An Offer You Don't Refuse - 9.075

[Taataani Meorrrei]

The door to the personal quarters slid open, and Taataani strode forward. Gone was her elaborate outfit, or at least the outermost layers of it, revealing a simple silk top and matching skirt. Gone too was her artfully-styled hair, which now hung heavily over her shoulders in thick red ringlets. The twitch in her tail belied her souring mood.

"Get uss movjing, Captajin."

Her tone was clipped, and she accentuated her displeasure by crossing her arms. Behind her, a bare-chested Taurrifar eavesdropped from the door. She ignored him, and devoted her full attention to Ben. Inwardly, she was trying to avoid a panic. Being a no-show to this meeting would be a disaster.

[Ben Merasska]

"Of course, Ma'am!" Ben said. "I'll just have us get going right away. Our close-range scanners aren't operational, so getting us through this - " He gestured to the gas giant, and the hundreds of moons that could be seen orbiting it " - will likely get us killed. We don't have a responding hyperdrive, so that three hour time limit we've got just turned into..."

He looked at the navicomputer.

"Oh... give or take fifty years, at the highest sublight output."

He gave her a sideways glance and lifted the datapad to highlight what he was saying, though the text was a bit too small to make out.

"Not to mention that we ran into a hyperspace mine. Lots of people lay hyperspace mines. The Hapans do for sure. The Empire does on the most dangerous Outer Rim routes." He stopped, his annoyance turning into a bit of anxiety, but he kept a lid on most of it. "But mostly it's Hutts and pirates who lay hyperspace mines, so they can loot ships and take really rich people and hold them for ransom. The pilots and others they kill because... well, they're not very nice people."

He smiled and continued to rant. "But I'll get us moving right away! Because it's not like there are any pirates out there, you know, leaving hyperspace mines out as a prank..."

[Taataani Meorrrei]

Bad, to worse.

As if fretting over blowing off the Imperial Navy and her shareholders wasn't trouble enough, Ben began to babble about other more acute problems, such as the trouble with hyperspace mines, and the assholes who lay them. That at least took the heat off of him, and having her think that he was an incompetent pilot. That would've been embarassing to deal with.

Mentioning pirates placed her in a strange sense of Deja Vu. She only hoped that this time it was Barton Henning doing the dirty deed. Preferably in a ship with a functioning hyperdrive.

"A sshjip."

Ignoring her pilot's prattling for a moment, Taataani drifted to the viewport, seeing distant movement. What looked like a star a few seconds ago was now certainly moving, albeit slowly, and moving to their position.

"Captajin..."

Her ears started to swing back, preparing for something the pit in her stomach was beginning to dread. Taurrifar, sensing the sudden change in her demeanor, emerged from his hiding spot to see what was the matter.

The speck was now clearly a ship, and Ben was still talking.

Taataani whirled around, slapped the datapad from his grasp, and brusquely shoved him against the viewport, smooshing his face slightly against it so that he could give the approaching vessel his undivided attention.

"Captajin!"

[Ben Merasska]

"Oh."

It looked like a commandeered picket ship.

Pirates liked to use commandeered picket ships.

"Oh."

Ben allowed himself one shudder. Any more than one and he might not be able to stop, and then he'd surely be dead. He nodded, his face still mashed up against the viewport, and slipped into the pilot's chair once Meorrrei (that's what her name was!) let him go.

He gripped the flight controls and sat there, watching the ship approach.

"Wait for it..." he murmured, mostly for his passengers' mental health, as they were getting progressively more agitated. "Wait for it..."

The picket ship slowed and turned, thrusters facing them. Ben rapidly powered up the ship, flicking switches and smacking a couple consoles that weren't cooperating.

They lifted off the asteroid-like moon, and blasted off in the opposite direction of the picket ship. His tactic bought them about one minute's worth of space between them and capture.

The ship bucked.

"Now that we're noticed," Ben sighed, keeping his attention on the sight in front of them: a number of rapidly approaching moons. "Let's try and not die. Making a withdrawal from the First Ben Merasskan Bank of Courage. Yes of course, how much would you like to withdraw? Oh, I need... two weeks' worth. Very well. Your balance comes out to... one year of courage left."

As he spoke, he deftly swung the ship around one moon and straight toward another, rounding that one once before moving to the next moon. Thankfully there were enough. Despite their close calls, the picket ship had to move further away to avoid the moons' trajectories.

The ship bucked as soon as they left the dangerously protective screen of moons. Ben grimaced, whimpering under his breath, and flew them straight toward the gas giant.

"Hold on," he said. "This could be a bit bumpy."

[Taataani Meorrrei]

The sudden acceleration wasn't expected, and Taataani heaved backwards, saved an embarassing fall by her ever-attentive husband, who made sure to secure her in a seat before tending to his own. She stayed seated for about two seconds before unsnapping her strap and carefully negotiating the trip back to her quarters, much to Taurrifar's chagrin.

"Bumpss wjill heal, Captajin! Expossurre to vacuum won't!"

She quickly, if ungracefully, made her return to the seat up front, splashing down as the ship bucked under the influence of the approaching gravity well. Grimacing, she again secured her harness, and placed her ornate pistol in her lap, keeping a white-knuckled grip on it.

"Rrememberr what jyou ssajid about pjirratess and rrjich rranssomss?"

Eyes forward, she wore an expression of grim resolve.

"Not agajin."

[Ben Merasska]

"Please follow us in, please follow us in, please follow us in..." Ben murmured under his breath, only stopping to give Meorrrei a worried glance, and then another anxious look at her pistol. "Please follow us in, please follow us in..."

The ship began bucking more often, though not as violently as was the case with hits from the blaster cannons on the picketing ship. He skimmed the surface, racing around the circumference of the planet. The picketing ship kept its distance, but its shots were wide. Soon, the ship turned and followed them into the winds of the gas giant.

Ben turned them further in, resulting in an even bumpier flight.

"So," he said, his voice bouncing as much as the ship was. "This has happened before with you?"

A display suddenly began showing static. "Scanners are back online!" he said happily, even as another system sounded an alarm and he turned it off.

He turned the shuttle to face the picketing ship and kept it in sight as he led the pirates deeper into the ever strengthening winds of the gas giant.

He stopped the ship and held their position just above the most violent level of storms. In the bottom corner of viewport lightning flashes and turbulent clouds of rich colour were vying for control of what little could be seen at all.

All three sat in strained silence as Ben slowly turned off as many non-essential systems as he could, until all that remained were the life-support and sub-light engines. The picketing ship slowly drifted by them, and Ben eased them into violently turbulent level. Three pairs of eyes were fixed on the pirates' ship until it disappeared into the gaseous distance.

Ben let out a long, slow breath and then slowly eased them back out into the upper layers of the planet's atmosphere and then out into the orbits of the planet's moons.

He flicked a switch, and the scanner flickered on, though the readout was frequently cut out by static. The other systems slowly came back online, or enough to allow Ben to read off which ones were operational enough to be of use.

"There's a planet further in. We need to land before they come back out."

[Taataani Meorrrei]

"That'ss a long sstorrjy, Captajin. Keep me aljive and jI'll tell jyou."

In the tense moments of hiding between storm clouds, Taataani could do nothing, not even see. She looked back to Taurrifarr, who met her eyes, only to return to his own window, hoping to see trouble coming.

What seemed like eternity passed, and it seemed the pirates had overshot them. Ben plotted their escape. The transport reached beyond the gas giant at an impossibly slow pace, and Ben began to think of the next step.

"No, we..."

The matriarch cut herself short, realizing that the only way out of this was to lay low and pray they could fix the damage done, to buy them the means of escape. No longer was she even thinking about the meeting with the Imperial Navy. Life and death had a way of simplifying things.

She looked back, as if trying to peer through the maelstrom to catch a glimpse of their pursuer. So his gambit had paid off, it seemed. Turning forward again, she caught sight of the planet they aimed to hide on. It was couched in a gray and white patina, with cool colors throughout. It certainly looked nothing like Carshoulis.

"jI don't ssupposse therre arre anjy nearrbjy rressorrt worrldss to hjide on?"

[Ben Merasska]

The planet - still unnamed, as the navicomputer was mostly unresponsive - laid on the outer fringes of the habitable zone around the star, which was cooling itself, if the color was any indication.

"Look out the viewport and tell me if you see one," Ben said, shooting a meaningful glance at the scanner display, which was now only showing static.

He glanced back curiously at Meorrrei's husband, but was soon intently watching the readouts for the sublight engines. Both of them were glaringly red on the display. Ben grimaced.

"We're not out of this yet," he said. Once more, they descended into a planetary atmosphere and felt the violent shaking of a ship buffeted by turbulence.

"Come on, we can make it..." he urged, the steering column gripped in white knuckled hands. But the engines finally cut out, causing the alarms which were previously silent to begin blaring again. Ben could only hum in terror, while he wrestled with the ship to keep it from yawing and turning their crash landing into a tumble. Auxiliary systems cut in, giving him a tiny bit of control.

"Engines are gone..." he gritted out, desperately trying to keep the nose of the shuttle up. The shuttle broke cloud cover going well over seven hundred miles an hour, and below was a huge expanse of thickly forested mountains.

As they fell Ben's focus strengthened and narrowed to the point where he couldn't hear anything at all. He could feel the ship nearly breaking apart around them, and he assumed the passengers were screaming or yelling, but he was so intent on landing the shuttle and surviving the event, he blocked it out.

Sound slowly leaked back in, until they impacted the canopy of needled trees, and one second later, hit the ground. Ben's head rocked forward, and he saw black.

[Taataani Meorrrei]

...engaging emergency...


...repulsors...


...brace brace brace!"

The world blossomed into red stars, fading to a field of snowy white nothing. The nothing was comforting in its ignorance, in its deprivation. White light, white noise, comfort. It was so very comfortable.

The first signs of discomfort was a feeling of cold.

"Ugh..."

Taataani blinked, watching her breath exhale in a faint puff of vapor. She shivered, and was now aware of a splitting headache, and...

Bleuuughhh

...her breakfast hit the deck as her stomach roiled with intense nausea.

It was then that she heard the scream. Her eyes tracked up to Ben, who sat motionless in his seat. No, the scream was behind her.

Disoriented hands fumbled for the controls of her harness, not quite sure yet how to work the clasp. As the stink of ozone and burned plastic crinkled her nose, she began to slowly gain awareness of exactly what happened. But the scream was still beyond her, and it terrified her.

[Ben Merasska]

Ben Merasska could count the times he'd awakened from unconsciousness that he was not party to inducing on one hand. He was proud of that record, but it also meant that the memories were much less familiar, and the responses were not ingrained.

The first thing he felt was pain. He ached all over, but his head was the worst. He knew one thing, and that was he likely had a concussion. Things felt woozy, and he had hard time really focussing on anything.

Then he heard the screams. He'd heard screams like that before, but never so drawn out; he'd heard people dying over the communications and in dogfights: the quick pained scream and realization of pain and then silence.

He undid the crash webbing and straps and promptly fell out of his seat, moaning softly as he recovered from the sudden bout of dizziness movement caused. He slowly lifted his head up and saw Meorrrei's husband, still shirtless, his mouth wide open and his chest heaving. His legs were caught between a section of the bulkhead that was bent in at an extreme angle and the seat he was still strapped into. The seat itself had broken from its anchoring to the deck of the cockpit and was now pushed against the back wall.

By the time the sight seeped into his consciousness enough for him to realize what was happening, the Cizerack male's screams had drifted into still skin-curling soft heaves of pain. His voice had given out.

He pushed himself to his knees and glanced about the cockpit of the shuttle and noted with some relief that the viewport hadn't cracked or otherwise broken. He forced himself to focus on the trapped Cizerack.

With a calmness he would not have otherwise had, Ben unstrapped the male from his seat and staggered his way into the galley.He dug through the drawers and cabinets for a moment before finding some painkillers. He staggered back to the shivering, shirtless male, and injected the drugs into him.

He sighed and stood up once the man had stopped screaming and closed his eyes. He was still shivering, but at least now he wasn't screaming. He staggered almost drunkenly over to Meorrrei herself, and shook her slightly, ignoring the steaming puddle of bile and partially digested food on the floor near his feet.

"Hey. Hey. Come on, wake up," he slurred, finding it hard to keep her in focus. Her form blurred and then cleared again. "Wake up."

[Taataani Meorrrei]

Taa absent-mindedly reached up, flicking what appeared to be dried blood off her brow as she tried to situate her wig, which she could feel sat askew on her head. It was a silly thing, but that kind of awareness was automatic and so was one of the first things she could control.

Suddenly she snapped into sharp focus, and her pulse quickened when she knew the sound she was hearing.

"Taurrifar!"

Her hands clumsily redoubled their efforts, this time managing to free herself from the straps. She rose, then tumbled, then regained her footing as she scrambled over to where her husband lay pinned.

"Help me move thjiss!!"

Reason had left her entirely, as there was no way to budge the heavy metal from its resting place, now biting into both of Taurrifar's legs just above the knee. Still, she heaved, gritting her teeth as she found new reserves of strength.

Taurrifar, feeling the mercy of the painkillers Ben had given him, shook his head as he mouthed a few protests in Cizeri. He looked to Ben pleadingly, hoping he'd rescue her from this delusion.

[Ben Merasska]

"Warm first," Ben said dazedly, though Meorrrei's voice gave him something to focus on. He decided to try again. "He needs to be warmed up first. Clothes."

He sat down heavily, his muscles suddenly feeling like liquid lead. He shook his head as his vision swam once more.

"Clothes," he said again. "Blankets."

He looked up and out of the viewport, but it was mostly covered in a thin white blanket of snow.

[Taataani Meorrrei]

Giving one more futile tug, Taa turned to Ben, and reluctantly nodded. Rising shakily to her feet, she stumbled to the ruined aft and the cabin, pulling the ruined duvet and a suitcase behind her moments later. She tripped and fell on a sectioned of buckled deck, her wig finally surrendering the farce and tumbling off, revealing a head of crudely-cropped and thin grey hair beneath.

Not even bothering to afford herself the dignity any longer, she regained her legs, returning to her husband to lay the duvet over the carnage, followed shortly by a hurried rifling through his personal tote, looking for a sweater she knew he packed.

"Don't worrrjy, jit'ss bad but nothjing we can't take carre of. We'll get jyou out of herre, okajy."

She gingerly eased Taurrifar's larger frame forward, which he protested with a groan, as she led his arms through the garment, one by one. The nausea was rising in her stomach again but she didn't dare let it break her resolve again.

Taurrifar moved with his own resolve, working the sweater the rest of the way, as best as he could, until it was midway down his torso. The front was awkwardly pulled down, and the duvet pulled up. Already it was starting to spot with blood. Taataani had no idea how bad he was hurt, but she doubted her own words.

[Ben Merasska]

The sounds of activity in the back of the cockpit drew Ben from his dazed regard of the snow-covered viewport.

He looked at the flight controls, now all but useless, and at the console, where a few light blinked, warning that systems and damage had been sustained. There was still auxiliary power, at least.

He flicked a switch, and watched the interplay of lights. Things weren't looking good. It was likely the shuttle would never leave this planet. He closed his eyes, trying to focus beyond the daze of his concussion and sighed.

Looking back, he saw that Meorrrei and her husband were fairly wrapped up in each other. He let them have their moment, and shuffled his way back into the galley. When he returned to the cockpit, he had painkillers again, only pills. He tried to crouch next to the two, but ended up falling into the back wall and sitting.

"Here," he said, offering her the bottle of pills. "Take two of these and call me in the morning."

Where was Chaz right now, he wondered, closing his eyes and feeling his aches pull him into sleep.

[Taataani Meorrrei]

Ben was brusquely interrupted from his unsafe bliss by two hands shaking his shoulders.

"Captajin, wake up!"

There was steel in her voice, but something else, mingling with the wild look in her eyes. A smoldering look of desperation was there and gone in an instant. The only thing left was urgency.

"We need to wake up. Caf, sstjimss. Whateverr we have."

She felt at the gash at her head, still paying no mind to the deep insult of her lost wig. What had been such a closely guarded thing once was quickly abandoned.

"jYourr pupjilss arre wjide. jI've dealt wjith morre than enough wjild cubss to know a concusssjion when jI ssee one."

She frowned.

"jI thjink that makess two of uss."

Shaking her head, the Matriarch began to rummage around the cabin, stuffing a few things here and there into a carry-on bag of hers, the valued contents that filled it a moment before were dumped on the floor without ceremony.

"We have to go forr help, and we have to watch each otherr."

[Ben Merasska]

With a tired groan, Ben stood and leaned against the wall of the ship and rubbed his arms. It was getting colder. Meorrrei was rattling off what needed to be done, but all Ben heard was 'caf and stims'.

"Galley," he grunted, her urgency filtering through her voice and his ears and into him. He looked down at her husband and frowned.

"We need a lot of things," he said out loud though still unaware of Meorrrei, meeting Taurrifar's bleary and drug addled eyes with his own. The headache was slowly lessening.

"First we need to get him out of there and patch up his legs. Then heat. After that we can worry about everything else."



Despite the lessening of his headache, the effects of slamming his forehead into the flight controls continued. They needed rest and cold compresses or ice packs for their heads. The concussions were making things ten times more difficult, at a time they couldn't afford to be handicapped.

Meorrrei had found the caf, but without anything working, there was no real way to make any.

"Listen," he said, sitting down again and resting his head on the wall again. It was cool, and he reveled in how comfortable it was. "I need to sleep."

Meorrrei looked like she was going to argue, so he lifted up a hand, which wobbled unsteadily.

"I'm not going to be any good without some sort of rest. Keep an eye on me," he continued, his eyes beginning to close again. "If I start losing my breath or looking bad, wake me up."

[Taataani Meorrrei]

He was stating the obvious, which was just adding fuel to the fire of her frustration. Of course they had to get Taurrifar free, but how? The bulkhead pinning him weighed orders of magnitude more than they could lift combined. If that wasn't happening, then what? Cut him out? With what? Taataani looked around, but in a desperate way, not knowing what she was looking for.

She made her way to the galley, cramming the bag full of baggies of caf grind and things with sugar. She tore a baggie open with her teeth, foregoing the brewer and simply poured some of the grind in her mouth. The taste and texture were beyond unpleasant but she could feel her heart quickening somewhat, which helped.

Storming over to Ben, she shook him free from his idea of sleep.

"jYou have to eat thjiss. We don't have tjime to ssleep, we have to hurrry!"

She looked back at her husband, whimpering under the grace of the painkillers in his system. She tried not to imagine the stain of red on the comforter at his legs growing.

"We don't have the luxurrjy of rresst, Captajin."

She wrung her hands nervously.

"Orr tjime."

[Ben Merasska]

Ben shook whatever she'd made into his mouth, and gagged, coughing up much of it onto himself. He shook his head, but within a few moments, the rush of added glucose and caf spurred him from his torpor.

Ben looked at Meorrrei and back to her husband, trying to puzzle through the dilemma with his state of mind.

With a grunt of effort, he pushed himself to his feet and stumbled back into the engine room. Sparing a glare at the inactive conglomeration of parts that made up the thruster and engine system of the craft, he began digging through the room for any tool that could be of use.

A few seconds later, he re-entered the cockpit and dropped it next to Meorrrei and her husband. With hands not so deft, he pulled a fusioncutter from the box and flicked it on.

"Keep the blankets and anything that can burn away from it," he mumured. "This will not be pretty."

Biting his lip, he put the burning head of the torch to the metal of the seat which was pinned underneath the Cizerack. Sparks flew, and smoke began rising from the point of cutting, and more dangerously from the pinned male's clothing and blanket.

He cut through the bottom of the seat at an angle, hoping to create enough free space for them to slide the seat, and the man sitting in it, from the hull that had been pushed in, like the metal of a food can.

Ben fell forward when the blade of the fusioncutter bore through the bottom of the seat, and the seat itself shifted, almost spilling Taurrifar onto the pilot and the still lit cutting tool. Ben flicked the cutter off with his thumb, drunkenly tossed back in the general direction of the box of tools, and gestured to Meorrrei to help him pull the seat from under the bent hull.

[Taataani Meorrrei]

Dutifully, she went to work, pulling her husband free from the crushed bulkhead. The sudden relief of pressure worked sharply through the painkillers, bringing renewed cries of pain. Taataani quickly put a hand to her mouth so that she didn't audibly gasp.

His legs were crushed just above the knees, to the point where it was hard to believe that they'd be saved. Worse still, without the weight of the bulkhead to staunch the bleeding, a spurting pool of crimson began to form anew. This wasn't something she was used to. Who could be? To such horrors like this, happening in such a raw and real way to somebody you loved? What should she do? What?

She remained fixed to the spot, motionless and indecisive. For someone so used to being take-charge in all other matters, she was useless when it mattered most. Irony was terribly cruel.

[Ben Merasska]

Ben had been a soldier, once. A fighter pilot. He'd gone through survival training, though the odds of being shot down instead of outright destroyed were astronomical.

"Hey," he said, looking at Meorrrei. She was staring at her husband like she'd turned to stone at the very idea that he was hurt. "We need bandages. Gauze, tape, and blood clotters. In the galley, third drawer to the right."

To the right of what he never exactly specified, but he wanted the woman to get a grip on herself so he could close his eyes and get some sleep. She didn't seem able to do that when her husband was bleeding out in front of her.

Ben realized that the concussion was actually helping him here. If he were in possession of all his mental faculties, he would have likely turned into a gibbering mess from the male's screams when he first woke up. It almost made him laugh.