Above the watery, mountainous planet Gaulus, a Jumpmaster Long Range Scout drops out of hyperspace. Renn Herkin pilots the Resolve in closer to the planet as Renci Tosh enters the small cockpit and takes up a position behind him, looking down over his right shoulder at the read-outs. The JM-5000’s sensors work at extreme range, giving them ample warning for what is to come. Seemingly out of nowhere, Renci asks Renn if he has ever been to the Givin homeworld. When he indicates he has not, she tells him about how it has pockets of vacuum and pockets of atmosphere. Based on the numbers before her, it seems that this planet is similar.
“Just up here, or are we goin’ ta have ta deal with that at ground level, as well?” he asks.
Renci judges that it is just the upper atmosphere but puts a positive spin on things: “This could be a good planetary feature for a Rebel base, as it would cause trouble for approaching TIE fighters.”
“Well, right now, it’s goin’ ta be causin’ trouble fer us,” Renn replies, as the ship enters the atmosphere and he has to concentrate on evading the vacuum pockets.
Renci notices an interesting blip and encourages Renn to bring the ship down near it. Dealing with the wild pressure changes taxes the Resolve’s systems, and the sensor computer starts rebooting. Renci remains poised just behind Renn’s shoulder studying the monitors and comments, “Looks like there won’t be any sensors as we go down.”
Unnerved by her position, Renn snaps back, “Aye, there will be, because yer goin’ ta go fix them, back in Engineering, where ya can access them without bein’ in m’ way.”
Renci heads to the back of the ship, announcing as she goes, “This might be your ship, but it’s my mission. Don’t forget that.” Renn just waves her off.
In Engineering, Renci looks over the jumble of wires and misses JT; she would intuitively know how to reroute the power. But Renci knows she can handle this, too. She studies the systems and sees that right now, it is just a matter of waiting out the reboot, unless maybe…. She starts looking at what power sources are nearby and shouts up to Renn to tell him all the technical details of what happened to the sensors. Renn yells back that he does not care about the particulars; they are no help to him. So she tells him that the last reading was of a vacuum pocket that they are about to hit, and maybe that will be of some use.
Renn avoids the approaching threat, but Renci is tossed around by the evasive flying, making it hard for her to judge precisely which sockets she is pulling wires from. She gets the sensors back online, but she needs to draw some power from somewhere else and that turns out to be the sublight engines. The power fluctuates, causing an overload and subjecting Renci to a jolt.
As they fly in low over a pine forest, there is no indication of settlements or large animals, at least not visible from above. Renn is able to land the Resolve on just one engine in a small forest clearing near the base of a mountain, only a few klicks from the spot that Renci had noted earlier.
Things were kind of tense up there, with them snipping at each other, and Renn feels like they might be getting off on the wrong foot. He approaches Renci in Engineering to compliment her on fixing the sensors so quickly and ask her to show him what she did, since now that he owns a ship he will need to learn to do some of these things. Renci tells him the Rebellion would be happy to have him back and could teach him those sorts of skills. He just shakes his head and leaves the room, heading over to pull equipment from crates stacked in the corner of the cargo hold/master bedroom. He lowers the ramp and heads out to set up the lifesigns detector he bought from Overcharge at the Enclave in Nabat.
Renci disembarks too, and she sees a flash of blue and purple as Mira flies out past her and settles on Renn’s left shoulder. He asks Renci for her datapad, so he can route the output from the detector to it. The detection range is a kilometer wide, so it will not cover the full distance to her site of interest, but at least they will be able to know if anything is threatening the ship while they are away from it. He has been able to increase the transmission power so that the status signal will reach them underground, as well. While he is getting that set up, Renci tries to camouflage the ship to blend in more with the surrounding forest. She uncovers a carved stone slab in the ground, which she judges to be a door of some kind. Since it is so close to the ship, she decides they should investigate this first, rather than whatever tripped the Resolve’s sensors earlier.