Captain Coruscant and the Hirsute Avenger

[Kes Akiena]

Those last words were perhaps the largest understatement of the year. Perhaps. It was plainly evident that Anauri was having a very large problem with being cooped up in a relatively small space, and Kes felt his brow knit as he thought through his options. There wasn't too much available at this point in time, and for a moment he was silents as he thought through what he could use.

The choices were limited, but they were there. Not many, but certainly some. And he would use those.

"You can't be in small spaces," he repeated in summation. His next question, though a single word, had the potential to send them both in a more productive direction, or send them back 20 paces.

"Why?"

He dearly hoped that it would push them forward.

[Anauri Rabeak]

Anauri's paws gripped the ladder rung before him so tight he swore he would leave indents in the durasteel. Tail still, his head lowered, as did his voice as memories flooded back to him, and the sound of screams, gunfire and explosions rolled about his brain like distant thunder.

"It's not small spaces," he forced the words. "It's small spaces I know I can't get out of whenever I want. If one of these hatches would open, I'd be fine. I could stand in my sonic shower stall all day if I wanted, just as long as I knew the door would open when I wanted to get out."

Good. Keep going. This isn't as bad as you're making it out to be.

We're sorry, reason isn't here right now. Please leave a message and we'll call you back.

Well, instinct it is, then.

"When I was trapped, people died. When I was trapped, I lost my unit. I could have supported them if I wasn't trapped. But they died. All of them."

[Kes Akiena]

He knew the feeling well enough. It was one that he wrestled with himself, at times. Even to this day he would sometimes wake up in a cold sweat, a hand clutching at the piercing, phantom pain of an interrogator droid's needle pushing into the skin of his chest.

At least in the dark, Anauri could not see the haunted look that'd passed over the commander, and Kes shook his head to rid himself of the memories.

"Being trapped is no one's fault, especially not yours. There is no doubt in my mind that you would've been able to support your unit, but what happened, happened. You can't blame yourself for something that you had no control over."

It was not so simple as that, he knew. Hells, he knew better than a lot of people. But, on that same token they both had to start somewhere.

"I have faith that you'll get the hatch open, but rather than trying to will it open with force and anger, just try working with it. And don't look at getting out of here whenever you want in such strict parameters. Tell yourself you can get out in five minutes. During that time, try to get the hatch open. And if it doesn't, then do your best to tell yourself that you've decided to stay in for another five minutes."

A hopeful smile.

"Just imagine it's the snooze button on your chrono."

[Anauri Rabeak]

"What do you think I've been doing ever since I realized the hatches were stuck?" Anauri replied. The words escaped through clenched teeth as his tail began to sway once more.

"Believe it or not, I'm handling this very well compared to how I used to be. After it happened I got stuck in a storage closet on a ship we were working on. I dislocated my shoulder trying to bash the door down, and I'd only been in there two minutes. I know I didn't disclose this on my application, but you'd never had hired me if you knew."

Were there any light at all in the maintenance shaft, Anauri's eyes would have adjusted to it by then, yet instead there was nothing but pitch black in all directions. Deep breaths held and slowly released became his soudtrack, accompanying the rustle of jacket sleeves as his paws trembled upon the ladder rungs. "I have a light in my toolbag. I'm going to try and get it. Might want to stand on my right side against the wall in case I drop something. I may be in a bad way, but I'm going to get us out of here, Commander. I have to get us out of here."

A pause followed, almost long enough for a reply to be interjected before Anauri added, "If we don't get out of here, we don't get up to the top, I can't get the part we need, and then spire five can't open on time. That's bad for my service record, and bad for your incoming comm call queue."

[Kes Akiena]

Unseen in the dark, Kes pulled a sour expression. It was a look that he rarely made even when dealing with the infuriating backlog of comms. A backlog that was only growing. But, it was an expression that also vanished soon after forming. The first stirrings of frustration began to tug at his patience, but the redhead refused to allow himself to give in. It would be too easy snap at Anauri, but it would do nothing to further their chances of getting out. Not to mention it would shatter the delicate precipice that both men found themselves standing upon.

And so, Kes remained silent. He let Anauri vent. It would be best, and perhaps with his mouth moving his mind would move as well.

Shifting to the right, he stood in silence, one hand still on the access ladder as the other reached up to run fingers through his hair.

[Anauri Rabeak]

As the shuffling of feet below stopped, Anauri took it as his "all clear" and reached down with a paw to unzip his tool bag. Immediately a pair of box-end wrenches fell, clanging and clattering with their chromium song as they bounced and danced upon the hatch below before rattling to a stop. "Sorry," he called down.

The clinks and clanks of his tools within the rustling bag threatened to rain more hand tools down upon Kes, who unfortunately had decided not to bring an umbrella with him that way, yet moments later it seemed that the durasteel shower had passed, and a click was rewarded by a nearly blinding flash of light.

"Ow!" Anauri blurted, having turned on his flashlight while it was aiming directly up into his face, blasting him with a light so intense that he almost lost his grip upon the ladder. Paw fumbling, he flipped the offending flashlight over so he could examine the access panel he had uncovered. "Ah, not so bad," he said with a nod. "Well, it's bad, but at least it looks like I didn't met the circuit board, so that's a good thing."

Possibly more annoying than the wrenches, the words continued to fall from Anauri's mouth, voicing a stream of consciousness he was seldom known to speak aloud while working, keeping his mind focused on the task at paw. Flashlight braced between his cheek and shoulder, the Nehantite went to work.

"Wasn't always like this, you know," he announced. "When I was a kid I was great at hiding in little places. I liked it, it was fun. I've seen a shrink about my phobia, and he said to do what you said, so it's good advice, but something like that's hard to get over. The kind of thing you know is silly, but it still gets to you, y'know? Maybe if I can reach in there with this wire I can bridge some power to the lockout clamps. After this is done I might need a bit of down time. I think there's a hanger or something nice and open I could set up a chair in. Bar would be nice, but a little crowded at this hour. No, can't send that much power over this wire, it'll fry it. I'll have to see if there's something else I can use to bridge that. Kinda with Stashia was still on the station; she'd be able to help take my mind off of things after we get out. Garfife, she'd want to drag me to that tea house, I bet. I had no idea what that place was when my team dragged me along. You ever been there?"

As he spoke he worked, not feverishly as he had initially, but mechanically, able to let his brain make more sense of the problem while his mouth rattled on and on and on.

[Kes Akiena]

Anauri's stream of consciousness was rather captivating, and Kes listened in utter silence as his Nehantite companion carried on. He didn't interrupt, choosing to see if a moving mouth could generate the power to begin moving a mind. He simply stayed quiet to allow the man to work. If talking as he poked about up top helped, then he was in no way willing to entangle himself verbally and possibly distract Anauri from making any possible headway. As much as he dreaded returning to his office, he knew that it was far more painful for his Chief Engineer to be stuck here, in the dark.

And then Anauri asked a question that came completely out of left field. A question that caught him very much off guard.

Had he ever been to the Madame's tea house.

The query had been sent, and hoping to further stimulate the grinding gears in Anauri's head, Kes answered; however his tone was halting, his voice a note lower than normal.

"I... have, actually."

His eyes swept down and to the side as he remembered the trip.

"But not for the reason that most seem to go there for."

[Anauri Rabeak]

"Yeaaaaah, it's safe to say I didn't go there for that reason either," Anauri replied. One of his paws was jammed deep within the access panel's opening, groping around for something, while the other held fast to the ladder. "I thought it was a tea house. Like, where you sit down and have tea and little sandwiches and everyone's grandmother is there. Color me surprised when I was told it wasn't clothing-optional!"

The light from his flashlight flickered and danced as the flashlight was pinched and rolled between his cheek and shoulder, his paw trying to reach deeper still, to the tune of a few grunts and groans. Testing the hold of his makeshift support strap. Anauri could not resist another pounding upon the hatch with his other fist, the demons of his claustrophobia refusing to be vanquished in their entirety.

"Why'd you go? Was it when the filtration system broke down on the main pool? That only took two days to get fixed, you know."

[Kes Akiena]

Looking up, he was careful to no look directly at the beam of light shining from Anauri's flashlight. Instead he focused on the Nehantite's hands. It was a long story, and Kes made his best attempt to condense it as much as possible.

"The Madame," on fresh instinct his voice seemed to grow just a little bit quieter, as if worried that the act of even invoking her title would summon Madame Maillanaaro.

"... invited me. Well, she insisted would probably be the better word for it. I put off her comms for as long as I could before she finally just came to my office herself. You ever look at someone and see your eventual doom?"

A sigh.

"I watched her walk in and that was exactly what I saw. She'd even sent a giftbasket."

There was no need to go into the details of what that basket actually contained, so Kes pushed on while shifting his weight and letting himself lean against the wall.

"She was fairly adamant that she was a servant of the community; that I needed an open mind about it all, and that I was in need of... relaxation. Who knows what she really wanted. I couldn't shake her, so I finally said I would visit the tea house, but that I needed her to have an open mind as well."

His grip on the ladder tightened as he remembered that long walk to the tea house with Tisha.

"That woman I told you about earlier? The one who's pregnant and had lost her husband in the attack? I brought her with me. The Madame was so insistent on her role as a healer of the community, so I took from her meaning what I wanted."

For a moment the redhead said nothing, instead remembering that feeling of helplessness in the face of a grieving widow.

Finally, he went on.

"Tisha; I took her to the tea house and asked the Madame to talk to her. Try to rebuild the trust." He sighed. "Tisha almost had none of it, though I really couldn't blame her. All I could do was ask that she see things out. Bringing her there, to a business run by a Cizerack, after a Cizerack had killed her husband was a risk, but I'll give the Madame credit for not giving up."

His eyes closed.

"In the end, there was no real disaster. No explosive emotions or theatrics. It was just... one woman helping another begin to move through a painful loss."

[Anauri Rabeak]

The story Kes told was far from the one Anauri was expecting, and as he listened he began to forget where he was, and that he was trapped. Well, he began to, at least, but the power of his phobia would not be denied as it clawed and tore its way back into his mind, upsetting the furniture and making all the pictures on the walls go crooked. Doubling down in his focus on his work, he at least shooed out his panic with a broom once more, letting it snarl and roar on the porch while he attempted some blind soldering.

"Could've easily gone wrong, but I'm glad it went well in the end," he replied.

More sparks erupted from the access port, Anauri closing his eyes and grunting as he felt some of the freshly-grown fur on his left paw singe. "Trying to bypass the power to undo the hatch's locking clamp. If I can do that, I can pry this one open manually and we can keep moving up," the words came out almost mechanically. "And, yeah, sounds like your trip to the tea house went better than mine. C'mon, little wire, where are you? At least your closest staff didn't see you naked, for starters. There we go, gotcha. Or with a hardon." Immediately Anauri froze, pink eyes going wide.

"Uhhh, shit, that was supposed to be in my head, not out loud."

[Kes Akiena]

Caught off guard, Kes blinked in the mostly-dark access tube. His brow knit, then an almost sympathetic look passed over his features. He didn't even want to think about what would happen if he had found himself in Anauri's situation. Ever since coming to Jovan, he'd done his best to socialize with his staff, but there was a line that he could not allow himself to cross. It was a line that was watched by a great many eyes, and some he'd wager were simply waiting for him to stumble so that they could swoop in and drag him off to court martial. No, visiting the teahouse with anyone under his command, and actually lowering himself into one of those tubs?

A disaster. An utter disaster is what it would be.

Kes continued to lean on the wall, letting his head fall back to thunk against a panel.

"No no, that was in your head," his voice was actually a touch jovial, as he chose to make light of the flub.

[Anauri Rabeak]

"Well, thank Garfife for that," Anauri managed a chuckle. "I guess I should add, in my head of course, that it was a complete catastrophe overall, but at least it gave some of my staff a good laugh. That's gotta be worth something right?"

His paw flexed and writhed inside the access panel, accompanied by the occasional grunt, then a light whine. "Commander," Anauri said, closing his eyes once more. "I'm trying my best here, I really am, but I'm losing this fight. I don't know if I'll last long enough to get us out."

[Kes Akiena]

Angling his head to look up, Kes sent a concerned stare to Anauri. There wasn't much else he could think of, and having exhausted most ideas he could come up with quickly, he pursed his lips in worry. If Anauri essentially shut down, then there was going to be a whole heap of not-lot that would be done. He'd have to simply wait, and even that was an unknown, as there was no telling how long it'd take before his lack of presence went noticed. Noticed and actually acted upon. Though, Anauri's crew might smell foul first, so that was a hope.

Didn't make things now any better.

"You try rerouting the jumper switch through the vox control?" It was a last thought, and a long shot, at that. He'd had to rig up enough Imperial machinery in the past, and sometimes those old systems held a few surprises. Most of which was the Imperial penchant for creating access loopholes through the combination of seemingly unconnected systems.

[Anauri Rabeak]

Anauri could feel the beast scratching against the door of his mind, its claws shredding off shards of wood as it weakened the door, hinges groaning and flexing beneath its assault. Panicked breath tore in and out through his mouth as his heart raced, the pounding of his temples in time with the bashing of the beast of his fear upon his sanity.

Paws trembled and shook as he worked, tail lashing against the wall of the cylindrical shaft behind him.

"Vox control doesn't have enough power to run the servos that operate the hatch clamps," he replied, though it came out in Nehantite instead of Basic - a testament to the strain on his mind. Continuing in his native tongue, he carried on, "But if I can pull from the lighting, now that its circuit is fried, and from here, it just might be enough."

Whether Kes could understand a word of what he was saying or not, Anauri frantically went about his work, only having to beat his fist against the wall twice while he did so.

Clearing his throat, he remembered to speak in Basic. "Heads-up. I don't have spare wire which can handle the current that this needs. Going to have to jump it through myself. My boots should insulate me from the ladder, but you might want to let go of it, just in case."

There was nothing more for it. He could feel the door buckling and splintering, the hinges threatening to give way, and he gave only the briefest amount of time before jamming his index finger against the servo control, and his pinky against the three power wires he'd freed up.

Above Kes was a brief light show as sparks shot out of the access panel, and Anauri jolted hard, the flashlight falling from his shoulder to spin and clatter down to the floor below. The Nehantite's jaws clenched shut due to the surge of electricity through his system, but it did not stop the snarling roar which tore through his grit teeth. Above the din, thhe clang of the hatch lock could just barely be heard.

As quickly as it had come on, it was over, and Anauri eased his paw out of the access panel, the fur on his fingertips smoking lightly. "Heknesh frodara gupen lat!" he cursed, flexing the fingers of his left paw. For most men, the next thirty seconds or so would have been spent calming nerves and recovering from the shock, but Anauri had a vested interest in moving on as quickly as possible. Still numb from the shock, his left paw reached down into his bag, feeling around until his fingers closed down on an old-fashioned pry bar. He took care to extricate it, not wishing to drop anything more upon his commanding officer, and with little care he crammed its blade into the split on the hatch above him.

"Open sesame," Anauri grunted, jamming the pry bar in and wrenching down hard. The groan of gears and hydraulics being overridden by manual force sounded above him, but the Nehantite would not stop, working the bar deeper and deeper still until a crack of light shone down upon him, a ray of hope from the heavens. "And with the strength of righteousness, N'duk broke wide the doors of the temple!" he called out, wrenching as hard as he could upon the pry bar, the hatch opening wide for him.

[Kes Akiena]

It'd been a rather short-lived shower of sparks that washed over the Nehantite, then down atop himself before fading out just as quickly, and Kes said nothing as Anauri played the part of a power conduit. It was nothing new to him, he'd been a party to that same sort of desperation; and had a few times been forced to do the same tactic himself. It never really got any easier, and he could still sometimes feel those painful jolts rip through each square millimeter of his body in phantom remembrance.

He'd knelt to pick up the flashlight, only idly listening as Anauri went on.

The grinding of servos and whine of forced gears brought him back though, and Kes finally looked up as Anauri pushed the hatch fully open.

Blinking, he gave an internal sigh of relief. There wasn't much he felt like saying in the moment, but he spoke up anyway.

"Good job, Chief."

[Anauri Rabeak]

Anauri held the pry bar slack in his paws, leaning back and letting his improvised strap hold him in place as he stared up into the glorious expanse of light above. Like snow melting off the branches of a tree, his panic and terror fell away in clumps, freeing his spirit to rise once again. Deep breath after deep breath, he vented a sigh at long last.

"Thank you, Commander. I couldn't have done it without you. I wasn't even thinking about the vox control," he said. "Allow me to buy you a beer after we make it back to the station proper?"

The pry bar was deposited back into his toolbag, and his safety strap unthreaded to allow him to start climbing up into the next section. A well-aimed toss launched the diagnostic computer up to him, and he wasted little time in plugging it into the next port and running the open command. To both men's relief it clicked and opened immediately, leaving just one section to go before reaching the operating platform of spire six.

It was there, in the threshold of the next access tube that Anauri paused, and he swung to one side on the ladder so that he could look down and face Kes as fully as he could. "Also... thank you for helping me with my... problem. I wish you hadn't seen me like that, but, you got me through it. I truly couldn't have done it without you, sir. Thank you."

[Kes Akiena]

Looking up the ladder to Anauri, Kes gave a small nod. The breeze coming down from the now opened hatchway, though admittedly stale, was certainly fresh enough to signal that their time in cramped quarters had come to an end. Well, for now at least.

"Sometimes all someone needs is an ear, Chief."

An offered smile. There was no need to dig into any possibly wounded pride, and so the redhead maintained a simple, honest response.

"You're welcome."

He let a small bit of levity wash over his next words.

"And as long as that drink is not in the teahouse, then I gladly accept."

[Anauri Rabeak]

A hearty laugh fell back down the access shaft to reach Kes's ears. "Oh, Garfife, no!" Anauri replied. "I don't care what you might have heard about Nehantites, that is the last place I would want to take another male. Or... anyone, really."

Maybe Stashia. She'd get a kick out of it.

Keeping that thought private, Anauri resumed his climb. It was totally against regulation to leave so many hatches open below him, but as he didn't know what triggered the lockout in the first place, he wasn't going to follow the book on this one. A good engineer learns the rules. A great engineer knows when to break them. By the time he reached the final access port, the only tremor in his paws came from the strain of climbing a ladder. Atmosphere and pressure readings from the other side all listed in the green on his computer readout - a good indication he hadn't fried some shield circuit while messing about below - and so he pressed the button.

Hatches leading to large areas were always built to a different standard than interstitial maintenance hatches. Larger, heavier, and with more redundancies in both their failsafe and protection circuits, they were some of the most reliable systems on Jovan. And to Anauri's great relief, it worked exactly the way it was supposed to.

The Nehantite hefted his toolbag and tossed it out onto the floor above first, then hauled himself up onto solid ground. Spire six was still heavily damaged, with emergency lighting casting faint glows here and there, while half the decking was scarred and burnt from blaster fire and explosives, and an entire docking bay was simply... gone, while a force field kept the remainder of the port safe for workers. Anauri only had a moment to take it all in before Kes reached the top of the ladder, and Anauri extended his strong right paw to help him up.

"Welcome to spire six, Commander," he said with a smile. All traces of his previous terror had vanished entirely.

[Kes Akiena]

Accepting the hand up, Kes grasped Anauri's paw with a strong grip of his own, using the Nehantite's weight and muscle to help lever himself up and out of the access hatchway. A moment to roll his shoulders, he sent a look out to the emptiness.

Oh, he'd read the reports. He'd seen the holo snapshots that had accompanied those reports. He had seen the destruction and twisted metal; the bent girders and shorn moorings. The nothingness beyond a certain point. Where space and scarred metal met in an ugly dance of blackened scoring and angry, severed circuitry. It was a sight, that was for sure. But holos did no justice to the actual act of seeing it all with ones' own eyes. Kes frowned instinctively, unable to keep the expression from gracing his normally easy and jovial features. This here? This was destruction in its' purest form, and that he was on the edge of it - yet again - was unsettling. He knew the dangers associated with the posting he'd been given, but he'd hoped that they would not mirror his time in the Rebellion so closely. It was... disheartening. It was also enough to make him wonder if he was truly cursed.

"Hell of a view," he finally managed to rumble out in obvious displeasure.

A deep breath, his chest rising and falling, and he finally let his eye close as he inhaled the burn-tinged air that surrounded them. Even now, he could smell that stomach-dropping burnt ozone tinge in the air.

Eyes opening once more, Kes gave the slightest shake of his head.

"Damn shame."

[Anauri Rabeak]

For Anauri, the view held a very different significance. Immediately it was freedom, room to move and work without the walls closing in. Beyond that, it was a job, a rebuild of immense proportions which would require a great deal of time and effort for his crew to pull off. Of course, new saftey protocol would have to be put in place before his crew could return to spire six. First, an examination of why the hatches in the access shaft had failed, followed by regulation for everyone taking the access shaft to also carry a power pack with them. Second, there needed to be a small transport craft available at the top of the spire for emergency evacuation. Third... Anauri would compile the list later.

"You're not kidding," the Nehantite replied. The damage was severe, yes, but it could still be repaired in time. "I'll call us a ride."

No further time was wasted as Anauri approached the hard-wired comm unit and punched in a call to Main Engineering. "Hey, whoever's down there this is the Chief; I'm on spire six, at the top, with Commander Akiena. Send us a light transport for pickup. Service shaft is non-functional. I repeat, service shaft is non-functional."

A shuttle was confirmed, and Anauri disconnected. "Likely gonna be about fifteen minutes before it gets here," he announced. "I'd, uh, offer you a seat, but there really aren't any. I'm gonna go ahead and get what we came up here for in the first place. Be silly to come this far and forget it, not to mention it'd delay the opening of five."

As he turned to get to work, Anauri paused. "And, Commander, I'd..." he faltered, chewing his lip. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone about my, uh, my problem. I can't have them worrying about me, not when they've got work to do."