Marr gasps for air as he regains consciousness. Struggling to find any air, he once again uses the same force technique as before to preserve what little air he had in his lungs to sustain him. Guessing that the ships life support most be down, Marr clambered out of his pod, fell to the ground and began crawling his way towards some nearby plasteel containers and frantically searched through them before finding what he was looking for ... a breathing respirator. He quickly strapped it to his face and clasps his hand over his chest as he begins to breath heavily and air once again starts circulating throughout his lungs. Marr sits up, and examines his surroundings. It took several minutes, but eventually Marr manages to slow his breathing and regain his composure.
"What ... what happened?" Marr managed to sputter out, despite feeling light headed.
He slowly pulled himself back onto his feet. Seeing through the force, Marr takes in his surroundings. The med-centre that he found himself in lies in complete ruin, every piece of equipment was destroyed and scattered around the area. He looked back towards the stasis pod he was in and examined it a bit closely.
"Huh, seems like this thing was on the verge of power failure. Lucky for me the emergency release activated." He looked more closely at the console before realising who was responsible for this good fortune.
"Thank you R3."
Moments later, Marr exits the med-centre and begin exploring the surrounding area. An eerie silence now engulfs the once busy activity of the ships hallways, where once colonists interacted with each other with optimistic excitement while his fellow Jedi would debate each other on the force while on their way to training or their duties. Occasionally, the young Jedi would come across a closed blast door blocking his path, and with the power down, he needed to use his lightsaber to cut his way through.
After making his way through the ship, Marr made a stop at the canteen, hoping to find some food to scavenge ... to no avail. Hungry, he forced himself to make his way towards the bridge. When he finally reached it, Marr looked around the area, only to find the charred and melted remains of R3. From the looks of it, the little droid remained at its post until the very end, taking steps to preserve its Jedi friend as the intense heat ended its existence.
"Your sacrifice will not be forgotten, my friend." Marr muttered quietly to himself as he approached the main console, but like most of the equipment he's come across, it's circuitry has been fried and is now useless. He looked up towards the main observation windows, only to see that the external blast doors now covered them, a last ditch effort of R3 to protect the bridge. With the power still down, Marr reached out through the force and began using it to "manually" open the doors from within. Slowly the doors were fully open and Marr looked out into the void of space.
"Now ... Where in the galaxy am I?"
It took a long time for Marr to navigate his way down to the dreadnaught's main hanger bay, hoping to find a means off the ship. As he entered into the main hanger, he felt his hope drift away as he witnessed the ruins surrounding him. Most of the shuttles stationed onboard were heavily damaged and Marr manoeuvred his way around the bay in the vain attempt to find something ... anything he could use. However, every shuttle he examined was far beyond his skills to repair. Even if he could piece together a fully functional "UGLY", it would do him little good since he was unable to open the hanger bay doors to leave.
With his options beginning to run dry, Marr exited the shuttle he was examining. However, as he made his way across the bay, he could have sworn he heard something off at the opposite end of the bay. He ignited his lightsaber and cautiously walked over to the source of the disturbance.
Marr called out, "Is anyone there?" Only to be met with silence. Thinking that it must of been nothing, he turned to walk away only to distinctly hear a soft beeping noise, coming from the direction of a pile of debris. Quickly he raised his hand over to the wreckage and used the force to pull towards him the noises source only for it to be ... a rather beaten up R5 astromech droid.
"By the force! Where have you been hiding?" Marr gasped. However the droid was panicking, screeching and whistling frantically before running away from the Jedi.
"No, wait!"
He hurried off and cut in front of the droid to prevent it from going any further. The droid however was still panicking and Marr attempted to calm it down.
"Just relax my friend, I mean you no harm." Marr said reassuringly, "I didn't know if anything else was... whoa, put that thing away."
The droid had protruded its "shock" arm and threatened Marr with it.
"Just listen to me", he held out his lightsaber for the droid to take a closer look. "I'm a Jedi Knight. My name is Javif Marr and I'm a survivor like you." The droid seemed to calm down a bit before letting Marr continue on. "Now ... what do I call you?"
The droid waited for a few moments before responding in its binary language.
"R5-TY?" Marr confirmed, "Tell me R5, how did you survive the attack?"
The droid responded.
"You hid? How about the radiation?"
The droid responded.
"The shields? What shields?"
The droid responded.
"The ships shields? Wait I don't understand."
R5 fired off into a rant of beeps, whistles and screeches and would have just seemed like incoherent noise to some people, but to Marr ... it was still a incoherent mess. This droid wasn't making any sense, ranting and raving like a lunatic. Marr was able to pick up bits and pieces here and there, something about a ship, shields and the number of screws it has collected, along with each of their names.
"You've ... been alone for a while, haven't you?" Marr asked concerned. It was said that R-series droids were known to develop personality quirks over time without regular mind wipes. But with the state R5 seemed to be in, it was like full blown madness. The droid let out a sympathetic sigh, informing Marr that it no longer remembered how long it had been functioning, nor the last time it spoke to "Gignar" the imaginary talking Dewback that only spoke in rhyme.
"Okayyyy...", Marr responded while thinking to himself that he must have been in that pod for a long time for this droid to reach such a state of functionality. "How about you show me how you managed to survive this long."
the droid hesitated for a moment but then sped off in the direction behind Marr, towards one of the private hangers with the Jedi giving chase.
Marr quickly followed R5 into the private hanger, only to be met face to face with his possible salvation.
"That's ... that's a Corellian YT-2400 light freighter! Marr gasped in astonishment. "Where did this come from?"
R5 responded with some energetic whistles.
"No ... I know from a shipyard, what I mean is... never mind." He began walking up towards the freighter, admiring it. The ship's exterior seemed only to be lightly damaged, likely due to being confined to a private hanger, giving it more protection. "This must have been intended to be used to transport goods and equipment between the Outbound Flight and other worlds. It's not standard complement however ... I wonder who it belonged to?"
Realising the droid was ignoring him, he tore his attention away from the vessel to see that the droid had disappeared up its open loading ramp. Quickly he made his way up the ramp and into the ship.
Onboard, Marr briefly explored the interior of the YT-2400. It was configured with a pair of starboard bracing arms that connected to the cockpit compartment, essentially a long tube. The aft section of the cockpit tube contained the primary escape pod, which seated six. The bracing arm's interior space contained the crew quarters and living space. The rounded hull area was devoted to cargo holds and ship's systems. Much of the interior hull space was taken up by modified engines, power generators and weapons systems. A second escape pod, as well as the airlock, was located on the far side of the cargo compartment, directly opposite the bracing arms.
"No wondered this has become a favourite amongst the smuggling community" Marr reasoned. He found R5 near one of the ships power generators just as the droid was charging itself up.
"I see, you've been using the power generators to keep yourself charged" Marr said, "and I assume this ships shield deflectors is what protected you from the radiation?"
R5 beeped in confirmation, while Marr sits down on a nearby seat.
"So, we've got a fully functional ..." suddenly R5 let out a high pitch screech as it received an electrical shock from the damaged power generator, followed by being thrown back several feet and crashing into the wall.
"Nearly ... fully functional ship. With some minor repairs we should be fine. All we need now are the override codes."
The still smoking droid let out a puzzled whistle as it put itself upright.
"We're gonna need those to escape this dreadnaught, this freighter doesn't have the fire power to get through those hanger doors." Marr takes a deep breath and thinks for a moment. "We need a protocol droid."
R5 lets out another whistle.
"All protocol droids assigned to the Outbound Flight project are required to have the override protocol codes in their memory banks in case of emergency ... which we're in. The only challenge is finding one."
The droid didn't understand.
"It may not matter if it's destroyed", Marr reassured the droid. "If we can find one with its head still intact." He gets to his feet and makes his way towards R5. The Jedi kneels down in front of the droid and uses the end of his robe to wipe away some of the scorch marks on R5s chassis. On closer inspection, Marr notices the general condition of the droid, corrosion, scratches and ... rust. Thanks to the lack of maintenance he's clearly suffered through.
"No time like the present, let's get started ... Rusty."
Over the next several hours, both Marr and Rusty searched the nearby area for any protocol droid they could find. Unfortunately this proved easier said than done. They struggled to find a droid they needed, and when they did come across one, it was usually too damaged to use. Finally, after searching amongst the wreckage and debris, Rusty zooms out into the hanger and towards Marr, dragging behind it the near intact head and torso of a blue protocol droid.
After removing the droids head, Marr hooked it up to the freighters onboard computer (after many explosive attempts by Rusty). With just enough power from the freighters power generators, Marr was able to transmit the codes from the droids databanks to the hanger bay doors and luckily for them it worked. The doors began to open and Marr got into the cockpit with Rusty by his side and began launch preparations.
"Alright Rusty", He looks over to his droid companion. "Moment of truth."
He activates the ships engines and after a nerve racking silence, the ship came to life. Rusty whistled excitedly and Marr let out a sigh of relief.
"The force is with us."
On that note, he took hold of the controls and guided the ship out of the hanger bay doors and flew off into space, escaping the dreadnaught. Having being used to piloting star fighters and not cargo freighters, Marr took a little time to get use to the feel of this ship. He made a few passes around the dreadnaught, taking in the the sight of its exterior damage, amazed that it's still in one piece. Marr also made note that judging from its damage, the engines must have given out and left the dreadnaught to drift along in deep space. Until it got caught in the gravitational orbit of a dwarf planet that, according to the sensors, seems to be on the very edge of this system.
"Ok, Rusty see if you can find the nearest populated planet."
The droid complied and used the long range sensors to complete the task set to him. After a few minutes, Rusty whistled in excitement and informed the Jedi of his discovery.
"Third world closest to this systems star? Then let's get moving."
With a new sense of purpose folding out in front of him, Marr engaged the ships engines and took of towards what he'd hope would be a new future.