The hangar is empty.  It seems like whoever this ship belongs to is busy elsewhere on the station.

Good. Still holding her datapad, she jogs over to the ship, looking for her access point - if she has to, she can try to slice through the ship's security to get inside directly, but it's much less risky to go in with the cargo, if there's any lying around waiting to be loaded. 

There's a couple crates laying next to what looks like the cargo hold door.

She creeps over and opens them until she finds one with space for a small girl. Then she crawls in and settles down with her datapad set on low brightness to read and wait very quietly. 

It takes about 30 minutes before someone comes by.  She hears a mans voice mutter "I don't even know why I agreed to haul all this osik for them.  I'm not a damn smuggler", as he lifts the boxes and carries them into the hold.  He doesn't seem to notice the added weight in the box she's in, and sets it down with all the rest, before heading out of the cargo hold.  It takes about another 15 minutes before she feels the ship lift off and leave the station.

She mouths the word 'osik' a little gleefully while he's moving her crate in, recognizing a curse when she hears one, even if she doesn't know what it means. She'll have to look it up later, or maybe do it the fun way and just start saying it to watch for strained looks when she uses it wrong.

Smuggling herself around the galaxy in shipping crates kind of sucks when you don't much like small dark spaces. She can only distract herself with the datapad for so long before she starts getting antsy, feeling a little like the air is getting sparse inside the crate. She holds out for as long as she can, but eventually she pushes the lid up again and slips out into the cargo bay, darting into the first cover she can find once she's out.

The person who'd moved the crates - Captain Not-A-Smuggler - had pretty heavy footsteps. She listens hard to see if she can hear where they are in the ship. 

She can hear him walking around on the other side of the ship.

That means the coast is clear enough. Jamis creeps out of the cargo bay and starts doing some careful poking around in the near areas of the ship. She doesn't touch anything just yet - best to figure out what the Captain might miss before she tries that. She still has enough food to last her a few days from the last ship, she can wait. She keeps an eye out for good hiding places where she can wait out the trip, looking for some place high up in particular, and pays some attention to where the Captains footsteps are as she goes, making sure she'll notice if they move towards this part of the ship. 

She can find all the air ducts easily enough.  He doesn't appear to have been lying about not being a smuggler- there's none of the convenient hiding places a smuggler would add to their ship.  Most of the storage spaces that might make for good hiding spots, high or low, are full with clothes, food, and a lot of weapons, but she can find a few with enough room for her to squeeze into them.  The captain isn't walking her way, but he doesn't seem to be walking around at all anymore.

That could be dangerous for her, she can't know for sure where he is... she picks one of the cubbies up high with some clothes that look less-used and climbs in, using them as padding between her and the hard metal. She leaves the door cracked open to let in the light, pulls a ration bar out of her bag, and curls up to nibble on it, draw on her 'pad, and listen to the sounds of the ship, waiting for the night cycle, when she can sneak out to look for the 'fresher and then explore some more while the Captain should be asleep. 

It's a few hours before the night cycle.  She hears him walking around again several more times in the interim, at one point coming into the room her cubby is in and opening a few cubbies, but he doesn't open hers.

She is Very Quiet while they're in the room, tense despite her confidence that this cubby is little used - that won't matter if she draws their attention. It takes a while for her to calm down after they leave, and her renewed caution has her waiting an extra hour after the lights go out and he stops moving around before she creeps out of the cubby again. 

The 'freshers are usually near the living quarters, so she heads over that way. This is always the riskiest part of the first few days, figuring out when it's safe to go use the 'fresher. There's always been more than one person aboard the ships she stowed away on before, which made it safer, but her intuition has never led her wrong yet, so she'll just have to trust that she can manage. She doesn't get the sense that she's in danger, anyway. 

It's near the living quarters, right next to the little kitchen, near the door to his sleeping quarters, which is shut. 

She eyes the shut door carefully for a moment and then slips into the 'fresher, closing the door behind her as the lights come on automatically and heading for the sink first of all, turning it to water so she can get a quick drink before she moves on to the toilet. 

She turns the sink back to sonic to clean her hands, and then taps the controls to turn the lights out before she steps back outside. 

"You doin' something specific on my ship?" says a voice from above her, as she steps out of the 'fresher.

"Eep!" Says Jamis, stumbling back into the 'fresher in her surprise and feeling a moment of betrayal that she hadn't gotten a warning about this- she'd always gotten a warning before- 

-the 'fresher is not where she'd have chosen to go on being discovered, but she works with what she has, reaching up to close and lock the door almost as soon as she's inside. Is there a vent in here? There's got to be, right? 

He knocks on the door a few times. "Hey! Come on outta there.  I'm not gonna hurt you, kid."

There is a vent, but it's too small for her to fit through.

Is she just supposed to take them at their word? Though, she's still not getting any sense of danger... 

She looks up at the vent in frustration for a few moments, and then she takes out her pad and little tool kit, setting to work on opening up the access panel under the door controls. If she can't get out she'll just have to barricade herself in for now. Everyone has to sleep eventually. 

"C'mon kid.  We're not exactly somewhere you can disembark, and I know you're here now, how long do you really think you can stay outta sight at this point?  If you come out and talk to me I might even be able to get you closer to wherever it is you're trying to get to."

"...I can just stay in here until we're almost there," she lies - she'll have to get out of the small space eventually, but this person doesn't know that. The latter part almost doesn't even merit a response - why would they help a stowaway when they could just drop her on the nearest moon or kick her out the airlock? But... the not-danger feeling gets a little more insistent, and she reluctantly adds, "Why would you help me?" 

"...You're a kid.  That's reason enough.  And I'm afraid if you plan to stay in my 'fresher for days on end I'm gonna have to be a little more insistent about getting you out of there."

She makes a frustrated noise - why'd she have to be in the 'fresher when he found her?

A few more moments' hesitation and then, "You'd better not be leading me wrong," she mutters to the air, and she repacks her stuff and unlocks the door, slipping outside along the edge of the doorway and watching the ship's Captain warily. 

"C'mon then.  You had anything to eat recently, or should I find something for you to eat?  The extra sleeping quarters aren't exactly usable at the moment, but you're free to sleep on the bench there tonight, and I'll see what I can to about better sleeping arrangements tomorrow."  Canin would really like to be dealing with this at some time other than the middle of the night while he really needs to piss.

Just like that, huh? "I ate," she confirms. "I can sleep pretty much anywhere, and I've got enough food for a few days. I wasn't going to eat a lot of yours when it ran out - I don't need much." She sidles along the wall a bit so - he? He looks human, he's probably a he - can get at the door to the 'fresher without getting too close to her, since that's probably why he was out here in the first place. 

"I'll talk to you again in the morning then."  He does indeed immediately head into the 'fresher after saying this.

Jamis watches him until the door closes behind him, and then- returns to the room with her cubbyhole, rather than finding the bench he'd suggested she use, climbing up into it and curling up around her bag. Her heart is pounding still, but she's pretty confident he doesn't know exactly where she was hiding, so by the time he exits the 'fresher again she's starting to calm down. 

He looks at the bench as he leaves and goes back to bed, but just rolls his eyes and returns to sleep.  He gets up promptly when the day cycle begins, and begins puttering around the main living area, making food.

She calms down further when she hears the door to his room close behind him, and then the adrenaline crash sends her to sleep pretty soon after that. 

She dreams the same thing she's been dreaming for months. 

The sounds he makes in the living area wakes her the next morning. She considers just staying in the cubby until she has to leave, maybe pretending that last night hadn't even happened- but probably being cooperative will go better for her, and he'd said he might even help her get closer to where she needs to be. That's... really tempting. The sooner she can get to her destination, the better. So she slides down from the cubby as quietly as she can and slips into the living area. Settling at the edge of the table's bench, Jamis nibbles on a ration bar and watches the captain putter around the kitchen, waiting for him to notice her.

He glances over at the kid nibbling at a ration bar, and makes a second bowl of the plain hot cereal he made for himself, leaving out the large amount of hot pepper sauce he poured onto his own.  He sets it down on the table in front of her, and a small cup of water a moment later, and then leans against the counter with his own bowl, eating silently.

He gets a bit of confused blinking for his efforts, but she's not going to refuse food she's given. She re-wraps her bar and sticks it back in her bag, before tucking into the bowl of cereal. 

"Thanks," she adds after a moment, between bites. Then, eyeing the bottle of sauce, she asks, "...What did you add to yours?" 

"You're welcome.  Pepper sauce.  It's pretty spicy, but you can have some if you'd like."  Unlike the night before, he's in his armor, minus the helmet.

She noticed. It looks kinda familiar - she thinks she's seen armor like it before, maybe, but she can't quite place when. 

"Maybe later," she says of the sauce, and, "You said you're not a smuggler. Are you a mercenary or a bounty hunter or something?" 

"Hid in the cargo, did you?  Yeah, bit of both, but mostly I'm a bounty hunter these days."

"What kinds of people do you hunt?" She asks, eyes on her bowl where she's fiddling with her spoon instead of eating. 

"The kinds people pay me to hunt.  I'll turn down a few jobs, goin after kids, someone wants someone killed real painful-like, but mostly I don't ask questions more'n I need to to get the job done."

Hmm, "You ever have to rescue anyone?"

"Once or twice.  Not common for people to hire a bounty hunter to rescue someone, unless it's bundled with killing or capturing the person who took them."

"The people who took him should probably die, too. They might try to do it again with someone else if they don't." She looks up from her food, "I don't have anything to pay you with, though." 

He gives her a considering look.  "Took who, kid?"

"My little brother."

"Is that where you're headed? To find him?"  He pauses and then adds, "And what do you plan to do once you have him?"

She nods, and then... stalls for a second. She hadn't really been thinking about 'after', busy trying to make sure there even was one. "I... I'll figure something out. He'll be better with me than with slavers," she adds, sure of that at least. 

"Tell you what.  I'll make you a deal: I help you get him back, and the two of you stay on my ship and keep it clean for a year, to pay me back.  You can pick up odd jobs on stations and planetside for some spending money while you're with me.  Sound fair?"  He's not actually going to refuse to help her, but it'll probably put her at ease that he's not just offering it for free.

She can guess what he's doing, but it works a little anyway. She still gives him a long, searching look before agreeing though, poking at her sense of people to see if it'll give her more than 'not a threat'. She can usually tell what people want from her if she's calm and focused enough, and she wants to make sure. 

He wants her and her little brother safe.  It's a little unclear to what extent this is getting attached incredibly quickly, versus just a sort of general protectiveness towards children in his vicinity, but it's definitely a bit of both.  He wants to keep her where he can keep an eye on her until she has a clear plan what to do with her brother.

...Huh. This sense has never led her wrong before, and she's based a lot of risky moves on it. She's not going to ignore it. She supposes she can probably trust him, for now, though she will have to figure out if she can work with his definition of 'safe' at some point. 

"That sounds fair," she agrees once she's decided this. "I can also cook, and I can do some programming, and I think I'd be good at navigation with a bit of practice," she offers. 

"Finish your breakfast and clean your bowl, and then meet me in the cockpit.  I can't take you to rescue your brother if I don't know everything you know about who took him and where he is.  And then we can look at getting you familiar with the navigation on the Gaanad." 

He finishes his breakfast, cleans his bowl, and moves off into another part of the ship.

"Okay." 

She finishes eating shortly after he leaves, and then takes her dishes over to the sink, climbing up to sit next to it so she can comfortably wash them. That done, she sets the clean and dried dishes back in their places and then jumps down and heads for the cockpit, guessing where it must be based on where the windows were on the outside of the ship. 

He turns around to face her as she reaches the cockpit, and gestures to the empty seat.

"So.  Your little brother.  What do you know about the people who took him?"

She sits.

"...I know where they are, and how they're keeping him, and I know what some of them look like," she says, "But I don't know much more than that. I was going to spend a while watching them when I got there, before I tried to get him out." 

"Smart.  Group of people, not just one person- an organization, or just a group of slavers?"
He's not dumb.  It definitely seems like she's reluctant to tell him something.

"I'm not sure. It didn't look like they were part of anything bigger, but they might have been keeping it quiet." She pauses, looking out at the streak of hyperspace outside the window for a few moments, and then adds, "They don't know I'm coming after them, but they might be wary of someone trying? They raided a village, the survivors might send someone, and there were Jedi on the planet at the time so it might even be them." 

"How long ago did they take him?"  He's hoping she'll be honest with him.  He suspects she will but he's had clients before who lie to him about the details and it's always ten times as hard as it would have been if he'd actually known what he was getting into.

She doesn't know for sure. She just knows she'll get there in time, before they sell him. 

"A few standard weeks ago," she settles on, "I left almost as soon as I found out." 

"Alright.  You said you know where they are and how they're keeping him- I need to know too.  And I assume you want to be part of this rescue?"  He'll have to think about how to best keep a kid safe without leaving her out of getting vengeance for her brother.

"Yeah, and- yeah. I'll show you the coordinates on the navicomp? And... they're all caged, but they've got drugs, too. That's how they're keeping him. They've got a hidden base on the planet they're using, I think they've been raiding all along Myto's Arrow for a while now."

He moves to let her reach the navicomp. 

"Do you know how to use a blaster?"

"Sort of?" She goes to the navicomp and starts inputting the coordinates she'd memorized. "I shot someone once, with someone else's blaster, but... I try not to get into fights." She is small and sneaky, and usually sticks to things that take advantage of those things, like hiding and taking detours around the people who might need to be shot.

She pulls away from the comp once she's finished, letting him look at the numbers himself before it can start doing calculations. If he knows his astrography, he'll be able to tell that the planet in question is in the north of the Outer Rim, in the Tingel Arm, and maybe he'll be able to tell it's in the Dalonbian Sector specifically, if he's memorized the sectors' coordinate margins like she has. 

"I'll teach you proper blaster safety before we land, then."

He looks the numbers over, nods, and enters it into the computer.  The computer, after taking a moment to calculate the route, estimates a 4-day journey to the planet.

"Looks like we'll have plenty of time for some training on the way."

She gives him a slightly wary smile, "Looks like," she agrees.

"Um... can I use your bathroom again?" 

"Go ahead."

He drops the ship out of hyperspace as she leaves the cockpit, returning to hyperspace along the new route a few moments later, and then leaving to go clean his weapons again.

A little while later Jamis comes to hover against the doorway of the room he's in, gripping her bag tightly and watching silently as he works, waiting for him to notice her. 

Canin glances up at her after a moment, nodding and patting the seat near him before resuming cleaning the gun he's working on.

When he's finished, he grabs a small blaster pistol and sets it between them.

"What's the first rule of using a blaster?"

She settles tentatively beside him and watches. 

The question... she's not entirely sure what sort of answer he's looking for. Dad never let her touch his blaster, and no one else who did ever told her any rules about them. 

"...Don't point it at someone you're not willing to shoot?" She offers after a moment, uncertain. 

"Close.  Always assume it's charged and the safety's off.  That means don't point it at anyone, or anything, you aren't willing to shoot."

He points to a small switch on the side.

"This is the safety.  Right now, you see the light next to it is off.  That means it's on.  If the lights on, the safety is off.  Safety on means it shouldn't shoot, safety off means it's ready to shoot.  If you aren't about to shoot someone, or something, keep the safety on at all times. Got it?"

Jamis leans over to look at the light, nodding in comprehension, "Always keep the safety on - which means the light is off - if I'm not going to fire. Got it." 

"Can you guess the two reasons why you should always treat a blaster like it's charged with the safety off?"

"The safety might not be working, or you or someone else might have left it off?"

"Both of those are true- I was thinking of the first one you said, and that the light might not be working- bulbs go out.  Ready to go learn how to shoot this thing?"

"I guess so," she reaches out to take it, checking the safety again and then keeping it pointed to... the floor, she settles on, and then looks up at... the man. Oh right.

"I'm Jamis," she tells him. "What's your name? 'Less you want me to keep calling you Captain Not-Smuggler." 

He nods approvingly when she checks the safety again, and says,

"Name's Canin.  How's the weight on the blaster feel?"

She hefts it a little, sliding off the bench and onto her feet, "I think it's alright. I could hold the other blaster fine, and it was bigger than this. Though I kind of dropped it the first time I fired it." She shrugs, "It jumped back and hurt me and I wasn't expecting it. I still hit the guy though!"

"A smaller blaster like this is better for you, since it's got less recoil and it'll be easier for you to control it.  You don't just want to be able to hold the blaster, you'll need to be able to hold it steady, if you want to get more than one shot off." He explains as they walk. "It's impressive you hit at all, the first time you fired a blaster.  If it wasn't pure luck you'll be a great shot with a little practice."

He doesn't entirely believe her, but he doesn't see any reason to make a fuss of it when he's going to see how she does with a blaster in a moment, and it's not impossible she shot someone her first time firing a blaster.

"He had almost caught me, so he was pretty close. I didn't even try to shoot him until I got stuck." Where are they going, the cargo hold?  

"Smart of you to save the weapon you weren't trained with for a last resort."

Not quite! The same level as the cargo bay has another section, next to it, which he enters a code into.  As they walk into the long, narrow room, there is a set of lockers along the same wall as the door, which are all closed at the moment, and on the opposite wall are a series of three targets.  The floor has bright red lines painted on it, perpendicular to the direction they're facing.

His words get a little smile, but then she's quickly distracted by the new room (and by idly memorizing the code he inputs into that door).

"You've got a place just for practicing with blasters on your ship?" She looks around, stepping over to the lockers to poke at them curiously. 

He'd made no effort to hide the code he put in. 

"Yup.  The walls have important bits of electronics in them that it's better not to risk hitting, so I had all the walls in here reinforced.  Gives me something to do during long trips, too."

The lockers are all locked, and if she tries the code she just saw him enter on them it doesn't work.

She nods in response to his words, and doesn't try the code - she'd only memorized the one for the door out of habit - just checks one to see if it's locked and then stops poking at the locking mechanisms. Instead, she turns back towards Canin, "Will this blaster... recoil like the other one did?" 

He smiles slightly at her question.

"It will recoil some, but not as much.  Every blaster that'll do anything to a person, or any animal larger than a gizka, is gonna have some recoil.  Hold it with both hands, to control it better, and correct your aim after each shot.  You'll get better at handling it with practice."

He begins walking forwards, making a "come on" gesture as he goes.  When he reaches the line closest to the target wall, he stops, and gestures for her to do the same.

"Go ahead and try from here first.  Once I step back, turn the safety off, then aim it at the center target and shoot.  I'll tell you what to change once I've seen your first shot." He steps back after saying this.

Hmm, she guesses she'll try to model herself off people she'd seen who'd used two hands, then... she calls one to mind - a member of one of the local gangs back home, who she'd seen get in two firefights and seemed to have decent aim - and shifts to match her memory of their posture best she can - something feels a little off, but she does her best - raises the blaster... flicks the safety off, and then sights the target and fires. 

-Loud. Not enough to leave her ears ringing or anything, not even as loud as last time, but still-

It's not a perfect shot, but she does hit the target. She lowers the blaster - flicks the safety back on again - and surveys the blaster burn, before glancing up at Canin for his evaluation. 

"Good.  Shift this foot over this way," He gestures and taps the place on the floor "and bring your back shoulder down some. Good.  Try again."

She follows his instructions best she can and then tries again, this time hitting a little closer to center, though still not quite a bullseye. 

"Drop your elbow a bit."  He pauses and looks at her two shots for a second.  "And bring the end of the barrel up a little bit, you're shooting low."

"Oh-" once those adjustments are made, she tries again, pausing for a moment before actually firing to breathe and settle- 

-and the next bolt strikes right in the middle of the target. 

"Ha!" She lowers the blaster and grins up at him brightly, pleasure at succeeding fully overcoming her reservations for a moment. 

"Good job! You did really well, bullseye on your third try.  If you get another two I'll move us back a line and you can try from a little farther."

Nodnodnod! 

She doesn't actually quite make a perfect shot the next time, excitement making her aim shaky, but the two after that share the accuracy of her third shot, once she's made herself calm down again. 

"I'm impressed, that's more consistency than I'd expect this soon. Come on."

He leads her back a line to try from further away.

...should she be pretending to be worse than she is? She's not sure she knows exactly how to convincingly fake that... and it's probably too late, now, and he'll need to know how good she is when they get to the planet Alek is on... 

She steps back to the next line and tries again. The first two attempts are off, but then she starts hitting right on target again.

He grins a bit, watching her correct herself after the first two attempts.

"Very good.  If you can manage from one farther back, I'll let you carry that blaster after we leave- assuming you can tell me all the safety rules again."

She bounces on her feet for a moment and then stills herself and nods more seriously. Back to the next line they go.

Her aim continues to be unusually good, particularly for a person who claims to have barely used a blaster before now. She also proves perfectly capable of repeating back the rules he'd given her, almost verbatim in fact. 

"Do you think I could get good enough to use just the one hand?" She asks after reciting them back to him, miming firing another blaster from her off hand while she holds the first pointed to the floor again. And also bouncing very slightly. 

"It's not just about aim, it's about wrist strength.  Remember how we talked about recoil at the beginning?  With just one hand, you need more wrist strength to hold it steady."

She wraps her fingers around one of her wrists and frowns at it. It is very skinny. 

"Maybe not then," she sighs. 

"Wrist strength is something you can work on.  You can go ahead and try now, if you'd like, but don't feel discouraged if the recoil is too much or you miss."

Silently, to himself, he adds that her strength will also improve with enough to eat.

-probably this has a chance of hurting her but she's more curious about whether she can than she's worried about the possibility-

Up comes the blaster, and she steadies it best she can, and then flicks off the safety and fires. 

"-mph," is her only comment, though the way her other hand comes up to grasp her wrist - and the much less accurate shot - is more than enough to make up for the lack of a verbal sign of that having been a bad idea. 

"I'll help you figure out some stuff you can do for arm and wrist strength later, if you'd like.  Your wrist feel alright? Let me take a look at it."

He watches to see what she does with the blaster as he holds his hand out for hers.

"It... twinges a bit..." -safety needs to go on, she flicks it with her hurting hand on autopilot and then her eyes twitch belatedly at the twinge- she switches it into her other hand as she squints at him for a bare moment and then offers her now-free hand to him. 

He inspects her wrist for discoloration and swelling.

He doesn't say anything about her turning the safety back on, but it cements his belief that she can be trusted with a blaster.

There's a little bit of swelling, and maybe some discoloration, though it's not totally clear so soon after. 

"It's okay, if I wrap it up and don't move it too much it'll fix itself eventually," she assures him. She has some experience with wrist injuries, though considers them definitely some of the most annoying ones. They cut her mobility a lot.

"You could, and it would- it's just a sprain, I think.  But I think I can spare a bit of kolto, and then I know you'll be healed and able to help out before you reach your brother."

He leads her out of the shooting range room and towards the 'fresher, opening a panel besides the 'fresher door and pulling out a small pouch of kolto and a bandage.

Oh, kolto! She's seen it used before and even stole some once, but she doesn't really expect to be able to use the stuff. She watches in fascination as he dresses her wrist with it... though the mention of Alek sobers her some. 

"So you'll let me take this with me when we get there?" She asks, motioning a little with the blaster she's still holding. 

He gives her a confused look.

"Did you think I was giving you blaster training for fun?  Of course I'm letting you take it.  Need to get you a holster for it, too."

"Well you did say you'd only let me carry it if I could prove I could hit what I aimed at from farther back, and I missed that shot and also hurt my wrist..." she shrugs. She'd been penalized for less, honestly. 

"You hit it from that distance just fine, and now you're not going to try and shoot it one-handed and end up shooting a gas line instead.  And you haven't pointed it at me or left the safety off yet.  C'mon, lets go get you a holster."

That gets a smile, "I won't," she agrees, following after him. "Hurting my arms is the second most annoying thing." 

"Lemme guess, the first is hurting your leg?"

He leads her back to the shooting room, keying a code into one of the locker doors once they're inside and looking through the contents.

"You got a belt?"

"Yeah, I broke my leg last year and it was the most annoying thing ever cause I could move everything else but I couldn't walk. At least with a sprained wrist I can walk, even if I can't climb."

The code gets memorized automatically again, not that she's really planning on using it at this point. 

"I have a belt," she confirms, tugging on it where it wraps around her hips at the seam of her pants and the skin tight sleeveless shirt she's wearing. "Though my jacket covers it a little, when I wear it." It's a little big on her. Cozy, though. 

He pulls out a holster designed to attach to a belt, meant for the model of blaster he gave her.

"Here.  Put this on your belt, and keep that blaster in it whenever you aren't using it."

Nodnodnod! She does as instructed, bouncing a bit once it's secured to her belt to check she can move around with it. 

"It's good," she nods after a bit, though she'll want to try moving up and down a bit more before she'll be totally satisfied with the spot it's hanging from. "Thanks," she adds, looking up at him and shifting on her feet. He definitely did not have to give her a weapon. Maybe her senses were onto something with the whole 'likes kids' thing. 

"N'entye."  He smiles at her slightly.

"It's past lunch time.  You got anything you can't eat?" He begins to walk back towards the kitchen area, glancing behind him to see if she's still following.

"I've got food." It's just ration bars, but she doesn't really care about the taste at this point. She is beyond used to it. Though she does miss those sweets she used to get from the street stall near the market.

He grunts in response, and sets about making lunch.  2 servings of it, of course, and he sets one in front of her before beginning to eat the other.  He watches to see if there's any part of the meal she doesn't eat.

Not really, no. She blinks at him and thanks him, and then she starts by spooning out a sample of any unfamiliar things, tasting them, and then picking out any objectionable bits to swallow down first, so fast she probably barely feels or tastes them. That done, she does her best to only eat the rest quickly, rather than wolfing it down as though she hasn't eaten in days. 

Alright then.  When he finishes his food, he washes up after himself and returns to his own quarters, for the time being.

He continues to make food for her every time he eats, and lets her practice with the blaster for a bit every day.  He teaches her how to clean it after a day, and while he doesn't let her use any of the other blasters, he does let her come with him to the target room whenever he goes.  He doesn't seem to be pushing her on doing any cleaning for him yet, but also doesn't tend to clean up after her at any point.

Jamis takes his pointers about cleaning her weapons just as seriously as she did all the other safety instructions, and her accuracy remains as solid as it was the first day, even after they move her back a few more markers. She's curious about the other weapons, but most of them are big enough she doesn't even ask to try them, having no desire to injure herself again. 

She starts out cleaning up after herself out of habit, and after a day of him making meals for her, she makes a point of taking over cleaning up after those, as well. (She also starts showing a tendency to climb up onto higher surfaces so she can sit somewhere closer to his height, though she'll quietly relocate to a chair rather than eating on the table if told to.) The rest of the ship... she's not entirely sure where to start with some of the rooms, but she does tidy up the room her cubby is in, and cleans up the kitchen as well - she knows how to do that, at least, dad pretty much never did and Jamis only had to get food poisoning from gross kitchen surfaces twice before she wised up. 

"What do you want me to clean next?" She asks him at lunch on the third day, somewhat at a loss after she'd spent the morning on the kitchen. "And m'I supposed to use the cleaning stuff from the kitchen on all of it?" 

He doesn't say anything about her sitting on the table, apparently finding it unobjectionable.

When she asks this, he glances up from his lunch and shrugs.

"If you can't find anything you'd rather do with your time than clean, I suppose the hallways could use some sweeping, and I haven't cleaned out the inside of the sonic shower yet this week."

After a brief pause, something seems to occur to him.

"Were you hoping to get a head start on paying me back for getting your brother back?"

"I mean, yeah. And also he's littler than I am, and he probably won't be able to help a lot at first cause..." cause they have him locked in a cage and drugged all the time and that's definitely gonna have some nasty aftereffects. "So I'm gonna get a bunch done before so I can take care of him." 

She would like to do other things with her time - she's in the middle of one of the slicing modules she'd stolen from a rodian on the first ship she'd stowed away on, for example - but she can put that on hold to make sure she's ready for Alek. 

"Go ahead and get the 'fresher cleaned, today, mostly the inside of the sonic.  The cleaning supplies for the 'fresher are in there, if you can't figure out what something's for, come ask me.  I'll figure out a cleaning schedule for you and start you on it tomorrow, don't worry about the hallways today.  We can negotiate how many days of cleaning you'll need to do in total tomorrow, once I've got the schedule figured out, but don't worry about skipping the first few days when we get out."

He picks up a holopad and begins typing on it, muttering under his breath in mando'a as he works.

She nods along to the instructions, "The 'fresher didn't look too bad when I was in there, bet I can do that before dinnertime even." She goes silent for a moment, looking away and swinging her legs absently as she thinks, "You've got... I mean, you have a medbay, do you have stuff for... withdrawal? I don't know what they're feeding him but I don't think they care if it's addictive..." 

"It'll depend on what they have him on.  If coming off it unassisted might be fatal, I've almost definitely got something that'll get him through the immediate symptoms, but it'll probably still be unpleasant.  Otherwise, you'll almost definitely have to treat him symptom by symptom.  I can help you identify what he's on and how to treat him, if you need, and I can warn you about stuff that may be addictive itself if used for too long."

He rarely has guests who's comfort is his concern, and the armor is generally pretty good against drugged darts, so he's not terribly well equipped for this situation.

She crosses her ankles and tenses, stopping the swinging. "I don't think it'll be a fatal thing, if they're any smart at all. If they ran out and he died they'd be out a lot of creds." Speaking of credits, "Won't that kind of thing cost a lot?" 

"You wanted to hire me, right? You want him back alive and well, so as I see it, that's what you're hiring me for.  Makes giving him medical treatment part of the job."

He makes a note on his holopad to add the price of medical supplies to the accounting when he works out her paying off the debt. 

She nods solemnly, "Okay." She hops down from the table, picking up her bowl and his and taking them over to the sink for washing.

He watches her silently for a moment, and then goes back to writing on his tablet, eventually returning to muttering under his breath in mando'a.

"Um..." she interjects, once the bowls and cutlery are put away again, "What's that language?" 

He looks somewhat pleased at the question.

"Mando'a."

"Mando'a," she repeats, her pronunciation exactly mimicking his, in her higher register. "What does 'n'entye' mean?" She was assuming something like 'you're welcome' in basic, but different languages sometimes do different things. 

"It means you're welcome, approximately.  More literally, it means "no debt."  Mando'a doesn't have an exact translation of thank you."

"So what do you say n'entye to when you're talking in mando'a? Is there something for... 'I owe you a debt'?" She says that phrase in a deeper, grander tone, mimicking the person she'd heard saying it in the holos. 

"Vor Entye.  It means 'I owe a debt', but we use it to mean 'Thank you'."

"Vor entye," thoughtful nods. 

"...What about 'osik'?" 

He laughs.

"Not sure when I said that in fronta you.  That one translates pretty literally- it means shit, both literally and in the swearing sense."

She giggles, "Think my dad would probably shoot at you for saying that straight out to me. You said it when you were carrying the cargo into the ship. It definitely sounded like the swearing kind." 

"Hey now, animal dung is a valuable fertilizer the galaxy over!  They could be paying me to transport it for them." He laughs.

Mentally, he adds that her father doesn't sound like any sort of buir to him.

"Only a couple crates of it? Where are you taking that stuff, anyway?" She tangents, suddenly wondering if rescuing Alek is going to get him in trouble with someone else.

"The planet this stuff came from fell under Sith control, and the merchant's a more law-abiding fellow, wanted the now contraband merchandise out quick.  Paid me to take it to a buyer who's getting a discount."

She hadn't actually realized she'd wandered into sith territory. It's kind of hard to keep track of the battle lines, though. 

"...I think the planet they're on was still neutral territory when I last checked?" Not that a backwater like that would have much value to the sith or the republic, really... 

"Hope you're right, the Sith empire tend to keep planets under pretty tight lockdown and that'd make this difficult."

"The planet's not very interesting, I don't think they'd bother." She didn't dream about any sith, anyway. The uniforms are kinda distinctive. 

"You're probably right.  We'll find out in about 2 days, anyway."

He begins to head out of the kitchen area.

Jamis trails along behind him until she reaches the turn off to the bathroom, where she metaphorically rolls up her sleeves and gets to work. 

The remaining 2 days pass much the same, though he does give her clearer instructions on cleaning now.  They drop out of hyperspace on the third day, and Canin calls her into the cockpit with him.

When she arrives, Canin has a scan of the planet pulled up in front of him.

"We'll need to work out where to start first, and since you're the one with information on the target, I figured I could use your help."

She mms in agreement, her eyes darting between the view of space outside the windows and the scan. 

"It was a very foresty area," she says, "But I guess that doesn't narrow it down..." The single continent on this planet is in fact very forested, interspersed with stretches of swampland and vast freshwater lakes. "Is there any... comms activity or something?" That's a thing you can track people by, she thinks. 

He seems to have foreseen that question, and with a quick flick of a few switches, several areas light up red.   One of them is on the shore of one of the lakes, another is over a swampland, but the remaining three are in forested areas.

"There's been comms activity from all of these regions, but I haven't been able to track their frequencies yet.  I can try, but it'll work best if we narrow down which one we want to start with.  I'm guessing it's probably one of these three," he gestures to the three in forested areas, "but any further ideas you have about which of those looks best could still be helpful."

"Umm..." she shakes her head, "I know what it looks like from the ground, but not from up here... Oh, it was snowing? So probably it was a cold part of the planet?" She hadn't dreamed the outside in a while, so she doesn't know if it still is, but it was eight sleeps ago, at least. 

He flicks several more switches, and begins an astonishingly fast series of procedures without trying to explain them at all.  After about 2 minutes, he has a series of numbers pulled up on the screen, and about a minute after that, a staticy voice comes through the comms.

"no news.... left the kid.... no one's gonna... heard from.... buyers coming... get outta here soon..."

That's it, she knows it is. 

"There, that's the one," she says, sounding very certain, "Where's that coming from?"

"This one." He points to one of the lit-up areas.  "I can take us in directly, or I can land us outside and we can try and sneak in, hopefully get the jump on them.  I can also fly us over and try and scope them out, but that risks them seeing us and having warning we're coming, and with just the two of us, and the need to get your brother out alive, that would be a major risk."

"It's underground, a lot of it, so flying over probably wouldn't help a lot anyway?" They're not gonna kill him, she doesn't think, not if they don't really really have to. The buyer would be mad, though she still doesn't know who the buyer's supposed to be. It sounds sort of like They're coming though, from the comm, so they probably have to kind of hurry. 

She's so close she kinda wants to just go in directly, but also she can't help him if being impatient gets her killed. 

"Land nearby and sneak in? I'm pretty sneaky." The bathroom incident notwithstanding. 

He picks up his helmet, which had been sitting on the floor on his other side, and puts it on, before flying the ship down towards the settlement, and setting it down a short distance away.

Jamis checks she has her blaster secured to her belt, and her slicer's kit in her bag, zips up her jacket, and nods up at him to show she's ready, nerves singing lightly in her mind.

"Um... how would you do this, usually?" 

"I'd approach the base carefully on-foot, until I'm within visual range.  I'd scan for life-forms and electrical activity with my HUD, and then I'd figure out the best tactical approach from there, knowing that we're going with a stealth strategy, so we want to draw as little attention as possible.  We will almost inevitably trip an alarm at some point, with a job like this- we're trying to get as far in as possible before that happens.  Ideally, we get all the way to your brother without tripping any alarms so we're not trying to get in through an enemy on alert.  I'm gonna show you some basic hand signals before we head out, so I can instruct you on the field without making any noise."

He shows her hand signals for stop, go, turn left, turn right, stay here, and go ahead of me.

She memorizes them quickly, and figures out how to make them herself only slightly less quickly.

"Okay... I'll follow you? And... keep an eye out for anything you miss? And point which way we have to go once we get inside. I don't have a map but I know the one route there and the one route back." So two routes, total, though she thinks security on one is heavier than the other? It's kind of hard to be sure in the dreams, the person she follows around doesn't have any trouble with it. 

He nods approvingly when she gets all the hand signs right.

"That sounds good.  Lets get moving."

He picks up one of his rifles, and leads her out of the ship and through the forest.  After about a 20 minute walk, they're within eyesight of the base- he holds up his hand to signal stop, and begins scanning the base for lifesigns and droids.

It looks more like a small, rough outpost than anything, really, what few buildings there are above ground worn down and tired with age, use, and less than stellar maintenance. There's a landing pad playing home to a single ship, with space for a couple more, not far from the largest of the buildings, and a comms tower tucked in at the edge of it. They can see a pair of what passes for guards to this group standing out of the wind near the door to the main building with the naked eye, and his HUD reveals the presence of a couple more inside, and a droid guarding a second entrance off on the far side of the building. 

Jamis stops at the hand signal, peering around and primed to react to any signs from her intuition or a signal from him, and then looks up to him when she doesn't spot anything more than the guards at the front, or sense anything more than the vague unease she's been sensing since they arrived and the muddied sense of someone familiar nearby, diffuse and faint though it is. That must be Alek, she knows. 

He gives her the "go right" hand signal, and moves with her around to the far side of the building, to get eyes on the droid and the door it guards, and check that no-one else is around to watch the door.

"You think you can get us there if we go through this door?" He asks his young guide.

It's a small side door, recessed into the wall with a little snow and foliage covering it to make it look like it and the droid guarding it aren't there. There's no one else around to watch, or even at this side of the building at all, and if there's any other surveillance it isn't obvious.

Nodnodnod, "The door'll be all locked up, but this route has less security besides that, I think," she tells him quietly. "That kinda droid's not very smart, either, I don't think?" 

Canin holds up his hand in the "wait here" signal, and moves forward towards the droid.  Once he's within close range, he pulls out a small blaster pistol and shoots the droid, which doesn't show any signs of damage but emits a sharp crackle of electricity and falls over.  He gestures for her to move forward.

She holds very still and silent while he deals with the droid, and then ghosts over to him as quietly as she can once he's done. She reaches into her bag and pulls out her tools, then, motioning at the door and tilting her head. She's been practicing just for this, she thinks she can get it open if he doesn't have the tools for it?

He gives her a nod, stepping back from the door.  He has the tools, but this is her mission.

She moves in close and gets to work then. The slice goes through mostly smoothly, only a little trouble spot that she catches and deals with in time. The door slides open for them with a quiet clacking noise, from the disuse. Jamis puts her things away again quickly and waits for him to go first. 

He takes the lead again, walking slowly enough and keeping an eye on his surroundings, and stops when he first sees either options for which way to go, or a guard, whether droid or living.

He encounters a crossroads before anything else. Jamis steps up to his side and signs left at him, peering cautiously down the right hallway as she does. Then there's a right turn, and then some stairs, narrow and a little creaky while they go down them. 

The first subterranean level is a little less quiet than the upper one had been, featuring the sound of some machinery in the rooms they pass, and there's signs of more use here in the form of recent footprints in the dust and grime on the floor. It must not see much use, still, however, as they don't encounter any guards or even unsuspecting maintenance workers until they get farther in, after a turn out of the narrow hallway and into a clearly more-used part of the base, going by the cleanliness of the floor. 

There, they can see a pair of guards bent over a console facing away from them in a room at the end of the hall, watching something on a monitor. Jamis signs go towards them, tilting her head in question, her other hand going to her blaster. The door they need isn't visible from this hall, but it's in that room. 

He holds up his hand to wait, and then points at Jamis, and then the left guard.  He draws a different blaster pistol, holding it in one hand exactly how he told her not to, quickly does a 1-2-3 gesture with his free hand and then holds up 3 fingers and waits for her to draw her blaster.

Do as he says not as he does, she guesses? He probably has the strength to handle it one-handed. Either way, she pulls her own blaster out and (flicks off the safety and) aims at the left guard, waiting for his signal. 

He counts down on his fingers, more slowly this time, and exactly as he lowers his last finger, shoots at the right guard. 

Her shot follows a bare moment after him, taking the left guard in the back of the neck and dropping them just as their companion falls across the monitoring station. 

Jamis (safeties and then) lowers her weapon, staring at the two bodies with an odd look on her face before she reholsters and looks up at him for any further directions. 

He glances at her briefly before gesturing her forward, stopping at the station to check what's on the monitor.

The monitor shows the landing pad, where a second ship is just completing its landing, steam wafting away from it as it settles into place on the ground. It looks to be a small, one or two person vessel of unfamiliar design, hyperspace capable but likely not meant for very long trips, and is not marked with any insignia.

Jamis peers at it from his side, "Do you think that's the buyer?" She shifts on her feet, glancing at the door that leads to the cells, impatience hitting even harder now and mixing with worry, "We should hurry." 

He nods, and begins walking again, continuing to take the lead while waiting on her for directions as they move deeper into the base.

Deeper in and deeper down they go, into more populated parts of the base, from the sounds of it. There's no one in the first hall but they can hear people in the rooms down some halls branching off of it, including the sounds of a kitchen in use and what is probably a small group playing a rowdy game of Sabacc down one. No resistance, though - perhaps most of the guards are up closer to the surface, now, greeting whoever came off that ship. 

The cells they want - not the only cells, as there are several blocks of them in this compound, she knows, some holding working slaves, some holding freshly caught beings for processing, some holding people bound for market - are down another flight of stairs, through a door which leads to a medical room of some kind, from what they can see through the door.

Jamis holds up the sign for stop at this point. They can clearly hear people bustling around inside, including someone giving instructions to an assistant, directing them to bring them various tools and dosages of drugs, and ordering another person to set 'the girl' on the table. She can tell - and his HUD informs him - that there are five people inside. One is standing next to the door just inside, on guard. Three are adult humanoid-sized beings, the assistants and the possible medic. And one of the assistants is carrying a form small enough to be a young human child, under ten.

Jamis' eyes are glued on this last form through the wall, following as they are ferried and dropped off on what must be the table mentioned.

"Trust me," he says, very quietly.

He gestures for her to stand just outside the door, to the side it opens away from, 2 steps back.  He walks up to the door, brings his rifle up, and shoots the lock, blasting the door open.

"Put the kid down and step away from the table, hands in the air."

(She follows his instructions, unholstering (and unsafetying) her own blaster, anticipation and worry leaving her practically vibrating.)

When he bursts in, the guard next to the door shouts and turns on a dime, fumbling for their own weapon in its holster and bringing it up towards him. 

The assistant holding the child is in the middle of dropping them off on the table, and his words startle them into dropping the child a little more quickly than they already would, and then scrambling back from the area the rifle is pointing. The assistant not holding the child is holding a bottle of something and an injector, both of which they keep hold of, freezing in place and staring with wide eyes. 

The medic seems to be made of sterner stuff than either, her free hand (the other one holding another injector) moving to hold her own holstered blaster as she drops to the ground. 

"Shoot the guard" he tells Jamis, not addressing her by name. "You with the injector, drop it and put your hands in the air."

He doesn't wait for either of them to act before shooting the medic, since they seem to be reacting quickest.

Jamis shoots the guard, who was not expecting a target that low to the ground, and takes the shot full in the face before they can get a shot of their own off. 

The medic moves out of the way just enough to take his bolt in the shoulder rather than anywhere else, making her shriek as she rolls under and behind the table the child is on. 

The assistant drops the injector and the bottle of liquid and puts their hands up as directed. The other assistant, recovering from their scramble, fumbles for their own blaster. Jamis turns her blaster on them as the guard drops to the floor and fires again, clipping them on the hip and sending them to the ground as well, though not out of the fight. 

Canin follows up on her shot of the assistant who went for their blaster, hoping to take them out while they're already down.

"Keep your eyes and blaster on the one who's co-operating," he tells Jamis before circling the table to get a better angle on the medic.

His shot does in fact take the assistant out of the fight. Jamis trains her weapon on the cooperative assistant as told, stepping into the room on the other side of the door from the dead guard as she does. 

(The door attempts valiantly to close behind her, but its mechanisms are thoroughly destroyed.)

As he circles the table, the medic calls out, in Huttese, "Wait, don't shoot! I know when I'm outmatched, I surrender!" 

"Drop your weapon, hands in the air, go stand 2 meters to the left of your assistant over there.  Don't so much as look at that kid or I shoot you."  He keeps his blaster-rifle trained on her, clearly not trusting what she's said.

 She does as commanded, tossing the blaster on the floor at his feet and then slowly rising to her own, hands in the air, and retreating to the assistant's side. 

"Does she still have the injector?" Jamis asks, from where she's staring extremely intently at the assistant, in an attempt to prevent herself from staring at the child on the table and losing track of them. 

 The medic stills in place at her words, a few feet from her assistant. 

"I said 2 meters away," He says as she approaches the assistant.

When Jamis speaks, he grunts quietly and adds,

"And drop the injector."

She takes a few steps back, and reluctantly allows the injector to fall out of the sleeve of her coat and onto the floor.

"There," she says, irritated, "Happy?" 

"No.  Get where I told you to stand, and then tell me what was in that injector."

With an air of wounded irritation - she's still got that blaster wound in her shoulder - she moves to the spot he'd indicated, "That injector has the implant meant for the jedi girl," she informs him, her expression showing nothing of her thoughts on this matter. 

Jamis makes an angry noise, turning her head to glare at the medic and releasing the assistant from her gaze. 

Canin walks with apparent calm to the place where she dropped the injector, and stomps on it, twisting his foot to crush it into the ground, still keeping his blaster trained on the medic.

"What drugs do you have the kid on, and when's the buyer arriving?"

She watches this with a vexed expression, and then sighs and lists off a short list of drugs, along with their dosages and frequencies. The cocktail is tailored just right to be as non-addictive as possible while also keeping a human child in a compliant haze while they are awake - an important feature when the subject can set things on fire with their mind, and you don't have any force-inhibitors on hand. 

"As for the buyer," she adds once she's done that, "I understand they've just landed, they should be here any minute." She maybe looks a little smug to be delivering this information. 

"Can I-" Jamis cuts herself off, vibrating in place but keeping her blaster trained on the assistant still. She desperately wants to go to the child on the table, to- to hold his hand or something, at least! 

He walks, still with apparent calm, to stand next to Jamis, keeping his blaster trained on the medic.

"Do either of you have a comm unit on your person?" he asks, and then glances, almost casually, at Jamis.  "Go gather up their blasters and check on the kid."

She jumps to do this immediately, circling the room, picking the blasters up, and checking them over quickly before she lays them on the table and pulls herself up onto it a little to get a closer look at Alek, reaching out to take his wrist in one hand. His pulse is... very slow. The drugs, she guesses. 

"Our guard," she motions vaguely to the one near the door, much as she can with her arms in the air, "And I do," the medic informs him.

(The child makes a soft noise, wrist flexing slightly under Jamis' fingers as they make a loose fist. They seem mostly unresponsive, their gaze fixed on the ceiling, blinking slow.)

"Toss me your comm.  You may lower one hand to do so, and then raise it again immediately.  Try anything and I shoot you."

She cooperates with these instructions! 

"I don't think Alek will be able to walk," Jamis tells him, moving her hand down to weave her fingers with Alek's as she speaks, squeezing lightly. 

He catches the comm, then drops it on the floor and crushes it under his boot.  He inspects the room for other entrances than the one they came through.

"I can carry a kid." Is all he says in response to Jamis.

She nods, and stays where she is, gripping Alek's hand tight and watching the rise and fall of his chest. 

There is another entrance, across the room from the door they came in through. 

He pulls something from a pocket on his belt.

"Turn around and put your hands behind your back.  In that order." He says to the medic. 

The medic does as ordered.

He walks up behind them and, using a piece of cable, ties their hands together, rather thoroughly.  He gives the assistant the same order, and does the same to them.  When he's done, he walks over to the table, and checks the kid for physical injuries, before picking them up.  Once he's done so, he speaks to Jamis again.

"Go search the guard for their comm.  We'll bring it with us."

She keeps holding Alek's hand as Canin lifts him up, and only reluctantly lets go in response to his directions. The guard's comm is quickly found, and then she slips back close to his side again, "That way leads down to some more cells," she tells him quietly, "I don't think there's a way out over there... though I guess maybe there's a door to the service corridors we came in through?" 

"There a reason not to go back out the way we came in?"

"Maybe, if the buyer is dangerous, or more guards are coming with them?" She's not sure, though. That air of danger is stronger than before, if she pays attention to it, but most of her attention is locked on Alek at the moment instead. 

He grunts, and heads back out the door they came in through, though he still pauses for her direction at every intersection after that, instead of simply following the route they took in.

She doesn't know the base that well. The best she can do is direct them back to the same route they came in, through the back halls and away from the route the buyer will probably be taking. But the only entrance she knows to those is through the door next to the monitoring station. 

And they encounter resistance before that, in the form of a pair of alarmed guards checking over the dead ones they'd left on their way past. One of them notices Canin coming up the corridor and shouts, turning their blaster and firing at him as soon as they spot him. 

Canin is wearing beskar'gam.  He turns so the child he's carrying is away from the guards, sets the kid down, and then turns again, keeping himself between the enemies and the unarmored children accompanying him, and draws his blaster and begins firing back.

Jamis helps! She ducks down so she's in his shadow and shoots one of the guards in the leg, sending them down in agony and leaving them as easy prey for Canin. Her second shot misses the other guard and hits the monitoring station instead, sending sparks up to flash over the pair of enemies. 

He takes the easy shot, and then shoots for the others shoulder, on their dominant arm, hoping to make them stop shooting for a second.

That does in fact make them stop shooting for a second! Multiple seconds, even, as they drop their blaster and duck behind the monitoring station. 

Canin follows them behind the monitoring station, moving quickly, and reholstering his blaster pistol to draw a vibroknife.  It doesn't take long for him to close in on them with the vibroknife and jam it into their chest.

When he's done, he stands up to look around for signs of more guards, or an activated alarm.

There's a light flashing on the monitoring station, and in the silence after all the noise of the fight he can hear someone calling over the comm. 

"Kresh! Kresh, respond! What's happening down there?!"

Kriff. He's no good at voices, and he's not gonna ask Jamis if she can do it- failing tends to get a presence quicker than nor responding would have.  He turns, picks up the still drugged kid, and signals "come with me".

He isn't waiting for directions, anymore- their cover is blown now, the goal is to move fast.  He's not running, because he doesn't want to lose Jamis or injure the kid he's carrying, but he is walking unusually quickly.  He's also watching through his HUD for more lifeforms, and when he first sees someone approaching he sets the kid down and moves towards them with his blaster drawn, shooting as soon as he comes into range.

Jamis follows after him at a slightly faster pace, for her, and stays behind to guard Alek whenever Canin sets him down to deal with enemies, only assisting now when those fights are within her sight. 

It's very clear that these slavers were not at all prepared to be confronted with a Mandalorian in Beskar'gam - and who could blame them, really, given the affiliation of the child said being is rescuing? Or that's what any survivors are likely to report, little though it will aid them in escaping the displeasure of their superiors. 

At any rate, despite some mildly hairy spots when a trio of guards close in on him with melee weapons, and once when a couple nearly get past him, attempting to reach the kids as hostages since he seems to be guarding them, he and his young client/helper manage to fight their way through the disorganized resistance and up to the front doors.

-where they encounter the first real trouble spot. 

With absolutely no warning, not from Jamis' intuition or from Canin's HUD, a vibroblade sweeps down at him as they enter the base's entrance hall, avoiding striking the child he's carrying but aiming for a part of his armour that's unplated, between helmet and pauldron. Its wielder, bipedal, average human height, entirely covered by cloth and armour and mask, clearly wearing some kind of advanced stealth tech, appears to have come entirely out of nowhere. 

Canin goes down with the strike as soon as he feels it, lessening the damage of the blow somewhat and giving him a chance to put Alek down, although he doesn't move away from Alek this time.  While the damage of the blow was lessened, his shoulder is still obviously injured.  He draws his knife again, with the uninjured arm, and stabs at the attacker as he rises, aiming for the neck, the hardest vulnerable area to protect. 

"Shoot him!" he shouts to Jamis as he rises.

Jamis darts forward to crouch over Alek and shoots at the man from under Canin's arm.

The attacker catches Canin's knife with the hilt of his own blade, deflecting and darting back to get a little space now that he's not at best advantage so close up, incidentally getting out of the way of Jamis' bolt in the process. His vibroblade deacitvates momentarily as he settles the flat of one blade against his arm and pulls out one of the blasters at his hips, firing at the knife in Canin's hand. 

As soon as he sees the man go for his blaster, Canin lunges forward, aiming his knife for the hand that reached for it, and causing the man's shot to go wide, almost hitting Jamis.  He curses quietly when he notices this and slams an armored boot down on the mans foot, hoping to distract him with pain and loosen his grip on the blaster.

He grunts, leg faltering, but his grip doesn't, and he turns the reinforced barrel of his blaster to catch his knife, shoving him back with that and the hilt of his vibroblade held in his other hand, supporting his weight on the uninjured foot and he reactivates the vibration and sweeps out at him with the blade, bringing the blaster up to fire into his wounded shoulder at the same time.

Jamis squeaks, flinching from the shot, but she's fine- she hesitates to try to shoot him while they're so close together, feeling like she could be pretty sure but not totally sure she'd hit the attacker and not Canin-

"Keep kriffing shooting!" he shouts.

He turns into the swing of the blade, catching it across his beskar-covered torso as he brings his knife over it to slam hard into the mans neck again.  The turn moves his injured shoulder mostly out of the way of the blaster shot, but it still grazes him, and he stumbles slightly, hissing in pain.

The man turns and twists with him, taking the knife to the shoulder instead of directly to the neck- this does cause him to finally drop the blaster though, and also puts his back directly to Jamis- 

-who shoots it as ordered, twice, one which his armour manages to absorb and one which partly gets through the damaged section there- 

-and he makes a noise of pain, as well, the combined injuries making him gasp-hiss quietly as he disengages from Canin and retreats towards the door they'd come in through, missing one blaster and a fair amount of blood. 

Canin draws his blaster as quickly as possible and shoots after the man, but doesn't pursue him, instead turning back to Alek and contemplating the task of carrying him.

He ducks behind the door, avoiding the bolts, and, based on the sound his steps are making due to his injured foot, keeps on going down the hall inside. 

Jamis pulls her eyes off the doorway and gives him a wide-eyed look, but moves off Alek and pulls him up a little to make picking him up easier for Canin. She's only 12, and only a little bigger than the 8 year old, so she definitely can't carry him herself. 

He lifts the kid, settling him mostly on his uninjured arm.

"It's gonna be slower for me to put him down now, and harder for me to respond without doing so, you need to shoot anyone you see immediately.  Keep an eye out for that guy coming back, but our goal is to get out as quickly as possible, not to get bogged down in a fight."  He hasn't said anything this long to her since they left the ship, and he sounds extremely serious about it.

She nods extremely seriously back, "Okay." She holds her blaster at the ready and... leaves the safety off, now, the reaction time will probably be important and she can make sure not to aim at Canin and Alek or herself. She definitely wants to shoot at more people than she doesn't, around here. 

Go, she gestures at him? Him first or her? 

He nods, and gestures for her to go first. 

She takes the lead then, putting more focus on paying attention to everyone around her that isn't Canin or Alek. She... thinks there isn't anyone immediately outside the front doors. She goes out carefully, anyway, and proceeds cautiously but quickly around the building to the path they'd taken from Canin's ship through the trees. 

(She can't feel the man who'd last attacked them at all. She couldn't feel him during the fight, either, she thinks, but she hadn't been paying as much attention as she is now. That's... pretty scary, actually.) 

He follows along after her, carrying Alek and looking around with the help of the HUD for anything she may have missed.

Nothing seems to be ahead of them, but after a minute or so they can hear pursuit coming up after them through the trees from the base. Jamis picks up her pace then, trying to keep ahead of them and get back to the ship before they can catch up. It'd be really bad to get caught out in the open like this, she's pretty sure. 

"Run."

He doesn't raise his voice to say it, but he does break into an all-out run, going faster than her shorter legs can carry her towards the ship.

Okay, running! Her legs might normally be too short to keep up with him but she seems to be managing fine anyway, actually, putting all her effort into not getting caught by slavers, thanks. 

They make it up into the ship before any of their pursuers catch them, but it's a near thing, their tracks in the snow making a perfect trail to track them by. The ramp closes behind them just as the first few guards enter the clearing they'd landed in.

Canin doesn't bother to take off- he spins the upper gun towards the approaching guards and fires- once.  The gun in meant to take out ships, and the guards are easily thrown by the blast, giving him time to begin the startup sequence to take off.  Once they're in the air, he heads over the base they'd just hit, firing on it from above as he flies over.

If his goal was to stop their attacker from following in his ship, this goal fails. He's already lifting off when he fires, and proceeds to demonstrate some impressive in-atmosphere acrobatics evading Canin's cannon. He then proceeds to follow them away from the base, after a short delay starting to fire at the ship - he's aiming for disabling rather than kill shots, though. 

Canin is not concerned at all with avoiding destroying the pursuing ship- he's firing to take it down as quickly as possible.  The problem, however, is that he can only do so many things at once.

"Jamis! I need you in the cockpit!" He shouts into the comm as he continues to shoot at the pursuer.

The pursuing ship is decidedly not cooperating with this plan!

!!! 

"Coming!!" Jamis shouts, doublechecking the straps holding Alek to the bed in the medbay one more time before turning to sprint to the cockpit, "Where?!" 

He continues to fire after the pursuing ship.

"Do you have the hyperspace co-ordinates for any other planets memorized?"

"Yeah, loads," she darts over to the navigation console, "Whaddyou want, populated, unpopulated, close, far, Republic-" 

"Lets stay out of the Republic" he says, half-laughing.

"Farther is probably better, the harder it is to guess you or your brother would flee there the better."

He continues firing at the other ship, though he has now switched from earnestly trying to shoot them to trying to force them into positions it will be harder to hit him from, though he isn't trying to miss either.

This is a frustratingly successful tactic (well, frustrating for their attacker, anyway)! The rate of fire lowers as he tries to maneuver into a better position, without much luck - so far, at least. 

So no Jedi worlds, either - they aren't all technically on Republic space - and probably no Mandalorian worlds, either - she'd glanced over a couple maps with those. Maybe... acting on a hunch, she punches in a set of coordinates she'd seen on a historical map once and looked up to check they were real, and then she sets the navigation console to calculating.

"Thirty-five seconds!" She calls the estimate for when the route will be ready. They'll have to keep the enemy occupied that long. 

Canin will do his best to keep their pursuer off their back, continuing to focus on herding the pursuer and keeping himself from getting shot.

Their pursuer seems to sense the growing urgency of his chase - or perhaps he just has the sense to know that the longer it takes him to catch them, the more likely it is that they'll vanish off into hyperspace - as his tactics grow more and more desperate as the next thirty seconds pass, gathering grazes from Canin's shots as he tries to maneuver into a better position to fire from, his own shots skimming by them to dissipate into open space. 

But his efforts are not enough, as after the thirty-five seconds pass the navigation console flashes ready and Jamis calls over to Canin, "Go now!" 

He slams the ship into hyperspace, and they shoot off, away from the pursuer.

Canin sighs, falls back in his chair, and pulls off his helmet.

"Lets go meet this brother of yours, and check on his health.  Any idea why that guy was so determined to capture him?"

She lets her hands, gripping tight to the console, relax, answering with a shrug before she takes a moment to steady herself.

"I don't know who he was," she says after a moment, turning to give him a wary-ish look, "But..." she sighs, "I think probably he was from the Sith. I... I couldn't feel him, at all. That's probably not something just anyone knows how to do." 

He pulls himself out of the chair and heads out of the cockpit, stopping at the console to check their destination.

"You did good in there.  If you're interested, I'd be willing to let you help out on more jobs, while you're with me.  I'll teach you more, of course- you did good with barely any training, you could do amazing with more.  But first, you feel like explaining why the Sith might be after your brother?"

If he knows the coordinates the planet Manaan is at, he'll recognize them as those. 

Jamis follows after him and then slips ahead when he stops at the console. She's staring at him, a bit, as she pauses in the the entrance to the cockpit. 

"You'd really just-" she stops, giving her head a little shake. "He's- the Jedi had him. They took him and my other brothers all to their temples to train them to be Jedi and then they didn't even protect him-" she stops, digging her fingers into her palms. "So I think, I think that Sith was gonna take him back to their schools or whatever they have and make him one of them instead." 

"I'm no fan of the Jedi.  But it doesn't sound to me like you want me to take him back to them.  Let's see how he's doing."

He continues down to where he'd left Alek, frowning when he doesn't find him there and then heading to check in the medbay.

"I don't," she agrees. She'd go get the other two as well, if she could, but she has no idea where they are and she's not sure they'd want her to, or if she could even look after them, if she did. 

She slips into the medbay ahead of him and moves to take Alek's hand again, squeezing lightly and leaning over him to look into his eyes as Canin enters. 

Alek is... a little more present, now, it seems? The eyes she's looking into do react a little to her presence, focusing briefly on her face. This action is then followed by a quiet possibly-questioning noise, raspy and thin though the sound is. 

Canin examines the kid for any sign of problems not related to the drugs.

"I can't do anything about the drugs, they'll just have to wear off with time." he informs Jamis.

Besides the effects of the drugs, it looks like there's a few bruises and scrapes from the rough handling - both while in captivity and while they were escaping - along with some scarring around the wrists and partly-healed burns on the arms, which look to have seen some care but nothing as sophisticated as kolto. 

"I'm staying with him until he wakes up," Jamis says. He's probably going to be very scared when he does, and she hopes her being here might help a little.

"Good." He tells her.

He gets out the kolto and applies it to the burns, and applies some cheaper bruise balm to the bruises, and cleans all of the scrapes- the cocktail of drugs the kid is on is *not* helping his immune system any, and he doesn't want to risk the kid getting some sort of infection.

Jamis helps with this where she's useful and then settles down by his bedside and holds his hand, trying to stay in his field of vision. 

"...About- me helping on jobs, and teaching me more stuff," She starts, once he's finished, glancing up at him from the side, "I'd like that?" It was scary, sort of, running through the base and almost getting shot and the Sith guy at the end- but it was also... exciting, and satisfying, using all the skills she's learned over the years and during the trip there and from Canin to save Alek and keep them alive. 

"Good.  I'll write up a schedule, for cleaning and training, and look for jobs when we get to Manaan, though the next place we're going after than is to drop off this cargo."

He gestures at an intercom button near the door.

"Comm me when he wakes up, so I can come check on him again- there's a few tests that you can only do on an alert patient."

She nods, checking the intercom he's pointing her to before turning her focus back to watching Alek attempt to watch her. 

Canin gathers up the container of kolto and several bandages, and heads out into the living area.  He sits down on the bench, pulling of his shirt with a wince, and sets about applying the kolto to his shoulder wound.  When he's done, he wraps it thoroughly in the bandages, and then pulls out his datapad with his good arm, setting it on the table and getting to work writing up a training schedule for Jamis.

It's a few hours later when she finally comms him.

"I think- I think he can answer questions now? He's still a little out of it but he's responding to the story I was telling him." 

He follows her back into the medbay and sits down where Alek can see him.

"Are you up for answering a couple questions?" he asks Alek.

...Aleeka watches him somewhat warily, eyes more focused now and at least aware enough at this point to know that something has changed and these people at least don't appear to have the same motives as the slavers did - it's kinda hard to read the girl, but this person at least is easily sensible in his concern, now that distinguishing which people are feeling what at all is possible. After a moment, he gets a slow, short nod in answer to his question.

"Are you in pain at all?  Or dizzy, or nauseous?"

Another nod. All those things. Head hurts and everything moves too fast and everything feels bleah. Throwing up is probably not imminent but only because there's nothing to throw up, and only probably. 

Slight sigh.

"Can you answer verbally?"

He can ask the questions in a way that doesn't require verbal answers, if need be, but it's slower.

"...yes." A pause, and then, mumbled, "Head hurts and 'm dizzy and feel sick."

"Thank you.  I suspect those are all side-effects of the drugs they had you on, and will wear off after some time.  I can give you some stuff to help with all of those, or I could give you something to put you asleep until the drugs have worn off more, or I could do neither of those things, it's up to you."

He gets a large bowl from another area of the medbay.

"I don't expect they've fed you enough for you to throw up, but if you do, try and do it into this."

"Mm," little nod, and then a bleary but watchful look, "No drugs." 

Jamis takes the bowl, setting it on the edge of the bed next to her. 

"Alright.  Can you tell me how many fingers I'm holding up?" He holds 2 fingers up in front of Aleeka.

It takes a second for Aleeka to focus and squint at them, but then, "...two?" 

He nods.

"Good.  Do you have any pain anywhere besides your head?"

...wrists? Aleeka lifts one hand - the one Jamis isn't holding - showing off the scarring from the manacles some of the slavers had used. It aches. 

"I can give you a salve for that, if you want- it's not a drug, it's just a topical salve that helps with scar pain."

...nod. 

"I can put it on for you?" Jamis offers, fidgeting in place a little.

Aleeka squints at her. She's... familiar, but why? 

He gets the scar salve and sets it on the bed, within reach of either of them.

"If you need anything else, you can ask now, or tell your sister to comm me.  Don't get out of the bed without comming me first, though."

nod- wait, sister? Aleeka turns to stare at the girl, finally connecting the familiarity of her with that angryangryangry presence ringing through the memories of when the Jedi had come to take Aleeka and Galen and- their littlest brother away. 

"Sister?"

Nodnodnodnod, "I'm Jamis." 

...Aleeka really wants a hug right now. 

Jamis does not need more than to sense this desire to climb onto the bed properly and hug. 

Canin waits for a moment, but if it seems like they're going to stay hugging for a bit, he goes ahead and resumes talking.

"If neither of you needs anything right now, I'm gonna get back to what I was doing.  Jamis knows where the comm is, and I'm serious about not getting out of that bed without me present."

Aleeka nods into Jamis' shoulder, mumbling, "Won't," into her jacket. 

"I'll make sure he remembers," Jamis promises. "And I'll put the salve on." 

"Good."

He walks back out of the room and settles back at the table.  He'd finished the main schedule before the comm, and moved on to a diet plan for bringing two underfed children up to a healthy weight while also giving one of them physical combat training. 

A few hours later again, Jamis slips into the room and comes to hover next to him, "She's asleep," she says - that's why she'd come in person rather than comming. "An' says she's Aleeka, still, not Alek," she adds. "m'I supposed to get her to eat stuff?"

"Hm.  Not while she's feeling nauseous, it'll just come right back up.  You do need to get some fluids in her- I'll give you a hydration mix to add to her water."

He heads into the kitchen area and pulls out a box, from which he pulls several packets.

"These.  One of these to a full cup of water, and make sure she drinks it.  Doesn't have to be all at once, but if it's taking her more than half an hour to drink it that's a problem.  I'll bring you both food at the next mealtime, but don't worry about making her eat it if she's feeling sick."

He grabs something else from the cabinet and hands it to her with the packets of hydration mix- it's a snack bar.

"Okay," she takes both- and squints at the bar. "Thought you said she shouldn't eat...?" 

"Doesn't mean you shouldn't."

Oh. "Thanks?" She doesn't think she's really hungry, she ate before they left this morning... though Canin usually has at least three meals and they must have skipped one of those, now she thinks of it. 

She tears the wrapper open and nibbles on a corner of it. 

He gives her an approving nod.

"Was she feeling any better before she fell asleep?"

Nodnod, "Specially after she had some water. Was less dizzy an the headache got a little better. An I put the scar stuff on an she said it didn't hurt as much then." 

"Good.  I've got your schedule written up on here if you wanna take a look at it, but I can't hand it over to you for long, it's my only datapad.  I'll look into picking up a spare while we're on Manaan, I'll need to restock while we're there anyway, and you can borrow that once I have it."

"I've got a datapad?" He wouldn't have seen her using it, though, she only works on it when she's up in the cupboard she'd taken over and still hadn't moved out of. She sets the packets and the bar down and goes to climb up into it, coming back out with the item in question (and without her bag). She offers it to him. 

"Oh, that's handy."

He opens a drawer and pulls out a cable, hooking the two datapads up to it and transferring the schedule over to it.

"There you go.  Things in blue you can do on your own, things in red you do with me.  Feel free to ask questions."

She recollects it and absently gathers up her bar and packets again while looking over the schedule he'd transferred. 

"Okay..." she glances up at him, and then her eyes go to the bandages around his shoulder. "...is your shoulder gonna be okay?"

He shrugs his good shoulder.

"I put some kolto on it, it should be fine in a day or two."

Solemn nod. 

She stands still in place for a moment, staring at him, and then she darts in real quick and throws her arms around his waist.

He hesitates awkwardly for a moment, and then reaches down to wrap his uninjured arm around her shoulders.

"Hey.  You and your vod are ok, yeah?  That's what matters."

She presses her face into his side and nods. 

"Vor entye," she whispers - she knows he's not getting near as much out of this deal as a mercenary usually would, she's not stupid, he's being nice to them. 

He pats her shoulder gently, keeping her close as he does so.

"N'entye.  At least, none you haven't already arranged to pay off, 'lek?"

She pulls back a bit to look up at him doubtfully. But, if he says so...

"'lek?" Both asking what that means and answering, if it means 'yes' or something like it as she thinks it does. 

"It means yes.  Or rather, elek means yes, and 'lek is shorter."

Nodnod, "Elek."

She pulls out of his grip then, readjusts her grip on the stuff she was carrying, and steps back towards the door leading towards the medbay. "You want me to comm you when she wakes up again?" 

He nods.

"'Lek.  Vor'e."

Vor'e? "S'that a shorter version of vor entye?" 

"'Lek."

Okay then. "N'entye!" She replies, and then she scurries out of the room and back to Aleeka's side. 

Canin returns to finding things to do that don't strain his injured shoulder.  That's always the worst part of an injury, in his opinion- waiting for it to heal.

She comms again a few hours later, just around dinner time. 

"She's awake an I got her to drink one of the cups with the powder in it an she needs to use the fresher? Also she wants to try eating." 

"I'll be right over."

He heads to the medbay, a bowl of food in each hand.  He sets them down on the table, and turns to Aleeka.

"Go ahead and sit up, first off, and tell me if any pain happens or you get drastically more dizzy or sick feeling."

Up Aleeka sits, making a small unhappy face once upright, but then smoothing out to the same 'slightly uncomfortable' expression as before shortly after.

"It was a bit worse for a second. The dizziness and the sick feeling." 

Though still quiet, Aleeka's voice is far steadier now, and diction much crisper than Jamis', allowing the contrast between their accents to be clearly heard. 

"But it faded quickly?" he checks.

"Yes." And, eyes straying to the food, hungry but wary, "Food?" 

"Your sister said you'd said you needed to use the 'fresher, do you want to do that first or eat first?"

"Mmm," uneasy shifting, and then a nod, "'fresher, please." 

"Can she walk, or do you gotta go with her?" Jamis asks from over by the food, "Or could I?" 

"Well, first she needs to stand up- I suspect she hasn't walked in a while, so her legs may be a bit weak from disuse."

He turns back to Aleeka.

"Go ahead and stand up now.  I'll walk you to the 'fresher, but if it seems like you're walking alright I'm not gonna make you have someone in there with you."

An attempt at standing up is made, but Aleeka's legs prove to be too wobbly to hold even the weight of an underfed eight-year-old for long, a combination of the extended time she'd spent drugged and the drugs still affecting her, likely.

She consents to be carried and helped in the bathroom, with some disgruntlement.

He picks her up carefully, and carries her to the bathroom, then calls Jamis in to help her, stepping out and facing away, but not closing the door.

Bathroom features are put to use behind his back, and then they can take Aleeka back to the medbay.

"I want to eat something," Aleeka says once they're all back, "But I might be sick."

"You can try drinking some more of the water with hydration mix and wait to see if that makes you sick, or you can start eating slowly, while drinking water with it, and stop if you get sick.  I do have some anti-nausea drugs, if you'd like, but taking those before eating isn't always a good idea.  It can cause worse side effects, if the food is causing an actual problem."

"Jamis gave me some water with the mix-in after I woke up. It hasn't made me feel worse." She pauses, glancing at Jamis uncertainly, and then adds, "I can filter what I eat some. Master Scinna taught us before... If I eat only a very little bit I can tell if it will make me sick." Actual Jedi Padawans and Knights can actually eat some things that will make them sick, and get all the nutrients out of it that they can use. Aleeka can only check and then spit it out.

(Actual Jedi can filter drugs out of their bodies, too, but Aleeka hadn't thought she'd need to know that and neither had any of her masters.)

He hands her a bowl of soup- a thin broth with chunks of rehydrated meat and vegetables in it.