Log:Knights of Ren: Interlude: Power Up!
The Knights find that the Night Buzzard has not yet completely given up the ghost.
OOC Date: November 13, 2020
Location: Hoth
Participants: Andro Tain, Imani, Malik Ren as Self/GM, Syrus, Tamsin Cas, Tarq Najjic, Knights of Ren
[Malik Ren]
As was predicted, the tauntauns smell awful, and feeding them is a chore.
They will eat slug meat, if nothing else is around, which makes feeding them a little easier and is also slightly disconcerting. They want to try to eat Lieutenant Kepp's head every time they pass it on the way into or out of the old hangar, and are in general acclimating to their new life as pets, livestock, ambulatory snacks. They will not let anyone ride them without a skillful approach (a passed handle animal roll), but they'll pull sledges without serious complaint.
One is hobbled outside the Night Buzzard now, snuffling around in the snow in search of food, which is a good indication that Malik is in there looking for something in the wreck.
[Imani]
Everything is cold, and now everything smells weird too. This is the best vacation. Imani has trudged her way back out to the Night Buzzard, helmet turned to look at the searching foraging tauntaun as she passes the creature. She doesn't stop to visit with the creature, moving on into the crashed ship, either to search for something herself or for their fearless leader inside. A stomp-stomp inside announces her presence better than anything, trying to kick off the snow caked around her poor abused boots, and then she removes the helmet, clipping it to her hip as she steps over debris to move deeper into the transport.
[Tamsin Cas]
When Tamsin was not doing, well, whatever she was needed to do inside the hangar, she had spent the hours of relatively decent weather attempting to search for more of the mushrooms that they had first used to draw the tauntauns to them. Of course, anything else she found that she could use to supplement their diet as well as what was available to the team she gathered as well. She spoke little and left often. And when she was not doing that, she was occasionally poking around inside the ship, trying to find anything else that might be useful to them, either in the old base or that they might need on the trek that was soon to be ahead. Just now, she offered a single mushroom to the creature standing guard outside of the ship, before she climbed up into it, only a short while after she saw Imani disappearing into it.
[Syrus]
Crunching through the snow on his way towards the Buzzard shortly behind Imani, Syrus is in better spirits than the day previous. Thoughts of a cold tomb have been replaced with ideas about how they may escape this wretched ice planet. Once again, the Kiffar slips easily through the large blaster-hole in the ship's hull and turns his visor upon the trio of souls within. "Any luck with the navi computer?" he asks, his vocoder clicky and tired, some of its components very likely iced over.
[Malik Ren]
Tauntaun sees and accepts your offering, Tamsin. The mushroom is gobbled up and the thing tries to follow her into the ship, discovering to its displeasure that it cannot easily fit through the hatch, even broken open as it is. The tauntaun disconsolately goes back to eating the lichens beneath the snow. Last night there was Lichen and Slug Stew for the sentients also. It's horrible.
Everything on the interior of the Buzzard is covered with frost and ice by now, and trauma-beard Malik can be found in the cockpit trying to get the ship to power up. "Come on, you bloody pile of....." Lights flicker, but then fall dark again. No life. "Stars sake," he curses, annoyed, and then 'greets' the arriving three knights with, "I don't think it should be a difficult task to get the coordinates /out/ of the navcomp, Syrus and I put them in there to begin with. The trouble is I cannot get the power to stay on long enough to manage it."
He sighs, reviewing the dark, dead, icy dash in the cockpit. "I've never in my life wished I knew how ships work. Until now."
[Imani]
Imani hasn't been enjoying the local cuisine because it is terrible, the textures, the flavors, the smells. But it doesn't kill them and keeps them alive, so it has that one thing working in its favor. So come each mealtime, as terrible as it may be, she grits her teeth and eats what is given to her, and doesn't complain. Even for her, this time, its not easy. She exhales a visible (and slightly slug scented) breath into the frosty air and looks down at the dark console. "I'm not going to be any help with this ship business, I know even less about them than you do. Though I am similarly finding myself wishing that I knew more at this moment."
[Tamsin Cas]
Tamsin, who had been intent to on returning to her so far mostly fruitless search of the remains of the interior of the ship, looked up as she saw the lights flicker and heard a familiar grumbling voice. She allowed the other two to proceed her, before she came to the edge of what had been the doorway into the cockpit. "I know very little about ships, but it may be that the problem is that there is not enough power to power on //all// of the systems, but if we can find a way to isolate only the system we need, we might be able to keep the power to the computer on long enough to download the information to a datapad. Tamsin moved into the cockpit, searching to see if she could locate a schematic for the ship.
[Syrus]
Sy's beard has never been better. Flecked with snow and fuller than usual, he's honestly just looking great. This is revealed, of course, as he unclasps his helmet and sets it down on one of the jumpseats, his fresh eyes set to the task of wrangling anything that may be left in the frosted Buzzard and of use to their journey. "I'm afraid that my knowledge of ships ends at only my natural acuity with their movement. Our crash notwithstanding, of course," Syrus says, kneeling down to pry the top of a case off and dig around at its contents.
[Malik Ren]
"Well, Dr. Cas has the right idea, I imagine. Look for schematics," Malik suggests, and then gets up to follow his own advice, breaths making clouds in the air as he starts rummaging through hatches in the cockpit. "Perhaps we'll find something useful."
Rummaging continues as he draws in a breath and exhales it slowly, parting with a little bit of history as he does so. "The Night Buzzard belonged to the original Knights of Ren, the first group of students who left Luke Skywalker's teaching with the man who became Kylo Ren. He kept this group separate from those who were my peers, and when we interacted, it was infrequent and ... acrimonious."
[Imani]
Imani only has the most basic ideas about how ships work, mostly she just knows how to be a passenger on them, but she's not bad at poking around and unearthing things, she has had a lot of practice at that in her life. So amid the poking, she finds a discreet compartment off to one side that the has to force open, and then gestures to the contents. "Is this what we're looking for?"
[Tamsin Cas]
Tamsin, who moved to look in the more obvious places did not seem to be having much luck. But she also did not seem inclined to stop looking. She did stop though, as if a thought had occurred to her, and she stepped back from where she had been working, eyes rising to study the ceiling, seemingly tracking something in the way the panels were fused together, "It is just another system, conduits instead of blood vessels, segments instead of..." don't mind her. She was mostly talking to herself. She did look over to Imani as the other knight found something, but she was not a senior member of the crew and she stood back, allowing Malik or Syrus to move them ahead.
[Syrus]
"Perhaps when we return to Spearhead, we can secure a much-needed upgrade. We are not bounty hunters, and seldom do prisoners suit our needs," Syrus says, continuing to dig through the case before him. Explosives, detonators, and a handful of loose wiring belie the aforementioned original Knights as poor stewards of the now-derelict vessel. Syrus replaces the lid and moves to stand, looking over at what Imani has found. He has no idea if that's what they're looking for or not.
[Andro Tain]
What's all the ruckus? Andy, still a little sore from her dance with death and flames, peeks up out of the Cavern, bundled in all the layers available to her. "Finding anything good?" She grunts, pausing to lean against some hunk of metal that was once some integral part of the ship.
Now, it's 'some hunk of metal'. Something that once was. Something that, likely, will never /be/ again. How poetic.
[Malik Ren]
Malik pauses his rummaging, to accept the item Imani has found! A frozen datapad, looks like... schematics! "It might be," he confirms to her, before looking around the ship at Syrus's suggestion. "What do you want the interior to be?" he asks, which sounds like a genuine question. "The only thing I can't part with is the forge to the aft, the one where we bleed the crystals, where Kylo reforged..."
He trails off, lost in memories of another life again, and there might be something arresting or unpleasant about the one he just ran into. The schematic datapad is handed to Tamsin, who looks like a NER-- smart girl. "See if you can find a way to isolate power, or otherwise direct just enough power to activate the navicomputer. It doesn't need to be online for long."
Andy's question is greeted with a dry, "Nothing is ever easy, but who could expect otherwise?"
[Imani]
Imani seems happy to pass over the frozen datapad to someone better equipped to deal with the information on it. Which in her mind is probably everyone else present. She is very good at menacing people with weapons, she is not nearly as good with tech. "I like this ship. It has personality. I think we ought to bring it back and make some minor changes, but..." She pats the door to the compartment fondly. "It has been good to us." She thumps the compartment door closed and glances up at Tamsin as the datapad is passed to her. "Whatever we do with it, we should have a place to store gear suitable for all terrains so if we crash somewhere cold again it's not quite so hard to stay warm."
[Tamsin Cas]
Tamsin accepted the datapad she was given, slipping her own from her bag, as she found a place to hunker down. "I'm not an engineer," she offered, "But the number of times we had to try to juryrig something in the middle of a warzone..." She trailed off as she settled in to work. Doctors in warzones learned to make use of what they had and put whatever they had to use. She did look up, briefly, at Malik's story, but quickly looked back down again. She knew better than most that people rarely liked it when their skin was peeled back. Worse when they had an audience.
She worked in silence, leaving the rest of the team to their own devices. She connected her own datapad to the one that she had been given, using the power from the fresh tech to help supplement the old one. Thankfully, technology rarely suffered much from cold and even, sometimes, worked better the cooler they were, and she hummed to herself as she transferred data, a finger tapping key points where the ships circulatory system could be truncated to allow the power to collect where it was needed. Finally, "I think I have it." She rose, moving to hand one datapad to Malik, hers, with its cables, the other to Syrus. Malik, because you know, he was the boss. Syrus because, you know, he was a giant, and some of the highlighted points were in the ceiling. "If we can deactivate the power couplings at these junctions, the power should hold long enough for the computer to be able to download the coordinates."
[Syrus]
"Perhaps less cages," Syrus says. "I tire of Zand's constant reminders that 'life is a prison' every time he boards the ship," the Kiffar complains. "It was a tired comparison the first time he made it."
"Imani, your taste is terrible, but your opinion is noted," Syrus says, accepting the datapad from Tamsin. He takes a moment to look it over before he begins wandering the ship, looking for the indicated junctures.
[Andro Tain]
"Fair." Andro sighs, giving a slight shrug and stooping to join the search. "We should also, just for the sake of it, look into comms jamming... Next time someone tries t'get fresh, it will be easier to isolate them and pick them off. Or escape."
And a better gunner. They would do well to invest in a better, more alive gunner.
"I'm going to see what I can get from the nav, if you lot can get it running at all." The archaeologist decides, slipping towards the kind-of-cockpit and dropping into the pilot's seat. She gives a sidelong look at the co-pilot's seat, and for a moment can feel the ship dropping through the atmosphere, remembers bracing, and waiting, and hoping... Right, download. After some fiddling (and only /slight/ re-wiring with the assurance that she has /no/ idea what she's doing), Andy stands primed to, hopefully, download something off the navcomp. "Good as it's gonna get." She nods, patting a hand against the machinery. It tried. It really did try.
[Tarq Najjic]
There's a bray from the tauntaun as someone claps it on the side. "Scoot! You are not needed in the wreckage." It backs up a bit, turning its heat behind it. "Do not give Tarq Najjic that look. I know I am not needed either, but my scent does not demoralize!" Then a head slowly rises into view, as the slim man peers over the crack into the ship, only nose, eyes, and fluffy hat visible. "How goes salvage, comrades?"
[Malik Ren]
"You know as well as I do that removing a few cells from the Buzzard will not reduce the number of times Errod makes that observation," Malik notes to Syrus, with a hint of amusement. "My intention is to escape this place and dispatch a retrieval team from Ichren to collect the Buzzard and restore it to spaceworthiness. I would rather not leave it with the rest of the debris on Hoth."
They've got directions from Imani and know-how from Tamsin; tallboi Syrus with the ceiling hookup and Andy's ready to grab the data. That leaves Tarq and Malik here just looking pretty, but don't they do it well. "We're about to find out if we can survive an overland crossing to the Nightfall base," Malik informs Tarq. "Andro Tain, power up, collect the data, and try to be quick about it, none of this is going to hold long."
And if the data suggests they can't make it? That the base would be six months of walking away, even with tauntauns? Then they stay here, among the wildlife and the broken speeders, and wait for rescue that may not find them in time or an excruciating starve to the end. Doesn't bear thinking about.
[Andro Tain]
"Ready..." Andro Tain announces, though she doesn't sound so sure. "Powering up!" She announces, though it is hardly necessary. When she flips that switch, there is a loud, pained sssSSSPOP CRACKLE ZZZZZZzzzz that announces it for her, and sends the archaeologist jerking back away from the controls. It's quick, brief, and she hopes that it went /well/ because she powers it down again as soon as she's able. "I... Think I got it?" She calls back, afraid to look at that data stream and confirm their fates.
[Imani]
Imani looks over to Syrus, then to Malik, and then she pushes upright and steps back from the closed compartment. There's an idle brushing off of her hands as though this had been a dusty task to accomplish, though it wasn't, then ducks out of the cockpit to start rummaging around in another room. Perhaps with the hope that she'll find some secret stash of nutrient bars that weren't previously uncovered. Anything to not eat more slug.
[Tamsin Cas]
Tamsin, having handed off the datapads, and trusting Syrus to find the proper junctions, returned to sitting on her bit of formerly a useful part of the ship. Or perhaps it was Andro's formerly useful part of the ship. She had, she hoped, managed to puzzle out the solution on the one hand, but she was happy to leave the actual doing to someone who probably had a much better grip of such systems than she did, "I would like to have a ship with a medical bay. Nothing large, perhaps a bed or two. But many more supplies, in case we ever end up in another such situation." Well, Malik //had// asked. As Tarq entered, she looked his way, "It was a good windbreak." Until Tarq moved its rump out of the way. Although she was not close to the console, she still lifted a hand out of instinct to protect her eyes from the sparks of sizzled power conduits. Once her eyes no longer sizzled with the afterimages of that sudden light, she looked towards Malik.
[Tarq Najjic]
Tarq puffs up a bit and spreads his shoulders, attempting to be a breaker of the wind himself, but he's just not bulky enough. "Well?" he prompts. "It is the hour of revelation. Do not hold back. We are prepared for bitter truths and hope." And so he stands, an ineffective wall against the gusts of cold air. "Tauntaun! Return. We block as one!" Whether motivated by loyalty to Malik or Tarq's brief conversation with it, treating it like a person, has forged a deep connection, the Tauntaun returns. Less wind! Tarq scratches it behind its ear. "I am sorry I said you smell bad. It is true, but I did not have to say it."
[Malik Ren]
Go, data, GO! As evidenced by the frightening noises leaping out at Andy, the power doesn't last long, but the Night Buzzard does flicker to life just long enough to do.. something. Maybe the data got transferred properly. It's their only hope!
Malik draws a breath and lets it out, breath making a cloud in the frosty air as he does. Even in here in the wreck of the ship, the air's so cold it hurts if you breathe too deeply! "We could exchange some of the prison cells for a medical space," he agrees with Tamsin. "This ship has served as an ambulance more than once, that much is certain."
It's nice to think about the possibility of going back to a world where they can retrofit the transport, eat hot food, see something other than ice.
But the chance of that lies in the datapad in his hands now, and Malik looks down to consult the results: the coordinates of the evil terrorist Nightfall smuggler base! "Two days," he eventually pronounces. "Two days in good weather, most of a week in bad."
[Tamsin Cas]
Tamsin, already thinking ahead, watched the fallout of the attempt. When Malik confirmed, or seemed to confirm that their attempt had been successful, Tamsin looked away, "Andro, you said you were skilled at making nets and traps. If we could cut sheeting, could you make enough sledges for the tauntauns to pull all of the equipment we have salvaged? And perhaps one so that we could take turns resting?" She had no doubt she was going to be walking. "We will need to find a way to conserve as much strength as we can, if we arrive at that base and it is defended."
[Tarq Najjic]
"Best to make attempt. Sitting and waiting... eh." Tarq finally pulls himself up into the ship to give a thorough glance and kick up snow in the hopes of uncovering additional supplies of some kind. He crouches near an oubliette, then proceeds further back. He hears Tamsin and examines a box that was crushed closed during the crash. He snaps the hinges, which have been done no favors by the cold, and roots around in it. "I have found manacles! Straps too. For attaching litters. To Tauntauns, and each other." He begins stuffing his pockets and pack. "Also for party favors."
[Andro Tain]
"Two days isn't bad!" Andy offers optimistically, though her expression falters when she looks towards the tauntauns. She's ridden animals for work before, but has always opted for speeders and ships if the option is on the table. Her nose wrinkles. Two days on a tauntaun - a week at worst - is going to make for chafed thighs, sore backs, and bruised egos. And cold. Deep, biting cold... So Tamsin's suggestion is met with a nod.
"I'll see what I can do. If we can dig up as much cargo netting as possible, that will help us out. Any fabric that can be spared, we can use poles and..." A moment is spent inspecting a wide piece of metal. She raps her knuckles against it. "Light enough to fly. S'not our worst option." She nods again. "It should be possible."
Reaching over to find a way to unhitch the metal sheeting, she slices her hand open. This will be tricky.
[Malik Ren]
"We have no way to predict the weather, nor do we have a detailed description of terrain along the way. These 'two days' could easily stretch out longer if we encounter crevasses, ravines, unstable ice... avalanches, blizzards, mountains." Malik sets the datapad down and scrubs his face with his hands. There are so many ways to die on Hoth. So many, and he's leading these people straight into them, but what can they do? Both hands drop, back to business mode. "We'll make the crossing as quickly as we can, and if anyone is left at Nightfall when we arrive... as they are, after all, confident in our defeat," he sounds sour there, "We kill them upon arrival. Fasten the tauntauns to sledges as best you're able, and abandon them if they prove recalcitrant. Inform the others, and enjoy the last shreds of warmth around a fire that you can. We're leaving as soon as everything is packed."
