"Aarrrggg, what in bloody names was that!"

Rin curses as he begins recovering from that assault on his senses. As his music nod recovers he begins hearing an unknown voice over the ships loud speakers, something about Imperials [whoever they are] wanting to inspect the cargo, turning he addresses the green scaled person who had a bit to say, he begins talking right over the top of the Cerean, shock and fear getting the better of his manners

"Are you telling me I got in that thing over 4000 years ago... bloody Sith. And now the Order is outlawed? These Imperials wouldn't happen to be the ones who outlawed us are they?"

Rin pauses and pinches himself on the arm [well that hurt, and I seem to remember someone telling me if you hurt yourself while sleeping you would wake up... This isn't a dream?]

He starts trying to pinpoint the source of that immense disturbance as he waits for a reply, one he is beginning to dread, seeing the Cerean looking towards the chamber with its dead occupant he heads over to assist.

Terror.
Terror, alone in the void.
No, not alone, I am.
The terror is not mine, but my own fear rising to mirror it, I feel.
"Three circles around the moons, Ossus Librarian, Convor brushes the water" the saber postures in my mind force the fear back.
I have a body. I remember.
A second onslaught of fear, this one my own, I feel.
Wrong! Wrong, this body is!
"Let not fear constrict your breathing!" To my mind Master Dao's words come unbidden. Pushing through terror and something else, a breath, I draw.
Outside of this body, something happens.
A heartbeat I feel, a second breath. Then pain. Agony in my head beyond anything imagined, I have. For this, trained, I am. "Three circles around the moons..."through the entire form my thoughts push. Replaced the pain in my head, that of circulation returning to my body has. Other needs it begins to express.
Escaping from the cryotube, Sonya retches into the cell toilet, immediately following it by using it for its intended purpose. Having taken care of her physical needs, she checks her lightsabres. Her training sabre is at her belt, but "Swive! Taken my guard shoto, Master Dao had." She was sure her crystal had been set properly. She gives the training sabre a quick inspection. "Do for now, it will."

She then moves on to assessing her own condition. She feels weak, slow, and her clothing is not fitting correctly. Her hand fur falls to the floor as she looks at it. "Fie!" More falls, from her face, head, neck, everywhere."Fie,fie,fie." Cursing under her breath, she shakes out her clothing. Finally, she tries to use the Force to begin a deeper analysis and possibly start to rebuild. It is gone!

No, gone it is not. A seed remains. Vanished, all of my training has. She lets grief and frustration wash over her, remembering cycles of being the last in the class to learn almost every aspect of her Force training. The skill of a youngling, I have. Still, legends of brave younglings we hear. Find my way, I must.
She then looks at her surroundings.

Xaramis recovers quickly from the sudden scream. The sound is a shocking one, that connects with him on a very primal level, one that oddly enough seems to tap into the same 'sixth sense' he sometimes feels when trying to change someone's mind. It's a sensation he rarely ever feels, but oddly enough he can sense some further potential in it. Shaking his head to clear it, he crosses the room towards the tube that the scream came from.

"Someone's not a morning person. Come on, we're all defrosted friends he-" he comes level with the tube, and pulls up short before the decomposing remains. He sees enough to recognise in this being the same robes as the other tube occupants, and realises what he's done. "I'm so sorry, I didn't know. I really am sorry. But the best way we can honour their memory is to keep our heads in a crisis."

"The Imperials are indeed the organisation that outlawed your order. They superseded the Republic, and rule in their place. But that is not what we want to be discussing at this particular moment," he unsheathes part of his blade, checking the ancient systems to ensure they're still functional, before re-sheathing it. He crosses the room to double-check the lock. He's particularly grateful that Tok thought to lock the door. "The Empire don't have Sith at least - the Inquisition, perhaps, but you don't get them this far out. Instead it's likely that when we're boarded the Empire's finest will pay us a visit, and that's not a pleasant experience," he taps his sword's basket hilt. "On either side."

Xaramis is unsure of how to go on. He's spent the last few years of his life explicitly avoiding situations like this. He's seen his share of Imperial entanglements, and he's aware that he's taken the life of more than a few Imperial servants with the blade he carries at his hip, but frankly he'd much rather not have to face any boarders - especially since as an alien he's fairly certain they'll find a convenient reason to fault his papers and lock him up, and that is the very last thing he wants.

"We need to decide how to deal with our two major problems - one, where did that scream come from, and two, how do we deal with the Imperial boarding party that's about to come swinging through the cargo bay looking for poor alien saps to send to the spice mines of Kessel?"

Kellen let go of his horns and stood up from his crouched position.

The force scream seemed to have passed with only a small echo in his mind.

"I'm also not feeling myself but perhaps we should catch up later...." Kellen turns his attention to Xaramis.

"As to your first question, that scream came from the cryo chamber over there. And if you felt it then you're sensitive to the Force...like a Jedi.

As for what to do about the boarding Imperials I say it's best we follow your lead in this matter. What do you suggest we do?"

Kellen made his way over to the dead master to help his fellow Jedi in their search.

Back in the prison cell on the destroyer, Sonya notices the forcefield appears to have a damaged power cycle. Every five seconds, there is a half second when the field cuts out entirely before turning back on again. It might not be enough time to jump through, but it might be just long enough to use her lightsaber to short out the power flow if she activates it and pushes the blade into the field when it deactivates.

Tok is too busy poring over the ship schematics on his datapad to notice anything out of the ordinary happen to the rest of the beings in the cargo hold, so he's terribly puzzled about what the Falleen means by finding the source of the scream.

His other point, however, is spot on.

"Listen, by my estimate we're about five minutes away from being discovered here," he says. "None of us want that and I think I've got an idea that might work. They're boarding to inspect the cargo, not look for Jedi. We close the pods back up, plug them back in and you all can come wait this mess out in my quarters. My IPKC shields me from too much scrutiny."

He looks regretfully at the wreckage of the Besalisk's pod.

"We also need a Plan B. There's a small freighter I've noticed in the hangar that no one pays much attention to. Wouldn't surprise me if Xaramis already has a love nest set up on it. If things get too hot, it might have to be our ticket out of here."

Sonya resists the temptation to try to jump through the force field when it is weakened.
Cut through the wall with my real saber, I could.
A quick thrust with her training saber at the right moment ends her captivity. Deactivating the weapon, she pads stealthily down the hall, assuming she is on a Sith vessel of some sort.

"A ship you say... Tok was it?" Rin replies to the Gotal, "I have some memories of Navigating in what now seems like a past life, if we need to run that may be a good option. How far to your room?"

[dam I wish I could remember my own dam name] Rin thinks after speaking.

"The Force?" Xaramis is incredulous as he looks at Kellen's earnest expression. "You think I can command the Force, the galaxy's most self-righteous super power? No. All I heard was a scream. Nothing special, nothing magic, just a weird noise coming from whatever was in there - an echo or something, trapped in the pod with them," he turns aw ay to hide a less-than-sure expression, but after a moment he begins speaking again.

"If I might suggest an alternative?" He turns back to them. "The crew quarters aboard ship are likely to be where the Imperials search straight after they've gone through the cargo bays. I'd say that instead we want to be much closer to somewhere with an easy line of escape. This ship has ventilation shafts running through it, including around the docking bay with our new ride in it. If I know anything about them, the shafts will be proofed against magnetic scans - since they're made of metal - and thermal scans - since it's all ambient hot air anyway - sort of like our captain really. If we lurk there we can avoid any sort of Imperial attention, and bug out if we need to. Granted, it might be a tight fit - " he eyes the Besalisk critically. "B ut it's safer than the alternative of sitting in a room waiting to be found."

“This can’t be a coincidence. The Emperor’s agents aren’t boarding an archaeological vessel to inspect the cargo in a random search. They are here for us,” the tall Cerean replies.

“No, no, it seems to be under there, I can sense its presence,” he quietly says to the Devaronian as they both look for some way to find the source of the scream.

“Ahem, what I’m trying to convey here is that this is no random surveillance by this Imperial military, they know we are here and mean to capture us. I think the air vents are the best option presented to us to get around this vessel, assuming we all fit. The direction we should take is directly towards this ship. If we are about to be discovered, we must flee in that ship,” Ren-Do continues in a louder voice.

He suddenly stops what he’s doing. “One question. Were these the only cryo-tubes on board, or are there more still? If there are more we need to wake the occupants and take them with us.”

Although he seems distracted he still keeps working on the problem with the Devaronian, one of the benefits of his binary brains. “There, a secret compartment,” Ren-Do says excited. “If you hold that I can slide it over there. Aha!”

The panel slides open and Ren-Do first tries to lift whatever is in there with the Force, before remembering how diminished his connection is. He gingerly reaches his hand into the compartment and pulls out a round object in his hand and examines it.

The spherical object quite obviously radiates the Living Force. There appear to be no seams on its flawless smooth surface, though it quite obviously is made of different materials: durasteel being the most recognizable, some sort of bronze, dark glass or crystal, maybe aluminium as far as you can tell. It is approximately the size of a combat remote droid, and it is also far heavier than it should be for a composite object of its size.

A more thorough examination may require some additional time and perhaps some careful probing, both with physical tools and the Force. There is also a heavy, flat cloth bundle in the bottom of the space where the sphere was found. It is coated in a very fine layer of oddly-colored dust.

The Hangar Bay is currently being used as a large cargo bay, since the freighter was discovered not far from the location of the archaeological site and moved into the hangar for repair and retrofitting.

"Is that..." Xaramis begins. "A holocron? Have you ever seen anything like it before? Do you know how long it would take to activate?"

When Sonya reaches the guard station for the destroyer's detention level, she slides noiselessly around the corner when the corridor meets the room. A pair of Imperial Stormtroopers are boredly guarding the turbolift doors. One of them is watching out the room's large transparent aluminium window as the destroyer's tractor beam pulls the large freighter closer. The second Stormtrooper, however, tilts his head and watches Sonya's silent progress through the room. He nudges his companion. "When did we take on passengers?" he asks.

"Huh?" The first Stormtrooper turns and watches as Sonya painstakingly climbs over a server tower to avoid one of the many cameras in the room.

The second Stormtrooper clears his throat and says, "Excuse me, miss? This is a restricted level of the ship."

~ ~ ~

Someone can be heard pounding on the bulkhead door to the cargo room. Tok's commlink crackles to life. "Did someone lock cargo bay 3-F?"

The pounding starts again.

Ren-Do does not fail to notice that the Falleen, who just a minute ago claimed to know nothing of the Force, immediately guesses that the object is a Holocron. Which might not be far off, but if it is, it's a type of Holocron he has never seen before. In any case, they had no time to investigate this now, with agents of the Sith Empire baying at their heals. Did we lose the war? Is the Republic gone, and our order with it?

"It could be, but not of any type used by my order. In any case, unraveling what ever mysteries it may hold will have to be postponed until we are at a safer location," Ren-Do replies, slipping the heavy orb into his side satchel along with the dusty cloth. While he has that open he quickly rummages through the bag and notices a well-worn first-aid kit and several stimpacks. Good to know in case we run into Imperial troops, he thinks glumly.

"Now, we should look to get out of here post haste," the Cerean begins, and then someone thumps on the door and Tok's comlink comes to life. "Ah, that rather complicates matters," he says, reaching for his lightsaber but not igniting it. "Can we all get into the ventilation shafts before they get this door open? It's the will of the Force that brought us here and I for one refuse to belief that it is the will of the Force that we fall into the hands of this Emperor who has outlawed our order. But I would rather not fight if we can avoid that."

He puts his hand on the Gotal's shoulder and repeats a question he asked before. "Are there any more cryo-tubes on this vessel?"

(OoC: I apologize for being indisposed. Time for a catch-up post)

Garon did not contribute to the conversation. He simply observed the back-and-forth between the others and their potential captors. At first he could not understand the crew due to their strange dialects, but as they continued their discussions, he was able to pick up more and more words. When the Gotal locked the door, his mood soured.

The Gundark already had little trust in these strangers, and he was none too pleased with the idea of being imprisoned. He had little time to dwell on the thought as an unknown voiced announced the arrival of an Imperial vessel.

Wonderful he brooded Another complication. This situation just keeps getting better. The others must expect trouble, they can't stop fiddling with their blasted lightsabers.

And that was when he felt it. A scream reverberating through the force. It seared his mind. Rather than falling to his knees he closed his eyes and tried to quell the growing anger. Anger of the unknown. Anger towards Master Hakkar for dying - for not being here when he needed him. Surely it was his scream that we was hearing.

And just like that, the screaming stopped.

He felt something wet on his hands and looked down to see that they were bleeding. I must have dug my nails into them when I heard that blasted noise.

While the others were searching for the source of the tremor, Garon began to bandage his wounds.

His robes were already tattered; he vaguely remembered ruining them during his escape from Ossus. Without second thought he completed their damage by tearing off short strips and binding his upper left hand, followed by his upper right.

The remains of the robes fell loose like a waistcloth, leaving his torso bare. The exposure did not seem to be bother him.

By the time he was finished with his work, the others were already forming a plan to escape capture or otherwise inspecting a small metallic sphere they had found.

He scratched the scar on his face as he considered the situation. We don't have time to bring any others out of stasis. They're safer left alone until we can see ourselves out of this mess. And just how big are these vents? Clearly if anyone was going to have a hard time fitting an confined places, it would be him.

Sonya eyed the people in white armor. In fighting condition, I am not. Much more courteous than the Sith, they are. Learn more of my environment, I must.

"Sorry. Lost, I am. Unrestricted area is where?" trying to imitate their accent and appear innocently lost.

Hm. Innocent and lost indeed, I am.

The pounding on the door settles it: they have to get to the ventilation ducts, there's no way he can secret them out of here and down to his quarters. Thankfully this cargo bay has two grates so it will take half the time to get everyone out and one of which is just big enough to allow for the Besalisk to pass. If the schematics on his datapad are correct, the two shafts connect before dumping back into the main ventilation system.

"These five are the only ones onboard I'm aware of," Tok says, thinking to himself he'd surely know if there were others. "Besides even if there are, the big guy's right, we're out of time to help them right now anyway."

He runs to the larger of the grates, pops the retaining clips and slides it to the side, indicating to Xaramis to do the same on the other grate.

The pounding on the door intensifies and then suddenly stops, making Tok's stomach drop because he knows when they stop knocking is when they start forcing the issue.

"Time to go," he says, motioning the Besalisk into the shaft.

Garon, grumbled the Besalisk before he entered the shaft. Call me Garon.

"Lead the way," the tall Cerean says with a serious look on his face. "I will go last. If they come after us I will engage them and hold them off as long as I am able."

Thinking for a moment he digs into his satchel and grabs the orb and tosses it to the Dresselian. Let's hope he seems familiar because he was my ally, not a Sith sympathizer I was escorting to Coruscant. "Keep this safe. Just in case."

Ren-Do watches as the others move into the ventilation ducts. Hopefully they will all have time to get in. If not he would soon find out what it was like to fight with a lightsaber with hardly any connection to the Force.

The Stormtroopers look at one another , then they tighten their grip on their blaster rifles. The one who spoke first speaks to Sonya again, more loudly and slowly. "Miss. This. Is. A. Restricted. Area. Please. Allow. Us. To. Escort. You. To. Our. Commander. To. Sort. You. Out."

The others begin filing into the shafts, but Tok stays put, ushering them in, and drawing a sidelong glance from the Cerean.

"No, you won't," Tok says. "I was hired to protect and watch over the cargo. That hasn't changed just because the cargo now walks and talks."

He pauses, knowing that won't be received well.

"The thought is appreciated, but you have to admit you're not at your best. Let's just get moving so we don't have to worry about holding anyone off."

Rin catches the Holocron [odd shape for a Holocron... whatever that is] then follows Garon into the ducts, squatting down and going on all fours to do so.

Nodding to the Gotal, noting his bravery, Ren-Do ducks and follows his friends. This was no time to argue.

"Tok, I appreciate your effort at gallantry, but I think it would be fair to say that it's not Imperial security trying to get through, but rather our friend of a Gamorrean disposition from cargo handling," he grins, attempting to reassure the others. "If you want to go last, that's your call, but I think our new friends could use someone who knows the ship - and from what I can tell you certainly seem to, while I've spent more time getting familiar with the crew than the ship, if you know what I mean," the grin he gives could cause durasteel to melt.

"The dance doesn't last all night..." Kellen remarks as he heads into the ducts.

"If these Imperials are competent then they could very early spot the bay we're headed to as a poiny of escape...let's be ready for anything".