Quinn was lying flat on his back, his legs extending out from underneath the ship's coolant system. His head was obscured under pipes and tubing that stretched up over the entire length of his torso. Vette sat nearby his feet, maintaining a constant twittering chatter that Quinn had long since blocked out as he yanked and manipulated various piping cylinders into their correct configuration.
"Vette. I need an arc welder," Quinn grunted, his voice muffled from under the machinery.
Vette fumbled through the tool box she dumped against her side, mumbling impishly, "Arc welder, arc welder … Maybe I used it on Toovee's innards the last time I mucked around in his head … Got it!" She passed the tool into Quinn's hand that he reached out from under the machine, grinning madly when he loosed a wearied sigh.
Jaesa tumbled into the engine room right then, fairly tripping over a box full of metallic ship parts set nearby the doorway. Likely delivered during the ship's most recent foray to the Imperial Fleet, where she followed Lusiel's path through the markets and examined the various personnel with wide eyes. She had not thought to ask or help the tired-looking workers who carried the materials onto the Wing, nor even looked at where they placed the things.
Now she hopped and skipped in pained and embarrassed distress on one foot, clutching the toes of her other foot with her fingers. Vette shook with laughter, as she rolled along the floor by Quinn's feet.
Jaesa considered some punishment she could levy against the Twi'lek – a twist to one of her tender lekku, a zap of electric shock on her backside, even a serious club upside her big, blue head. But she knew that her master would be displeased. For whatever strange reason, Lusiel seemed to like Vette. Jaesa couldn't quite understand the appeal, although Vette did have her uses.
Jaesa did understand what Lusiel liked about Quinn. At least she thought she did, glancing down towards Quinn's legs as they shifted back and forth along the floor. But Quinn had his own status in Lusiel's affection. One that literally screamed "Hands Off!" to her. So Jaesa stayed carefully mum on whatever brief interest she felt in regards the Imperial.
How did she best approach Lusiel, in regards those more physical of her desires, though? Lusiel insisted Jaesa should give vent to her passions, all of her strongest emotions. But the Jedi were adamantly opposed to overt or excessive behaviors involving anything like a romantic relationship, and Jaesa simply had no real experience with such things, regardless.
It would likely be best, to simply ask outright. Before she did something stupid. Like make an overture to the closest thing to a man on board the Wing and end up in the Med Bay afterwards. If she were lucky. Lusiel might send her flying straight out the airlock, rather. Considering the crimson of Lusiel's normal aura, Jaesa rather doubted she would be lucky in the aftermath of such an offense.
Vette continued smirking at her, and Jaesa glared towards the twi'lek spitefully. Then she reconsidered, slowly scanning the twi'lek's slight frame all garbed carefully in proper technician's apparel as she worked over the ship's engines. The small blue-skinned female giggled, "Better watch out for that box. It jumps out at you when you least expect it."
Jaesa rolled her eyes, "Oh, that one truly stings. I'm so impressed. Truly! Can't you tell?" Of all the people on board the ship, surely Vette could give her some pointers on how to entice masculine attentions. Maybe if she threatened her, somehow.
Quinn remained quiet as the two women argued, only continued his tinkering motions underneath the engines. He rarely paid attention to anyone that Jaesa had seen. Except for Lusiel. Everyone paid attention to her. Not the way Quinn did, however. No, Quinn watched Lusiel like she was a rich wine and he was a connoisseur of the stuff. Like he wanted to bury himself in her, just lose himself. He seemed to ache with it.
At first, Jaesa assumed his feelings were only so strong because Lusiel didn't feel the same way. Except then she noticed Lusiel watched him just as much, and just as intently. She wanted him, too.
It was all so purely confounding, Jaesa thought. If Sith were able to explore their strongest feelings, their greatest passions – well, then why did Lusiel deny hers? It was baffling just watching them together.
Vette continued chuckling, "Yep, you're obviously done in by the most simple puzzles. A single box just frustrates the crap out of you." Jaesa growled at her and Vette laughed even harder.
Quinn reprimanded them from underneath the coolant machinery, not even bothering to look, "Do not get blood anywhere in the engine room!" Vette grinned at Jaesa, sticking out her tongue to deliberately taunt her. Jaesa pantomimed kicking the twi'lek. But Vette only skirted sideways, so that Jaesa would kick Quinn rather. Jaesa lightly stomped her foot back down onto the floor, and Vette laughed again.
Jaesa sighed, explaining, "Captain Quinn, there's a transmission for you on the holo. Some old guy, in a uniform. He seems upset." Quinn mumbled something. Jaesa wasn't sure but she thought he said, "Not again."
Then Quinn scooted himself back out from underneath the machine. Jaesa watched as he moved to the sink nearby and scrubbed his hands and arms, then reached for his coat that had been hanging across one of the nearby venting pipes. How he managed to present such a duly appropriate appearance in mere moments was mind-boggling, and Jaesa gaped at him as he pulled his uniform into tidy place and marched out of the engine room.
Jaesa turned back to Vette after Quinn had gone, watched her return the tools they had used to work on the engines back into place all around the room. She asked the twi'lek, "So who's calling?"
"Oh please, let's not talk about Broysc. It's headache enough we have to listen to him every time he's on the holo."
The figure of Moff Broysc was slight, aging. He was hunched over a bit as he twitched and shook back and forth over the top of the holoterminal, and his voice as he screeched at them was raspy rather than forceful. Lusiel studied the little man with narrow judgment, watching the thick mustache covering his upper lip tremble as he pointed at her and yelled shrilly. Quinn mumbled to her as she stepped up to stand beside him, "These transmissions have increased. They're beginning to disrupt operations, my lord. He's nearly incoherent, as you can tell."
Quinn's frustration was intense. So Lusiel eyed the Moff critically, listening as he ranted. He didn't seem to know where he was or who it was he was talking to, "Flew the coop! Your new cage will be smaller. And tighter! Coffin-sized. No smaller! I'll put you in a locket that hangs around my neck!" Broysc shook even harder as his agitation seemed to increase, "Druckenwell proved my point. The glory is mine! Mine! You're nobody!"
"It's unlikely he'll stop, my lord," Quinn rubbed his forehead wearily. "I hesitated to bring this to your attention, mind you. Except that the knowledge I have left Balmorra has further unstabilized the Moff's slender grasp on reality. He seems to be completely mad." Lusiel pressed her lips tightly closed, as she shuttered her memories and focused on the present.
"Vette tells me he's communicated with the Wing on numerous occasions. What seems to be bothering him this time?"
"He's threatening to destroy Balmorra because I somehow 'escaped' the place, actually." Quinn was disgusted as Broysc snarled and jumped like a maddened gizka right over the holocommunication. He seemed to jump up and down right there in place, screeching, "Why did you transfer me, Radjnic? I see a Sith on this thing! Not the Admiral."
Lusiel glanced at Quinn, murmured questioningly, "Admiral?"
Quinn shrugged, "He calls me the 'Admiral Malcontent.' He seems to believe that's my actual rank and name." Lusiel's mouth twisted into a slow grimace. Quinn looked away, before he embarrassed himself by staring too hard at the way her lips pouted prettily with anger.
Lusiel wagged her finger at the holotransmission. "Broysc, calm yourself!"
Moff Broysc glared back at her. "How dare you! Wait … You! It was you who liberated the Admiral! Have you lost your mind? Don't you know it was because of him we lost the Battle of Talay?" Quinn sighed, explaining again. "Broysc's earliest command. Before I was born."
"It was his blunder that allowed the escaped Jedi to flee Taris before the bombardment!"
"Three hundred years ago, actually. Broysc wasn't even born, then."
"He sabotaged the Glory Space Station, for crying out loud!"
"I have no idea what that is, my lord."
Quinn anticipated Lusiel's amusement, thought she might laughingly jeer at the Moff's mind-numbing routine. But she seemed stiffly disapproving, rather. She only stood there, frozen and frowning up at the image of Broysc' gross incompetence. Like a terribly proper Sith statue standing there, and she only said, "Broysc, you are unfit for command. I want you to resign."
"Oh ho, Sith! I'm not unfit, just passionate about this … scourge … that threatens us all! Once it's eradicated, we'll all be fine! You! I order you to deliver him to me so that he can be executed!" Broysc stomped his skinny boot against the edging of his holoterminal, once and then twice. Lusiel wondered what other damage he made the men and women under his command had to typically repair, actually.
Lusiel shook her head, "No. You do not order me! You lunatic fool!"
"Then I accuse you alongside him! Radjnic, cut transmission! Cut it!"
Lusiel was disgusted. She was tempted to kick her own holoterminal, actually. But then she noticed Jaesa and Vette standing nearby, their mouths hanging open as they watched. She contented herself with a slow roll of her shoulders, as she sighed. She would not lose control enough to descend into childish tantrums, at least. "Have you contacted Imperial High Command, captain? That man is unhinged."
"No one will confront Moff Broysc, no matter who I address. Too many powerful allies, too entrenched. No, he's determined to serve, regardless of criticism or blunder." Quinn's gaze hardened. "And he will never willingly step down. It's seems clear I must deal with Broysc myself."
Lusiel lifted her chin. This Broysc and his oh-so-powerful friends had managed to castigate her captain to Balmorra once before. She knew enough to read between the lines, to know that today wasn't the first time the word execution had been tossed at Quinn's face, though. She was Sith, and no one threatened her people. "No. You will bring him to me." Quinn stared at her for a long moment, before nodding his head just once and marching smartly from the room.
She stood in front of the terminal long after Quinn had left her. Her mind swam with old memories – "He's weak, failed! I told you! I told you to leave him, to just let him go! I'll give you a new brother, once he's gone!" Blood, then. More ranting. Then her brother was screaming, trying to just get away from her. Lusiel shuddered lightly, as she remembered. Madness plagued the weak. It stole the best of the strong, weakened the whole of them. Lusiel had no patience for it, whenever she saw it and knew it for what it was. She refused it utterly, in any shape it took.
Broysc wouldn't step down. So he'd die.
Vette heard the man's yelling. She skittered down to the hold, just in time to see Quinn dragging Moff Broysc into the space. Vette recognized him, of course. Even if he was trussed and bound up like a wrapped sausage that Quinn tossed down against the floor. Vette giggled when Broysc took to flopping around there, kicking his thin legs and screeching, screeching and rolling back and forth along the floor.
He reminded her of a hard-shelled animal Nok Drayan had brought to Risha once from the planet Mon Calamar. He'd called the animal a turtle. When he threw it onto the floor at Risha's feet it landed on its back with its legs kicking futilely in the air, unable to right itself. Risha and Vette had spun the creature on its back for endless ages, giggling the entire while.
Vette almost asked Quinn if she could spin Broysc around like she had that long ago turtle. Make some new, sweet memories at least. But Quinn was watching as Lusiel entered the room right then, and he never even glanced at Vette. He only reached down and yanked the Moff up by the scruff of his jacket, shaking him slightly to make him aware of Lusiel's entrance.
Broysc began screaming when he saw Lusiel, "You … Sith! I'm commandeering this vessel, all this crew ! To contend with this Malcontent! Do you hear?" Vette snorted, along with Jaesa, who'd come down from the crew quarters when the shouting began. The two of them stood quietly waiting, their shoulders bumping impishly as they watched the show.
"Shut up, Broysc!" Lusiel slapped Broysc sharply, across one narrow cheek of his face and then the other. Broysc reared back and roared at her. Vette might have warned him, but she sensed how far removed from the events Lusiel really was. Broysc was a dead man already; he was just going about it a bit more loudly than the ones they normally mowed down, she thought.
"I'm a Moff, I command you! You! You'll do as I say, you and all your people! I'll kill you all, you'll all be executed!"
"You don't threaten my people, lunatic!" Lusiel made to grab the Moff, to grip him with the Force and finally be done with him. But Quinn called to her, just before her power was let loose on the sodded fool.
"My lord!" Quinn glared at Broysc' rolled-up figure with the utmost disdain, his nose curled with disgust, "I would gladly rid the Empire of this wasted figure. Like throwing trash out the airlock! Please!" Lusiel sighed.
"No! I'm a Moff! I am a Moff! You can't do anything to me!" Broysc began twitching as he rolled around even more, his agitation so greatly increasing Vette thought he was surely going to die of shock right then and there. She whispered sideways towards Jaesa, "Ugliest turtle in creation."
Jaesa glanced at her, "What exactly is a turtle?"
But Quinn was snarling, "You're not a Moff any longer, Broysc!" Quinn thumped the man in the nose, sending Broysc' head flying back to thud hard against the floor. Broysc yelped like a wounded Akk dog, before he began to cry. Vette goggled at the sight, then. Broysc cried as loudly as he did everything else, anyway.
"Just dispose of him, Quinn. I don't wish to regard him any further," Lusiel turned around on the heel of her softly-tooled leather boots and strode out from the room. Quinn murmured as she went, something respectful-sounding. But he didn't look at her. Jaesa was the only one who leaned over slightly to watch as Lusiel left the hold and climbed the stairs to the upper decks.
Jaesa frowned, watching her go. Lusiel's normally brilliant red aura was tinged gray, like it was pockmarked with soot, or grit. Like something had smudged up against her, and left a bruise in its wake. Jaesa sensed her master was far more disturbed by the events than anyone really understood. Perhaps she should mention something to …
Quinn used his blaster, held tightly against the side Broysc' temple as Quinn held his head down with one boot pressed hard into his neck. Broysc wheezed out a single breath as he died, his blood flashing in a single splat up against the floor. Quinn grimaced, and palmed his personal weapon as he turned around to direct them both, "These tiles of flooring should be easily replaced. Send all the debris out with the waste drop this afternoon. All of it." He idly toed Broysc's shattered figure on the floor.
Vette sighed, "It was so much better when he still looked like a skinny turtle. Now he's just another mess to clean up."
