They crater some jungle. It smokes. Birds flee in all directions.

Callida takes a little while to painfully peel herself off of the floor, then barks, "Status report?" None of her crew's dead, she would have noticed, but she's a bit too shaken up to have a good immediate grasp of the situation.

  "I'm feeling such an affinity with soup right now," mutters Deenia, grumpily. "Fine. Ish. For the record: ow."

  "All of my things are broken!" wails Doctor Gelrath, sounding like he'd rather be a casualty.

  "I'm all right. Running a diagnostic on the ship's systems now," says Envee, in a smooth mechanical voice. A droid swears loudly in binary after her, so rapid and indignant that it's honestly hard for Callida to catch everything. She's pretty sure that the ship isn't doing great, and that TN-R13 is very unhappy about it. Well. That doesn't bode well. At least both of her droids are all right.

"Get me a list of what you need to fix it and an ETA on how long it'll take. And if it's worth the trouble. Do we know where we are?"

  "Most of the delicate instruments on the outside got crisped, best I've got is looking out the window. There's, uh, some trees?"

"Atmosphere composition?"

  There's a pause, then Envee chimes in: "Breathable. Tentatively non-toxic."

"Great. Then I'm going to have a look around outside, see what the damage is."

The outside airlock door is - well, it's a little melted. Callida quietly adjusts her odds for salvaging the ship. She unceremoniously lightsabers open the door and exits.

Jungle, somewhat the worse for wear. Enough trees fell over that she can see more than fifteen feet in most directions, which based on the density past the effect of her impact wasn't the case a minute ago.

Way over there, far enough to have been rattled but not damaged, is a four-story house.

"There's a building. Envee, please stand by for translation, I'm going to go knock on the front door."

  "Yes."

A Sith showing up at one's house is bound to be more than a little alarming, but at this point Callida doesn't really think it's worth the trouble to try and disguise it. Maybe she could manage to get herself and her crew into suitable disguises, but her ship is obviously of Imperial make, and uh. It's not like she can move it or make the giant flaming wreck less noticeable. This way, everyone will be very excited to send her on her way as quickly as possible.

She locates the front door, and she knocks politely.

A little old man who looks like a human with purple hair answers the door tentatively and blinks at her.

Oh, that's promising, a near-human subspecies is much more likely to speak Basic.

"Hello," she says politely, looking like crashing out of the sky is the most natural and ordinary thing in the world. "I apologize for the disturbance. Do you speak Basic?"

...he does not. He says something in Definitely Not Basic.

Damn. It was worth a shot.

She retrieves her comlink. "Local looks like a human with purple hair, probable human subspecies. Does not speak Basic. Envee?"

  "... I don't recognize it. Etymology doesn't immediately sound familiar either, but I'd need to hear more to say. Ask him to say something else?"

Callida obligingly holds up the comlink and motions for the little old man to please say something else.

...he says something else.

  "Still not recognizing anything, it doesn't seem to have any roots in the likeliest candidates. I'd have an easier time figuring it out in person."

"Acknowledged. Send your system diagnostic to TN if you haven't already, then I'll come by to pick you up. Deenia, please see Gelrath for any injuries, and then help TN with surveying the damage. Gelrath, inventory of which of your things are and are not broken, then do the same. Once we're sure the ship won't explode, please prioritize the communications and sensor array. I want to know where we are."

She motions for the purple-haired man to wait, then begins the journey back to the now defunct airlock. She doesn't have much trouble with the uneven and debris-littered terrain, but Envee almost certainly would. It might just be better to carry her.

The purple-haired man... waits. But with the door closed so the air conditioning doesn't escape.

Reasonable.

She retrieves Envee, ending up carrying her to the door, and then knocks a second time.

He opens the door. ...he blinks at the robot.

"Hello," says Envee pleasantly, bowing her shiny metal head in greeting. Then she repeats one of his sentences back to him.

Purple man furrows purple eyebrows.

Clearly a protocol droid is not a familiar sight. She demonstrably says a few sentences in very different languages, then starts attempting to construct rudimentary sentences in the purple man's language, motioning for him to speak more.

...he calls a sentence into the house.

A younger man with blue hair pops out of the next room.

Envee inclines her head to the blue haired man politely. She motions towards herself and Callida, then inside; asking to bet let in.

Blue haired man smiles and motions them in!

In they both go! While she's letting Envee do the talking, Callida is clearly in charge; her bearing speaks volumes.

Envee attempts hopeful sentence structure again. She would really like to figure out what this language's deal is.

Blue haired man is more talkative than purple haired man.

Then Envee will very rapidly get the hang of this language!

That's really impressive!

Blue haired man's name is Sondayo Insho and he is pleased to meet them and glad they didn't crash any farther to the left, is everyone aboard okay?

Protocol droid! She has a perfect memory for vocabulary and grammar structure, perfect pronunciation, and a very complete idea of how languages are structured. She's cheating very hard.

They're pretty happy they didn't crash any farther to the left, too. Everyone's all right.

"Which planet are we on?" asks Callida, with Envee as her interpreter.

"It's called Amenta."

"Do you have a star chart available?" (This sentence gives Envee some trouble; there is a delay as she acquires the appropriate vocabulary and relays the concept. A map of the stars in the galaxy and where they are in relation to them.)

"...I'm not sure if I have one like you have in mind..." He can pull up a constellation map on a computer. And a picture of a galaxy with an arrow pointing at Amenta's star.

"It will do nicely, thank you," says Callida, snapping holos of both. The contellation map is near useless to her, but the galaxy is enough to work with. She begins gently persuading her datapad to figure out their precise location; she's familiar enough with the galaxy to guess their general location, but her computer will do a better job.

"What's your planet like?" asks Envee.

"...it's the only one I've ever been on. I'm sure you can tell it's got an atmosphere. What do you mean?"

"How's it structured? Do you have space travel? Are you a single group or is it split into many?"

"It's a sphere. We can get to moons and back okay. Lots of countries."

"No hyperdrives?" The word in Basic is pronounceable, but naturally unfamiliar. "No star-to-star travel?"

"No, but we'd absolutely love to import it."

"We'll keep that in mind," says Envee brightly.

Callida glances up from her datapad upon hearing this translation.

"Is it likely that locals might attempt to seize my wreck of a ship to reverse engineer it?"

"You were probably noticed coming down, so yeah, I'd expect it. My family owns this land but I can't vouch much for what they might do about it."

"Charming. Thank you for your candor. Pardon my rudeness, I have urgent business to take care of. Excuse me."

The next part is not translated: "Envee, please continue speaking to the nice man, and send transcripts of it to my datapad. I will be seeing to theft prevention. Call if you need anything."

She bows politely to Sondayo, and goes to return to her ship to see to theft prevention.

"What's your species like?" asks Envee.

"...we live about forty of our years, we've got seven castes..."

The protocol droid nods along to his explanation.

"Caste systems are uncommon but not unheard of in the galaxy. How long are your years?"

"1,475 days."

She takes a moment to verify day length, then: "That's about four times longer than the most commonly accepted standard galactic years. Your lifespans are are a bit above galactic average. Is there anything you'd like to know about the galaxy?"

"How crowded is it?"

"It varies based on the section of the galaxy. Near the galactic core it can get rather crowded. In the Outer Rim it's more common to have unclaimed habitable worlds and smaller outposts. There are also unmapped and largely unexplored sections of the galaxy; if galactic average holds, there are probably several thousand uncolonized habitable worlds there. If you pull up the galactic map again I can tell you which section you're in and who your neighbors are, if you like."

Map!

She reorients the map so that the star marking Amenta is near the top of the image, and then begins motioning to different sections of it.

She circles the left side of the image, mostly 'west' of Amenta but including it in the circle. "You're in the upper section of the Unknown Regions; they're largely unexplored, because no major hyperspace routes have been discovered yet. By either the Sith Empire or the Galactic Republic, anyway. The Chiss are secretive and are located roughly below you on the map. They might have a route mapped out, but if they do they have yet to share it. No one's quite sure how big their territory is, because they refuse to tell us where they are or how to get there."

Next, she motions to the right of Amenta's star. "You're near the edge of the Sith Empire's territory. It controls approximately," she roughly circles most of the upper section of the galaxy, "this area. Either by direct control or more indirect claim, because no one else has challenged them. It's a relatively new entrant to the galactic stage and the seat of its power is located," Her metal finger moves to the far right edge of the circled territory, "here. On a planet named Dromund Kaas."

Her finger trails down from the Sith Empire, tracing out a rough half-circle that contains most of the galaxy. "Below them is the Galactic Republic. It's largely centered around the galactic core and is one of the oldest organized galactic-spanning groups present. It's currently at war with the Sith Empire. Its capital is the planet Coruscant, located in the center of the galaxy."

Then, to the right of that, in a much smaller circle: "And here is Hutt Space; it's a neutral party in the conflict and often serves as a supplier to both sides. Whichever is the higher bidder."

She drops her hand and politely rests it in her lap. "There are a few places where either the Empire or the Republic are fighting over what belongs to whom, but very roughly, that's where everyone is."

"The galaxy isn't quite two-dimensional, I assume there are complications in the other direction."

"Some, yes. A proper three dimensional star map would be better, and is the preferred format. This is missing some of the nuance. But as a basic overview, it's mostly accurate."

"Three dimensional projections aren't household staples, alas. So this is promising, lots of not-interstellar-war to colonize."

"Yes. But you're also not along any major trade routes, so you're largely on your own, especially for mapping hyperspace routes. Which would mean little economic aid."

"I think we need the planets more than we need the aid, but maybe I'm guessing wrong about how hard it is to map routes."

"If they were easy, there would be routes mapped to the entire galaxy," says Envee, a little wryly. "It can often be dangerous for the explorers, and it's tricky to know which routes are actually stable and safe without a lot of trial and error. If you're wrong in your calculations, you can collide with stars or planetary bodies or other galactic hazards at high speed. Explorers tend to prefer to branch smaller hyperspace routes from longer, more established ones, so they can be assured of resupply if something moves unexpectedly and they find their path cut off. That way they are guaranteed a resupply location."

"Makes sense."

"What makes you say that you need the planets more than the aid?" wonders Envee, curiously.

"We're under some serious population pressure."

"Oh. Is your species's natural birthrate significantly higher than replacement?"

"Yep."

"Ah. Is this a stable sort of serious population pressure, or are you desperately in need of resources immediately or half your population dies?"

"We've got internationally enforced population controls. But people are deeply unhappy."

"The pressure is psychological more than biological?"

"Right, we have working birth control."

Envee nods. "That sounds unpleasant, I'm sorry. Do you divide the population controls by caste, or something else?"

"Caste, yeah."

"What are the castes?"

"Blue, green, yellow, grey, orange, purple. Red."

"Are they — above one another, in that order, or not? Do they all have different jobs?"

"Not exactly, but approximately. And yes." He lists jobs and other useful Amenta facts.

So informative! This kind of thing is fascinating, and Envee enjoys hearing about it.

It's also very useful information for someone else to have. Best to know the environment, after all.

All right, so there are people on this planet who sound like they're desperate to get off of it, and she's landed with their ticket off world. On one hand, if she leverages this appropriately, this is an excellent bargaining position. On the other hand, she's stranded on a foreign planet with four noncombatants and a hunk of very valuable slag, and an entire planet's worth of people that might decide that negotiating takes too long. So far she likes Sondayo; if the world's made up of people like him, then she's more than happy to negotiate with them. But she's a Sith Lord, and so she has long since lost the idealism that would stop her from asking TN to please remove and hide anything they can't easily replace from the hyperdrive, navicomputer, and databanks, and then rig what's left to explode on her command. So she does that. All of them will absolutely be destroyed very thoroughly if she deems it necessary. For good measure, she backs up blueprints of everything she'd need to claw her way back to Imperial space onto datasticks. It's best to be prepared in case someone has the bright idea of trying to use force.

Not that she's going to open with that kind of hostile negotiation tactic, of course. She absolutely does not want to blow up her things, nor does she want to use the threat of its destruction as anything more than a last resort. But she will if she has to, and so she's prepared.

All of her ship's sensors have been ground into dust by re-entry, but she can watch for anyone investigating her very dramatic entrance with the Force.

There are some people! Two different sets from two different directions. No, three.

That makes her suspicious. Three separate groups? That could get very untenable very quickly. Maybe there's a reasonable explanation, maybe one's emergency services and another's a group of expert translators and another is a defense force, all coordinated by the same entity, but... She's a Sith Lord. Paranoid and prepared for anything kind of comes with the territory.

"Heads up, there are people incoming. Three different directions. Would Sondayo like to harbor all of you while I have a chat with them?"

Envee asks!

"- I can, yeah. Uh, some of them might be from the Senate. More than one bunch of them might be from the Senate, the Senate doesn't. Coordinate very well."

Envee relays this, then: "Likelihood of infighting?"

(Callida helps shepherd her crew to the nice air conditioned building. TN in particular needs help, beeping unhappily all the while. This task completed, she drags a chair to the top of her ship/pile of slag and sits, watching Envee's transcripts with a critical eye. Yep, this is going to go badly, isn't it.)

"...pretty bad, honestly, getting ahold of the ship would be a major coup, the incentives against infighting aren't that good. And some of them could be foreigners who think Calado shouldn't have it and are coming to swipe it."

"Oh," says Envee.

Callida retrieves her comlink. "Is he likely to require my protection as well?"

"—My lord's wondering if you expect to be in danger during all of this, and if you'd like protection."

"I should be safe if I stay out of it."

"As you like. She'll try to keep the mess from troubling you, anyway, you've been very helpful."

Callida sits calmly and watches the sky, wondering if she's going to need to conquer a country to get off this rock.

"Thanks, I appreciate that."

The first batch arrives in a helicopter! There are greys in there and one green.

"Translation please," requests Callida, turning her comlink up to full volume. She stands from her chair and bows politely to the greys and green.

"Greetings from the Sith Empire. I apologize for the state of my landing."

"Hello!" says the green. "Do you need some help with that?"

"I probably wouldn't mind it, but I suppose that depends on what you mean by help."

"We can haul the ship and you to civilization, get you whatever you need."

She doesn't like this. It feels like they're trying to manipulate her. But they haven't yet crossed any lines, so she's still willing to play along. She can play stupid. Let them trip themselves up.

"That sounds like an excellent idea. Are the others on the way here to assist you?" she asks, sweetly.

"Greys are crewing the helicopter, they can attach the wreck to it to get it out of here. Everybody else is back in the seasoned part of the country."

Yeaaaaah, okay. She doesn't like this answer very much. Nor does she have warm fuzzy feelings about them, empathically. Time to see what happens if she says no.

"If you're not working with them, then do you mind if I hear out the other offers before deciding where I'd like my ship hauled?" she wonders, still very pleasantly.

"What other offers?"

"From the other people that are on their way."

"...how do you know there are any?"

"Some of my ship's sensory equipment is still functioning," she says, which is actually not a lie, because she counts as part of her ship's sensory equipment, "and there are two other groups on their way."

She is the absolute picture of innocence. Look at her. She's so wholesome. Maybe they'll think she's one of their oranges, she has the hair for it.

"What if they're coming to attack you or something?"

"That wouldn't be very tactful, and wouldn't help with future galactic negotiations!" she says, like the very thought of people showing up to kill her is completely unthinkable. "I'm a Sith Lord, member of the ruling elite in the Sith Empire. Good faith diplomatic relations would be seriously impacted if someone were to just attack me. Or if someone tried to force me to work with them."

The 'Lord' gets translated, and the 'Sith' does not. The word is a complicated and historical thing, and does not easily translate. She continues to look wholesome. She even smiles winningly.

("This is the most amazing thing I've ever heard," whispers Deenia, delighted and grinning ear to ear. "Can we get a recording, I want to listen to it later. Fondly."

// Best conversation == already recording to TN's databanks //

"Yes, good.")

"Some people might not care about that! I'd really rather get you somewhere safe right away."

"Well thank you very much for your concern! But I think I'd rather hear what everyone has to say first. I hope that's not too much trouble?"

"I don't think I have enough greys here to fight off hostiles."

"Oh, well then you'd better get to a safe place before they arrive! I wouldn't want you to be in any danger."

"We're worried about you too!"

"You can stay and make sure I'm safe, if you like! But I think I'd prefer to wait and hear everybody out before deciding to go anywhere. It'd be kind of silly to just blindly go with the first people who showed up, just because they got here first. Bad negotiation tactics."

"We want to help you."

"Thank you for that. I think you'd be doing me the best possible service by respecting my sovereignty and my right to make decisions you don't agree with." Instead of treating her like a prize to be carried off to whomever hired them.

"I don't think you quite understand the circumstances here," says the green.

"I think that my ship is my property and that I can do whatever I like with it, circumstances or no," she says, with a dazzling and sugary-sweet smile.

"Well," he says, "we think you're in Calado now."

Greys fire hooky things at the ship to grab it.

The hooky things mysteriously miss! What a shocking surprise for all!

"I think," she says softly, in a voice that suddenly turns dangerous, "that you should either negotiate with me as an equal, or leave. Because I and my ship are not prizes for you to carry off to your boss."

...hooky things retract and try again.

Miss.

"Performance problems?"

Apparently yes but they keep trying.

This time they all mysteriously miss in the same direction, just as she ignites and throws her lightsaber, severing all of the hooky things in a single flash of purple light.

"Do you perhaps want to rethink your course of action."

...a grey produces a tranquilizer gun.

Nope, tranquilizer gun is going on a field trip, it can go visit the scenic jungles of Calado.

And then she jumps a distance she really shouldn't be able to and lands neatly on the side of the helicopter, a bit of protruding helicopter metal gripped in one hand, violet sword made out of plasma ignited in the other. The latter is held quite casually close to the helicopter blades. She looks amused.

"No? Perhaps you didn't hear me? I so despise shouting. Almost as much as repeating myself. Last chance."

"- how did - wh-" says Tranq Grey.

"Get in the air!" yells another.

"Are you out of your mind she has that thing pointed at the rotor -"

"I do! Thank you for noticing! Do we understand each other?"

"Get off get off -" A grey kicks her.

She takes the kick with only an understated growl. Her eyes lock with the grey responsible, all cold glare and haughty implacability. Then, she says, "Yes, all right, fair enough."

And she drops from the helicopter and lands gracefully on the ground below.

"That was with a sword," she yells up to them, brightly. She retrieves her blaster, and displays it. "This is my gun. Do you want to see me use it, or do you want to leave with your lives?"

They don't listen to the entire paragraph before the pilot gets them into the air.

She smiles, slightly, and she returns quite easily to her chair. She resists the urge to laugh maniacally.

Another batch comes in a different helicopter a few minutes later.

She is the picture of innocence again! There isn't even any wreckage to give her away.

"Greetings from the Sith Empire! I apologize for the state of my landing."

"Hello, welcome to Amenta! It looks a bit rough," says the blue who is in this helicopter. "What brings you here?"

A blue, doesn't she feel important.

"Space travel malfunction! And you?" she says, smiling winningly.

"Checking out the visitor! Can I offer you any help with that?"

"Thank you for the concern! Possibly! But that does depend on what you mean by help."

"If you need the spaceship fixed I could get you some parts and some engineers, if you need a place to stay that isn't a chair on top of your wreck I can put you up..."

—she snorts a little laugh, at that last phrase.

"Those both sound excellent, but if you don't mind I'd like to wait for the next group to show up as well and hear their offer too."

"- so, first thing you need to know about this country, is that it's got too many heads, which don't cooperate so good. I don't really blame you for wanting to let more people get a look in, I get it, you don't know one head from the other, but if you wait here long enough there'll be a hundred of them all pulling in different directions. If you don't wanna stick with me can I give you some general advice? Don't park here and wait for passersby. Pick one interest, however you want to do it, go next door to Oahk if you must, but don't get bit by a hundred headed monster."

"I like you," she declares, with a smile. "Actual sincere advice, thank you. I wasn't planning to fight the hundred headed monster, I was planning to see if any of the early heads could manage a single shred of sense between them before someone forced me to blow my own ship up and run into the wilderness with my crew to track down someone intelligent to help me build one from scratch. But I'd rather skip that."

"Please don't blow your ship up."

"I would really rather not, it'd be a terrible waste. I could get you and myself to space without it, but this seems like the kind of thing that I need to get right, or your whole planet slides ever so delicately into total chaos. So."

"I can get you over the border into Oahk, too, if you want."

"Thank you for the offer, but I don't think that will be necessary. So far I like you. If you keep dealing with me in such good faith, then I'm perfectly happy to work with you."

"Is there actually someone else you know of about to get here?"

"I know another group is coming from that way." She points in the appropriate direction. "But I don't know who they are. We don't actually need to wait for them, that was a ploy to see how you reacted to the word 'no.'"

"I see."

"Sorry," she says, not sounding very sorry. "The group before you was much less candid and respectful. Can your helicopter carry my very important hunk of slag?"

"Unless it's a lot heavier than it looks."

"No. If you have trouble maybe we can get a repulsorlift working to help lighten it, but I think my first priority should be disarming the explosives. I apologize for the delay. Excuse me."

"...yes, I'd really rather not explode."

"Me too," she agrees. She does not inform him that the explosives were small and localized, to carefully take out key components necessary to reverse engineer space travel without causing a giant explosive mess. That sort of thing isn't very reassuring.

She picks up her chair, casually and gracefully hops off the hunk of twisted metal that was once her starship, and puts the chair back where she found it. Then, she quickly and efficiently disarms the makeshift explosives. They're not very complicated.

"Done!" she calls.

And grapply thingies are shot at her ship again.

These ones do not miss.

She retrieves her comlink: "Please prepare for extraction, we will be leaving as soon as possible. Gelrath, anything fragile that might not appreciate the treatment?"

  "The fragile things got broken in the landing."

"I will buy you new nice toys once we're off this rock," she promises.

Then, with translation working again: "One moment while I collect my crew, please."

"How many are they? Might need another chopper if there's a bunch."

"Only four, if you're already capable of carrying a spaceship, they shouldn't overtax your vehicle."

"Not the weight, it's the passenger space," he says, gesturing at the cabin of the helicopter. "Four's fine."

"Ah," she says, nodding. "Do you have a ramp, or something? One of my crew has wheels."

"...one of your crew has wheels?"

"Two of my crew members are robots. One of them has wheels instead of legs."

"I don't have a ramp, sorry. How heavy is it?"

Envee needs a little bit to figure out weight conversions, but Callida names a figure soon enough. TN-R13 is the heaviest of her crew, but not so heavy as to break ramps and ground helicopters.

"...maybe the rest of the crew and me and the pilot and you all together can haul it?"

"No, it's all right, I can get it onto the helicopter without a ramp. It just finds my methods undignified and prefers to go places under its own power."

"I'm sorry, I threw this together kind of hastily."

"I think in this instance speed over preparation was the way to go. Speaking of, I'd like to be gone before the next group arrives; excuse me."

To the house! She has a crew to retrieve and a host to politely thank.

"I know that guy," Sondayo says. "I think we're related. I have no information on his politics but he was a dick to me in school."

Eyebrow raise.

"What kind of a dick?"

"Not the kind that gives me information about his politics. I'd rather you told him the housekeeper let you in and you didn't see me, though."

She nods.

"Certainly. I'll keep an eye on him. I've probably dealt with worse people. Anything in particular you think I should watch out for?"

"...This country uses a permissions system of population control. Gives blues who give those out a lot of sway over everybody else. I don't know what policies he backs in the Senate and if I did I couldn't distinguish principle from favor-trading, what I'd watch out for is people working for him, are they - desperate and scared and stressed out about being in his power."

"A good tactic, thank you. Would you like some anonymous way to contact me to send advice?"

"If you have one that'd be great. I've got email..."

"I don't think I could connect to a foreign system sneakily enough, but I'll probably acquire one eventually. I could give you an encoded comlink, but that'd be audio only, and there's a chance someone might detect the signal and trace it back to you, even if they couldn't hear what we said. Is 'email' secure?"

"Basically. It's not a one time pad but even governments can't casually read it."

"Ah. Okay. Then that would be appreciated. For when I eventually set that up."

He recites his email address.

Envee takes the time to steal her datapad and write out this in Amentan characters, then they depart.

Does blue-whose-name-she-does-not-have happen to care that she took so long in there? She has an overly excited doctor who is known to go on tangents, she can blame him. (He won't mind.)

"Is that somebody's vacation house?" he wonders. "Anyone home, or did they just go in to get out of the heat?"

"I believe so. The housekeeper let us in, if the owner was present I didn't see them. It was for the heat, we'd ah. Just been in that." She waves at the ship was very obviously on fire. "The air conditioning was nice."

"Air conditioning's a great invention. Out past the rainforest there's better weather," he promises.

"Oh good. Some planets are just misery all around."

"This one's got variety. Ice on the ends, jungle around the waistline." Helicopter goes up once everyone's aboard, toting the ship below it.

"Oh, good."

Callida gets TN onto the helicopter with liberal use of telekinesis. TN beeps unhappily about it the whole time.

The rotor's pretty loud. Everyone is offered hearing protection. Except the robots, although he hesitates.

The assorted humans accept offered hearing protection! The robots do not.

  "My audio receptors aren't as delicate as yours, but thank you," says Envee, politely.

The other robot is less polite. Luckily, it's kind of hard to tell with the beeping and the general noise of the rotor, so the grumpy // TN-R13 =/= inefficient organic // TN-R13 == pained by inefficient engine design // Engine design == ++ terrible // is entirely lost to everyone that might be offended.

Okay, no robot earmuffs.

No robot earmuffs!

Since it's kind of hard to talk with the rotor and the earmuffs, Callida takes the opportunity to clear her mind and stretch out with the Force.

Nothing following them? No hostile intentions from anyone in this helicopter?

Nothing following them, nobody in the helicopter about to shank them!

'Hostile intentions' are more than just 'willingness to shank,' but yes, it's good to have that confirmed.

She keeps a proverbial eye on their surroundings through the Force during their trip. Just in case.

Jungle down, sky up. Eventually, sea off to the left.