Date 09: Pelagia's Moon

originally posted in March 2011

"He can't be here," some muffled voice insisted from the shelter of the lower gallery.

Since the firefighting team seemed to be ignoring said voice, the Knight-Errant and the Padawan both ignored it as well. "Mystic Mob," Vanya reported to the person in the most scarred armor. "What do you need?"

The woman inside the armor tilted back her polarized face shield enough to let a bit of air through. "I want to seal off the bulkheads in Thirty-Two, over here, but there's a handful of civs dangling in the net. We're too heavy to climb out and grab them, that catwalk got flash-burned twice already and has crystallized enough to shatter. Can you get them out in under six minutes?"

They exchanged glances briefly. "We can, milady," Davish answered.

"Good," she grunted. "Try to do it in under four. I've got the fire cut off in most directions, but I can't keep it from spreading along Thirty-Two's airflow no matter how many suppressors I throw at it. We're going to narrow the tunnel farther updraft, and I'll have a man at the override for the second you get back through. Adelphes, Halhne, you traverse belowdecks and get at this from the other side—"

"He simply cannot be here," the muffled voice insisted again.

"Lieutenant," the fire captain snapped, and then sighed. "Just ... put a sock in it for now."

"He's a Galactic spy!" came the nearly howled response, before the gasket seal around the door cut off all sound coming into the gigantic airshaft.

"He's got you pegged," Vanya snorted. "Good gravy, you could fit an A-Wing in here!"

"Former ancient warship," Davish reminded her. "When they converted the pieces into a space station, I doubt they got everything connected in a straight line. This might've been an exhaust shaft, or a bulk loading tube...." He surveyed the tangle of people in the emergency safety net, and the glitteringly brittle catwalk above it. "Artificial gravity is sputtering low a bit, too. You want to hold the metal together?"

"One of my specialties," she agreed. "Gimme a couple of seconds first--"

Vanya climbed hastily up onto the arching metal gridwork, tested her balance, then folded her arms across her chest and stared thoughtfully down at the metal lines crisscrossing just before her feet. She moved slowly forward a step, two, three ... glanced sideways at the railing to her left, then down through the grid to its understructure....

"I know it now. I have it. Go ahead." And then she fell silent, as if meditating.

As quickly as he had ever moved, Sir Tam hurled himself up and forward, dancing past Vanya's immobile contemplation, until he reached the hatch in the apex of the curve. This he opened, pulling the lead line for the net upward into his grasp, and began hauling. "Remain still," he told the wiggling man at the top of the human pile. "The safety net is tangled already, and I don't want to risk its snagging on your way up."

Scarcely ninety seconds later -- I don't think we're going to make that four minute deadline, he regretfully noted -- he had two people on their feet and cradled the third. "Move," he commanded, "quickly but calmly. Do not bump the Jedi if you can help it."

They'd passed her position, in fact almost made it to safety, when a great spout of flame burst into sight, hurling a thick metal hullplate ahead of it. "Dame Ysadora!" one of the three civilians bellowed in warning, at the same moment that Davish reached out to poke her mentally.

Her eyes flashed up to the oncoming hazard, and the understructure of the walkway began to dissolve like rain. "Well, this is certainly going to suck," she commented mildly.

Davish used the Force to hurl his three charges through the not-quite-open door, jumped to the ledge himself, and turned back to face his date. Vanya, meanwhile, had drawn the hatch cover to herself while dropping to her knees; she crouched behind the plate, angled inward near the top, and braced it with her left hand. Her right hand slapped flat against the powdering catwalk, which trembled but slowed its decay.

The hullplate struck, utterly shattering the railing. It slammed against the hatch cover before Davish could grasp it with the Force; he yanked it upward, hovering a few centimeters away, to divert the flame over and around her position.

One of the three rescuees -- the same, in fact, who had shouted the warning -- stepped back into the airshaft. "Good God!" he choked, wide-eyed, before thrusting a frayed coil of duracord against Davish's chest. "Grabbed it from a merchant's booth, looks like it was waiting for repair. Best I could do," the older man coughed.

"Good enough," Davish said; at any rate, it would have to be. "Get back in there, we'll be right along." Swiftly he tied a loop through the bracket of an emergency light. He sent the other end out to Vanya, who squirmed around until she had it wrapped more-or-less around her hips and one arm. Her eyes met his, they both took a deep breath-

- the last of the catwalk dispersed into a crystalline fog -

- she leapt, and he hauled, and she went swinging around and down, out of the path of the flame, to end wham! shoulder-first against the sooty wall below him, to his left, where it was only the effort of an instant to drag her up to his ledge.

They piled through the slightly bent door, laughing despite themselves, and shouting "Seal it!" to anyone who might care to hear.

About ten minutes later, Vanya scrubbed at her face with a blackened damp cloth. "Lovely to see you again, Sir Angelo," she told the older fellow who'd come back with the duracord. "How's the arm?"

"Bacta makes everything proper again," he answered with exquisite politeness, "thank you for asking. And, er, durst one inquire as to your arm, this time 'round?"

She shrugged the shoulder in question. "Bruised, but no worries. Have you met Sir Tam? Davish, this is Sir Angelo, we met on Kapella. Sort of. He's a marvelous shot in awkward circumstances."

They'd gotten little farther than opening pleasantries before that aggravating Imperial Security Lieutenant popped around a corner. "Sir Tam, while unofficially we are more grateful than we have time to express at your heroic rescue of Tapani subjects, you are entirely restricted from being on this station!"

"Why?" Vanya asked, blinking.

"Because the Imperial Princess has ordered all Galactics banned from her vicinity until she's done being incensed by Emperor Kane's offer of marriage!" the unintroduced lieutenant huffed, as if stating the universally known.

Vanya looked at Davish.

Davish looked a bit poleaxed, actually.

His recovery chances weren't exactly aided by Vanya's sudden gales of laughter. She actually fell off the crate on which she'd been perched. "He didn't!" she gasped. "He can't be that damned dumb!"

If he'd thought, he probably wouldn't have admitted, "I saw nothing of it on the console this morning, I swear. I can't imagine...."

"Yes, yes," the lieutenant sighed, finally showing some measure of kindliness in his demeanor. "And that's all very well, but you really cannot be here. You simply must leave. Immediately. Or I'll have to arrest you, and it's a diplomatic incident, do you see?"

Vanya finally managed to bring her cackling under control. She took a few deep breaths, just to make sure, then told the ImpSec lieutenant as she climbed to her feet, "By rights, that applies to me, too. I'm a Galactic, you know."

"Bosh," the lieutenant and Sir Angelo both replied. The latter continued, "You're an Imperial Knight, woman. It's emigrating without all the pestersome filling of forms."

"Haar'chak," she muttered. "We're trying to have a date!"

The Galaxy, apparently, had other ideas.