Fruit of the Poisonous Vine

Hyperspace swirled like a tempest tunnel, intangeable and radiant above him, stretching off to infinity in the distance. Blues and hues swam about, weaving together the spiral river down which the Astral Queen sailed. The physics was incomprehensible; it was as if the very fabric of the universe had become unstuck, and flowed around them in some inconcievable form.

Amos witnessed none of it. His lids lay closed across his hazel eyes, arms wrapped across his chest and lips slightly parted as his shallow breaths kept his unconscious body sustained, oxygen reacting with his brain to spark a subconscious world of imagination that played out behind his eyes. He had been in space far too long to find the spectacle of Hyperspace unsettling or intreguing; now, he simply found it soothing, and the wash of colours across him invariably lulled him to sleep.

A harsh tone sounded from the console, and robbed him of his tranquility. He stirred, and grunted, the boots that rested against the rim of the console shifting slightly as he squirmed in semi-conscious comfort into the padding of the pilot's chair. It continued, with infuriating persistance. An eye peeled over; glanced at the display. Hyperspace warning. Three minutes. Force damn it.

With reluctance, his heels unhooked from their perch and settled back towards the deck, motion levering his body until he sat upright. He shuffled, back and legs attempting to grind out the divets that his apparently several hours of odd-posed slumber had generated. He dug the heel of a palm into an eye socket; withdrew it and attempted to blink away the fogginess that covered his vision. The indicator selected a new frequency, no doubt vocalising the frustrations of the NaviComputer. Another grunt escaped him as he jammed a digit into the control that would silence it.

Adjusting himself into something resembling a comfortable position, he glanced once again at the scrolling chrono that counted down their time until arrival at the pre-set coordinates; reaching across the console, he grabbed the headset hooked around the comm controls, and brought the microphone vaguely close to his mouth. "We're about to drop out of Hyperspace," he advised, depressing the PTT key that glowed amber beneath his touch. "Might wanna get up here."

Discarding the periferal without another thought, he turned his attentions back to the controls, and went through the muscle memory motions of preparing the ship for rapid decceleration as it reverted into Realspace. He hauled back on a handle, and Hyperspace exploded, fragmenting into a firework of pinprick lights that spread outwards and dissolved away amongst the stars. Without the cool blue glow washing down through the viewport, the cockpit was plunged into comparative darkness. He jabbed at a few controls, and the artificial lighting kicked in; a twitch of roll from the flight yoke and the Astral Queen tumbled sidewards, the dull and dirty orb of Skako tumbling into view. A few more adjustments oriented them on a course towards a vague orbit, sublight engines firing to hurl them across the thousands of kilometres that still separated the two bodies.

Amos' nose wrinkled at the sight before him. The world looked even less welcoming than Raxus Prime. He only hoped Jaden would be able to forgive him for subjecting his precious ship to the intense pressures of the Skakoan atmosphere; he'd been unnerved enough as it was by the extra sheen and tint that the Queen had collected last time Amos had generously volunteered her for another interstellar endeavour.

Letting the ship fall into the grip of the planet's gravity, he compensated with a little thrust, and waited for Tionne to provide instructions on where to go next.

Amos’ gruff voice startled Tionne out of her hour-long calibration of environmental suits that the two borrowed from the Alliance repository. Acquiring such equipment raised a few eyebrows in the storage, mainly because such apparatus would be used in high-pressure environments like the one in the Hrakert Rift on Maanan where kolto was mined. Nevetheless, officers rarely questioned Jedi openly, viewing them as a peculiar, irrational kind.

Even if they did ask, Thanewulf had an answer ready. They were going fishing. Which was, considering the viscosity and texture of the Skakoan atmosphere, not far from the truth. Hence careful preparation was a prerequisite, if they wanted to avoid being squished into bantha dug the same moment they set foot on Skako. Having completed the task, the Coruscanti made her way back to the cockpit, slumping into the copilot seat. Amos was visibly repelled by the prospect of landing on a planet with Type 4 atmosphere. Encouragement was on the way.

‘’Why the sour face, my friend? There are far less hospitable places in this galaxy. Like…Nar Shaada. The Skakoans are highly civilized, maybe a little slimy and wobbly, like their homeworld…but also a highly advanced society. But that does not really matter, now does it…Because we are heading for the north pole. Make sure you have shields up to maximum. The pressure is seventeen standard atmospheres on the surface. We don’t want to be turned into a pancake.’’ she instructed, leaning back in her seat. Iakona seemed confident enough with steering the ship through the dense atmosphere. It looked like he had his share of rough landings, but the Knight was quite sure this was not one of them.

‘’You must be asking yourself…why Skako?’’ the redhead inquired, ready to give an explanation that would shed more light on the apparently insane and illogical choice of a planet to hide ones possessions.

Amos loathed the prospect of setting foot on the planet before him. The Jedi was probably right: he was more likely to come to harm on a world like the Smuggler's Moon than he was here, on the homeworld of such a relatively civilized race. But on the other hand, the risk of harm in most locations at least provided him with the opportunity to rally against it. Toxic, crushing atmospheres weren't exactly the kind of thing you could stave off with a good old firefight.

The memory of Raxus Prime was still fresh in his mind, and the prospect of having to trust in a few flimsy layers of durasteel and duraplast to protect him from the pervasive air was daunting at best. The last thing he needed to be reminded of was that the air here was more than just insidious and corrosive like Raxus Prime's had been: it took hold of its victims; squeezed them in its invisible, crushing grip. That the atmosphere would asphyxiate him before it converted his body into a paste actually came as mild consolation.

He grunted at Tionne's words, complying with her instructions, and shunting power from the hyperdrive and weapons to reinforce the shields, just for good measure. He felt tempted to sneak back and don one of the pressure suits immediately, and then barricade himself in the most central and reinforced space he could find within the Astral Queen's innards. But that hardly seemed like appropriate actions for a budding Jedi; nor the son of a Mandalorian, or the steadfast and stallwart warrior image that he had conjured for himself over the years.

Why Skako? The thought had certainly crossed his mind numerous times during the voyage here, but the answers had seemed frustratingly numerous. A former Separatist world, Skako had been shunned by the Empire for its abundant non-Human population, and somewhat undesirable living conditions. The Jedi had no doubt made the gamble that no one would be determined enough to mount the sort of extensive search that would be required to uncover what Thanewulf had hidden here.

"It's the perfect hiding place," he concluded. "Nobody in their right mind would come searching here; and even if they did, the odds of them finding anything in this soup are almost nil."

The Knight merely grinned, putting her lucidity in question. She liked the way his mind worked; there was definitely Sentinel potential there. Also, he seemed abundant in common sense, something as scarce as a Jedi Master these days.
''Exactly.'' the redhead confirmed his point, eyes grazing the control panel of the ship, particularly paying attention to shield monitors as she opted to explain her peculiar choice.
''But not only that. The Skakoans were one of the key players in the Clone Wars, the pillars of Trade Federation and the Techno Union. As one of the firmest supporters of the new regime, they acted as key allies to Grievous and Dooku. However, when the Republic finally fell, it was clear alien species had no place in the new government. There were evidence of intolerance even before that occurred.'' Pausing for a second to readjust the side thrusters to compensate for the build-up of pressure underneath as the ship plummeted into the sauce-like atmosphere of the Skakoan homeworld, the Knight divulged inducting reasoning leading to her cunning decision, hoping her newest student would learn from it.

''When I searched for a planet to hide my ship, I took a few things into account. The atmosphere had to be as toxic as possible, making any prolonged search a great strain. I narrowed it down to a choice of three - Gand, Dorin and Skako. Again...why Skako? Simple. Skakoans have Force sensitivity incidence of zero percent. In over twenty five thousand years of recorded Jedi history, not one Skakoan had ever been identified Force sensitive. The Gand and the Kel Dor, on the other hand, had prominent representatives within the Jedi. It would be thus expected for Imperial forces to storm both planets...as I learned they ultimately did. But not Skako. Forgotten and isolated, with their people rarely travelling the galaxy... Also, its methane atmosphere is also non-corrosive. We should find Crimson intact.'' With that concluding remark, Tionne diverted her look to Amos, in search of some form of approval now that he knew her reasoning.

Telemetry scrolled across the screens, an interactive chart projecting the weather patterns in the upper levels of Skako's atmosphere along their projected course cycling before Amos' eyes. He paid only passing attention to the information, mainly because he only had a minimal understanding of what the numerals and data-bytes actually meant. Jaden had explained the mechanisms of the device in simplistic terms; the graphical display provided enough information for Amos to infer what he needed to know. Ordinarily a pleasant green, occasionally punctuated with hints of green and yellow, the atmosphere of Skako was displayed in angry oranges, and shades of red. High windspeeds and extreme pressure differentials meant one thing.

He glanced over his shoulder to Tionne. "You might want to buckle up," he advised, mouth narrowing into a thin line as he sharpened his mind and concentration. "Its going to get bumpy."

The Astral Queen swept into a roll as Amos haulled back on the flight controls, aiming her towards the northern pole of her axis. The ripples of cloud that migrated around her equator wound tighter here, the fluctuations in composition and density that painted patterns elsewhere in her atmosphere forming tighter and tighter bands. Amos orientated the craft near parallel with the surface of one such column of gas, easing the craft inch by inch towards the surface of the clouds. The ship buffetted as the planet's winds caught her, accellerating her forwards. The pilot silently congratulated himself for choosing to approach from this direction; though aiming into the wind would have prevented the planet's surface from rolling away beneath them at quite such a high speed, his piloting skills weren't advanced enough to guarentee that they wouldn't be flipped end over end by the turbulence. They'd no doubt overshoot their destination on the surface, but it would be much easier to navigate to those coordinates once they reached the slower-moving air at lower altitudes.

The deck rumbled beneath his boots; unfortunately, there was little that could be done about that. Inertial compensators were linked into the ship's propulsion systems, varying the artificial gravity throughout the ship to shave off the worst of the g-forces from extreme accelleration and manoeuvres. With turbulence though, the ship was tossed about in far too rapid and unpredictable a pattern for the computers to compensate in real-time. They'd just have to brace themselves, and hope for the best.

Amos' eyes focussed mainly on the computer displays; there was nothing to see through the viewscreen except an unpenetrable wall of murky brown. An artificial horizon superimposed over the weather chart; it wavered constantly as Amos swept through the atmosphere, flitting about through the clouds like a leaf on the wind. A patch of paler orange appeared; Amos steared towards it, dropping down a few hundred meters into a pool of relative calm. He released a breath of relief as the vibration in the deck plates abated; casually, he wondered if there might come a time in his training when the Force would allow him to feel the ebb and flow of the atmosphere, and guide him through such ordeals with greater ease. Maybe he should have just let Tionne fly.

Pushing that throught aside, he flipped a few controls, conjuring a map of the surface topography of the planet onto another screen. Running a few comparative scans of the major features, the computer calculated their location relative to the charts that were recorded on-file. "Got a specific set of coordinates," he asked, easing back gently on the thruster controls, "Or do I just fly north until the compass says we can't anymore?"

Idly, Tionne watched Amos struggle to keep the ship in one piece. The physics of fluids was always complex, unpredictable by any set of high-order equations; another reason why steering any ship other than a native Skakoan would be considered suicide by most pilots. Simply lacking the technology to perform, the vessel hovered like a dry leaf in the wind. Nevertheless, the Knight seemed undisturbed by atmospheric turbulence or the prospect of crashing. Comfortably seated and buckled in, she crossed her legs and observed her student stabilize the ship. At least he did not panic, like most people would. The Coruscanti made a mental note to teach him how to aid himself with the Force while navigating through such a hostile, erratic environment. Even without her divine intervention, the gruff man did reasonably well, all things considered.

''Oh good. We are still alive. For the time being.''
The comment was uttered in her trademark cynical tone, the very one that earned her quite the reputation among her fellow Jedi back in the day. There would be a lot more where that came from, so the sooner Amos adjusted, the better.

''0-60, 0-10. There should be a plateau among the vines there. Just make sure you stay in the clouds for the time being. We don't want to be spotted. Skako is an ecumenopolis, you know. Slime comes in layers here.'' the redhead reminded, slightly leaning over Amos' shoulder to take a better look through the viewport. Her position brought her uncomfortably close to the bundle of shreds that dangled from his head down past his shoulders. Her brow furrowed a tad as she lay back into her seat.
''Speaking of vines... What is that on your head, Amos? You know... You do not intend to... stand in front of queens, kings and senators with...that on your head? Maybe... maybe we should find you a hat.'' the Knight stated, her face plastering with a self-confident smile.
''Consider it free stylist advice. No need to thank me.'' she added, waving her hand dismissively, her thoughts drifting towards the hidden stash of tobacco and her pipe awaiting her aboard Crimson.

Amos felt an eye clambering up his forehead in earnest, but through some unprecedented surge of self-control managed to stay his tongue. It had been a while since anyone had bothered to critique the ropes of hair that hung from his scalp; his former shipmate Jaden had been a common practitioner, and Amos had always had an ascerbic retort on the tip of his tongue in preparation. All this time without him around had apparently dulled the razor edge of his words; not that he felt they would be appropriate here, of course. What reaction the Jedi hoped to provoke was unclear, but Amos chose to err on the side of caution, maintaining his outward calm. That seemed like a pretty Jedi sort of thing to do.

"Zero-sixty, zero-ten," he echoed, punching in the coordinates manually, and watching as an indicator overlayed itself on the topographical scan. "Plateau. Vines. Clouds. Got it." His mutterings were as much a verbal conformation for his own benefit as they were an aknowledgement to Tionne that he had heard her words. Well, the relevant ones, at least: his lack of response to her fashion advice remained intact.

The Astral Queen drifted through the clouds, much slower now as they neared their target. Residential structures overlayed atop the terrain map disappeared into blankness that Amos assumed was some sort of wilderness. He risked a drop in the ship's altitude, ducking own into what the scans informed him was a relatively concealled canyon. His eyes tried to peel back the murky air, searching for whatever plant life Thanewulf had referenced. They certainly weren't hard to miss: organic snakes and tangles, weaving a net of foliage across the planet's surface. His eyes followed them, trying to seek out their destination through the gloom. They found nothing, though the sensors implied it lay only just beyond the cloud horizon.

"I'm taking us down," Amos informed, easing the controls towards the surface, the Repulsorlift generators - already straining against the downward pressure of several extra tons of atmosphere pressing down on them - struggling to keep the descent fluid as he manipulated the controls. His mouth offered a grim, thin-lipped smile. "Lets hope there's nobody down there whose got it into their heads to shoot at us."

''Oh, don't worry'' she retorted in a solacing tone, gaze fixed on the digital altimeter that marked the rate at which they descended through the viscous Skakoan atmosphere - ''The Skakoans are a pacifist race. The last thing they would do to a couple of strangers is to shoot them off the sky. Far too precious to be mere cannon fodder. They like to experiment on alien species, genetically mutilate them into monsters via processes that introduce whole new levels of pain. One of the reasons I chose this planet too. Anybody who would be caught as an intruder would be squished under a watchglass and turned into a specimen.''

The Knight hardly exhibited any concern regarding potential outcomes if they were to get caught; she had done far wackier things in the past, defied the odds a numerous amount of times. As far as she was concerned, dying as a guineapig was not an option. Still, she enjoyed scaring the shit out of Amos, just to test his integrity.

''There are also Octuptarra. But we will worry about those if and when we encounter them.''
Her self-absorbed smile widened when the said plateau emerged between the murky clouds. It was still there.

Amos' eyes narrowed, but he kept his focus squarely on the planet ahead. "You're a very reassuring person, you know that?" he grunted.

Any further comment on the matter was stampeded aside by the appearence of the plateau, and his concentration on manipulating the craft in a groundwards direction at a controlled pace. Landings had never been his strong suit - they were arguably the most difficult part of flying, which was why Amos tried to avoid them so frequently - and with the thick Skakoan clouds weighing down the ship and making every movement that little bit more exaggerated, in was sure to make for an interesting exercise.

He drew in a slow, deep breath through his nose; held it in place for a moment before heaving it out as a gentle sigh. A wave of calm washed over him as he exhaled: not some Jedi meditation technique, or anything so profound; merely a simple infusion of oxygen to his brain, designed to sharpen his concentration, or something along those lines. At least, that is the explanation his father had provided while teaching him to shoot a rifle as a boy. He remembered those times with a hint of a smile, and realised it was the first time he could recall that thoughts of his father had come without any negative side-effects. Apparently, more than just literal demons had been slain on Ord Ithil.

The Queen wavered as Amos brought her gently towards the deck, aiming carefully within the clearing that was scarcely large enough for the ship, bow to stern. Her port skids hit the ground before the bow and starboard, a judder migrating though the deck plates as they dropped an unexpected foot or so while the craft levelled itself. Amos grimaced, but as the intertial compensators smoothed off the last of the resitual vibrations, the craft came to a comfortable rest. With more than a little relief and satisfaction, Amos slapped a hand into the repulsorlift controls, killing power to them completely before commencing the somewhat lengthier process of shutting down the sublight drives and the navicomputer, shunting every last amp of excess power into reinforcing their precious shields.

Amos hesitated, peering out through the viewport with a wrinkled nose. "Not meaning to sound cliché," he muttered, addressing his new mentor, "But are we nearly there yet?"

A dampened creak was to be heard, with the hull gradually pushed inwards by the weight of the thick Skakoan atmosphere. The sound was unpleasant and sinister and reminded Tionne no time should be wasted. Her eyes rolled to gaze at the ceiling when Amos shut the power down; she unbuckled herself and rose from her seat once she made sure the ship had indeed touched solid ground.

''We have about fifteen standard minutes before both me and you and this flying tincan are turned into a pancake.'' the redhead murmured as she slid past her student down the cramped corridor and down into the cargo area where two environmental suits waited ready. Her jacket was tossed aside when she started to unbuckle her belt, slipping her trousers off to remain in plain white underwear.

''I'd suggest you get rid of any excess clothes if you do not wish to cook alive in your skin. It's hotter than hell out there, like a very murky spa.'' the Knight commented briefly, finding nothing embarrassing in parading around in her underwear. Knowing herself, there would be much more awkward situations than this. The sooner Amos adapted and grew comfortable around her, the better. Besides she had nothing the tall man did not see before.

Once she managed to wiggle into the suit and locked herself in with a snap-hiss of the pressurizers, her attention turned to her student. He seemed to be struggling with his suit; these were apparently not made for oversized giants like himself.
''Here, lemme help...'' she offered, approaching to aid him in an almost maternal way.

For some reason, the simplistic whites she wore under her clothes came as a slight disappointment. He wasn't entirely sure what he'd been expecting - indulgent lace or seductive leather hardly seemed befitting of someone as regal as his mind percieved the Jedi to be - but even so, it did resolve in something of an anti-climax.

Kicking off his boots, he'd made short work of disrobing but, as Tionne had observed, donning his pressure suit wasn't quite such an easy task. Claims by the manufacturers that one size fits all clearly hadn't bargained on individuals of his stature. He could possibly have allowed his mental tirade to spill over into considerations of species that didn't follow the typical human shape and proportions, but frankly he was more interested in haulling on the magic suit that was apparently going to prevent him from imploding.

"Uh, yeah," he muttered awkwardly, stooping a little so that the clasp he was fumbling was within her reach. Two reinforced segments covered the bulk of his torso; unfortunately his broad shoulders were crammed right up against the inner padding, and whenever he flexed his arm to reach for the latch, he inadvertantly levered the segments a few millimetres too far apart for the sections to lock together properly. He winced a little as, with her help, the two halves clamped tight around his upper body. He offered a tight-lipped smile, and a mutter of thanks.

Reaching for the helmet that he'd had the forethought to place atop one of the Queen's consoles - stooping in the bulky suit was hardly an easy task - he flicked his head forwards furiously, dreadlocks tumbling forward in a cascade over his face. Carefully manoeuvering each of them into the helmet, he lifted it over his skull and onto the locking plate, twisting it carefully into place. A hand ran around the collar, ensuring that none of the thick ropes of hair had strayed into the seal; his ears popped as the suit pressurised, and a green indicator burst into life in his periferal vision to inform him that everything was operating as expected.

Stiffly, he hefted the bulky suit around to face his teacher. "Ladies first," he insisted, gesturing towards the main hatch with a clunky arm. "It's not a gender thing," he clarified, unsure whether he might have inadvertantly caused offence. "I just have absolutely no idea of where we're going."

With a hiss, the inner door of the airlock opened and both of them walked into it, barely fitting into the cramped space in their oversized envo-suits. The Knight blew slightly over the comm in the helmet, just to make sure it was working, as this would be the only way of communication in the thick atmosphere of Skako. Since these were borrowed and thus seemingly used, all of the parameters were better checked beforehand.

''Do not worry, it's not far away...'' the Knight started off, reaching out for the manual controls to open the airlock - ''...I left my ship in a cave made out of vines, hidden from plain sight. Perhaps a two minute walk through the goo, even less.''
Her words sounded rather encouraging, only to be completely confuted by the sight that now lay before them. Entire mountains made out of vines dominated the horizon, with nothing but entangled roots adorning the landscape; light was rather low as methane clouds blocked out the sun, the entirety of the environment bathing in a brownish hue. Dull, monotonous and slimy - Skako had nothing exciting or diverse to offer the eye. Thus, a perfect hiding place.

Tionne stepped out, firmly planting her feet on the ground. Her hand extended towards an spacious opening amidst the vines - ''That way...'' she signalled and began to progress in the designated direction.
''Just watch your step, Amos. We don't want to...wake the Octuptarra.'' the redhead stated with great care, remaining observant and alert.

Through reflex, Amos reached for the controls of his pressure suit and activated the lights mounted to his helmet. Beams shot forward, but were quickly swallowed by the murky haze; the lights did a better job of illuminating the clouds themselves than of anything he was trying to see through them. Muttering a curse under his breath, he killed them in favour of slightly extended battery life, and trudged off in the wake of his mentor.

Whatever an Octuptarra was, Amos agreed with the sentiment that they shouldn't wake them. While he would normally have taken care not to disturb the native wildlife in the interests of not advertising his presence to the local populace and predators, the fact that Tionne felt the need to specifically warn him against doing so for one creature in particular injected an extra nervous edge into Amos' mood.

His hand strayed towards where his blaster was shoved into a convenient nook in his pressure suit, but it didn't offer the same reassurance that it normally would have. With the air so thick, and the visibility so poor, the range the weapon usually afforded - and the opportunity to keep his enemies at a reasonably safe distance - was robbed from him. His vibroblade was attatched to a magnetic plate on the back of his suit, but he didn't rate his chances of being particularly formidable or mobile in a fight with that either, should one errupt.

"Just out of curiosity," he asked, reluctance lacing his tone, "What is an Octuptarra?" He winced. "Or do I not want to know?"