at the end.)

She rose to her feet and her boots made a steady clang on the floor for the entire trudge back, left with consideration that maybe her mother was right. The noise of the engines kicking in began to surround her, proving that it was a good skill-set to know. However, her idea of placing faith in the abilities and opening a garage to make a living at her age wasn't a wise idea. Following her mothers instructions, if she was still able, was a better choice- it was time for Mallis to stop living in her little bubble and realise there was more out there than the small patch of land she was accustomed to.

Mallis took her seat and fastened the harness.

"Let's go get our stuff back." She spoke to Nik, whilst glaring out of the window ahead. It wasn't witty, nor was meant to be- all of her faculties were now charged with a single purpose in mind and there was no failing now.

"Damn straight." Nik responded as the ship took off and after a few minutes surged past lightspeed. The psychedelic corridor of hyperspace did its thing outside the windows, it would be several hours before they arrived at their destination and it occurred to him that he really didn't have a clue who he was travelling with.

"So whats your story Red?" He asked as he sought a more comfortable position on the aged chair; he found only more springs.

Mallis considered, for a moment, responding with the phrase 'which one?'- but without the crystals it seemed like an empty response.

"You can call me Mallis." She said, after all, he'd earned that much. It had been a long time since she had heard her own name aloud. She didn't tell it to many people and her mother was the only one would use it in full length, much to her distaste. "I was going to open a garage or something, put what skills of working on engines I'd taught myself to use- but there's really not that much call for it- or anything else on Andooweel. So, I'd planned to look around Najiba while I was there. Not so sure, now, though. Honestly, that's about everything- Andooweel is a boring place. I might have hung around a bit longer if the mine hadn't collapsed, but that's a different story."

"What about you?" She wondered. "How did you end up on this tin can?" He didn't appear to Mallis as the type to suffer the low budget flight out of anywhere.

"Its...." He started and strained through his memory of the events prior to the robbery. "A bit hazy....I was on some down time, by downtime I mean I lost my ship in a game of sabbac and then....I woke up on the ship." He shrugged, he didn't have anymore to tell. Well, anymore that he felt she needed to hear.

"So you wanted to be a mechanic by trade?" He looked at the not blinking warning lights again. "I can see that kid. I'd have been blown to bits by now if you weren't here. Don't stress too much, these things have a way of sorting themselves out in the end." He grinned and then unbuckled himself before clapping a hand on her shoulder. "I'm going to grab a few hours kip, you might want to do the same. Gods knows we have more than enough beds."

She thought back to the room she had checked out before.

"Plenty of beds, sure- but how many are clean?" She voiced her thought aloud. "In a moment, I guess." Mallis hadn't spent a lot of time on a ship- most of the time that she had- she had been unconscious, in a great deal of pain or just plain afraid for her life. This was the first moment she had been able to look out of the window and appreciate the black on the other side.

The scattered collection of lights were almost hypnotic to Mallis. She could sit and watch them for hours- after all- she had been knocked out for most of the day, how could she possibly sleep.

After watching the stars for a few more minutes, this would ironically be the last thought she would remember when she awoke.


Mallis rubbed her eyes and stretched herself out as much as she could, feeling the restrictions of the harness of the chair. She opened her eyes, alerted and fearful something else had gone wrong- it had been one of those kinds of journeys.

She let out a slow sigh of relief, unhooking the harness and pulling herself up to her feet to continue stretching as much as she was able and get out of the chair for a moment. It had not been entirely comfortable for a lengthy sleep.

Mallis' gaze fixed upon the view screen, an enormous nondescript brown rock stared back at her and she was frozen in spot with just one thought running endlessly through her mind. 'Oh no. Not again.' Not only was she sharing the mentality of a potted plant, but she also felt as helpless as one.

A beeping from the console of the captain's chair, accompanied with a flashing light on the console, snapped her out of her statuesque form and she realised that the asteroid before them wasn't heading towards them- the navigational computer had matched speeds with the object and was awaiting instructions for docking. It seemed as though they had arrived at the destination.

She collapsed back into her chair and opened her mouth to release a kind of helpless whimper, her body, however, hijacked the process and forced her into a large yawn. She suddenly found herself chuckling, weakly, at the situation.

Nik didn't sleep. He couldn't, not with a potential gunfight looming just at the other side of the jump. He tossed an turned in the small cot and tried not to think about what might be in the unwashed bed sheets with him. One question flipped about his mind like an annoying acrobat; Why was he doing this?

This wasn't the first time he had been double crossed, hells it wasn't the hundredth time, so why was this different? Sure he loved his combat pistol but it was a gun, plain and simple. "Kasseys gun..." He reminded himself and there was the rub.

Rillians didn't remember dozing off but in the moment between blinks the reversion alarm was bleeping in his quarters. He pulled himself up and swung his legs over the edge of the cot and yawned. A hand mussed up his hair and he stared bleary eyed at the cracked tiled floor for a few seconds before getting to his feet.

A groggy walk took him to the cockpit where Mallis remained and outside he could see their destination. The asteroid spun lazily and upon its surface he could make out the glimmer of man made constructions. He assumed it was an old mining base turned den for the less than reputable. It was on its own though, half way between Tatooine and the next sector over, he judged from the nav-computer screen as he took his seat. It was rare but not unheard of for an asteroid to drift alone, this one however remained stationary, spinning on an axis so that lead him to believe it had been towed here probably via the tractor beam of a large ship.

"Sleep alright?" He asked as his mind joined him in the land of the living. He let his hands settle on the controls and awaited clearance to dock, he doubted they would be scanned or indeed logged but he could see the telltale grey towers of turbolaser emplacements.

"Like a brick who was counting sheep whilst watching a documentary on morris dancing, who then gets hit from behind by a much larger brick- surprisingly."

Mallis was puzzled. There was a chance that they had been here floating for a while. If anyone on the rock had tried to make contact while they were asleep, or noticed their presence- by all regards they would have been crushed already. They were being ignored- and she couldn't help but think why.

"No way." She uttered aloud, kind of amazed at herself as the last few puzzles began to slot together. "The engine and hyperdrive were the only things in good condition. The engine had a problem which would cause it to break- but anyone who knew engines would know it was easy to fix. That's how I was looking at it, because I knew engines- but anyone who didn't really know engines, wouldn't know there was a problem." By this point she wasn't aware if she was just talking to herself, nor did she care- a puzzle had just been solved and she was hellbent on explaining how.

"The hyperdrive probably was never meant to truly be broken- just disconnected, so that anyone who had no knowledge of ships wouldn't be able to hook it back up. After all, why would people who knew how this stuff works charter a flight with this pile of problems." She smiled. "They've done this before and they were planning to do it again. We haven't been shot yet, because they were expecting this ship to return. Do you know how to scan the ship for electrical signatures?" She had an idea.

"They get willing people to charter a journey, they knock them out. Break the droids on board and disconnect the hyperdrive so that the people on board would perish. The asteroid that almost crushed us was just bad luck, not part of the plan. The moment our life signs were extinguished, I bet a final- perfectly intact- droid would jump out of its hiding spot, hook the hyperdrive back up and fly us right here. If we find it, not only would we find these co-ordinates amongst it's data, we'll find data for a landing pad that will let us dock with no effort of resistance." She grinned wildly. For the second time on this journey, Mallis felt like she had made herself useful.

"Those crafty pricks!" Nik exclaimed catching the jist as she was half way through her deduction, his hands danced across the control board and turned the sensors inward while shutting down all non-essential power systems. "I'm way ahead of you."

The small screen pinged with a growing circle that represented the progress of the scan, with power shut down to the majority of the ship it would narrow down the possibilities of picking up a false-positive. It was a tense minute before the sensors completed their sweep and a bright green dot appeared on the screen.

"If I recall the layout right, the wee bastard is...." Nik's eyebrows furrowed in confusion and then realization. He looked to the floor plating behind them and then scrabbled or his seat to crouch down at a large tile just in front of the cockpit door. He signaled for Mallis to keep quiet and pointed toward the floor in front of him. He drew the hold-out blaster from his gunbelt and motioned for Mallis to lift up the panel.

Rillians held up his free hand as he stood, pointing the blaster at the floor, and counted down from three fingers.

Mallis nodded and felt a wave of coldness across the palm of her hands as she grabbed the metal panel. She waited patiently as she watched Nik's final finger to drop. She hoisted the panel up and looked down into the compartment.

Some mechanisms clanked into action as the droid reacted to its detection. It pivoted the bucket-like torso, as though to look up and emitted a high-pitch noise which Mallis understood to mean 'aw, crap' as its detectors spotted the blaster pointed at it.

"Is that an R5 unit?" Mallis asked raising her hand to her forehead. "Shouldn't be surprised, I guess- bargain basement droid for a bargain basement ship." An erratic series of beeps came from the robotic form, her recognition of the language was a little rusty- not to mention incomplete- her only contact had come from repairing some in her efforts to see how they slotted together mechanically. It seemed to mention something about an on-board blaster, something about wishing to avoid lethal force and ended with some kind of comment about stacking paper cups. The last one had to be her mistake, she concluded.

"So, what do we do?" Mallis was prepared to flip the panel back over. "Gotta be honest, being strong-armed by this soup can is pretty much the highlight of the trip so far."

"No funny business!" Nik demanded of the Droid that continued to beep and whistle at Mallis. "You move a bloody servo and I'll put a hole in your mother-board, then she'll use whats left to make a toaster. We will then have bagels and waffles on a regular basis." In hindsight he probably should have stopped talking around word five.

Nik looked from the droid to Mallis, then back again. He hadn't thought this far ahead, if he were honest; which he usually wasn't. "Switch the wee bastard off, maybe we can tinker with its programming and make it get us onto that hunk of rock."

The droid buzzed and beeped erratically as Mallis hopped into the robot hiding spot. The series of noises grew increasingly rapid and it became evident, while she didn't recognise any of the patterns, it was pleading to remain active. She reached towards the illuminated buttons- the droids noises turned into one consistent screech.

A panel on the droid slid open quickly revealing the nozzle of a gun and there was a momentary flash which forced Mallis to recoil and close her eyes. A gunshot shook her skull, passing through her ears and reverberating within. She didn't have time to think about what had happened because of the increasing burning sensation on her arm. She started patting at her arm furiously, trying to extinguish the non-existent flames.

The droids gun had overheated, causing a short explosion around the barrel. She rolled up her sleeve and pressed it up against the cold metal of the compartment, unleashing a sound of immense relief as the chilling metal washed over the reddened section of her arm. She noted the droid was now inactive- a large hole in the receptacle where the blaster had been revealed.

"Damn those personality malfunctions." Mallis gripped what she regarded as the legs of the machine and lifted it as best she could, dumping it sideways- unceremoniously- as soon as she got it high enough to reach the floor of the cockpit.

"The memory core is within the head." Mallis mentioned, as she sat on the edge and swung her legs out of the hole. "I can hook it up to a console, but you'd have to access the data." She propped the machine back up and wheeled it to the captains chair.

She reached inside the chest cavity and gently tugged on each side of a handful of wires, examining them to see if any were suitable for the process.

The flash of light was all that saved the droid from permanent shutdown, by the time Nik's vision returned he noted with some satisfaction that he wasn't dead.  Oh and Mallis was still alive too, which was nice of her. Dead bodies were heavy.

"Err....Good job?" Rillians said while crouching down to drag the droid from its murder hole. He watched as the mechanic wheeled it toward the outlets for the ships computer. "Hook it up and I'll see what can be done with the little prick." He responded, tossing himself into the chair and tapping away on the console.

When Mallis had hooked the droids memory core into the ports on the console, lines upon lines of code scrolled across the screen in green. To anyone else it might as well have been an ancient dialect or a poorly scrawled message in a pub stall by a drunken hand but to Nik's trained eyes it was the very blueprints of the Droids soul. Like a geneticist sees specific strands that make a girls eyes blue or her hair blonde or even her boobs exceptionally perky Nik began to pick out the lines of code that triggered the farce that had landed them here.

It took twenty or so minutes and he was acutely aware that those turbolaser batteries wouldn't stay silent forever. They'd soon wonder why their little tin-pet hadn't com'd in as per their instructions.

"Right that'll do it. Ready to boot it back up?" He asked Mallis.

"Boot it back up?" She repeated. "Um..."

She reached into the chasm created by the misfire and felt around- snapping off the screwdriver from the droids internal mechanisms for self repair. With it she proceeded to remove the panel and get a look at the circuitry.

"There's no way this can be fixed." She said reluctantly. "Hang on." She dropped the screwdriver and grabbed hold of something with both hands and ripped it out of place. "We don't want fixed, we want functional." She muttered aloud, picking up the screwdriver and set about the process of removing and relocating circuitry. It was nearly ten minutes further before she spoke again.

"That ought to do it." She powered the droid up- but it remained motionless. She pivoted her head to check her work before pulling back and sighing dejectedly. "It SHOULD work, I guess the blast was too much for it to handle."

With the mechanical labour complete the droids singular photo-receptor illuminated and it spun its domed head around as if assessing the chances of escape from its captors. It noted with a shrill screech of electronic static that its motor-functions had been disabled, it ended its dialogue with a low, mournful, whistle.

"You know what to do crapheap," Nik growled giving it a sharp kick that gave a satisfying clang against its carapace. Tweets and woots which sounded very much to Nik like it were grumbling under its breath was all the indication it gave that it understood the role it was to play. The socket arm that was already jacked into the console spun this way and that before it sent a coded transmission to the base below.

The ship was suddenly stuck by a blue beam and Rillians was forced to brace himself lest he tumble from his seat. "Tractor beam, I guess we're playing Trojan. Jump into our tin friends hidey hole while I wipe its memory." He said to Mallis and immediately set to the task of erasing this particular part of the droids life from existence before he too hopped into the concealed compartment.

The ship was guided, against its will, down toward the asteroid. As one tractor beam reached the end of its range another took the burden and soon the ship was being ushered into an opening maw hidden by the craggy rock surface.

They were in.

A pair of slow, but loud clangs were all the evidence that Mallis had received to clarify their position, as the ship touched down in the hidden hangar bay and the the doors subsequently sealed them inside. She vaguely made out the sequential noises of the hangar being pressurized.

"It's little more than a big air-lock." She noted aloud. "No chance for a quick escape, I guess- we'd need to wait for the pressure to balance itself again."

Mallis had a knot in her stomach- she suddenly put her finger on something that had been bugging her subconsciously since this incident started. If the ship was due to be delivered back to the hands of the bandits- why were her belongings taken and removed from the ship before hand. If the plan was for her and Nik to be left for dead on the ship, their belongings would've still been on them when they arrived. This step offered no purpose on the grand scheme of the plans in motion- as they had figured out so far.

She made to voice the feeling of dread aloud, when she was interrupted by the hushing noise of the footsteps entering the cockpit of the ship.

"Why aren't ye in yer hole." A gruff male voice barked at the droid. It vweeped back, not returning to its hole because it no longer remembered sending the message. It rolled back and forth a few times, erratically, uttering a few perplexed noises. "Take the piece of crap down fer another memory wipe. Blasted things getting t'be more trouble than its worth." He hollered across the bridge, while two more heavy sets of boots across the metal floor.

A third pair of footsteps- much slower, adopting a more methodical pace, made its way across the room before falling silent.

"Alright, the jobs done- just like y'said. Took the girlies gems, let 'em off wherever they landed at port- the logs say...hrm...Tattoine, accordin' t'the log. Seems a bit of an odd choice, musta been the guy." It was only now that Mallis realised that he wasn't talking to someone on the vessel. "My ships been busted up a bit, we might need to up our fee, to handle the repairs."

"Now, now." An indiscriminate voice shot through the communication relay. "I gave you a fair price and all the added incentive you needed- repair your ship from whatever you get for the crystals. As far as I'm concerned, our business is concluded."

Mallis was rocked rigid by the news. This wasn't just about her being targeted on a whim- there was some sinister conspiracy involved. However, she didn't have much time to dwell on things.