"Thank you."

She warily eyes the cockpit interior as DZ says the word 'safe'--perhaps noting the conspicuous shortage of inertial harnesses.

Deskyl notices her wariness, and demonstrates her telekinesis with a few quick movements that seem blatantly impossible.

    "Deskyl will keep us from moving around in flight."

"Okay. That's..." Drishti blinks. "Yes. I'll be in the corner if you need anything."

She tugs herself along and wedges herself into the space where three padded walls come together.

    "Let's go, then."

The hatchway shuts tight and the docking umbilical retracts.

Shreya kicks off the ceiling and alights on one of Devika's harness tethers.

"You've been at it for a few degrees. Want to switch off?"

Devika nods and, once the SLAYER's drifted a safe distance from the facility Dysofrag and performed a scanner sweep to confirm a lack of oncoming debris, unclips herself from her harness and helps Shreya sync up in her place.

Deskyl helps with this, too, guided by Devika's understanding of the maneuver and impatient to be on her way.

It doesn't take long. Even without outside assistance, a properly trained pilot can get another person unplugged from a SLAYER and then plug herself into it in less than half a minute. Changing out the harness takes a little longer, but there's no reason the SLAYER itself can't be in motion during that time.

Shreya quickly familiarizes herself with the available navigational data and picks up where Devika left off. In all, they lose barely any progress at all.

Devika settles down beside Deskyl once Shreya's all the way strapped in.

She doesn't say anything for a while.

Eventually she mutters: "Not what I expected."

Deskyl snuggles up. She's still tense, a little shaky even, not enough to be visible at any range but detectable by touch. Yeah.

"Are you really going to work with her?"

Being told masked figure was a 'he' does not actually give Devika access to words like 'him' or 'his' and she's not particularly interested in having a language lesson right now.

"After everything that... after I was..."

She clenches and unclenches a fist. Shakes her head.

"No..." Devika appreciates everything Deskyl has done for her, and does not want to let herself speak. "...sorry, I'll..."

She'll keep quiet and listen is what she'll do.

(But her thoughts, unbidden, continue to retrace childhood torments.)

Deskyl sighs.

    "Sith are like that, Ma'am, almost all of them. She's not going to change him by disapproving; at best she'll be able to minimize the collateral damage."

Devika nods. That does make a sort of sense.

"Was it tough for the two of you, before, thinking you were the only ones left from wherever you came from?"

Deskyl curls in on Devika a bit.

    "Not at all, she says. It was nice to be safe, and to be able to have what she wanted."

Yeah. That makes sense. That would be nice.

"What we've just learned, it changes a lot of things. We need to... reevaluate our mission profile?"

It feels like they currently don't have a mission profile.

and Devika would feel so lost without a mission

    "Yes Ma'am. For now, we're gathering information; she'll decide what to do once she knows more about him and this facility."

    "It might not be safe for you to go back to the outpost. As long as you're under Deskyl's protection, he won't hurt you unless he's willing to make an enemy of her, but that's not true if you're operating independently."

"I understand."

"I'll stay close to you until instructed otherwise, and keep a close eye on our surroundings."

Shreya, meanwhile, pilots competently.

She avoids further expenditure of flash plates, but apart from that crosses the distance between the two hidden facilities as swiftly as her biomech can manage.

The inertial frame shifts when she goes from acceleration to deceleration.

"Devika." She glances over her shoulder. "Could you ask your friend if she has reaction mass to spare? My SLAYER'll be near to empty by the time we arrive."

Right. Veda.

Devika tells Shreya to open a line to the DEUS and then proceeds to have a lengthy conversation with Veda's holographic simulacra.

The conversation in question is, of course, only half-legible to those not versed in Oswan meaning scribbles.

Deskyl does her best not to listen in, though it's not perfect.

"I brought her up to speed. She's confused and alarmed by recent developments."

"She has reaction mass to spare. She points out that we could reach our destination more quickly if we decouple ourselves from her DEUS after the propellant transfer."

    "Deskyl would rather have the firepower, if Veda doesn't mind staying along. She can make up the acceleration."

"I don't think she wants to stay."

It sounds like those words hurt to say.

"I could maybe convince her, but..."