“Thank you, if you don't mind, I will take a cold tea if you have it. If not, don't worry.I won't impose on you long.” Caltin said as he took up Joran’s invitation to come inside
"Tea? Alright let me take a look then." Joran said.
His tone may have come across a little frustrated, though it had very little to do with Caltin despite his unannounced arrival. Joran's comm conversation was still freshly sore and Caltin's request for something so simple as cold tea left Joran a tad flustered as he was not the one who stocked this house's food or drink.
Joran left Caltin alone for a moment and when he returned he did so with one of the pit droids following behind him pushing a drink cart carrying two glasses a pitcher of cold tea and a bottle of dark brown liquid.
"Bourbon in yours Cal?" Joran asked, suspecting he knew the answer already. Joran poured two glasses a tall frosty cold glass of bourbon free tea for the Jedi and a shorter one for himself half full of bourbon, hold the tea if you please.
"How have you been doing?" The Jedi Master inquired.
Joran was a little surprised by Caltin's cordiality. It was true that the men were not enemies and at this point were hardly even strangers, hell they were actually relatives –separated by a handful of generations but who was counting, really? – but they were also a far cry from busom buddies.
"Oi, don't get me facking started mate." Joran said.
He tried to sound light as he said it but a hint of weariness may have crept into his voice.
"I've had seven commercial shipments go missing since the start of the year. Facking seven, mate! It's bloody madness it is." Joran drained his glass and filled it half way full again.
"And the facking senate! A Force damned joke, yeah? Never seen something so…" he sought for a word
"…monolithic be so facking useless, right?" Joran took a more modest drink.
"I petition them about the assaults on my legal shipments and law abiding captains who transport said shipments and what do I hear back?"
Joran didn't even wait for Caltin to open his mouth before answering his own question.
"Facking nothing that's what!" He barked.
"They are electing to do nothing. Facking nothing. Excuses all of it. All because I refuse to pay for Alliance backed escorts, or to register my ships in anything other than the local registries of the systems wherein I will be conducting my business , nor will I allow Alliance inspectors aboard any vessel registered to myself or my company. Its facking extortion I tell you. I pay taxes on those shipments, right? I should be owed some recompense. Worse then the facking pirates, I tell you." He finished his glass and poured himself another.
Joran's voice which had been raised a mere moment before lowered quite significantly and he continued on in a more calm controlled conversational manner
"Now good men will go hurt and hungry and I go without a full bank account all because I value my freedoms and my privacy. What has the galaxy come to, I ask?"
Joran fished a cigar out of a drawer on the drink cart, cut the end, chomped down, lit the thing and began to smoke. He offered one to Caltin.
"Aye, and what's more," Joran began again through a could of smoke.
Caltin really shouldn't have gotten him started.
"a facking captain in my employ has gone missing, his ship found abandoned and his facking crew found murdered. Not that I'd bring this particular issue to the senate, due to, well let's just call them legal gray areas concerning what exactly it was this captain may or may not have been transporting at the time."
Most folks probably wouldn't bring up their extralegal activities to a Jedi Master and most likely Caltin didn't want to hear about them but Joran was not most people and did not often give consideration to what Caltin Vanagor wanted.
"What about you, mate? I don't suspect you showed up here to remind yourself what I look like."
Caltin Vanagor