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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"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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