Post by Marshall on May 2, 2019 9:03:02 GMT -5
Breis Teimar was a veteran of multiple campaigns, with considerable clout with his fellow clan-heads. The survivors at Tal Ruus would die for him; those at Tal-Kebii'tra treaded water to hold their own without him. The man had a mountain of experience and a confidence in his ability to read an enemy and take them out.
He had no idea what to do with information from sensitives. It didn't matter what they called themselves: jetii, dar'jetii, he'd seen them stare past each other, or save everyone a few nightmares by closing their eyes. That was all he'd seen.
It was not that he did not believe anything had happened. He wanted to believe that someone could learn something useful and help them to survive. But he didn't even know if he should classify what they'd told him as information. He had information. Information looked like this: This is a wakeks. Stay away from its mouth and tail and, oh yeah, its claws also, and maybe don't let it step on you.
Whatever it is, it has all the Dreamers connected-- Where did one categorize that?
It seemed more a distraction than useful.
Breis wanted to see if Captain Black would volunteer advice or insight into just what role she'd played in that, but he didn't have time to initiate it himself. It was a long way through the Red to the graveyard, though, even with Azair's wakek's making the trip faster, and maybe she would warm to the topic then. Whether she did or did not, he'd pull their team and they'd be gone in that five minutes, and within two hours, if the world didn't end, they'd spot their first marker: a buried-nosed Seinar flatbottom skimmer.
And that's how they'd know they'd arrived.
In those five minutes before they'd left Solomon had eaten and taken some water. Eventually the disorientation would wear off, but it would be about mid-trip before he'd begin to fully feel the waning of effects from what he'd attempted. It kept him quiet and still on the wakek he was riding. That, in itself, was an experience. There was a healthy respect to be held for anything that could bite you in two with one chomp, and when using that thing as a mode of transportation that respect only grew. It had a mind of its own, its own weight to throw around, and if it were ever so keen it could do so quite easily. The wakek he was on breathed beneath him, and around him there was nothing much to see that hadn't been seen before -- a lot of red haze that hung heavy and hung close. His right arm was bound a little closer, a little tighter, to his body for this trip while his left was used to keep his balance on top of the large lizard-like creature.
The supply run group consisted of Jujanaj Azair, who sat in front of Solomon on one of the two wakeks he kept under control, Grot, Tavv'ari, and another of the Tal-Keb Mandals named Nen. Catia and the two Hapan grunts were along, and so was Liv. Breis had opted to trade places with Dorara the zabrak; she remained behind at Tal-Keb.
It was two wakeks, instead of more, because while Jeryndi Trander's work had been extraordinary, Breis could not yet bring himself to rely on them when he was pressed for time. If even one went wild and had to be killed--let alone if it hurt anyone--they could be out after the light was gone. So: tried and true. The doc had the heads of the two Tal Ruus wakeks wrapped, and for the sake of speed the Mandals and Hapans would switch out riding and running alongside the big carnivores through the Red on their way to the skimmer. Solomon, being injured, was not asked to run yet.
Breis' plan was to escort Catia around the densest area of dead ships. She'd scrawled a list in the dust for him about what she thought she might need; he'd approved it. They'd scout out the area, carry back only a certain class of relatively lightweight supplies, plus water if they got lucky, and mark off the bigger stuff she wanted if they found it. Then they'd bring out their herd of wakeks to use as beasts of burden; then it would be worth the risk.
Sight of the skimmer had him perking up a bit. What had seemed like just the same old scenery of red haze was changing with that spotted marker. It wasn't an instant alertness, but he was more aware, his eyes open and squinting into the red cloud that surrounded him. He had heard from Grot and several others that ambushes might be a thing now for the brute-built invaders so as they headed into the graveyard, Solomon was watchful.
'Distracted' would be the best word to describe Captain Black in their time of finishing preparations and launching their departure. Distracted, quiet, mind somewhere else. She had distanced herself after the meld, spoken only when necessary, and offered no more personal insights or suggestions. Even a quick five minute separate resting period didn't help; if nothing else, she seemed even more disheveled. When it was time to go, however, she pushed forward without complaint.. and as the skimmer came into view, her attention sharpened on it just slightly. They were arriving, and she needed her head in the game.
In the uncertain light, shadows were weird or nonexistent. The group passed from dim to dark and back again, and the Mandals read that as signs that, unseen through the dust, there were very big rocks above them somewhere. The skimmer was a dark blotch at first, stuck out of the red ground at an awkward angle. Coming upon it, its crunched burns were visible only because of how the dark red dust caught in the heat scoring.
Beyond it spread a soft-edged vista of other blocky shapes, most barely able to be discerned from the landscape like a host of headstones in thick fog.
Azair reined in the wakeks. Those who'd been taking their turns running on foot--including Catia, this round--slowed to a stop and created their own mini-whirlwinds of red.
Breis twisted around and raised his voice. "We split up only as much as the cables let us. Hook yourselves up and under no circumstances do you disconnect, hear me? If you've got comms, lucky you; but you can't depend on them alone." He was probably talking to the Hapans, mostly, there, or to Solomon.
He'd been in places like this before. Not so much the same on the outside, as this looked completely different than some of the others he'd seen, but it felt the same. There was an odd stillness that settled into his bones. It was almost a sense of extreme fragility in nature. Everything felt so settled around him, and that was unsettling. Like stretching his arms out wide, and spreading his fingers Solomon was once more letting The Force shower its quenching rain down on him. It wove, giving his awareness a bigger area to encompass. It was no more what he could just see with his eyes, or touch with his gloved hands, or the ground on which he stood as he slid off the back of the wakek. It was a wider sense of all of those things, a bubble of sorts, in which he could feel the living elements around him -- The Mandals, the Hapans, Dr Azair, and the wakeks -- as well as the edges of the ships that lay buried in the graveyard.
There were several spools of cable, and the cables were all different gauges. They'd been picked up over time after Tal-Keb had been founded, and rigged to be used in case visibility dropped to zero when a group needed to move. Word was that visibility was getting steadily better! ... which was probably hard for the Hapans and Solomon and his companions to believe, since it was still sporadic and liable to close in with its monochrome density.
This run was different. This run asked for more. Not just water and weapons, food and a chance to check out ship's comms or other tech they came across to see if any of it worked even slightly. This run, they hunted for materials to fix a ship that was potentially their only hope for survival. They hunted for materials that might enable them to signal up to help their own would-be rescuers. This run, they had to look to the future even with the present still cracking apart all around them.
So the spools were large and attached to the wakeks' tack. None of them offered leashes that would unfurl longer than sixty feet, but with it possible to be lost entirely from view at half that distance, that was the most Breis allowed.
"Cables. Check." Liv replied, looking towards Breis for a moment before shifting attention back to the skimmer and the shadows of other ships on ahead. She wondered just how many of them there were, trying to force her eyes to see what couldn't yet be seen. They could easily spend days or more down here, going from ship to ship, if they weren't focused.
Catia and the others who had been running backed off. Mandals slid down--only to the outside, never between both wakeks. Dr Azair had them, but caution never hurt, did it? The sharp whirring of spools cut into the windblown heaviness as thickly gloved hands began yanking out lengths of cable. The assortment of connectors was nearly as varied as the thicknesses of the cable. Ringclips, magclips--snap, snap, snap on belts and harnesses and shoulder armor.
Breis slid down and backed off to make room for Liv, circling wide to take an offered clip from one of his warriors. Azair remained mounted.
One of the Tal-Kebii'tra Mandos (hard to say which one with an extra heavy layer of wrappings) made a big wave with his arm as he (as it turned out) shouted to be heard: "Off the skimmer's starboard wing: we've been over that; it's thinned out. Port side's thicker with ships; we've been through about twenty of them. We think it must be closer to where the Yaim was."
Which fit.
Breis cleared his throat. "Ahem," he called out wryly. "For your bearings, please note that the skimmer is upside down."
The weight of the tool kit he'd had with him shifted against his right thigh, the make shift thick cord of a strap he'd fashioned at the last minute creaking against the knots he'd asked for help in tying. The black bag barely showed any red but for a glittery covering that was so thin in places that it looked like it was part of the bag itself, a facet of its making. He adjusted the strap there against his left shoulder with his left hand and turned to look toward where the heavily wrapped Mandal's voice had come from, and then toward Breis' before looking to Catia and the Hapans, "Are we splitting up, or do you want to comb over these ships together?"
It might have seemed silly, making them orient to the skimmer when they could only go at most sixty feet from the wakeks, but out here the Mandals were paranoid of getting disconnected and lost, and every tiny shred of information they could latch onto to stay oriented felt precious. Unlike Liv, Solomon, Catia, and the grunts, at one point in the last week or so, each and every one of the Mandals had been lost out here, and most of them had been utterly alone.
"Two wakeks," Liv began, hopping down from her ride and latching onto the cable. She didn't push or argue that point; she too knew that feeling of being completely cut off and lost. "two teams perhaps, two different ships? Cover more ground faster." Her eyes shifted to Breis, checking his thoughts.
Already nodding, Breis urged the Mando who had spoken before, "You heard the Captain. Lead Azair to the first cluster."
The first cluster was so close it was already visible, and it happened to be three ships, not just two. Two of them had collided with enough force to mold their hulls partially together. The larger one protruded from the ground, half-buried, and the smaller one, which appeared to have been cobbled together from a boxy transport and some outrunner turrets, was practically grafted to its underside. The third ship was thirty feet from them, just resting like it meant to be there, right-side-up, buried up to the tops of its struts but with one of its loading doors yawning open at them like a toothless mouth.
"Already gutted these for water and supplies," said the Mando who'd taken on a role as a guide, "but we ignored some stuff that might come in handy for the dropship or cable."
As others had before him, Sol got himself hooked up to a guide line while Liv and Breis spoke. Ready to go, then, he'd move with the group going for the first cluster. With the way the wind was shifting, pushing and pulling at The Red it was easy to imagine getting lost out this way, double that by the distance they were from the Blood Sky and he could very well imagine how becoming separated meant the hell that surrounded them would be worsened. It was thoughts like that, that had him checking the blaster on his suit, and the positioning and sturdiness if the lock that held his guide line in place.
"Were any dreamers found in the ships you've already gone through?" He asked, eyeing first the cluster they were drawing toward, and then turning to look toward their guide.
"Not by us." It was Grot who answered. Some of the Mandals reacted to that; one could be heard to laugh sourly. Grot explained: "We think we were probably the dreamers around here before we started to stir."
Breis, walking ahead, now in the eddying wind-shadow of the double-ship amalgamation, called back: "Found bodies, though. Snapped necks; snapped spines. Crushed. Or just floating, dead."
The Mandal guide added: "It's further on you'll see the ones we can't reach. They're too high up. But when the sky opens, you can see them up there. Just drifting. Floating. Dead to the world or really dead."
Tavv'ari from Tal Ruus perked up. "Out there's where the Astrala is, isn't it?"
Their guide nodded but nods were habit rather than useful out here. "Past the next marker."
"Our jetii were asking about it."
He took in that news, looking up toward the horizon over their heads. Others floating out there, up too high to reach. Maybe they could...."The Astrala?" Pulled back into what was being said, Sol had a bad feeling and he spoke that question, and about why the Jedi might have been asking about it. This was his first time hearing the name of the ship, so maybe it was a different matter entirely. In some ways he hoped that it was, and in others he didn't want to think about it at all.
Mentioning the ship name and 'jetii' had Liv looking to Solomon for recognition.. but he didn't show any immediate recognition, so she waited to see if Breis offered more context.
Breis didn't notice anyone was looking to him. He stretched his lined out toward the two-made-one ship, stirring waves of hyperlight red dust with every step, every motion of his hands.
It was Tavv who said with feeling, "One ugly piece of Hapan ship design." A moment passed when she seemed to realize that
Solomon needed substance rather than opinion. "Oh--right. You were chewing Red."
"Trap-Nap?" Catia muttered, interested.
Tavv hadn't heard her and added: "Tlin brought it to Um-Shara. Yen's family and Jegoth Ordis' cadre came with him."
"He won't know who Yen is," Breis said, hooking a boot onto a crumpled hull section in order to boost himself up to a wide tear in the side of the bigger ship. Slipping sideways into it, his cable vibrating in a sudden gust of wind, the man was immediately swallowed into darkness. When his glowrod flared a second later, the change was barely visible from ground-level outside.
"Amidi clan-head," Tavv offered. "Renda's grandmother."
"How far out is the next marker from here?" It was only as Breis struck his glowrod that Solomon had realized the Clan Head had disappeared into the ship. When Catia had muttered, his head had hooked her way slightly, but he remained focused on Tavv'ari. Tlin's ship. "That's also where more dreamers are, right?" Like he was trying to draw a mental map, someway of defining the unknown layout of the world around him.
Tavv'ari turned all the way around to give the floor to the Mandal guide who seemed to know the lay of the desert the best. Judging distance sucked when you couldn't see and when the substance across which you walked was so fine that the slightest breeze meant you lost all your own footprints almost as soon as they were made. It had been days, though, and he said, "We've been calling it three hundred meters. Next marker is one of the racing pylons from Um-Shara. About twenty feet of it was sticking up the last time I was here, but we think it's falling over. Could be harder to find this time."
As for the dreamers...
"They just got done telling you that, Director Jedi," Catia said as she passed Solomon, moving up to follow Breis Teimar into the ship so that she could start the hunt for anything at all that might help them save their own rescuers.
"Seen invaders out there, too," said Grot.
The guide nodded. "That's where we saw the group of them. Crappiest ambush attempt I ever had the pleasure of blasting my way out of."
Sol moved aside for Catia, and then a Hapan grun who was following behind the Naval tech, "Would any of you be comfortable going out that far, again, with the chance of running into the invaders what it is?" He was stepping up for his turn to climb into the ship behind the Hapan grunt, "There could be a way for us to reach those further up."
The other team had begun to fan toward the other ship, but had slowed when the topic roped them in. Jujanaj Azair remained with the wakeks, still mounted, unable to hold much by way of conversation but taking on a role of lookout.
"Comfortable?" the guide asked blankly from the ground. It did not compute.
From the torn hull, grimy lights flicked on in her suit, Catia turned back to look down at Solomon. "Salvage op. Remember?"
"Not right now," he said up toward Catia, "But soon. A different run. I have to talk to the others before anything is committed to on our end anyway," and maybe comfortable wasn't the right word, but he had to focus on what he was doing just then, using his left hand to pull himself up and into the ship while feeling lopsided in the motion. From his tool kit, once inside the ship, Sol pulled a white-lighted glowrod and struck the light. There was no difference this time, just as every time before, in how far the light traveled through the haze. It hung just as close, if not closer due to the geographical location and the confines of the ship.
In the awkward angles of that room, they walked on the walls, across storage compartment doors and hatchways. Obvious right away in the dim lights was that, as with all other spaces, the Red permeated. Past that, it was clear that this ship (or this part of it) had indeed been gone over: a comm box by the hatch that was, for them, underfoot, had been prised out and was missing, a few weathered old wires sticking out like gnarled hands.
"What's the topic?" Breis could be heard from farther in, but not seen.
"Time," Catia told him. "Always time."
Time, yes, and more specifically "A technique that might allow my friends and I to reach the higher dreamers." He called ahead to Breis, stepping over a compartment that's closure looked as if it had been a magnetic one to allow room for others to come up.
In the crimson darkness of the ship's interior, Breis shone his light into an obviously gutted storage compartment, leaning in to sift through what was left. He didn't stop what he was doing, but his voice carried well enough. "We'll talk about it back at Tal-Keb. For now: focus here. On where you are, what you are doing. We need to be in the present to make sure we've even got a future. Get to work."
Without formal orders, the teams had broken down on their own. Grot, Tavv, the guide--whose name was Nen--and Nora the Hapan grunt, had headed over to the other ship.
Outside of the ship where Breis was at work, Buttercup waited to follow Liv in.
At this point, the cables and cords connecting them to the reels on the wakeks' harnesses made a minor obstacle course once past the door.
With that word from Breis, Solomon turned and headed forward on the ship toward where the cockpit would be. Navigating the innards of the ship was a task. In the darkness with just the dim lighting of his glowrod to see by it could be easy to trip on a corner, or miss an indentation that was natural to the ship's design. He couldn't tell just what kind it was, or what ship yard it had come from, with visibility so low but those were just details. In his going, steadying himself with careful footing, he paused to stop. There were somethings he needed to stop and think about these days before doing. A lot had changed, and while that was alright back home where the ground was soft and moist, and he could wait for daylight and breath fresh air readily, this was not home. This was the complete opposite. Turning, looking back toward Catia, a sweeping glance that took in the Hapan tech and who ever else had just come into the ship, he said, "I'm going to start in the cockpit, and I might need some extra hands. Anyone want to come with?" It was one of the hardest things in the galaxy for him to do, and he was doing it more and more often since they reached the Blood Sky.
Catia's light swung around, illuminating drifting dust in the air more than any single thing. Then the beam swiveled more, and the tech said, "Give him a hand. Get it? Ha ha. This mission is comedy gold." Snort. Her light turned away.
Two other lights came into view, belonging to Buttercup, the armored grunt who had been the unfortunate recipient of Catia's focus. Her armor was top notch, light and nimble in battle, but in it she was less able to squeeze through awkward rips in ship hulls and sideways oriented doors. It simply lacking give was enough to force her to realign herself continually where Solomon in his lighter suit had simply been able to shimmy. She finally blocked all hints of red from the next room, coming up carefully behind him.
"So! Up the bantha's butthole together," Buttercup observed philosophically. "Joy. Lead on, sweetie."
She was the grunt whose arguing he and Ava had interrupted up at the dropship, but either she bore no hard feelings or Buttercup, bearing a grudge, was exactly the same as Buttercup feeling neutral.
In response to Catia Sol gave a humorless smile that was more of a sneer, the lack of light within the ship and in the heavy dust let it go unseen. "Har. Har." He said flatly in response before turning back to begin for the cockpit at Buttercup's urging. He gave a small tug to the cable attached to his suit along the way, looking to get both slack and whip it out from slipping underfoot of the Hapan grunt behind him. The ship, heading further up, was no different from the part of the ship they were leaving behind them. It was dark, and the light of his glowrod was severely diminished by the thickness of The Red. The Red, itself, glinted like the fine dust it seemed to be with the granules floating, shifting, and being kicked up in passing. Every few steps he turned to look back over his shoulder toward Buttercup. Things were feeling close, relying on intangible senses gave him a better sense of where things were, but in that was a battle with his other senses. What he could see, and what he could feel were two different things and that kept his steps careful in the thick darkness as he picked his way forward.
He had no idea what to do with information from sensitives. It didn't matter what they called themselves: jetii, dar'jetii, he'd seen them stare past each other, or save everyone a few nightmares by closing their eyes. That was all he'd seen.
It was not that he did not believe anything had happened. He wanted to believe that someone could learn something useful and help them to survive. But he didn't even know if he should classify what they'd told him as information. He had information. Information looked like this: This is a wakeks. Stay away from its mouth and tail and, oh yeah, its claws also, and maybe don't let it step on you.
Whatever it is, it has all the Dreamers connected-- Where did one categorize that?
It seemed more a distraction than useful.
Breis wanted to see if Captain Black would volunteer advice or insight into just what role she'd played in that, but he didn't have time to initiate it himself. It was a long way through the Red to the graveyard, though, even with Azair's wakek's making the trip faster, and maybe she would warm to the topic then. Whether she did or did not, he'd pull their team and they'd be gone in that five minutes, and within two hours, if the world didn't end, they'd spot their first marker: a buried-nosed Seinar flatbottom skimmer.
And that's how they'd know they'd arrived.
In those five minutes before they'd left Solomon had eaten and taken some water. Eventually the disorientation would wear off, but it would be about mid-trip before he'd begin to fully feel the waning of effects from what he'd attempted. It kept him quiet and still on the wakek he was riding. That, in itself, was an experience. There was a healthy respect to be held for anything that could bite you in two with one chomp, and when using that thing as a mode of transportation that respect only grew. It had a mind of its own, its own weight to throw around, and if it were ever so keen it could do so quite easily. The wakek he was on breathed beneath him, and around him there was nothing much to see that hadn't been seen before -- a lot of red haze that hung heavy and hung close. His right arm was bound a little closer, a little tighter, to his body for this trip while his left was used to keep his balance on top of the large lizard-like creature.
The supply run group consisted of Jujanaj Azair, who sat in front of Solomon on one of the two wakeks he kept under control, Grot, Tavv'ari, and another of the Tal-Keb Mandals named Nen. Catia and the two Hapan grunts were along, and so was Liv. Breis had opted to trade places with Dorara the zabrak; she remained behind at Tal-Keb.
It was two wakeks, instead of more, because while Jeryndi Trander's work had been extraordinary, Breis could not yet bring himself to rely on them when he was pressed for time. If even one went wild and had to be killed--let alone if it hurt anyone--they could be out after the light was gone. So: tried and true. The doc had the heads of the two Tal Ruus wakeks wrapped, and for the sake of speed the Mandals and Hapans would switch out riding and running alongside the big carnivores through the Red on their way to the skimmer. Solomon, being injured, was not asked to run yet.
Breis' plan was to escort Catia around the densest area of dead ships. She'd scrawled a list in the dust for him about what she thought she might need; he'd approved it. They'd scout out the area, carry back only a certain class of relatively lightweight supplies, plus water if they got lucky, and mark off the bigger stuff she wanted if they found it. Then they'd bring out their herd of wakeks to use as beasts of burden; then it would be worth the risk.
Sight of the skimmer had him perking up a bit. What had seemed like just the same old scenery of red haze was changing with that spotted marker. It wasn't an instant alertness, but he was more aware, his eyes open and squinting into the red cloud that surrounded him. He had heard from Grot and several others that ambushes might be a thing now for the brute-built invaders so as they headed into the graveyard, Solomon was watchful.
'Distracted' would be the best word to describe Captain Black in their time of finishing preparations and launching their departure. Distracted, quiet, mind somewhere else. She had distanced herself after the meld, spoken only when necessary, and offered no more personal insights or suggestions. Even a quick five minute separate resting period didn't help; if nothing else, she seemed even more disheveled. When it was time to go, however, she pushed forward without complaint.. and as the skimmer came into view, her attention sharpened on it just slightly. They were arriving, and she needed her head in the game.
In the uncertain light, shadows were weird or nonexistent. The group passed from dim to dark and back again, and the Mandals read that as signs that, unseen through the dust, there were very big rocks above them somewhere. The skimmer was a dark blotch at first, stuck out of the red ground at an awkward angle. Coming upon it, its crunched burns were visible only because of how the dark red dust caught in the heat scoring.
Beyond it spread a soft-edged vista of other blocky shapes, most barely able to be discerned from the landscape like a host of headstones in thick fog.
Azair reined in the wakeks. Those who'd been taking their turns running on foot--including Catia, this round--slowed to a stop and created their own mini-whirlwinds of red.
Breis twisted around and raised his voice. "We split up only as much as the cables let us. Hook yourselves up and under no circumstances do you disconnect, hear me? If you've got comms, lucky you; but you can't depend on them alone." He was probably talking to the Hapans, mostly, there, or to Solomon.
He'd been in places like this before. Not so much the same on the outside, as this looked completely different than some of the others he'd seen, but it felt the same. There was an odd stillness that settled into his bones. It was almost a sense of extreme fragility in nature. Everything felt so settled around him, and that was unsettling. Like stretching his arms out wide, and spreading his fingers Solomon was once more letting The Force shower its quenching rain down on him. It wove, giving his awareness a bigger area to encompass. It was no more what he could just see with his eyes, or touch with his gloved hands, or the ground on which he stood as he slid off the back of the wakek. It was a wider sense of all of those things, a bubble of sorts, in which he could feel the living elements around him -- The Mandals, the Hapans, Dr Azair, and the wakeks -- as well as the edges of the ships that lay buried in the graveyard.
There were several spools of cable, and the cables were all different gauges. They'd been picked up over time after Tal-Keb had been founded, and rigged to be used in case visibility dropped to zero when a group needed to move. Word was that visibility was getting steadily better! ... which was probably hard for the Hapans and Solomon and his companions to believe, since it was still sporadic and liable to close in with its monochrome density.
This run was different. This run asked for more. Not just water and weapons, food and a chance to check out ship's comms or other tech they came across to see if any of it worked even slightly. This run, they hunted for materials to fix a ship that was potentially their only hope for survival. They hunted for materials that might enable them to signal up to help their own would-be rescuers. This run, they had to look to the future even with the present still cracking apart all around them.
So the spools were large and attached to the wakeks' tack. None of them offered leashes that would unfurl longer than sixty feet, but with it possible to be lost entirely from view at half that distance, that was the most Breis allowed.
"Cables. Check." Liv replied, looking towards Breis for a moment before shifting attention back to the skimmer and the shadows of other ships on ahead. She wondered just how many of them there were, trying to force her eyes to see what couldn't yet be seen. They could easily spend days or more down here, going from ship to ship, if they weren't focused.
Catia and the others who had been running backed off. Mandals slid down--only to the outside, never between both wakeks. Dr Azair had them, but caution never hurt, did it? The sharp whirring of spools cut into the windblown heaviness as thickly gloved hands began yanking out lengths of cable. The assortment of connectors was nearly as varied as the thicknesses of the cable. Ringclips, magclips--snap, snap, snap on belts and harnesses and shoulder armor.
Breis slid down and backed off to make room for Liv, circling wide to take an offered clip from one of his warriors. Azair remained mounted.
One of the Tal-Kebii'tra Mandos (hard to say which one with an extra heavy layer of wrappings) made a big wave with his arm as he (as it turned out) shouted to be heard: "Off the skimmer's starboard wing: we've been over that; it's thinned out. Port side's thicker with ships; we've been through about twenty of them. We think it must be closer to where the Yaim was."
Which fit.
Breis cleared his throat. "Ahem," he called out wryly. "For your bearings, please note that the skimmer is upside down."
The weight of the tool kit he'd had with him shifted against his right thigh, the make shift thick cord of a strap he'd fashioned at the last minute creaking against the knots he'd asked for help in tying. The black bag barely showed any red but for a glittery covering that was so thin in places that it looked like it was part of the bag itself, a facet of its making. He adjusted the strap there against his left shoulder with his left hand and turned to look toward where the heavily wrapped Mandal's voice had come from, and then toward Breis' before looking to Catia and the Hapans, "Are we splitting up, or do you want to comb over these ships together?"
It might have seemed silly, making them orient to the skimmer when they could only go at most sixty feet from the wakeks, but out here the Mandals were paranoid of getting disconnected and lost, and every tiny shred of information they could latch onto to stay oriented felt precious. Unlike Liv, Solomon, Catia, and the grunts, at one point in the last week or so, each and every one of the Mandals had been lost out here, and most of them had been utterly alone.
"Two wakeks," Liv began, hopping down from her ride and latching onto the cable. She didn't push or argue that point; she too knew that feeling of being completely cut off and lost. "two teams perhaps, two different ships? Cover more ground faster." Her eyes shifted to Breis, checking his thoughts.
Already nodding, Breis urged the Mando who had spoken before, "You heard the Captain. Lead Azair to the first cluster."
The first cluster was so close it was already visible, and it happened to be three ships, not just two. Two of them had collided with enough force to mold their hulls partially together. The larger one protruded from the ground, half-buried, and the smaller one, which appeared to have been cobbled together from a boxy transport and some outrunner turrets, was practically grafted to its underside. The third ship was thirty feet from them, just resting like it meant to be there, right-side-up, buried up to the tops of its struts but with one of its loading doors yawning open at them like a toothless mouth.
"Already gutted these for water and supplies," said the Mando who'd taken on a role as a guide, "but we ignored some stuff that might come in handy for the dropship or cable."
As others had before him, Sol got himself hooked up to a guide line while Liv and Breis spoke. Ready to go, then, he'd move with the group going for the first cluster. With the way the wind was shifting, pushing and pulling at The Red it was easy to imagine getting lost out this way, double that by the distance they were from the Blood Sky and he could very well imagine how becoming separated meant the hell that surrounded them would be worsened. It was thoughts like that, that had him checking the blaster on his suit, and the positioning and sturdiness if the lock that held his guide line in place.
"Were any dreamers found in the ships you've already gone through?" He asked, eyeing first the cluster they were drawing toward, and then turning to look toward their guide.
"Not by us." It was Grot who answered. Some of the Mandals reacted to that; one could be heard to laugh sourly. Grot explained: "We think we were probably the dreamers around here before we started to stir."
Breis, walking ahead, now in the eddying wind-shadow of the double-ship amalgamation, called back: "Found bodies, though. Snapped necks; snapped spines. Crushed. Or just floating, dead."
The Mandal guide added: "It's further on you'll see the ones we can't reach. They're too high up. But when the sky opens, you can see them up there. Just drifting. Floating. Dead to the world or really dead."
Tavv'ari from Tal Ruus perked up. "Out there's where the Astrala is, isn't it?"
Their guide nodded but nods were habit rather than useful out here. "Past the next marker."
"Our jetii were asking about it."
He took in that news, looking up toward the horizon over their heads. Others floating out there, up too high to reach. Maybe they could...."The Astrala?" Pulled back into what was being said, Sol had a bad feeling and he spoke that question, and about why the Jedi might have been asking about it. This was his first time hearing the name of the ship, so maybe it was a different matter entirely. In some ways he hoped that it was, and in others he didn't want to think about it at all.
Mentioning the ship name and 'jetii' had Liv looking to Solomon for recognition.. but he didn't show any immediate recognition, so she waited to see if Breis offered more context.
Breis didn't notice anyone was looking to him. He stretched his lined out toward the two-made-one ship, stirring waves of hyperlight red dust with every step, every motion of his hands.
It was Tavv who said with feeling, "One ugly piece of Hapan ship design." A moment passed when she seemed to realize that
Solomon needed substance rather than opinion. "Oh--right. You were chewing Red."
"Trap-Nap?" Catia muttered, interested.
Tavv hadn't heard her and added: "Tlin brought it to Um-Shara. Yen's family and Jegoth Ordis' cadre came with him."
"He won't know who Yen is," Breis said, hooking a boot onto a crumpled hull section in order to boost himself up to a wide tear in the side of the bigger ship. Slipping sideways into it, his cable vibrating in a sudden gust of wind, the man was immediately swallowed into darkness. When his glowrod flared a second later, the change was barely visible from ground-level outside.
"Amidi clan-head," Tavv offered. "Renda's grandmother."
"How far out is the next marker from here?" It was only as Breis struck his glowrod that Solomon had realized the Clan Head had disappeared into the ship. When Catia had muttered, his head had hooked her way slightly, but he remained focused on Tavv'ari. Tlin's ship. "That's also where more dreamers are, right?" Like he was trying to draw a mental map, someway of defining the unknown layout of the world around him.
Tavv'ari turned all the way around to give the floor to the Mandal guide who seemed to know the lay of the desert the best. Judging distance sucked when you couldn't see and when the substance across which you walked was so fine that the slightest breeze meant you lost all your own footprints almost as soon as they were made. It had been days, though, and he said, "We've been calling it three hundred meters. Next marker is one of the racing pylons from Um-Shara. About twenty feet of it was sticking up the last time I was here, but we think it's falling over. Could be harder to find this time."
As for the dreamers...
"They just got done telling you that, Director Jedi," Catia said as she passed Solomon, moving up to follow Breis Teimar into the ship so that she could start the hunt for anything at all that might help them save their own rescuers.
"Seen invaders out there, too," said Grot.
The guide nodded. "That's where we saw the group of them. Crappiest ambush attempt I ever had the pleasure of blasting my way out of."
Sol moved aside for Catia, and then a Hapan grun who was following behind the Naval tech, "Would any of you be comfortable going out that far, again, with the chance of running into the invaders what it is?" He was stepping up for his turn to climb into the ship behind the Hapan grunt, "There could be a way for us to reach those further up."
The other team had begun to fan toward the other ship, but had slowed when the topic roped them in. Jujanaj Azair remained with the wakeks, still mounted, unable to hold much by way of conversation but taking on a role of lookout.
"Comfortable?" the guide asked blankly from the ground. It did not compute.
From the torn hull, grimy lights flicked on in her suit, Catia turned back to look down at Solomon. "Salvage op. Remember?"
"Not right now," he said up toward Catia, "But soon. A different run. I have to talk to the others before anything is committed to on our end anyway," and maybe comfortable wasn't the right word, but he had to focus on what he was doing just then, using his left hand to pull himself up and into the ship while feeling lopsided in the motion. From his tool kit, once inside the ship, Sol pulled a white-lighted glowrod and struck the light. There was no difference this time, just as every time before, in how far the light traveled through the haze. It hung just as close, if not closer due to the geographical location and the confines of the ship.
In the awkward angles of that room, they walked on the walls, across storage compartment doors and hatchways. Obvious right away in the dim lights was that, as with all other spaces, the Red permeated. Past that, it was clear that this ship (or this part of it) had indeed been gone over: a comm box by the hatch that was, for them, underfoot, had been prised out and was missing, a few weathered old wires sticking out like gnarled hands.
"What's the topic?" Breis could be heard from farther in, but not seen.
"Time," Catia told him. "Always time."
Time, yes, and more specifically "A technique that might allow my friends and I to reach the higher dreamers." He called ahead to Breis, stepping over a compartment that's closure looked as if it had been a magnetic one to allow room for others to come up.
In the crimson darkness of the ship's interior, Breis shone his light into an obviously gutted storage compartment, leaning in to sift through what was left. He didn't stop what he was doing, but his voice carried well enough. "We'll talk about it back at Tal-Keb. For now: focus here. On where you are, what you are doing. We need to be in the present to make sure we've even got a future. Get to work."
Without formal orders, the teams had broken down on their own. Grot, Tavv, the guide--whose name was Nen--and Nora the Hapan grunt, had headed over to the other ship.
Outside of the ship where Breis was at work, Buttercup waited to follow Liv in.
At this point, the cables and cords connecting them to the reels on the wakeks' harnesses made a minor obstacle course once past the door.
With that word from Breis, Solomon turned and headed forward on the ship toward where the cockpit would be. Navigating the innards of the ship was a task. In the darkness with just the dim lighting of his glowrod to see by it could be easy to trip on a corner, or miss an indentation that was natural to the ship's design. He couldn't tell just what kind it was, or what ship yard it had come from, with visibility so low but those were just details. In his going, steadying himself with careful footing, he paused to stop. There were somethings he needed to stop and think about these days before doing. A lot had changed, and while that was alright back home where the ground was soft and moist, and he could wait for daylight and breath fresh air readily, this was not home. This was the complete opposite. Turning, looking back toward Catia, a sweeping glance that took in the Hapan tech and who ever else had just come into the ship, he said, "I'm going to start in the cockpit, and I might need some extra hands. Anyone want to come with?" It was one of the hardest things in the galaxy for him to do, and he was doing it more and more often since they reached the Blood Sky.
Catia's light swung around, illuminating drifting dust in the air more than any single thing. Then the beam swiveled more, and the tech said, "Give him a hand. Get it? Ha ha. This mission is comedy gold." Snort. Her light turned away.
Two other lights came into view, belonging to Buttercup, the armored grunt who had been the unfortunate recipient of Catia's focus. Her armor was top notch, light and nimble in battle, but in it she was less able to squeeze through awkward rips in ship hulls and sideways oriented doors. It simply lacking give was enough to force her to realign herself continually where Solomon in his lighter suit had simply been able to shimmy. She finally blocked all hints of red from the next room, coming up carefully behind him.
"So! Up the bantha's butthole together," Buttercup observed philosophically. "Joy. Lead on, sweetie."
She was the grunt whose arguing he and Ava had interrupted up at the dropship, but either she bore no hard feelings or Buttercup, bearing a grudge, was exactly the same as Buttercup feeling neutral.
In response to Catia Sol gave a humorless smile that was more of a sneer, the lack of light within the ship and in the heavy dust let it go unseen. "Har. Har." He said flatly in response before turning back to begin for the cockpit at Buttercup's urging. He gave a small tug to the cable attached to his suit along the way, looking to get both slack and whip it out from slipping underfoot of the Hapan grunt behind him. The ship, heading further up, was no different from the part of the ship they were leaving behind them. It was dark, and the light of his glowrod was severely diminished by the thickness of The Red. The Red, itself, glinted like the fine dust it seemed to be with the granules floating, shifting, and being kicked up in passing. Every few steps he turned to look back over his shoulder toward Buttercup. Things were feeling close, relying on intangible senses gave him a better sense of where things were, but in that was a battle with his other senses. What he could see, and what he could feel were two different things and that kept his steps careful in the thick darkness as he picked his way forward.