BBY 29 - Open Space

Jango's concerned frown filled the holoscreen. "Su cuy'gar Cye, where are you?"

"Right now? In open space near Corellia," she replied, not bothering to hide her relief. "Trying to figure out where to go next. Any ideas?" She wanted to be snarky, but her voice cracked as she asked.

"Are you alright, Ika'vod? Are you hurt?" Concern pervaded brother's tone. "What happened?"

Cye took a shuddering breath. "I was stealing top secret freighter schematics. Hondo was supposed to be there to get me off the station. He betrayed me. Left me to be caught and rot in some prison or worse." Heat flared in her cheeks as she remembered the many times Jango warned her against her relationship with the pirate. "I had to fight my way off, and now I'm stuck in a Starhopper. I don't know how I'm gonna get anywhere. You were right, Jan'ika. About everything." Her voice caught in her throat as tears welled in her eyes. The hopelessness of her situation was crushing. She might be safe from capture from Corellian authorities, but she was trapped nevertheless.

"Cye'ika," Jango said softly. "We can talk about that later. Right now, we have to get you home." Home. Such a foreign concept, but one she welcomed in that moment. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. "Good. Now, it's a straight shot on the Corellian Run to Tatooine. You fly there and I'll meet you in Mos Espa."

"That's four hours in hyperspace," Cye lamented.

"It's weeks otherwise," Jango said. "The other option is to stop at Denon and I'll get Zam to meet you. Should only be thirty minutes tops. Besides she owes me a favor, so she can keep an eye on you while you recover."

Both options were terrible, but Cye knew she could tolerate the clawdite bounty hunter more than she could four hours in hyperspace. "What the hell," she said as she wiped her cheeks, "I haven't actually met Zam as myself." Jango's worried frown cracked a fraction at her choking attempt at humor. "What are you going to tell her?"

"That I'm going to give her two thousand credits to watch over my sister," he said in a matter-of-fact tone that bore no argument. "And if anything happens to you that she'll be the first one to die."

"I guess that's one way to handle things." Cye grimaced painfully at the navicomputer controls. "I better get this over with."

"Hey." The scar lines on Jango's face creased heavily with his smile. "It's going to be okay. You'll get through the jump in one piece. I'll see you within the next couple days, and we'll spend some time with Boba on Kamino while you figure out your next move."

Cye sniffled, but smiled back at her brother. "Alright Ori'vod. I'll see you soon."

"Ni hukaat'kama, Ika'vod."

Jango ended the transmission, leaving the cockpit dark and foreboding as Cye started programming the navicomputer. As she finished calculations Jango sent another message with the coordinates to Zam's RV point. Once it was all keyed and the computer beeped all Cye needed to do was initiate the jump to hyperspace.

She stared at the controls, willing herself to start the jump. Her hand wavered over them, her pulse pounding in her ears as sweat beaded on the back of her neck. Fear kept Cye locked in place, trembling until her arm ached at being held aloft.

"Shab," she whispered as she brought her hand back. "Nibral. Ni'duraa!" she berated herself, but still didn't activate the ship's drive. With a growl she pried open the cleaning box with her armor. She ripped off strips of leather left over from her flak vest and tied them loosely together. Once it was long enough she put it over her eyes, cinching it tight to her head. Pushing up the edge of her makeshift blindfold she settled back into the pilot's seat. With her hand back on the controls she covered her eyes again, shut them tight, and made the jump to hyperspace.

Everyone she'd ever flown with said they never had any problems, never felt any difference inside hyperspace than they did out of it. Cye envied them, being able to freely traverse the galaxy without needing a piece of osik, betraying ex lover of a pirate to ferry them about.

For her the moment of the jump was always the same. It started with a punch in the gut, knocking the wind from her lungs. Her head buzzed like she'd been slamming back shot after shot of tihaar. Her body felt as though she were falling in a dream, and then suddenly she was in hyperspace.

She gripped the sides of the chair, holding on tight enough that she lost feeling in her fingertips. She kept her eyes squeezed shut and began to count the minutes.

After five minutes, even through the blindfold, she swore she could see the kaleidoscopic swirl of hyperspace. She twisted in the chair until she was positive she was no longer facing the viewport. After ten minutes the blue streaks of tumbling light played in her mind. Bile rose in her throat, and she practiced her breathing exercises to keep the dizziness at bay. How could Jango tell her to fly all the way to Tatooine in this deathtrap?

Skies it's hot in here. Seventeen minutes in and she was soaked in sweat. All Cye wanted to do was rip the stupid leather blindfold from her eyes and gulp down a full canteen of water. A strange, dissonant chord rang in her ears, like the ending note of every song ever played in every shady cantina all at once. She rubbed her temples, trying to will the sound away when her finger snagged the edge of her blindfold and it slipped off her eyes.

Others who didn't understand her condition would tell her that hyperspace is calming and hypnotic. That they wished they could stay and bathe in the zen-like effects it has on them. Those people were insane.

All Cye ever saw was a swirling mass of chaos that sent her reeling sideways. She couldn't tell up from down, forward from backward, left from right. It overwhelmed her senses to the point where she couldn't tell where she was, or how to move. Even in the cramped space of the Starhopper Cye lost her seat, tumbling in the small cockpit. Dizziness and nausea erupted from her gut and in seconds the contents of her stomach spread over the floor.

Cye curled up on the floor in her own vomit, tucking her knees up to her eyeballs to try and block out the spiraling maelstrom. She tucked her arm into her side and hissed as a sharp burning sensation blazed up her ribs. It was a knee jerk decision to look and when she did, all she saw was swarming blue light surrounding a red, oozing snake.

Bile rose again and she choked it down as she frantically waved her arm around the cabin searching blind for her armor. She grazed the box with the back of her hand, then flailed to grab a hold of it. Not wanting to lose it she tumbled forward pressing herself against it as she latched onto the edge of the box with her armor. She reached into it, her eyes still clenched shut despite the tears streaming down her cheeks, and sorted through the pieces until she felt the shoulder plate with her father's aliik, Jaster Mereel's mythosaur kyr'bes, and crushed it to her chest.

"Ja'buir, gaa'tayl! Liniba kot'gar," Cye sputtered between gasps. She focused on her father, on the first time she experienced crippling hyperspace vertigo. She'd been so happy to leave Concord Dawn for the first time on her 6th birthday. Excitement at learning how to pilot Jaster's starship quickly morphed to confusion and terror when they made the practice jump to hyperspace. 'K'oyacyi,' he said gently as he calmed her down and cleaned up the mess. 'K'oyacyi, Cye'ika. Gar aala jate'shya mhi yaim'ol.'

Twenty six minutes in and she'd managed to keep from vomiting again. She forced herself to focus on survival. Her head swam and her eyes played tricks on her behind her closed eyelids, but at least she was sitting up. Her side was sticky and warm. Somehow she'd managed to cut herself some, but she wasn't about to open her eyes to do anything about it, not until it was safe.

Twenty eight minutes in and the navicomputer beeped incessantly, announcing that the ship would need to leave hyperspace shortly. The next thirty seconds were the most tense part of the trip as she got to her knees and hunted blindly over the controls for the right lever. Once she found it she didn't wait for the ship to prompt her, she simply powered down and slumped to the floor once again, hoping the manda wouldn't take her just yet.

The trip ended like it began. Cye pressed her back against a panel, trying to fight the sensation of free floating in the void. Then she slammed into reality, coughing and gasping for breath like she had the wind knocked out of her as the ship left hyperspace.

"Fierfek." The croaking voice barely sounded like her. She gradually uncurled herself from around her father's pauldron and began to feel around for the chair. Her body quivered as she pulled herself into the seat. On the count of three, then five, and finally seven, Cye opened her eyes. She collapsed back in a whimper to see Denon filling the viewport.

Blood coated the right side of her maintenance jumper. She pulled at the uniform and saw that she'd cut straight through her kute in a jagged zigzag. "Damn it," Cye said as she looked around the floor and eyed the culprit. Her vibroblade was lodged under a side panel. She bent down and pulled it out, knowing how lucky she'd been that it hadn't been activated. It would have sliced straight through her ribcage and she'd have bled out already.

She held the blade in her trembling grip and cut away the fabric enough to see the wound better then tossed it into the box with her armor so she wouldn't have another accident. She pried out a bacta patch from her utility belt and unfolded it. Carefully she pressed it against the cut, holding her breath as sealed it against her skin. That would hold until she got planetside. Her head pounded as she took over the ship's controls. She pulled up the HUD and flew to the coordinates Jango provided.

Denon reminded her of Coruscant. The city planet didn't go as deep as Coruscant did, but it was just as dirty. She flew beyond the major districts to the quadrants of the megacity where they wouldn't ask questions about her ship or her current state. She wondered what kind of impression she would make on Zam and if Jango would be embarrassed by her first real introduction to the woman who saved his life on Kholma.

Cye dived into the city towards the specified landing platform. It looked to be attached to a casino. A transmission came and she patched in through the ship's comm. "What?"

A woman chuckled on the other end. "I was going to ask who this was, but I don't need to ask you anything to know you're Jango's blood."

"Zam Wesell?"

"The very same. Set down on the north end, I'll meet you out there."

Cye clicked off the transmission and steadied the ship to land as instructed. As she powered down a petite woman with short blonde hair wearing a form fitting purple dress walked towards the ship with a bag under her arm. Cye opened the cockpit and sucked in the cool air. She made it.

"Oh sweetie, you look like warm bantha fodder." Cye's eyes snapped open, not realizing she'd closed them. Zam had climbed up to the cockpit and sat with her legs swinging casually over the edge. She grinned as her nose wrinkled. "And you smell like it too. Come on, let's get you cleaned up."

Mando'a Translations

Su cuy'gar - Hello (lit. 'You're still alive')

Ika'vod - Little sister (vod'ika is the common term to use with any close friend or relatives, but this is what Jango uses for Cye specifically)

Ori'vod - Big brother / Older brother

-'ika - diminutive suffix written as 'ika - also added to a name as a very familiar or childhood form

Ni hukaat'kama - I've got your back.

Shab - Fuck

Nibral. Ni'duraa! - Loser/Failure. You disgust me!

Osik - Shit

Tihaar - alcoholic drink - strong clear spirit made from fruit

Aliik - sigil, symbol on armor

Kyr'bes - skull, especially mythosaur skull - coll. Crown

Buir (Ja'buir) - Father/Mother/Parent (the name Cye used with her father, Jaster)

Gaa'tayl! Liniba kot'gar - Help! I need your strength

K'oyacyi - Hang in there. Literally, a command; *Stay alive!*

Gar aala jate'shya mhi yaim'ol - You'll feel better when we get home

Manda - the collective soul or heaven - the state of being Mandalorian in mind, body and spirit - also supreme, overarching, guardian-like

Fierfek - Huttese curse, similar to Shab but more widely used by non-Mandalorians

Kute - underwear, bodysuit, something worn under armor