Ask Battered

[Crix Aran]

Two ships rammed into each other so tight that they needed to get detached from each other and no clue as to what was actually wrong with either ship aside from the issues that had resulted from said crash? Part of Crix wanted to make a sex joke about getting too stuck into the guts of another ship but the rest of him was concerned - even in the middle of a pitched, Clone Wars Era, battle it wasn't the usual play for dedicated battleships to suddenly ram into each other. Hopefully it was just a case of the pulses from the local star knocking out the controls for both of the gunships.

But he wasn't sure that would be the case.

"Bring us in closer to the one closest to the star." Crix ordered Red Lancer, his pilot droid, standing fully armed and armored at the ready behind the droid with Sebastian the spider-droid-legged man 'sat' awkwardly in the co-pilot's seat, "Sebastian, what have we got on the scans?"

Said co-pilot flicked several places on the scanner before sighing a little bit.

"Looks like all the escape pods were ejected - but they didn't get far."

No need to ask about life signs - it had been hundreds of years since the clone wars after all. It did mean, however, that when the ships had collided there had been enough people on board to make their way to the escape pods and enough time to make it to the escape pods. He nodded to Red Lancer to proceed with the planned boarding action and the droid began to pilot the ship closer to the gunship closest to the star as planned. As this was going on, Crix moved into the cargo hold where the pilots and other crew-members were waiting to arrive at their new ships.

He nodded to the other Jedi who was set to accompany him.

"Alright, we're docking with the gunship closest to the star. We're going to cut power to preserve the shielding to this ship - we need to get on the gunships and make sure they're ready to jump as quickly as possible. My fellow Jedi and I will lead the way; no one comes over before we say it's clear."

Moving over to where the docking tube connected to his own ship, Crix grinned at his fellow Jedi.

"Ready to raid the ghost ship? Five credits says it was a technical issue we need to fix."

Wishful thinking but he thought they might need it as the docking tube opened ahead of them.

@Darasuum

 

[Orenth]

"This looks like two butterflies butt bashing." He said to himself, unaware of the forming sex joke in Crix's mind at the time. The younger Zabrak was a bit of an up and comer but Byron had never met him before this mission. After the battle of Denon he had seen Crix momentarily but otherwise had known him from his mother as well.

Byron was dressed in his personal flight suit, his helmet under one arm for the time being. The other callused hand scratched his beard after a moment and then returned to his hips where a belt held his lightsaber and other equipment. There was more than just a few Jedi checking this place out but it would by the two Knights leading the repairs and investigation.

The young Zabrak seemed to fall into leading his crew fairly well. It was nice to see Crix progressing as a Jedi and the Order having more good members. Byron gave a chuckle at the prospect of a bet. Mostly because he knew he was never lucky enough for anything to 'just be a technical issue'. "I'll take that action." He replied over the sound of his helmet fastening and closing its pressurized seals.

@Nefieslab

 

[Crix Aran]

Crix couldn't help but laugh a little bit at the joke - he tried to be mature when other people were watching for the most part but he had been thinking something similar himself so it just hit different. Snorting in amusement, he shook his head slightly and tried to be mature, he really did but...

"That moment when you realize it wasn't lube, it was glue."

Of course Byron took the bet.

It was a sucker's bet and they both knew it but damned if Crix wasn't going to try and inject some kind of levity into the situation that they were facing. Even at the best of times, Ghost Ships were freaking terrifying and knowing that the other ships had contained battle droids driven mad from dozens of forced restarted every hour, he wasn't holding out much hope for this one to be much better.

Dressed in his own flightsuit to avoid, you know, dying on the ships they were entering due to their lack of life support systems, Crix nodded once to Byron before securing his own helmet. He hated wearing them because of how they made him feel a phantom itch at the tips of his horns.

Phantom because it never actually touched his horns.

The airlock opened and they were free to step inside the first of the gunships. Activating a torch rather than his lightsaber, Crix tentatively started to make his way forward.

"Comm check Bryon - Master Voran has an Only Fans, repeat, Master Voran has an Only Fans, please acknowledge."

Best way to check a comm-line was to say something scandalous in his opinion. Saying that Hannibal had an Only Fans wouldn't be that surprising so he went with Alexandria instead. But the ship itself? Blood stains on the walls, lights that, somehow, worked well enough to flicker but no bodies. Sighing ever so slightly, Crix gripped his lightsaber in his right hand, holding the torch up with his left.

Wait...

"... is that a femur?"

Yep, there, on the ground, was a femur bone from a human. It looked like it had been cut with precision rather than brute strength though.

@Darasuum

 

[Orenth]

Byron chuckled at the words the Zabrak Knight said to him over the commlink. "Comm check Clown, I don't subscribe to that kind of entertainment." A slow shake of his head at the adolescent mind of the younger Jedi. Crix did not need to know that Byron thought Master Voran was attractive.

"Hyperspace collision could be a possibility." He said out loud so his fellow knight could hear his thoughts the closer they came to the gunship. The impact and suddenness of the event could explain things. But Crix Aran and Byron Ryker still needed to check out the rest of the ship before deciding the truth of the matter. "Battle group with bad jump calculations..." It waited to be seen.

In his right hand he held his lightsaber hilt. Set to have the hybrid design fire stun bolts as a pistol. In his gloved hand, the man pulled a small glowrod before activating it. It came as part of the regular jedi utility belt and the Jedi sentinel found it more efficient and less dangerous to use as a light source than his lightsaber.

The further they went, they soon found bloody remains. A dark foreboding presence wafted into him from deeper inside. The air however was flowing inwards from the depressurization. The bearded jedi recognized it as something malicious had occured here. As if on queue, Crix pointed out the remains of a human leg bone. "Wanna bet it was emergency surgery that looks worse than it was?" The tone he spoke with was to the contrary.

He eyed the femur on the ground, the stains in a moment of measured contemplation. Psychokenisis was a technique that Master Sati had as welll as Master Grayza, both of which trained him. Without realizing it, Byron had begun to kneel by the bone.

@Nefieslab

 

[Crix Aran]

He couldn't help the chuckle at the response he received to his com unit check - seemed that Byron was able to hear him perfectly fine. Always good to get a reaction but he would have loved to have seen the older man spluttering indignantly too. Oh well, that would have to be a goal for another time.

A hyperspace collision was an option but those tended to make more damage than they were currently seeing on the ship they were onboard. Though two ships crashing into each other during battle made a lot of sense - sometimes tactics and drills didn't hold up so wel in combat. If the battle had been done in the early stages of the Clone Wars it would make sense that there was a lack of practical experience.

"Looks like they collided but not at massive speeds, yeah." he admitted with a grimace, "Hopefully just human error."

Crix tilted his helmet to one side slightly to give Byron a 'look' even through the helmet.

"Even I'm not taking that bet."

Seeing his fellow Knight move closer to the bone, Crix raised an eyebrow but came closer as well. Rather than examining the bone itself however, Crix was standing by Byron's side to stand guard over his fellow Jedi instead. He did glance at the bone again and raise an eyebrow underneath the helmet.

"See something?"

@Darasuum

 

[Orenth]

Byron was not surprised by Crix's response. The grisly sight before them did not encourage happy thoughts. If someone was injured and left for dead then their body would still be nearby.

Finally he decided to pick up the bone. Holding in his hand the Jedi Knight focused and drew on the macabre artifact. But aside from pain and fear there were no details to conjure. "Thought I did." He replied and added a huff at the end. The bone dropped back to the deck of the ship and Byron rose from his crouched position.

"So...reactor and engines first right?" He said, refocusing on getting the ships up and running. "I'll look at the ship logs after that and maybe find out what happened."

Then came a ting sound. Metal on metal like a pipe glancing off a bulkhead. Byron stopped moving and strained to hear anything else. It was quiet.

"KZhizit clear?!" Byron nearly jumped into the ceiling as his comlink activated loudly. "Working on it." He grumpily replied and brandished his glowrod again. "We'll let you know." He adjusted the volume of the helmet communicator a little so he did not get any ringing in his ears.

@Nefieslab

 

[Crix Aran]

Well he, for one, was glad that Byron hadn't actually seen anything in the bone. The damned thing was creepy enough as it was and he really didn't want to go messing around with it unless there was nothing else for it. He nodded as they both refocused on why they were actually here - cut up limbs aside, they still had a ship to make safe for the crew they'd brought along to take over. The other ship too if they were lucky but, well, he was reasonably certain they had already established that neither of them was lucky at all.

His grip on his lightsaber tightened at the noise and his eyes narrowed underneath his helmet. The flickering emergency lighting of the ship wasn't helping even with the torch and glowsticks that the two Jedi had to hand.

"... just the ship settling. Come on, let's check the engine first and make sure it won't immediately blow up if we reengage the reactor."

It was technically a possibility but the more likely outcome was that if they kick-started the power after so long, they could break the engines and they'd have boarded a spooky ship for nothing. Leading the way toward the engine room, Crix's eyes narrowed again at finding the door already open - as though something had jammed the doors open. Engine room doors were supposed to be shut during most emergencies after all to prevent any explosive issues within the engines endangering the crew.

Stepping through the doorway, he eyed the engines of the ship from the inside for only a moment before he did something he had learned from horror movies long ago. Something that no one in horror movies ever did, something that would often have saved their lives.

He looked up.

Almost immediately he was both grateful and not - the torch illuminated most of the ceiling but it did a very good job of exposing the five buzz droids that were hanging from the ceiling, connected by their magnetic legs. Seeing that they were spotted, they began chittering loudly, madly, as their saws spun up. Crix's lightsaber ignited in a high guard.

"Heads up Byron - crazy buzzers above!"

@Darasuum

 

[Orenth]

Byron continued with Crix deeper into the bowls of the creaking metallic hulk. The Knight heard his zabrak partner muttering to himself words of encouragement. Arriving at the engine room Byron noted the state of the door at the entrance. His eyes examined the threshold and then the outside access panels to see if there was any clear sign of damage or tampering.

Crix stepped inside and stopped only after a few steps. The snap-hiss of the Zabrak's lightsaber activating and adding to the illumination of the glowrods in the compartment. Five of the semi-spherical machines brandished whining saws or sparking torches at the end of mandible like manipulators.

"Don't let them self-destruct!" He warned Crix. Especially in the engine room that would be bad. Plus Byron wanted to read them after they were disabled.

Since Crix had entered the room first and was in front, Byron still kept his saber inactive but had the weapon leaveled over Crix's shoulder at the buzz droids. Holding his fire, he did not want to risk hitting the fellow Knight in the back. Instead he loosened his grip on his blaster and extended both arms. Focusing on the small mechanisms making up the center of the droids triclopic eyes he would disable three out of the five buzz droids. Each of the red photorecptors would go dark leaving only two for Crix to deal with on the ceiling.

@Nefieslab

 

[Crix Aran]

Self-destruct sounded just plain bad, though he wasn't quite sure if it would be quite as explosive as the manufacturers intended after almost two hundred years. Though, knowing his luck, the damned things would have become unstable so the explosions would actually, somehow, be much larger.

Thankfully he didn't need to find out.

Launching his lightsaber up into the air with a throw from his right hand, he guided the blade with the Force, seeing it fly true to skewer one of the buzz droids through the central 'eye'. Another came rushing at him as he was busy, buzzsaw awhirl, but Crix reacted quickly. Reaching out with the Force, he Pulled it down far faster than it had been intending, smashing it into the floor before literally jumping on top of it to keep it pinned.

Pulling his saber back to his hand, he thrust the blade down into the central section of the buzz droid's body. Stepping off of the debris he had made of the droid, he nodded to Byron as he noticed that his fellow Knight had done well.

"Wanna make a bet on how many of these things are still around? We got five so ten credits saws it's less than ten."

He could hope, right?

Although his luck was already going south, hard.

"Shite." he muttered as he looked over the engine, "Oh this is not good... we might need to call in the workers before we clear the rest of the ship."

It was a terrible idea - he knew it and Byron knew it too. But as he checked on one of the diagnostic panels, Crix knew it was probably their only hope of ever getting the ship moving again. The damned buzz droids must have been attacking the engines back before their memories got too fried to remember any orders but they (and age he supposed) had done a number on the engine.

"Unless we get them on this, we're going to need a tug." he muttered, shaking his head, "If we're going to, we need to call them in while we move to the reactor. Make sure the damned thing isn't leaking or something."

@Darasuum

 

[Orenth]

"I was kind of hoping those were the only ones." He said idealistically. Also he was not sure making more bets was the best course of action given their situation.

Byron's fellow Knight had a point. The small droids could be anywhere on the ship considering how small they were. They were designed for sabotage and combing the ship for them was not practical. "We can try to draw them out if there are any left if you think they'd fall for it otherwise we can just keep a sharp eye with anyone who can come over."

It was Crix's idea and his call. Byron would move over to the three knocked out droids to examine them. They were definitely old and worse for wear.

@Nefieslab

 

[Crix Aran]

Yeah, Crix would have been hoping the same but he really didn't think his luck was good enough to have that be the case in the end so he wasn't going to say anything aloud in case he further cursed his own luck. Instead he thought about how they might be able to call the droids out - thankfully they were due another pulse from the star soon and they knew that they were protected (for now at least) but the buzz droids would not be.

They just needed to get them all close enough together to be able to take advantage of the fact that their tech would continue to work while the droids would all shut down.

"Right okay so... we need to figure out a way to bring all the droids in from where they're hiding." he ran a hand over his helmet, annoyed he couldn't run a hand over his spikes like he usually liked to, "Alright that's... fine. I'm going to head toward the bridge and I'm going to see if I can't use the emergency power to broadcast a message across the ship, pretend to be a clone or something."

Clones all had Mandalorian accents right? He could fake one of them well enough to trick some neurotic buzz droids he was reasonably certain.

"While I'm doing that, you slip in and check on the reactor. That way even if I'm busy trying to avoid sawblades until the next pulse, we at least have a shot of figuring out how screwed this ship is and if it's actually salvageable. And if not?" he shrugged, "Onto the next one I guess. Sound like a plan that might not explode in my face?"

@Darasuum

 

[Orenth]

Byron wondered how the droids could have survived. They had only a forty eight hour battery life normally. Looking over the machines a bit closer they did not look modified, only old.

"Sure." Byron replied with a shrug of his broad shoulders. He did not know if Crix's plan was going to work. Part of him wondered if it was a good idea splitting up. But ultimatly the Knight would stay in the engine room while his fellow Jedi tried to intentionally attract the attention of the remaining buzz droids.

Keeping in mind Crix's warning from earlier, there was no sign of a damaged reactor. Byron's flight suit could detect dangers like radiation or other environmental threats,. But nothing popped up in the HUD for the Jedi as his magnetic boots continued to bring him into the reactor. As far as Byron could tell it was in working order.

Opening up his commink he wanted to check in with Crix. "I can probably get the reactor up and running. You at the bridge yet?" He knew that the gunships were large. The Knights hand still held his hybrid saber at the side. "Have you tried talking droid yet?" Byron was half joking since he was well versed in binary, also known as droidspeak. It also helped to be able to directly interface with some machines. The man wondered if he would be best suited to try and start up the reactor once again and head to the bridge. If the buzz droids were going to find the Zabrak there, Byron wanted to be there to help if needed.

@Nefieslab

 

[Crix Aran]

Getting to the bridge wasn't really a drama - it was pretty much a straight shot - but what he did find rather concerning was that there didn't seem to be any enemy droids along the way. Even when he poked his head into different rooms along the way, he couldn't actually find any of the damned things which was good in some ways and bad in others. It would be great if it meant there weren't any droids left but, well, he just simply did not believe that was the case.

The fact that the Force seemed to be so tense kind of clued him into the fact that he was not actually wrong when he worried that the danger had not passed. It was just that either the droids were currently rebooting or they knew better than to come after him, especially when he was literally shouting in binary as he approached the bridge.

Speaking of, the bridge was another showcase of a horror vid because there were bodies this time - well, skeletons - and they were all in perfectly uniform, regulation, positions as though they were bracing for combat.

"Not creepy at all."

With his attempts to garner attention having failed rather badly, Crix tapped his comlink.

"At the bridge now - the bridge crew are all in position but as skeletons. It's really freaking me out." he admitted before moving to the captain's main console, "Going to try and connect to the ship using the Force now."

Placing a hand on the captain's console, he reached deep within himself before pushing his mind forward and down into the console, into the binary matrix of the machine. He had enough of a chance to know it was a bad idea before he was violently ejected from the console, blood gushing out of his nose as what felt like an electric shock ran through his brain. It physically couldn't be actual electricity but a feedback loop sounded about right.

"Karking sith-spit spewing piece of shite!" he cursed, the comlink still on, "Alright so technopathy with a ship regularly bombarded with exotic star fuckery? Bad. Very bad."

@Darasuum

 

[Orenth]

The Jedi furrowed his brow a bit at hearing of skeletons. There must have been some form of bacteria that eventually ate away at the bodies tissue. There were some that could live out in space and others that thrived in the vacuum of space. As Byron thought about that, his worries about buzz droids remained present and awareness open. But something else was creeping closer to the Jedi. That just made the man want to get the ship up and running sooner rather than later.

The curses from Crix made him wonder for a moment if he had been attacked. Flight suit clad Jedi hesitated for a moment to hear what he said next and was somewhat relieved to hear it wasn't in any other immediate danger. The instinct to run to the bridge right away was there if he felt Crix needed his help. "You alright?"

The engineer would begin the restart procedures once Crix gave him the all clear on everything else as well. "Make sure the parking break is on. Don't want us shooting off towards the next system with another gunship stuck to our face and with the ships still docked." Byron went through the cycling steps for a safe start up for the reactor. The dimly lit interior began to brighten a minute later and the gentle hum of other systems coming online returned as well. "We're in business."

@Nefieslab

 

[Crix Aran]

Aside from feeling like his head was on fire and making everything taste of copper, Crix was remarkably in decent condition. Not good enough for him to think that he could go toe to toe with a ship full of buzz droids but well enough that he wasn't too messed up. Shaking his head, he reached out to some of the controls used by the rest of the ship - not just the captain.

"I'm fine - everything just tastes of copper and red."

Red tasted like copper too though.

"Moving to make sure we're good to go." he assured Byron before checking over the more manual, emergency, features of the ship that could be worked without consistent power, "Engines should be off from what I can see, navicomputer and hyperdrive in manual shutdown mode... should be go for power."

The ship came alive quickly with lighting beginning and some of the consoles in the cockpit coming online without too many issues - aside from a litany of error messages of course. Moving to the captain's console, he decided to satisfy his curiosity and pulled up the log.

... shite.

"Byron, the crash was deliberate." he informed the other Knight quickly, "The other ship was already boarded by infiltration droids before they set off and they brought on board some kind of bioweapon. KARK! Bridge, Byron!"

The last was all he could say as he was force to leap backwards and away from the captain's console as a vibrosword sliced down through the remains of the captain and almost through Crix's side as well. His lightsaber ignited, he held it at the ready as he stared down two Commando droids and eight more buzz droids.

A container was strapped to the back of one of the commando droids and, oddly enough, neither of the commando droids looked like they had been effected by the pulses. Infiltration specialist droids... it made some sense that they had survived where others hadn't but that was terrifying.

@Darasuum

 

[Orenth]

So far nothing had been detected at fault with the reactor or the engines of the first gunship. The large ship groaned but came back online all the same. But his connection with Crix told him something was amiss a split second before he keyed the commlink. What the Zabrak Knight said was terrible to hear but Byron believed him all the same. "Crix?" He said once in response to him getting directions but only got a sudden burst of feedback and then silence. "Crickin' great" He sarcastically with no small amount of concern in his voice. If his suit couldn't detect a bioweapon then he may already be at risk of exposure. Though he hoped it had not lasted inside this ship for decades upon decades.

The Jedi Knight left the reactor room behind and ran towards the bridge of the DP-20. It was not a very large ship so he hoped that Crix would be able to fend for himself in the short time it took him to get there. He came to a stop as he saw four buzz droids attached like spiders around the bulkhead door leading into the bridge.

Beyond it Byron could see two Commando droids and more of the phistoka sabotage droids. The numerous buzz droids that stood between Byron and the bridge turned their photoreceptors and brandished their numerous tools of dismantling. Byron pulled two roughly off the wall and towards him. They tumbled and twirled in their semispherical shape, numerous legs now no-longer having purchase on a surface. The Jedi raised his lightsaber into the path of the two droids in one swing, causing them to each fall to the deck behind him like two sliced tropical beach nuts. "Crix!" He shouted again, hopefully maybe even distracting some of them from ganging up on the Jedi.

@Nefieslab mild fail

 

[Crix Aran]

Lightsaber out, Crix blocked a vibrosword slash to his right shoulder, blocking it with the blade of his lightsaber at the same time he Pushed out with the Force to keep the slash of the second droid from cutting into him from the left. Tilting his saber, the vibrosword slide down it's edge enough for him to move in closer, shoulder-barging the droid in question off to the right hand side.

Hurt his shoulder too because, you know, tackling metal sucked.

Spinning in place, he ducked under another slash and batted a thrust of a vibrosword away from himself so as to avoid being impaled through the chest. Thankfully he also managed to avoid taking any meaningful damage to his space suit either. With the biological agent in play, he didn't want to risk a suit rupture.

Logically they should be fine as any biological agent should have likely died off or been rendered inert over the course of a good couple of hundred years but he didn't want to risk it.

Using the arrival of Byron as a distraction, Crix spun on the ground, using the Force to strengthen his leg as he used it to sweep the legs out from one of the infiltration droids. As he launched a slash at it, his blade was forced to be intercepted by the second droid, which unbalanced it enough that a point-blank Force Push from Crix sent it flying off in land in a heap.

"Welcome to the party Byron!" he called out merrily to his fellow Knight as the two infiltration droids launched themselves at him after barely a moment's peace, "Isn't it lovely to see all these antiques in action?"

@Darasuum

 

[Orenth]

One could use the technique of roughly yanking or otherwise disrupting a droid with little knowledge about the specific model. However Byron's mentor and friend, Master Sati, was an avid scholar and historian. It naturally happened that he would come across the older designs and be more familiar than the average Jedi these days.

Coiling the energy of the Force around himself, harnessing the power of his own body and connecting it to the grid of electricity in the corridor around him. Face twisted into intense focus, Jedi were keepers of the peace but defended through necessary violence. Charging forward, the heavy mass of the flightsuit brawler spun and collided with several of the pishtoka droids which were thrown back. Their shells sparking and clattering against the hard surfaces in addition to the electrical arcs that neutralized them. More that were out of physical reach were zapped by warping blue and orange lightening bolts.

Byron stood with his broad shoulders tensed and staring at the two Commando droids that Crix faced. But unlike before, his flight suit smoked slightly from channeling the electrical energy. The lights inside his helmet flickered but remained true as did the primary functions of the suit. "Time to put them out." His right fist collided with his left palm as he faced the thrown specialized battle droid.

It righted itself unnaturally and pushed off to reacquire its lost E-5 blaster rifle which was more forward in the bridge. But it still had a vibroblade close at hand. Byron waited, inhaling patiently and staying close to Crix since there was the other droid to consider too. Switching opponents worked on droids too. But Byron was cautious for a multitude of reasons and in doing so, defaulted to his Form III training.

@Nefieslab rousing success [/aox3]

 

[Crix Aran]

Regrettably, Crix wasn’t doing as well as Byron was – he was on the back foot and he knew it. Swear under his breath, he dodged backward as best as he could before immediately sucking in what air he could safely.

Because the vibrosword of one of the commando droid sliced through the safety glass of his suit’s visor, immediately compromising the seal.

Focusing on the Force, Crix did his best to keep moving fluidly with a limited amount of air left in his lungs. Using the Force to limit how much he actually needed was all well and good but it was distracting when in the middle of actual combat. His lightsaber was batted aside with ease from the unnaturally unending strength of the droids.

He was going to get weaker but they could keep going at their best for far longer – years, evidently. Unable to speak without compromising what air he had managed to steal, Crix was unwilling to risk it with the unknown agent in the air.

They could finish them, they just needed a good chance… just one.

@Darasuum

 

[Orenth]

The smaller sabotage droids were done and out of the way. But there were the two commando droids remaining. Byron remember that he was not wearing his gauntlets in this instance. His lightsaber had returned to his belt. As the BX commando droid reached for the blaster. Byron's right hand thrust out, freezing the mechanical being in place his other hand aimed towards the one that had Crix backpedalling.

"Take them both out. Quick!" He said to Crix as he held the droids frozen in a stasis like state. Each of the BX series were stuck in whatever blurry stance they had taken when Byron had extended his hands. He was well aware that the chasis of the machines could be reinforced. He had taken one down on Ossus when liberating the kyber mines after all. The one that had reached the blaster rifle hadn't pulled the trigger yet. The zabrak would be free to chop either of them down, hopefully.

Byron looked towards his companion without loosing focus. It was then that he saw there was rupture in the Knight's suit. The was a problem for later. Patch later, slice these death bots first. He tried to convey his own intentions via telepathy. Byron didn't need to tell Crix to stay calm, centered and in control of his breathing. Do that, and they were sure to get out of this in one piece.

@Nefieslab