Private Cheap Beer and Power Tools

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

DAWN CHASER
LAEKIA ORBIT
LEVANTINE SANCTUM
890 ABY

The repair vessel City of Nar Shaddaa had been nestled up alongside the Dawn Chaser for a busy couple of days when Jorus finally went to meet Coren. Some nerf herder had taken a shot at the old Victory-class and been appropriately rewarded, and the City of Nar Shaddaa had all the right spare parts. The patch job had been a good solid exercise for the younger Merrill generations, Mara's kids and Rave's grandkids learning one of the family trades.

With all that work tied off, Jorus had a whole other job in mind and a gleam in his eye.

He stumped into Coren's workshop — a familiar space since the Chaser had spent decades in Levantine and Kathol territory — and set down a heavy clanking duffel by a workbench.

"Twenty years," he said. "At least twenty years since the Maw started putting Path engines on their command ships. You're right: why the hell haven't we tried building a Path engine ourselves?"

Coren Starchaser

 

[Coren Starchaser]

It'd been a rough few years since the beginning of the Kattada Jedi Temple and the reconnection with some of the things Levant. Coren had been looking, and working towards, a life away from the war front. After the events on Coruscant and the follow up events in Terminus and the Outer Rim Coalition, the call of war had weakened. The Sith were always going to be present, no matter what he could see himself doing in the galaxy, no matter how much of a Sentinel he was, ferreting the dark side out, and chasing it away, it would always be present.

Perhaps it was Tiland or Jend-Ro who had helped him find the balance he was seeking. A place for him to still be him, but to let the war horse die. Jedi were what they were needed to be, at all times, that was a teaching of Master Elzar Mann, an ancient teaching, but appropriate. But it didn't mean anyone had to remain the one thing.

Perhaps that was why he became a Wayseeker. He had wished to be seen, and perhaps was still, as the Barsen'thor of the Order, with his work on the River and Academy Network, but Wayseeker gave him much more room to work. And with his mind on being more than a Sentinel, being a Watchman, that was going to make all the difference.

And with yet another strike against the Dawn Chaser, life was getting harder and harder. The ship did have the remnants of the Warbird Wing, in a few TIE Exalts, E-Wings, and Preybirds, to defend it, but with some of the more renegade families aboard, Force sensitives trying to hide from the Orders and, more specifically, the Sith.

Looking over at Jorus as he came in and dropped a bag, Coren was working over a holocron, one of the Jedi ExplorCorps ones he found, about crafting and creating Jedi compasses. And the discussion of a Path Engine was definitely the sort of shenanigans Coren knew Jorus would be game for.

"I've been doing some more research, on the Path engines, on the Jedi compasses… They're a bit different than hyperspace, but I think we can cobble something together. Even have a ship that we could put it on." Of course it was the Shortfin, Coren's assault shuttle and prototype tester.

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

"And of course Sasori's built one, but I haven't poked too hard at that. I want to come at this cold, without reference to that or what the Maw do."

Ten years ago he'd have hefted that duffel with ease; ten years from now it might be more than his bad knees could take. It held a variety of pre-owned high-end hyperdrive components and two six-packs of lum. Jorus appropriated a workbench and, with the aid of a cold can, began unloading.

"I'm no Mari San Tekka, but I can sort out Paths case-by-case, been doing it since the forties. Now, the way I understand it - and dial me down if I'm wrong - the way this shavvit typically works is, the Force gets used by someone with a real knack for it, or a ritual or something, to find the Paths. Then that nav data gets piped into the Path engines, which can grok them where normal hyperdrives can't. Far as I can tell, that's how Path engines first worked a thousand-plus years back, and how the Sasori thing works too. The Maw one, from what I've heard, doesn't need a Forcer as a choke point, it's got a real good nav system that can figure out Paths without a you, a me, a San Tekka, or whatever."

Navicomputer components joined the six-packs on the bench.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

He had to give it to the Tech Division. Sasori was always out prepping the latest in technology. It was good that their side had an artificer. Coren tried to fancy himself as one, but it was not always the thing he was best at. The Jedi Master had his skills, and it was more in the after-market modifications of ships and equipment. Coren had made due without a modified hyperspace engine by doing exactly what he and Jorus were known for.

Instinctive astrogation.

It almost felt a bit more pure than using the engines. He knew that was wrong, but he also knew between him and Jorus they could make something very slick. A third alternative. Even if the Maw option was something Coren didn't want to touch, but there were ideas out there that could be used to shape a Merrill-Starchaser engine.

"Yeah, I mean… with what I've gathered from the Jedi archives of the past, I think we've both been doing it for longer than we both care to admit publicly." But he also knew he was shaving time and distance off of established hyperlanes. Neither were a bad thing.

"What I've read is that yes, a Force user seems to parse everything out. Feeling their way through. Kind of like the sky-walkers of Csillia. More than doing a jump by jump move, you are linking multiples to get from A to B, without taking the established routes." He placed a holocron on the table and the blue dodecahedron all but exploded as it opened up, showing a familiar-to-them section of the Kathol region.

"Hyperspace path is the green line. The jump by jump through the Kathol Outback is the yellow. A path… if we wanted to go from Dolston to Jangelle, its possible if we were aboard and working on it." Coren waved a hand and a red track appeared, one that he was fairly convinced was of Jorus's own trail.

Grabbing one of the lums, he cracked it opened and pointed. "Lots of data for something like that."

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

Jorus slurped lum and rested his elbows on the workbench to scrutinize the maps.

"Yeah, Dolstan to Jangelle'd be a tricky one, wouldn't it. A good navicomputer's gonna take that, though, make sense of those start-and-endpoints with the right input. I think a full Path Engine's gotta not just make sense of that, but grok a jump from, say, halfway point to halfway point. Jump from Bresan halfway to Timbra Ott, for example, if there's a clear Path, and wind up partway between Dolstan and Sebiris. Might not be the quickest thing in the world, but sure faster than two weeks..."

He slurped some more.

"I'm trying to see a clear course around the idea that it's gotta intuit those potential shortcuts and do it as reliably as an astrogator. Or, or, we skip all that and set up some kind of astrogation aid so one of our kids, say, could sit down and meditate over a sector and get some Paths. So the better you know a sector the better the engine works."

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Being able to work these types of problems out alongside Jorus was what Coren really looked forward to when he was working on starship development. His friend had more experience than he did in the exploration market, as Coren remained with a Jedi Order or two for a time. But looking forward, looking at the wayseeker life gave him a pause and a sense of calm.

“So, you’re thinking to jump in the middle or fractional jumps between end points and collect the data?” Coren took a pause and a sip. Nodding, he was starting to see the Paths in his mind, not as well as when he was navigating live. There was always a time to stop a jump and reconfigure. Doing it on the fly with the Force was easier and faster than letting a computer time it.

But avoiding any anomalies and asteroids, it reduced the risk, especially with the right momentum sustainer settings…

“What you’re saying sounds like setting up a sky-walker program, or navigators guild…” Which Coren did not hate. “Letting the right people act as a navigator to get someone from A to B. It’d allow them to create more efficient paths than a purely electronic system, I think. But also if they were some based in the big regions we know, Tingel, Wild Space, Kathol, the Csillian Chaos… that could work. A ship docks up, we upload paths, and give them an expiration date?”

And let the engines work their magic with the inputs that were created.

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

Jorus sucked his teeth in thought and crumpled up his empty can. "Well, I'm not much for making institutions these days. There's been some great guilds - you remember that lead your brother gave me, those Unknown Regions folks, Vector One and all that? Lotta skill - and you've got a point about the secret Chiss sky-walkers. And then there's that whole Spacer Guild thing out of Loronar a few years back. Anyway, you're right, there's any number of groups we could trust and make agreements with."

Coren's workshop, like any respectable workshop, had a drawing surface. In this case it was a hard-light board. Jorus cracked a second can and divided the board into sections.

INDIVIDUAL PATH CREATION

• Astrogator alone (Nihil/Sasori style)
• Astrogator + Force/tech aid
• Math maybe w/ astrogator aid case by case (Maw style)

INPUT TO DRIVE

• {Assorted technical scribbles)

DRIVE CONSIDERATIONS

• {Assorted technical scribbles)

DATABASE INPUT

• {Assorted technical scribbles}

WHO GETS THE THING

• Nav guilds, small circles
• {Assorted scribbles on distribution options}

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Another can down. Coren tossed it across the shop to where the receptacle was. On the Chaser it did pay to keep organized, but in this shop, his shop, it could all be handled later. There were a few days where Coren and Jorus and Julius has been here, working through puzzles late into a few too many evenings with enough lum and pizza to feed a Corellian Frat House. Those days were behind them but they could, even more so a decade ago, put it back.

“The sky-walkers are interesting. Them and their seekers. Hidden and secret, but still, a lot better at linking jump by jump than some of the nav systems we have.” Coren walked to the map and drew another series of lines from spots in the Kathol Outback that didn’t look like much but to Jorus would translate to a common jump by jump of a ‘back road’ between two of the worlds. Then along that drew the same path in another color.

“If we found a group we could sub out to, we could probably make references and referrals the galaxy away. Not goin’ be sending war fleets through the void, but we can get freighters and couriers through. Like we used to for the Underground.” And like he still did for the Jedi River. “I know Kaia is working on some things in the Koboh Abyss, searching for a place called Tanalorr.” It was jump by jump but with his daughter, she was doing it the way Jorus and Coren were thinking.

“I favor the astrogator and tech approach. If we develop some waypoint markers. Give something say a few astronomical unit range, we could keep a flow of good data, to at least make a shot at a path without the astrogator, and just make it better when someone is aboard…” This was more about the theory now, rather than the feasibility and the execution.

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

"References and referrals..." Jorus scrawled down several points from Coren's comments on the whiteboard, then connected that (under WHO GETS THE THING) to the heading INDIVIDUAL PATH CREATION with a long arrow and labeled it CROWDSOURCE.

He hucked his can into the receptacle - of course Coren would recycle - and nodded in satisfaction.

"Crowdsourcing."

Then he circled +FORCE/TECH AID and drew an arrow from that back to CROWDSOURCE. He labeled the arrow PATH DEMOCRATIZATION MEDITATION HAVEN BEACONS, which required recursive and increasingly smaller letters to stay within the section delimited by INDIVIDUAL PATH CREATION.

"You grok it?"

 

[Coren Starchaser]

The whole word web was really one way to go about the thought of this.. He knew that when it came down to hyperdrives and hyperdrive accessories it was going to be a bit of what he could tear apart on the fly, and what Jorus could rightfully build. Coren was more a shield and scanner tech crafter, and modifying damn near anything else. All one had to do was look around the Dawn Chaser and it would be obvious.

This ship had more refurbished tech than new tech. It was fine, parts were plentiful, and the families aboard the Chaser were survivors. Even with what Coren did gather from the Alliance, Outer Rim Coalition, and the Sanctum, they preferred to not owe favors. But that was the way of things.

Back to the matter at hand. The idea that Coren was coming up with would require a lot of trust, especially if the path engine they created was going to be used.

“Just thinking, I know we’re looking to do it for the greater good. Could it fall into the wrong hands if we bring that many people aboard?”

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

"...yeah, there's that. The Maw and the Nihil sure did a lotta damage with Paths."

The WHO GETS IT section was therefore inscribed with an awkward linear scale, with the left side marked SECRET and the right marked OPEN ACCESS. He added a dot on the scale, somewhere around the middle, with a question mark and arrows pointing either way. A dot near the SECRET end was labeled SELAB TYPE. A dot around the middle got marked BAOBAB MAP SALES.

"Where you think it belongs on that line?"

Separately, but in the same section, Jorus drew a box labeled TRUST/VERIF. He then drew an arrow from SELAB TYPE to the box and scrawled PIGGYBACK OFF SELAB? -> JUST GIVE TO SELAB MAYBE? in there somewhere.

Jorus loved holo-whiteboards.

Coren Starchaser

 

[Corey's OOC]

.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

“Its what I want to prevent. If we’re going to be bringing something big into the galaxy, I dont want it used for the wrong reasons. I don’t mean to align us with any one goal, but being able to move our kind of people around.” Still thinking the Underground or the Jedi River. There wasn’t a doubt that Jorus would be on his side.

Looking up at the board, he took a sip and gave a point. “I’d say we do more near the secret for an advanced model, maybe something using buoys and a stream of data, and more to the open access, we do the one where we have our own pilot aboard. At least they can provide us a headsup if someone is dropping the wrong words.” Sith. Mostly. But in the Sanctum, it was more anyone looking to move a war fleet.

Coren didn’t think they could or should go after a single dark sider trying to get from A to B.

“If we gave it to Selab, I know they’d make the right calls. Keeps us as some sort of ghost in space. And with you, me, the kids, Chloe… Could be useful to get Selab aligned Wardens being able to cut the line…”

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

"I don't know about cut the line but..." Nodding furiously, Jorus added an arrow from SELAB to a space above all the headings, wherein he wrote PILOT PROJECT HAR HAR.

"Which isn't to say I trust every Selabite, but the vetting's there, formal, informal, all of it." He underlined VERIF and PIGGYBACK repeatedly. "Saves us a lot of time. And sure, there's not the most intuitive connection between the Selab and the Paths, but there are Wardens of the Sky in Selab, like you said, and navigators from other traditions. Only hitch is, when we expand that circle of trust, we gotta have some kind of a way for the circle to be good with it, with sharing the work they've done, the database they've helped make. The hell am I handing this to Alliance admirals or worse."

Under DATABASE INPUT's technical scribbles, he added TRUST FOR FUTURE USE. A dotted line then connected that to a bracket outlining the SECRET end of the SECRET <-> OPEN ACCESS continuum, with a question mark.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Looking at Jorus, Coren nodded. The step to make this a Selab project definitely wasn’t what Coren foresaw he was getting into when he called his old friend to help with repairs on the Dawn Chaser but here they were. And it wasn’t a bad idea, in retrospect. The Nihil, according to the Elzar Mann holocron he found, used the Paths sparingly, and only for very specific situations. The Selab would know to use it to move certain peoples around, and the knowledge.

But also the Underground.

“I mean, I don’t trust them all, hell, I don’t think I know them all. But there are a few I’d trust with this. Ilias, my witch friend Brooke, Chloe Blake, Tiland, Romi, Jend-Ro…” He was listing names, those he’d trust, and those who all had docking privileges aboard the Chaser anyway.

And they’d all recognize the bronze plaque at the visitor’s docking location, the one of the tree.

“Yeah, I’d want to keep this local. Wish we had it during the Underground. But Selab is a good starting point, and they’d have to be good with taking certain jobs. If we needed to move some Force sensitive children out of a Sith expansion…” Just as an option. Looking at the board, Coren grabbed the last can and hit a button on the desk.

“Can we get some grub in here? Another case of lum… bottle of Whyren’s and probably another white board?”

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

"Yes. More whiteboards."

Jorus' ship for the past umpteen years was the unarmed salvage/repair train City of Nar Shaddaa. Large, large portions of its interior were actually hidden holographic whiteboards, or the analog version.

Under WHO GETS IT, he added KID EVACS, circled SMALL CIRCLES above, and drew a line between KID EVACS and SELAB with a question mark. Like Coren had flagged, a lot of Selabites didn't necessarily have the capacity or aptitude or even desire to participate in the kind of urgent missions that transformed a Path Engine from a fun exercise to a real amelioration.

Jorus hiccuped and set aside his nigh-drained second can in favor of piecing components together.

"So the way this is coming together in my head is slow-burn. Set up a meditation satellite, basic little docking thing. Meditate there, bolster your familiarity with the sector, Paths get identified, you learn'em, database gets'em simultaneously."

He scrawled SIMULT by MEDITATION HAVEN BEACONS and crossed out PATH DEMOCRATIZATION.

 

[Chloe Blake]

"Did someone ask for more Whyren's?" The whimsical drawl of the Corellian Warden's voice would resonate with notable amusement. In her arms, she held a large crate with the familiar bottles of Lum and of course, more than one label of Whyren's. It was one of the benefits of being part of the Blake family.

"I shall forgive you for your terrible cravin's for Lum on account of time we've known each other, Coren," Chloe teased, the woman flashing those blue eyes full of mirth. Even with the score of laugh lines surrounding her face, there was a classic hometown beauty to her that aged well like a barrel of the finest whiskey.

Behind her, a droid would wheel in another blue board. This one larger than the last.

"Well, " she began, the amusement shining at Jorus Q. Merrill and Coren Starchaser , "Had I known this was goin' to be that kind of shing-dig, I reckon I'd have brought more whiskey."

She set the crate along a nearby table, pulling out a large bag from the crate full of snacks that the trio would be able to grab, juggle in their hand, and then toss into their mouth while figuring out what have you Jorus was in the throes of drawing out.

"I see Jorus is already knee-deep," she teased while grabbing bowls and pouring the snacks out for them to reach easily.

"So... what do you have here?" she asked, her curious eyes roving over the vast diagram of symbols and acronyms.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

The Force and timing just worked in miraculous ways. The Dawn Chaser was set up to be a waystation for Wardens and the Selab. It did have a mobile vault for the Selabites, but that was only until it could be delivered to Kattada, or elsewhere that the Alliance or Sith Empire couldn’t find. “Always can use more Whyren’s!” Coren called with a laugh.

Chloe was someone they were going to be reaching out to, and it must have triggered Porter to call for her. The droid was trusted by Coren and knew a few of his contacts. But the speed was too quick, so Coren just had to wave that all away and be glad the blonde wanderer was here. Looking up, the way that Blake entered a room always made the other Corellian feel at ease.

“When have you known it to be something else when a few of us old timers get together?” He laughed and indicated a seat. The droid was bringing in another white board and Coren could all but feel the excitement in Jorus. “Working on an idea for a path engine… service… thing.” He pointed to the board.

“Trying to find a way to make use of the skills we have, set up a path engine, but then figure out who we can trust with it.”

Jorus Q. Merrill Chloe Blake

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

Jorus lit up. "Chloe! Been too long, too long - ahh, what vintage do we have here?" He hurried over to welcome the newest addition to the brainstorming exercise with great appreciation. "Deep color, strong foundation, clean lines, the whispering scent of bygone days, the beauty of a certain age-"

He was speaking, of course, of the whiteboard.

"The Paths," he said to Chloe over his shoulder, still gazing adoringly at the whiteboard. He flicked its holo functionality on and off and on again, then set it in beside the first one. "The core of it's on the desk-" In about twenty mismatched pieces, surrounded by cans.

"I got to fly on a Sasori ship with a Path engine," he added. "Not that they used it for that - they'd set up an ExGal jump - but I did get some good readings off my gear. Enough to dial in the power integrations anyway."

 

[Chloe Blake]

"Should have known things were going to get knee-deep in a pile of Giju with you two," Chloe replied, a broad smile curving upwards in teasing affection. Musing over, she mulled the notes, recognizing Jorus's Nuna scratch scribble. It made her chuckle, recalling times past when he would do the same in the Gypsymoth.

"You got some readin's off a Path engine off a Sasori ship?" blonde brows rose high, but to be sure, she wasn't surprised. Par for the course with Jorus. Looking over who to trust, she let her curious gaze settle over the plans.

"So we got a good sense regarding power intergrations. Now, on to whom and the what..." She reviewed the notes of Selab, not Selab, Wardens, and verify. Onward it went, like a massive, complicated spidersilk web that, from up close, appeared chaotic, but with a few steps back, you saw the woven masterpiece.

She got to the part of SIMULT by MEDITATION HAVEN BEACONS and crossed out PATH DEMOCRATIZATION. Turning to Coren Starchaser and Jorus Q. Merrill , she asked for clarification, seeing as she came in the midst of their brainstorming.

"You thinking of creatin' meditation chambers to gather the intel with verified folk?"