revivalproject | In the Deep Dark Hills of Eastern Temba

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In the Deep Dark Hills of Eastern Temba

WHO: Cobb Vanth & Mining Expedition Team
WHERE: The Mines
WHAT: Mine exploration
WHEN: First Week of Event.
WARNINGS: Cursing. Blood/Injury.

Mining Expedition - for Mining Team

It had been a long time since Cobb had worn the armor he bought on Coruscant. He stood outside the entrance of the mines in the polished slightly gold colored durasteel with no cape. Last thing he wanted was for that to get caught on something while underground. The armor would protect from minor cave ins and small falling rocks but a part of him wanted to take it off. If the ceiling came down, Cobb would honestly preferred to be crushed immediately instead of survive.

A few had happened while he worked underground and he'd been lucky not to get caught in them. He had seen what happened to slaves who had been and those images haunted him as he looked at the entrance to the darkness beyond.

As the little team started to gather together Cobb pushed those thoughts from his mind. He needed to focus to keep all these people safe underground.

"Here's the general plan," he said when they had all arrived. "Drake's probe, Mini, and this guy here will go first. The probe should be able to tell us the air quality which should be your number one concern. Anyone who breathes starts to feel light headed, you walk out immediately. No pretending everything is fine. We're here to map this place and see what needs fixin', not start digging around."

Anyone who toughed it out and then passed out would put them all at risk. Cobb's tone was very stern and grim. This was not a time to fuck around like this was a walk around talk. Luckily, this group didn't seem like the type to do that.

"Second thing to look for is the ceiling. You see it bowing down anywhere that's a good sign of a collapse. Should be even all along the way." That was how it was back home, at least. "And it might get tight in there depending on how the Agrii build their mines. No one goes off alone. You always have a buddy. Any questions before we head in?"

The mine's entrance was big enough but Cobb felt once they got inside and got under they might be in for a tight squeeze.

---

Cave In - for thesepreciousthings

It was surprisingly easy to get comfortable underground again. Cobb was all too willing to explore around with Starling when she asked. Apparently, she came from mining people too. She felt more useful helping out in the mines than exploring the new city.

"I can't tell much of what they were doing down here," Cobb said as they walked down a side tunnel, intending to map it. They had a pretty decent map taking shape with marked spots for the strange place they found and the holes to the surface. "They didn't leave any mining equipment behind so who knows what they got from here? Haven't seen crystals or coal or oil. Not even salt. Just the stone walls."

He was a little bothered by that. This was an extensive mine and clearly served a purpose at one point. There was no real clue what the purpose was however. Not to Cobb's eyes, at least. They had some hope once they understood the panel and all that, it would become clear.

Cobb was about to say more when he noticed something in the glint of his flashlight. A piece of metal hanging down from the ceiling. He had half a second to realize it was a roof bolt meant to hold the roof of the mine in place when a stone slipped.

"Starling!" He grabbed her just as more stones start to slip and the roof broke apart. Cobb dragged her out of the way but they were caught in the fall. Not the worst of it. Cobb pressed her against the wall as what felt like the whole of the earth came down around them. It was his worst fear come to life and it hurt as the stones bounced off his shoulders, his back, and his head while he tried to keep her from the worst of it.

When the rumbling stopped and the air went still Cobb blinked in the darkness. His flashlight was somewhere but they were in complete blackness now with the mine closed in around them. Well. Damn it all.

---

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"It did and it didn't," she replied, helping him by shifting some of the loose rocks to form more support for the hole they would eventually be clearing. It was something she could do while sitting, a compromise for both of their stubborn natures.

"He had the girl down in his basement, in an old dug well. I couldn't get her out until I knew he wasn't a threat anymore, but the place was a maze of rooms and - well."

She looked up into the dark, at the ceiling she could no longer see.

"He turned out all the lights down there once he realized I'd followed him down."

"Hey, I promise you the darkness here is only as far as these rocks," he said firmly and with absolute confidence. Cobb wasn't going to let the two of them spend forever in here, in the dark. "On the other side is light. You and me, we're gonna get out of this."

After getting out of mining and getting out of slavery Cobb did not plan to die underground. There was a hell of a lot more he wanted to do. Din was going to give him a hard time for this one too after they'd promise to be safe.

"I was ten when I started mining," he said with a heavy hint of bitterness in his voice. "Was whip thin back then and fit in a lot of small places. Perfect for drilling holes for explosives. Got into fixing machines just so I could stay at the surface but sometimes I'd have to come down to fix them in the mines."

And sometimes, he went down to try and rescue trapped miners that masters didn't care.

She gave him a genuine smile. It was good of him to reassure her: true, her rational mind knew that there was no Buffalo Bill lurking down here: he'd been dead and gone for a long time. But the trapped feeling still lingered, making her heart flutter like one of his prized death's head moths.

"Ten. Jesus. You didn't have a choice, did you..." She heaved a sigh. "My family ... they used to be miners. West Virginia Starlings, we were. As my beau was fond of telling me once, before we got close: I was only a generation or two from what they called 'poor white trash'. Grow up where the money's thin, you don't have much choice but to work to help your family, even when you're young. I think my daddy was the first Starling who hadn't had to."

"You do what you gotta survive." Cobb wasn't going to touch on just how little choice he had. Now was not the time to get into the real ugliness of his past. Maybe when they were safe, maybe over drinks. Right now, the focus was on getting out.

He shifted enough rocks to make an opening big enough to let a rush of air in. Now they wouldn't have to worry about suffocating. Good. But it wasn't big enough to crawl out of.

"What's West Virginia? Your peoples title?" There was a lot in there that Cobb couldn't quite grasp from context alone. And he figured the more Starling explained to him the less likely she'd be to fall back into panic.

She recognized the tactic, one she'd been trained in herself for dealing with victims, hostages, shell-shocked bystanders. And she appreciated the hell out of it.

"No, not really. On Earth, things get divided up first by continents - the land masses in the oceans. Then countries, and some countries have states. West Virginia's a state in America. And the states are split up in counties and towns. ... The FBI covered all of America, so I got to see a few different places before I left." She paused. "Like that basement."

She moved the rocks he'd shifted, continuing her tactic of shoring up the sides of the wall to keep it from falling further, making more room for him to move more if he could. It was still easy enough to do while remaining seated.

"Honestly, it wasn't the dark that bothered me most: it was knowing he was out there." As she spoke, her voice was level, calm. Having Cobb close by her side had taken the edge off the story. "He had these goggles that let him see in the dark - so I was looking for him blind but he always knew where I was. It felt like forever, walkin' around in all those rooms. He raised moths. They'd flutter against my face and I'd think it was gonna be him - every draft, every little noise."

"One of these days, I'd like to see a planet with oceans." Cobb could picture that a little easier now that he'd seen lakes and the water filled fields here but an ocean had to be so much more water.

That sounded like a real miserable time. Cobb had never run away but he knew the fear of being hunted. It lingered in the back of his mind all his life, even once he was free.

He reached out in the semi-darkness and squeezed her shoulder gently. She was calm, steady, but fear like that didn't disappear. Being hunted like a thing, like an animal, never really went away.

"What he'd raise moths for? Food?" There were plenty of insects back home that Cobb ate. Moths were rare but could be good eating if they could be found and caught.

"No," she said, the psychology behind it and how much it had fascinated her drawing her out of the fear just as much as the touch to her shoulder. She closed her hand over his and gave it a brief squeeze in silent gratitude.

"He identified with them: their natural habit of cocooning themselves and emerging as an entirely different creature. That was why he was killing the girls ... he did something with their bodies that ... well, it's pretty horrible. I don't know how squeamish you are about violence against women in general. Some men really don't like to be privy to it." Clarice blows out a sigh. "To put it pretty obliquely ... He coveted them. Wanted to use them as a vehicle to be a woman, himself. But only on the outside."

"So, he made a woman skin suit, huh? Wrapped himself up in it?" Cobb wasn't squeamish about violence against anyone. His life was full of it. He'd seen men and women whipped and beaten since he was a young kid. "Sounds like a guy I knew who wore severed ears on his belt."

An overseer who cut them from slaves and wore them to remind other slaves to behave.

"Sounds like the kind of shit you put a blaster bolt through and leave in the desert for the sandswimmers to eat." Cobb grunted as he moved a large stone and a nice burst of air came through. "There we go. Hey, can you fit through this? Will go faster if we work on both sides."

"Yeeeeah, that's pretty much it to the letter." She gave a heavy sigh. "That guy with the ears, he sounds like a real piece of horseshit himself. And yeah, that's exactly what I did. Minus the sandswimmers, of course. I heard him move behind me, turned on a dime, took a literal shot in the dark. Pretty sure I got him in the lung, the bastard."

She reached up and brushed a fingertip beneath the dark spot on her cheek that most mistook for a beauty mark. "Left a pretty decent powder burn at that close range." She took an indulgent lungful of the fresh air and sighed in relief. "Mmmh, nice goin' That smells damn sweet. Lemme give it a shot. I've squished under smaller, but... that was years ago, when I was still trackin' his sick, sorry ass."

Starling swallowed, reminding herself that she was with friends, that this was no abandoned storage unit and there was no threat of rats to scuffle across her legs or arms while she crawled: at least, not that she'd seen yet. Bracing her good ankle against the rock, she crawled forward and put her head through, then her shoulders, knowing her hips weren't much wider than that, if at all.

"Yeah, it's lookin' good. Gimme a sec."

"Some folks deserve to die." Cobb absolutely believed that. There were people in the galaxy that should be put down and no one should shed a tear over them. He was mostly thinking of the people that had owned him during his life. Oh, he'd love to draw fast on them.

"Hang on, hang on, before you go crawlin' through." Cobb crouched down next to her and yanked his bandana from around his neck. It wasn't his lucky red one - which was probably why they got caught in this cave in - but a forest green one. "Let's wrap up that ankle so you've got a little bit of support for movin' around on it."

Normally, he wouldn't risk taking it off in front of another person. His brand could easily peek out from his collar and he did not want anyone to see it but he trusted the mine's darkness would hide it.

"You smack me if I'm bein' too rough," he said with an easy grin as he started to wrap her ankle. It wasn't his first time doing something like this though he wouldn't call himself an expert.

"Ooh, that's a little saucy of ya, Cobb," she winked, her shit-eating grin making it clear she didn't mean a damn thing by it. She didn't wince or cringe - he knew his stuff, and soon enough she was giving her ankle an experimental flex. It didn't budge much, but it didn't fight, either.

"Nice work, partner," Starling smiled. "Better'n an Ace bandage, just about. Thanks." As she began to slowly worm her way through the hole, not wanting to dislodge anything vital by hurrying, she chattered away to keep her nervous mind distracted.

"I think you're right, there well and truly are. Not many, but some overstep the bounds of human decency without even stoppin' to check where they're at, and those're people I'd gladly ban from the gene pool. Two fellows that caused the train wreck've my career were right up there, too. But I'm guessin' a place as wild and rough as Tatooine breeds 'em like rabbits."

The knot of her ponytail dislodged a shower of loose gravel and she froze, her breath hitching in her chest. When that was all that came down, she let it out with a sigh of relief.

"Never a dull moment. Almost got it..."

"Sometimes. But Tatooine also breeds a tight knit community. You've got no one to rely on except the people around you. Makes you real close." Cobb knew there were good people on Tatooine. Most of the population was just folks trying to survive. Some turned to crime and hurting others. Some banded together like the folks in Mos Pelgo.

He gave her leg a little pat. "Easy there, you're fine. Just keep goin'."

Cobb had a good hold of the stones around her to keep anything from falling down on her. She'd get through easy enough. As easy as anything else was around here.

"You live in a harsh place and you know the value of kindness. Custom is in some places back home to give what you can when you can and others will return the favor when they can." Everyone looked after each other as best as they could. He missed that sense of community real bad in this place.

"Sounds a lot like the town where I grew up," she said stiffly - more out of exertion than any lack of feeling. The obstacle course was bearing its fruit, and she wasn't out of shape by any means. Soon enough, she gave a shimmy of her hips and wiggled through the hole, carefully pulling her bum ankle in behind her.

"Awright, I'm through. Walk me through it, you startin' on your left or your right? ... but yeah, West Virginia was a lot of miners, too. Most of us dirt poor. Where I'm from they called it 'white trash', which I always thought was pretty rotten. What did it matter what color a poor person's skin was? Wasn't like they could help it. We never felt the sting of any lack of money, though. My mama and daddy made things comfortable as they could, and we were pretty happy, 'cuz we had each other. Daddy had his work friends and they'd sit on the porch, play cards when the sun went and it cooled down. Mama taught me how to sew, how to go to the farm stands and pick out what was ripe. And when you were bored you could kick down a dirt road and look for wild flowers and little frogs. It was a little world, but it was ours, and a good one."

"Startin' on my right."

And they were free. Poor but free. Cobb could hear it in the way she talked about growing up. He was glad for that. No one should have to know the weight of chains. Mos Pelgo was like that these days. No one was really wealthy but they were free.

"There's a story back home," he said as he worked, distracting them both from the pain and the semi-darkness. "About a rare flower that blooms on canyon edges at first dawn. Story says if you can pick one with five petals before the second sun rises you'll be granted a wish."

Cobb shook his head. "Not many wild flowers back home. Or frogs. Got a lot of insects. Sometimes catch those or dig 'em out of cactus."

"Roger Wilco," she said amicably, settling herself in a seated position that wouldn't aggravate her ankle and starting to move the rubble like a higher-stakes game of pick-up sticks.

"Your five-petal flower superstition sounds a little like our four-leaf clovers. Most clover's a three-leaf plant, but if you find one with four, they're supposed to be lucky. Two suns, though, whoo! No wonder it's so got dam hot there."

As she moves the stones, she starts to stack them on the edges of the tunnel, planning to reinforce the wall with them. After a moment she pauses to reach for the canteen of water on her belt and take a swig.

"What'd you do when you caught 'em, eat 'em? Not a lot of people in America eat bugs, but ... in other countries they do, for sure. Heard most of 'em taste kinda nutty."

"They always have five petals. I think." Cobb had never seen a canyon flower though. He spent more time in the dunes and at the bottoms of canyons than at the tops. Honestly, he didn't even know if the canyon flowers were real. It was just a story he heard growing up.

He nodded mostly to himself since she's on the other side now. "It's hot but you won't see a prettier sunsets anywhere else in the galaxy I promise you that."

Oh, he missed home something fierce in that moment. "Usually we fry 'em with chillies and other spices. Can't really taste anything besides heat."

"Sounds a bit like Mexican food, back home," she said amicably, continuing to stack the rocks on her side of the hole, mindful of even the slightest hint of movement in their little circle of light. "Makes sense, they're a pretty hot, arid region too. I gotta say, I'm real curious what having two suns looks like. We've only got the one."

"I don't know if I can describe it." Cobb wasn't a poet. He didn't have much of an imagination in his own opinion. Everything in his life had always been practical first. There was no time to daydream. "You get this golden color when the first twin rises. We call our suns the Twins. Anyway, you get a lot of golds and yellows and when the second twin rises you start to get reds. And a lot of groaning because it's about to get hot."

He pushed his shoulder against the wall to shift a large stone and groaned as his arm ached with pain. Might have to get that one looked at. Maybe.

"You get the real explosions of color at sunsets. It gets all mixed up and bleeds together." He really wasn't great at describing it.

"Sounds absolutely gorgeous." Starling, for her part, had a fairly active imagination when she had a mind to, and could almost see the scene splayed out across the stones in the dark. That groan of Cobb's brought her out of it, though, and she scuttled on her hands and knees to the hole, looking through at him.

"That sure as shit didn't sound like it was about to get hot in here," she quipped. "You okay?"

"As sure as sand, Starling." Cobb said with a grim chuckle. Pain was something he could ignore and work through. He'd been taught from a young age to work through any pain. If he showed any weakness it could get him in trouble or worse sold.

He'd work through it and get it tended to later.

"Almost enough room for me to fit." Best to change the subject before Starling got to asking too many questions. "These wide shoulders of mine are a curse, I tell ya."

"Handsome curse, though," she said, shifting her tactic to widen the hole at the right height and shore up the sides of it a bit more.

"I hope you know that if you did need to ever take a break or a knee for a second on the sidelines, I wouldn't think any goddamn less of you." She kept her tone warm, neutral, free of judgement. That same one they'd used when sharing bits about home scenery and folklore... because it was one and the same, a matter of culture.

"Quantico teaches y' that if a member of your recon team is hurtin', better to let 'em sit somethin' out than push and make it worse. Nothin' wrong with takin' care of yourself. I'd rather work a little harder on my part for a couple hours than see stubbornness get someone hurt worse, or even killed."

Starling could comment all she wanted about not thinking less of him but it wouldn't change things. Cobb was going to keep working at this until they were both out. He did not want to linger underground like this.

He hated it even if he didn't show it.

"No one's gonna die down here," he said in a tone that made the eye roll obvious. "Neither one of us is injured bad enough for that."

He had some aches and pains, sometimes sharp, but nothing that he felt would be fatal. Cobb wanted to live, damn it. "Unless you've been keeping somethin' from me. We're gonna be fine."

Maybe a little beat up for a week or so but they'd both get out of this fine.

"Never said we were," she replied calmly. "I was just speaking in general, about anything that might come up. We got lucky today, but someday we might not, and I don't want you to be so stubborn in that case that it costs you more'n you can afford, darlin'."

She shifted some more stones as they spoke, making the hole a bit wider, and definitely sturdier.

"You come from some real harsh territory ... why would you push yourself like this in a place like that?"

"Look, if I'm actually dyin' I promise you all will know about it." Cobb would never stop fighting to live. He had ten years of freedom under his belt and that wasn't enough. He wanted at least twenty. If he was lucky, he'd take thirty.

Realistically he probably had five. He'd made a lot of powerful people mad back on Tatooine and they'd come for him eventually.

"Because if you don't, it'll kill ya." Cobb leaned forward so that he could look at her through the hole, eyebrow raised. "You gotta be twice as hard as Tatooine to survive. You work hard, you live hard. You survive."

And then he was gone back to moving rocks.

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In the Deep Dark Hills of Eastern Temba

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