Astral Drift (Hal)

[Karkoon]

Karkoon listened to the twisted and heart wrenching tale that was woven through the air like an ugly tapestry. So much travesty, pain, and loss. Every sentence was a new journey into the pits of darkness. There was nothing for him to say. It was becoming increasingly apparent that there was no wisdom, Jedi or otherwise, that could reach the dark place that Hal had fallen into. No. He corrected himself. He had not fallen. That implied a floor that fell out from under you. This was a place, dark and brooding, full of violence, that he had built around himself and now he could only see glimpses of the outside world through the cracks and bars of his new prison cell. It was more heartwrenching than the deaths of so many Jedi.

At least they died with their spirits intact. Untainted. Pure.

"I have.. much to reflect on. If you would excuse me. I must meditate."

[Halajiin Rabeak]

"And I must take a leak," came the Nehantite's impassionate reply.

His tale had been told, and whether Karkoon could accept Hal as he was, or whether he would reject him, was out of Hal's control. A stop at the refresher, followed by a quick washing of his paws, and Hal was back to life as usual aboard his stolen craft, acting as if for all the world Karkoon was not there. Star charts were pulled up, arrival and departure logs consulted, and cargo manifests inspected, all in the search for a replacement ship. But one by one he checked off ports of call, either due to lack of acceptable craft, or too much security. His ship was wanted, that much was a given, so to simply fly into most ports would be to alert the authorities. What Hal needed was a backwater shithole so backwater and so shithole that the authorities didn't even bother showing up. That left only a handful of possibilities, and the nearest one he could reach with a single intact hyperdrive engine was some dustball called Jakku.

"Really hope you've got something worth taking," he muttered to himself.

[Karkoon]

Meditation did not come easy. His heart was troubled. Difficult to focus. Mind wandering. All those years spent floating in space, locked in a meditation trance, it should be easy to fall back into place. 'Like getting on a grav bike' is the saying that humans used.

Pushing on he finally managed to slip beneath the surface of himself. It was not true meditation. Instead of the familiar peace and quiet he was visited instead with the murky shadows of his own troubled mind. Flashes of images, of the slaughter on Ossus, and snippets of Hal's unnerving dialogue played through his mind.

He rewatched the attack like he was there. All around him Jedi rushed; some to meet the enemy while others gathered the youths and ran for the Alliance and Cizerack bases. Then the attackers came. Troopers in different armor and darksiders in strange garb, their daggers, lightsabres, and blasters stabbing through the lines of Jedi. He tried to stop them. He reached with his big hands but could not hold them.

They look like big, good, strong hands. Don't they? I always thought that's what they were. My little friends. The mechanic Suri, pink Scout, even that stupid R1-X1. I couldn't hold on to them. They pulled them right out of my hands. I failed.

The battlefield fell silent. Looking up he saw nothing but corpses. The wails of the dying pierced the night, only to be horribly silenced. What was that? In the distance he saw something. Someone. A group of people. Jedi judging their shapes, but they were far away, and when he ran after them they did not come closer. Then a blinding light, and in the night sky of Ossus, above the tree tops and through the smoke he saw another planet. Too close to be real. A dusty orb; brown and barren.

Karkoon snapped out of the trance with a gasp. His optic lenses flared to life; his systems powering back up after falling into sleep mode. Scrambling around the common room for the holonet display he found it underneath a blanket and half eaten protein bowl. Turning it on and establishing the connection took only a moment and then he was surfing through planets in the directory.

One after the other he punched the controls, causing the readouts to fly by faster than could be seen by the human eye. Stopping suddenly he looked at the planet straight out of his vision. A dirty, dust bowl wasteland.

Jakku.

He wasted no time in finding Hal. "Jakku. We must go to Jakku."

[Halajiin Rabeak]

"Yeah, already got a course laid in," Hal grunted. "Set off to it about ten minutes ago."

The Nehantite leaned back in the pilot's seat, its collapsed seat cushion and lack of lumbar support only adding new fuel to the fire of his need for a new ship. "Place is so far out in the sticks we might end up basket-weaving hyperspace by the time we get there."

It was only then that one eyebrow went up, and he peered up at his massive, slightly rusted companion. "You know something about this place? It doesn't even rate on SpaceAdvisor. What makes it so special to you?" He was waiting for the, "I looked over your shoulder while entering destination coordinates," response, as he couldn't imagine any other reason Karkoon would name the place they were already going to.

[Karkoon]

"I had a vision while meditating. The force spoke to me. It showed me Jedi, still living Jedi, retreating into the distance. Jakku was shown to me. There must be Jedi survivors there. And... and if there are none, it should still afford us a ship. The planet has become a scavenger world after the Battle of Jakku at the start of the war. There should be more than enough ships to choose from, or parts to fix up this one. Rest assured we will not be trapped there."

He had to sell the planet or Hal might never agree to go there. Karkoon doubted that the man had any interest in finding any survivors of the Jedi Order. His heart was hard and full of gloom. There was no promises they would find a ship, but the chances were very good. Chance was something that Karkoon did not normally put much weight in. He preferred hard facts. There was no holonet directory for available starships. The planet was too out of the way, too backwater, to ever have anything resembling a civilized market. It was very likely that they would have to steal a ship right from under the nose of it's owner.

And should that fail he could always trade his suit.

"Will this ship reach Jakku?"

[Halajiin Rabeak]

"Living Jedi, huh? On Jakku?" Hal asked. The height of his left eyebrow was indication enough as to his sincere belief of such claims. But, if it was a junkyard it would at least provide him with enough material to cobble together a working ship.

Pink eyes returning to the expanse of hyperspace before them, he nodded. "Yeah, she'll make it. Might not escape the atmosphere again after landing, but she'll make it."

With that he hauled himself out of his seat and pushed Karkoon back, delivering enough force - gently - to push him as if he were a normal man. "Come on, we've got the rest of you to fix up. Should have enough time to get through a few sessions before we get there. You'll be useless in sand if we don't get all your joints smoothed out. Sit down and plug in."

A second beer flew from the cooler into Hal's paw as he took a seat opposite the hulking droid suit, and he cracked it open. Alcohol soothed the nerves, and allowed him to concentrate longer before he risked burning out. And he just plain needed a beer.