Climbing Mount Fuji (Kaili Talith)

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

ORD MANTELL
DINGO DARR'S CHOP SHOP

"All right, so you know what I am."

It wasn't exactly a secret, at least to the Talith kids. For one thing, they were friends. For another, her father was a little bit apostate -- publicly known as a Warden of the Sky, even if he was the derivative kind that used guns and such.

Mara licked ribene sauce off her fingers and slid off the side of her Tachyon, landing deftly in a clatter of rib bones. She hooked her thumbs in her belt. Aela was aloof, Micah was too involved, but Kaili was just fun. A bit younger than Mara, still enthusiastic about everything, but not in your face about it, Kaili ranked among Mara's preferred Taliths. And honestly, that was saying something.

"What you know about the Wardens, apart from defend the spacelanes and don't publicly be a Warden?"

[member="Kaili Talith"]

 

[Kaili Talith]

She was back on Ord Mantell for this one to meet Mara again. Things were different for this one though, the others weren’t really here with them. It was just the young [member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"] and the younger Kaili Talith. Normally it wouldn’t have been a big deal but this wasn’t just for socializing, it was more like an audition or an interview.

The Wardens of the Sky. Her friend was one as was her father which oddly enough most seemed aware of. A fact that made it all the more curious when it turned out a Warden usually wasn’t as open about it as Jorus was. Kaili perked a brow at the comment about it but decided it was just best to drop it.

“Well, I don’t know much. They’re cunning navigators and pilots.” Kaili shrugged. “And... Yeah, they keep the spacelanes safe and open for all and keep quiet about it.”

Kaili looked around the cantina before that eyebrow perked up again.“But, I mean, what about your father? He’s pretty open about it.”

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

"Yeah, and Ch- Uh, other Wardens have given him heck for that. Me, I don't know why he blabbed in the first place. I figure it just snowballed when he started doing big things -- resistance groups and Omega Protectorate navy and building hyperlanes and breaking bacta monopolies and building Silk. That's why most Wardens live kind of a low-profile life, and why Dad's life changed when he became a Jedi. The Code's got lines about not using the Force for glory or getting rich, and that's a thing the Jedi and the Wardens agree on. Older I get, the more I realize that getting famous ain't for me.

"But yeah." They were still alone, for now. "That's the general idea of what Wardens do. Why does that interest you?" She could get into the 'how' later.

 

[Kaili Talith]

Oh, so he’d gotten his over it from the mysterious and only slightly mentioned ‘Chl-Other-Wardens.’ Kaili thought nothing of it, the more amusing part was when Mara went into detail about who her father was which, at this point, was no real secret to anyone in the Brat Pack. At least not the basic gist of who he was.

“You don’t have to remind me who your father is, Mara. We all know” Kaili chuckled. “I guess the reason I find myself interested is because I just... I don’t know, I like to see new things. Explore the unknown.”

It was the truth, her entire family and most likely the whole Brat Pack could reassure anyone of that. “I want to see new things, you know what I mean? It’s the rush and excitement. If I can help people while doing that it’s all good by me.”

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"]

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

"Exploring the unknown is great. Some Wardens do a lot of that. There's no functional Jedi Exploratory Corps, so that's more or less out. There's the Levantine Sanctum, that finds lots of lost worlds and connects'em to the galaxy -- but I can pretty safely say that my dad's not the only Warden who operates in Sanctum territory. It's just a great fit."

Some Underground techs entered the hangar with a load of laser cannons. Mara tossed them a wave.

"Looks like we've got company. Come on aboard -- let's talk in private. Besides. I hate sitting still."

Inside, the Tachyon-class light freighter was still fairly stock. It had the usual modifications -- better reactor, better shields, stronger guns, some countermeasures -- but nothing especially interesting or innovative. Yet. Mara took the pilot's seat and started running through preflight.

"How are you with technopathy? Mechu-deru?"

 

[Kaili Talith]

Finding lost worlds. It certainly felt familiar in a sense. Kaili joined Mara in her wave to the techs. She didn’t know them, of course, but it never hurt to be polite. At her friend’s request Kaili entered the ship to gain the privacy they needed.

Sitting still? Not her thing either. Most of the time.

The ship’s interior was still as impressive as the last time Kaili saw it and envy certainly played a note over the fact that Mara had her own ship, but with time it was only fair to assume Kaili would get a ship of her own as well. After all, Aela got her own ship and if the other siblings get the same luxury thrown upon them Kaili would make sure her parents never ever heard the end of it.

Perhaps she was a little spoiled, but it simply spoke of how loving her parents were!

Or something like that.

“I’ve learned of it. My father showed me how to use it and I’ve tried to practice it as often as I can ever since.” She shrugged. “Though they warned me not to get too carried away.”

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"]

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

"Well, don't get carried away with technopathy on my boat," said Mara, continuing preflight. "Maybe you'd better tell me what you can do with that. Me, what I know of it is basically just starship-mechanic-related. How to know what to fix, how to know what's wrong with systems. A lot of Wardens aren't pilots, they're mechanics. Great way to keep your head down. Nobody suspects the ship's engineer of being a Forcer -- and that says a lot about how little Wardens crave recognition."

The Tachyon-class freighter -- she hadn't named it; it didn't have a personality yet -- lifted off and accelerated out of Dingo Darr's Chop Shop. Ord Mantell stretched out before them, then dipped below the horizon of the cockpit viewscreen as Mara pulled back on the yoke.

"First rule of being a Warden is not to say you're a Warden. Second rule: no guns. Ideally no weapons that can breach a hull." One-handed, she pulled out her hydrospanner-looking sabre and ignited it in the cockpit. She tapped the silver blade against the viewport without effect and grinned, then shut it off. "Just about always set to training mode."

 

[Kaili Talith]

“No, ma’am.” Kaili joked. “Father showed me how to do it on droids and other appliances around the house. Nothing as big as a ship.”

It was still amazing to see Mara control the ship like she did. Not because taking off was something that most people couldn’t do, but because if Kaili was at the controls they would have razed three blocks of cityscape by this point. Did she want to pilot? More than anything. Could she pilot? No, not by herself.

Curse the Talith family curse.

The rules of a Warden was simple. No guns, no breaching and no- OHMYGODWHATISSHEDOING! Kaili widened her eyes in surprise as she arched back into her seat. The look lingered. Her face had seemingly turned into stone. The saber collided with the viewport and as the mention of training mode was made Kaili let out a sharp exhale.

“Right. Nothing that can cause any breaches. I get it.” Kaili let her nerves calm down. “So what about if we’re not on a ship? Would I be expected to follow the same rules then as well?”

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"]

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

That assessment of Kaili's mechu-deru didn't seem too threatening, and Mara let herself relax. The freighter got to soaring, up through the Ord Mantell cloudscape and into near space.

"Wardens just plain don't use guns," said Mara as she flew. "And frankly, Wardens don't spend hardly any time off a ship or a station. Get used to not being on planets if you want to be a Warden. Grav wells are death; grav wells are a trap. Space is freedom. You can't instinctive astrogate a blind jump off a planet or a moon. If you've got to go planetside, stay close to your ship or at least a port.

"So as for what Wardens use instead of guns and lightsabres -- they use their hands and feet and knees, and they use the Force. Projected fighting. I'm no better than decent at Warden martial arts, but I can still throw a punch that'll shatter a stormtrooper helmet six feet away, and that's pretty good. Projected punches and kicks -- it feels weird to kick the air, but it works -- plus little tugs and pulls and pushes. A full-trained Warden can go up against a Sith without using a lightsabre. Just tug at the right time, move at the right time, push at the right time, all little things to screw with their weapons or their balance."

 

[Kaili Talith]

No guns and no planetside activity. It was all fairly simple aspects that she was willing to live by and if you removed the weird cult-like chanting from the way Mara spoke of gravity wells it all actually kind of made sense.

“So, a warden stays off planets unless they have a good reason to land, they prefer not to use any kind of weapon and they can kick butt with their bare hands?” It felt like that was the summary. “Because the ship is a warden’s everything and to lose it would be beyond catastrophic?”

There was more to it, of course, like the fact that most of the work is done in space. Kaili would lie if she said the idea of not being planetside very often was a bit of a bummer at first, but that mostly drew on the fact that she was very much still eleven and the actual world was still very much an interesting aspect of exploration as well.

Still, there was bound to be times for that too. Just not as many as for most. Which still was pretty okay by her.

“I think I understand.”

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"]

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

"I'm probably teaching it wrong. A ship is home, a ship can be to a Warden what a lightsabre is to a Jedi, but lots of Wardens move from ship to ship all the time. My dad and one of the Wardens that taught him, they spent time as crewers on a starliner, just mechanics. My dad's ship's the Gypsymoth -- or the D'Lessio, or the Absolution, or the Daragon. This ship's mine, but so is the Gypsymoth. Getting tied down to things, to ships, is like getting tied down to people or places or droids. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn't, especially when it gets in the way."

The last tenuous wisps of atmo faded away, and bright clear unblinking starlight poured in. Mara sighed. "And we're back. All right. Open up the nav display and find a planet called Nirauan. It's up near One Sith and Mandalorian space, so be sure to find us a course that'll avoid their territory. Don't worry; I'll check over everything you do, and Nirauan's already in the charts, plus our location's known, so it'll only take the navicomputer an hour or two to finalize the course."

 

[Kaili Talith]

It wasn’t like a lightsaber then. If anything after the careful explanation it felt like -- if they were going by the lightsaber comparison -- that the chances were there would be several lightsabers involved and all of them just as important as one another. Kai was most likely just overthinking it but things would make sense with time.

Eventually they reached space and it became Kaili’s time to work it.

“Right.” She followed order and prepped up the nav display. “So, Nirauan.”

A look at the map had her thinking while the uncertainty radiated off of her. She had used navigational computers before and gotten out of a stickier situation before. This time it was just a question of potentially experiencing the sticky situation or not. There was a way she could think of but they could potentially be shifting slightly into Mandalorian turf.

It was worth a shot. Prodding away at the computer she eventually set up a route.

“There.” Kaili would nod as she pointed at each planet along the route. “It runs from here through Phaeda in an attempt to pierce a tiny gap between Adumar and Aeten II.”

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"]

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

"Phaeda's a good choice -- and yeah, slipping between Adumar and Aeten is the way to go. Vertical to the galactic plane, that whole front is monitored on both sides. Aeten's super high security, Adumar's the closest the One Sith get to the Mandos, and the Mandos haven't forgotten Junction or Keldabe." Mara compared the route with her own charts, then closed her eyes and focused on the Force. "Looks like your route's viable. We might get a bit of turbulence, but that's totally to be expected. I get it all the time."

The Tachyon-class light freighter surged into hyperspace. It had a good navicomputer, meaning it could take a complex course without reversions, so she rose from her seat and stretched. "Welp, now we just wait and see if we get interdicted. You did good. Wanna help me name my ship? Right now it's the BLX-462."

 

[Kaili Talith]

A small and totally-not-at-all nervous chuckle parted Kaili’s lips. Interdiction was not on the table. She had gotten her family and herself out of a tight spot around Crina a long time ago but she always accounted that to luck if anything. Even if it was all a gut feeling, but gut feelings and luck seemed to have that hand-in-hand relationship.

The young girl’s mind blanked out though at the mention of getting to name a ship. As in name a ship, as in name a freaking ship. As in help name Mara’s freaking ship! The obligatory blinking of surprise occurred and the kid looked at her friend and as-of-now-probably-also-mentor.

“Yes! Oh, heck yes!” Kai gleed. “It needs to be something cool, like... Like, like-”

“The Phantom Menace!” Her face quickly scrunched up. “No wait, that sounds really lame and annoying.”

“What are we going for in a name here?”

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"]

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

"Or, like, Return of the Wardens or something, yeah. For a real name? I've always liked ships named after ideas and jobs, I guess. We could.maybe use this to train. They say real Sith get their Darth names by their masters just...". Mara gestured. " Plucking it out of the either or something. If Sith can get that kind of, like, inspiration, what's to say we can't too?"

She felt gerself.get a little animated. "Heck, it'd probably be easier for a lightsider to pick a new name, wouldn't it? If people can, like, intuit passwords and things, why not a name? Give it a shot. Get meditation if you have to. Or we could practice with passwords and crap. Seems like a decent way to spend time while we're in jump, right?" she said with a grin.

 

[Kaili Talith]

“Yeah! If a Sith can do names like it ain’t no thing, so can we.” Kaili put her hand on her chin. “So if we’re going by a ideas and jobs. Let me think...”

Her eyes closed as her mind went to work. If this was meant to work the way Kaili thought it was going to work then she had to go with her gut. So what was it that her gut told her? A great many things. Most prominently that it was long enough since she ate that the small grumble of hunger would rumble within her.

“The Corridor Sweeper.” She eventually spoke up. “Sweeper, fast. Corridor, your spacelane. I don’t know, it feels right to me.”

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"]

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

Young Mara pondered that for what felt like months, but was probably more like thirty seconds. "Corridor Sweeper. The Sweeper for short. I freaking dig it. It's like Millennium Falcon but not. Maybe I should paint a broom on the nose or something. Okay, so. We've got a name that clicks, and it was totally the Force that gave it to us, so that's progress. We're getting good at this."

At some point during the whole instinct exercise, her hand had moved over and tweaked a few numbers south of the navicomputer's decimal place. As she keyed in the adjustment, the click of the switch caught her attention and she glanced over. Slowly, she withdrew her hand from the controls. "Thaaaat...was probably nothing." Her head tilted. After a moment, she reached over to the manual hyperbubble tolerance adjustment and dialed it up twenty percent. "Fairly sure that was nothing either. Just felt like the thing to do. Yeah, it was nothing. But, uh, we should probably buckle up. A little."

 

[Kaili Talith]

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"]

It was a good name! Sweet! Maybe Kaili had the whole spaceship business under control! Not that she expected herself to not have it, but for a Talith to be able to interact with a ship and not die? Yeah, that was amazing. Some would think it to be a miracle that the now-named ‘Corridor Sweeper’ hadn’t blown up yet with Kaili on-board.

Still, Mara praised her and it felt like being complimented by a hero. Gleefully obliging to her mentor’s instruction to buckle up Kaili did just that. Mara was doing that thing she did. Something was going to happen, neither party seemed to be quite sure what it was yet, but it was going to happen. Call it the uninitiated Kaili’s unawareness.

Instinctive astrogation was, after all, still a very new thing to her.

“What was nothing?” Kaili said before the nervous laughter kicked in. “Because usually when someone says ‘it was nothing’ they’re really saying ‘Oh no.’ and ‘Oh no.’ is not a good thing.”

“Unless... Oh right, the astrogation... Thing, right?”

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

The queasy dubiety in Mara's gut became uncomfortable certainty in short order. She readjusted her straps and, for good measure, dialed up the inertial compensators from 9 to 11. "The thing, yeah," she said grimly, though not without the excitement of serious events. Her knuckles whitened on the control yoke. So far, though, she did nothing with it. There was nothing more to be done. If and when they hit turbulent realspace ahead of schedule, she meant to be ready.

The jolt, when it came, introduced her stomach to her spine better than a shortage of ribenes ever could. She whipped forward against the straps, head coming perilously close to the docking levers. Almost before she recoiled, she was scrambling for some impression of what surrounded the ship. What they'd missed, what they'd hit, what might be coming this way. She was talking, she realized, something nonsensical and without substance. Back in the hold, air hissed through a breach.

"I'm all right. Ship's been better. You?"

 

[Kaili Talith]

Head jerking, breath knocked out of her chest. A few uneasy coughs forced Kaili’s lips to part as she raised her forearm to cover and wipe away any or all saliva that had tried to escape her. Deep breaths. The Talith kid needed to breathe and regain her faculties. Eye hazily looked over at her pilot and how she was doing.

Hmm, just about the same.

“I’m okay, it’ll take more than a bumpy exit to knock me out.” Kaili said, putting on her most feigned of bravado. “I mean, we didn’t crash and we’re still alive, so I’ll just assume that means we did pretty okay.”

She chuckled ever so nervously at her own joke. In reality she was partially freaking out, but were the Taliths truly known for freaking out? Last Kaili had checked: No. They were not and she was more or less obligated by family standard to comply.

Even when it was, you know, very hard.

“Okay, yeah, I mean...” She blinked for a second. “My head is spinning and I am nauseous but other than that I feel great.”

“... What’s that hissing noise? That's not just me, right?”

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"]