Memories Of Better Days

[Arage Bao]

[SIZE=10.6667px]"If you say so, Ember. Lessee what we got here."[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] took a lot out of him to just say that, instead of going all the awkward route.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]After making the introduction rounds, meeting a few younger cousins all grown up now, hearing a couple of stories that gave him a general sense of what Ember was exactly building here, he stepped up towards the console to take a good look at what they had here. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]A lot.[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] Was the assessment immediately. Ember hadn’t been kidding around, after all these years the Rekalis had gathered up a sizeable amount of space worthy vehicles, ranging from frigates to corvettes to little shuttles awaiting hosts. He scrolled through ‘em - immediately eliminating the bigger ships, the slower and the ones with a lot of heavy armament; wasn’t his style anymore. Sam looked for a few things in the ships: reliability, modularity and engine potential. Surprisingly enough it all came down to the Tegaanalir -- it had a good, solid base in terms of food supplies, so if [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]something[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] happened they would be set. It was one of the fastest out there, Ember hadn’t been kidding; though Sam was probably a little bit spoiled. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]All in all… good ship.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]"Think I will take up the ol’ reliable, this Tegaanalir looks like a beauty. Says here it has two people assigned to it, I got one other person coming in, means I will need to find another four experienced folk." he’d muse to himself.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px][member="Ember Rekali"][/SIZE]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Samael Rekali"]

"There's always cousins looking to sign on for the Hard Roil. Money to be made out there, and if they hear you've got a knack for astrogation, you'll have more knocks on the door than you can shake a stick at." Mixing metaphors furiously, Ember leaned over and tapped in the code to alert the Tegaanalir. He said their goodbyes and moved along. "We'll leave you folks to your job. The night's coming on, and this close to the Jedi Academy, that means there'll be a sore need for bouncers."

Chuckles all around, both because you laughed when the boss made a joke, and because about one in five Jedi Padawans really was a menace to the local cantina-and-brothel scene. Ember made his way farther into town, bound for the nearest part of the port. "C'mon, Sam. Lemme get you set up to bunk on your new boat, and we can post up your crew ad. Who you got and who you need? Don't just mean jobs, either, though there's mechanics and there's mechanics. What kind of people you looking to work with?"

 

[Arage Bao]

"Picked up a stray, urchin girl, on the way here." Benna's eyes. He shrugged, while thinking back on how he had met her in the first place. "I was planning on having her settle down somewhere, but then I found out she is one hell of a mechanic - 14 years old, got only one arm, but the amount of spunk she has? You wouldn't believe it, unless you saw it."

"Think she has some talent with the Force too. Would partially explain her talent with technology."

Sam scratched his chin and pondered about who he wanted, who he needed. A ship’s crew was almost as important as the ship itself. Especially if it was a smallish ship on prolonged journeys; meant you were pretty much stuck with them in cramped spaces. Which wasn’t really beneficial to the overall health of everyone involved - mental or otherwise.

"Stable people. Don’t need ‘em to be sociable, but I need to be able to count on ‘em when things get tight." and things would get tight, they always did. What mattered was how you and your crew handled it.

"Experienced probably, but I will take potential. Don’t mind teaching people the ropes."

[member="Ember Rekali"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Samael Rekali"]

"Stable? Heh. We're Mandos, witches, and Vahla." Ember got a good chuckle out of that as they made their way to the landing field. "Stable. That's a good one. But reliable, we can get you that, that's not a problem. You and your one-armed prodigy."

Port Shardrock's trees and buildings parted, revealing the evening-lights of a series of landing fields and bays. The Tegaanalir was a rounded gold-and-green shape like a backwards Firespray, nestled between ugly Silk freighters and lethal Mando starfighters. Ember exchanged greetings with the occasional ground crewer or star pilot as he and Sam wound their way through the press. He called up the codes on his datapad and keyed them in by the hatch. It opened with a smell of overripe blumfruit and tomo-spice. Ember's eyes watered as he clambered inside. "Looks like we'll need to boot up the cleaner droid - and the air filtration system." He set about finding the former and powering up the latter; the Tegaanalir wasn't a large ship, but he still had to shout a bit to be heard as he moved ahead. "Any problems with this bein' home sweet home? Speak now or forever hold your peace."

 

[Arage Bao]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Ya kidding?” Sam made a noise that sounded distinctly like a snort, but with his mouth, more like a [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]choffing[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] sound. His nose was currently occupied trying to filter through the smell that was all too pervasive in the air, but Ember forgot a simple thing. The younger brother had spent close to two decades on one ship or another out [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]there[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px], in the Outer and Mid Rims, there were no luxuries or pleasantries out there, except the ones you fight for.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Remind me to tell ya the story where I won this Hutt’s pleasure yacht in a pazaak game.” Sam shuddered at the mere thought of it.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Nevermind, don’t ask. You don’t want to know.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]He was in the cargo hold. [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]Not too spacious, but by the looks of it the ship tried to condense as much room as possible by using a lot of vertical space. Some ships had a huge length to provide the occupants with room, but this one had the design of making as compact a ship without compromising much in the space.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Commendable. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]The stench was already going away because of the filtering system, but a soft whine in the distance could be heard - the thing hadn’t been worked for a while, so they would probably need to replace a few parts here and there.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px][member="Ember Rekali"][/SIZE]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Samael Rekali"]

"Oh, I can guess." Ember flopped onto a crash couch near the cockpit as Sam rummaged. "Alec inherited a Hutt Sith Lord's ship a couple of years back. 'The Garden of Unending Delights.' Think a three-hundred-metre dick with flame carpets and TIE Defenders. Whole harem section, too. I think Alec uses that bit for shockboxing classes - teaches cousins and the Underground too. She got the ship by way of a private collector with a thing for sterility, but she never could get the smell out of the bulkheads."

Truth be told, there was a lot more to that story, but he'd just met Sam again. No point in explaining the identity or creation of Rasho the Hutt, or the next owner of the ship, out anything to do with Abeloth's World. Maybe later.

"Mind if I pass out on the crash couch, Captain?"

[member="Samael Rekali"]

 

[Arage Bao]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Ain’t gonna ask how she got on the will of a Huttese Sith Lord.” he mumbled to himself more so than his brother. There were a multitude of ways how that one came to pass and none of the options sounded all that comfortable in his mental ears, so [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]not[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] asking was very much a concern of his mental health and all that. Sam really didn’t want to know what baby Alec was doing in her free time out there in space.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]He kept on rummaging for a while. Before realizing he was really just stalling for the inevitable, which was to clean and scrub this piece of rust, until it was at least [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]a little[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] bit presentable for the kids.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]“Sure thing, ensign. I am gonna go and see if any of the shops got something to clean the ship, sleep tight.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px][member="Ember Rekali"][/SIZE]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Samael Rekali"]

Ember pretended not to notice that bit about Alec and a will. Wasn't his story to tell. Instead, he stretched out on the patrol cutter's crash couch and tried to remember how many drinks he'd had. Nothing compared to the time he'd gotten sobbing drunk during the great Jedi convocation seven years back, and Skye Mertaal had dragged him out of the station's bar. Nothing like the dark days when he'd liquored up to go get Aaralyn back from the One Sith. Nothing like the friendly nights with the clan on Dathomir, the Shardrock misfits that had formed the core of Clan Rekali.

Nothing like that much, but he still couldn't remember how many drinks he'd made. He'd managed to count to two when he fell asleep.

He woke to a foul taste in his mouth, a sore neck, the smell of cleaning products, and the vibration of a starship in flight.

 

[Arage Bao]

[SIZE=10.6667px]He also woke up to the scratchy feeling of a blanket draped around him. It was just like Sam to be empathetic enough to put a blanket over someone without being empathetic enough to make sure it was a non-scratchy blanket -- utility over comfort. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Suppose all that time away hadn’t changed him [/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px]that[/SIZE][SIZE=10.6667px] much. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]The ship was alive, moving in flight. But it was more than that. In the distance Ember would hear voices, the sound of industrial cleaning equipment doing its job and the familiar old gruff baritone of his brother shouting over it.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]Commands, apparently.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px]It seemed that while Ember was off in dreamscape, Sam had found himself a cleaning crew. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.6667px][member="Ember Rekali"][/SIZE]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=14.6667px][member="Samael Rekali"][/SIZE]
[SIZE=14.6667px]Not much of a hangover. Maybe he hadn’t been drunk; maybe he’d just been worn out. He fumbled his way out from under the blanket, getting a lungful of mostly-cleaned Mando patrol ship, and shuffled toward the cockpit. Sam was in there alone; Ember slouched into the copilot seat. Ahead, and all around, was the Hard Roil.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]He murmured a Dathomiri charm and his eyesight sharpened. Details of stellar mortality took on stark relief. Out there he spied a waystation, one of many. This one had familiar scars, and this part of the immense nebula had a distinctive yellow-green caste, like someone had shattered a Nightsister’s soul-trap crystal and thrown the wailing detritus to the stars. Out here, he knew, was the raggedy edge, one of a dozen jump-off points where Rekali clanspeople jumped farther into the Roil in search of treasure and lost civilizations. Or just some harvestable gas. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=14.6667px]“What you looking to find out here, Sam? Caught a scent off something?” Good instinctive astrogators were a joy, and Sam was better than decent. Better than the average Rekali astrogator, too, even if Oren and his friends had their little Calypho symbionts. [/SIZE]

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Ember Rekali"]

“Good question.” Sam mumbled. Fact was that his instincts were pretty good in general, but they were also awfully silent when it came to the specifics. Just that faint tugging at the corners of his being -- telling him to go out there and look. Sometimes he would stumble upon a new world, sometimes a new lane was blazed, often it was simply a beautiful scenery stretching out before him; things no one had ever seen before. Nothing valuable in terms of commodity or anything.

But it was sure as Vahl an attractive scene every single time.

The clansman altered their trajectory just slightly. There hadn’t been anything on the HUD, the sensors and scanners didn’t give him any hints, he just knew that they needed to shift a little bit to get where they were needed.

“How was the dream world?” couldn’t remember the last time Ember had actually been a wild drinker. So it wasn’t all that surprising that two, three glasses had been enough to do him in for the ride.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=14.6667px][member="Samael Rekali"][/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Ember grunted and tried to match Sam’s focus. “What’s the old line? You can never go home again? Never set foot in the same river twice? I feel like I’m dancing around-” He gestured vaguely “Ah, I’ll think of it. It’s not like it used to be, and there’s good and bad to that. Matter of fact, Sam, I ain’t been much of a drinker since I got Aaralyn back. ‘Fore that, there were some dark times. Didn’t just quit the Jedi Council on account of being allergic to burlap.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]”Not that you need to worry or anything,” he added after a moment, still scrutinizing the nebula and what it veiled. “I know my limits. What you think about that?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]He pointed at a smallish star cluster -- ten or twenty close-set stars, a bit deeper into the Roil than you could normally get from here in a single jump. “Something out there’s feeling good. Could have the waystation roll out a Ret’lini S-thread booster and clear us a path if you aim it.”[/SIZE]

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Ember Rekali"]

“Haven’t seen little Aaralyn since she was in diapers.” he adjusted the trajectory just a little bit more. They weren’t moving towards the waystation though, but they were moving towards the small cluster that Ember had picked up on a few moments ago. Sam’s thoughts weren’t with the calculations, the sensory data or even the stars though, they never really were when he was working.

Instinctive Astrogation wasn’t a precise study. There wasn’t one sure-way thing to do what they did- hell, none of ‘em did precisely what the others did. Some were better at short jumps, others at longer ones, some couldn’t even do either and had to rely on nav computers either way: for them their talent manifested itself in different ways.

Point was. For Sam, he needed to… not think about the journey ahead. Let his subconscious and body do the work, while his waking mind wandered abroad.

“What she like?”

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=14.6667px][member="Samael Rekali"][/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Angry,” said Ember bluntly. “Her whole fething life. But she’s married to a guy named Falcon, Galactic Alliance guy who seems decent enough, and she’s got a couple teenagers. Not sure when that happened. I don’t see’em enough. They’re coming for Life Day, though, out to the Sanctuary on Dathomir. You ever want to get to know Aaralyn, go check that place out. It’s got her roots, but it’s also ambitious as feth and chock full of starfighter tech. Me, I just hope we can evacuate that sucker to somewhere out here next time someone comes knocking on Dathomir. Can’t believe the Sith and the Primeval never took a swing at it.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]He got a sense of what Sam was doing; a familiar process, but with a depth and subtlety that Ember couldn’t match. His talents mostly lay elsewhere. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“You want a hand from the Ret’lini, or you good?” Top-notch astrogators could literally smoothe mass shadows out of their course; Ember couldn’t do much of that, but Sam might be able to.[/SIZE]

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Ember Rekali"]

Sam grunted. Angry. That could mean a whole lot a thing. He heard a few rumors here and there, of course. The clean-up crew didn’t want to give him too many details. They probably figured it was not their place to say, but the words ‘Sword of the Jedi’ came up fairly often in those talks. Sam didn’t know what it really meant, didn’t even know if he wanted to know what it meant, he had never been a big fan of the Jedi, never joined up like his brother, just hadn’t really been his scene.

“Mhm? Oh, think I am good, thanks.”

Something was building up in the air. Might have been him, but he felt they were getting somewhere now. A few more half a clicks, some more shifts here and there, then they would be ready to jump.

“Angry, huh? “Imma punch through a Sith Vault wall.”-angry? Or a different level of angry.”

Years had mellowed him. Back when the Sith had waged war on them… different story, the fury and anger had almost consumed him. The Blackthorn they had called him. But that was a long time ago.

Now he just wanted to be with his family. See if he could do some good, before Vahl claimed him.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=14.6667px][member="Samael Rekali"][/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I wasn’t angry when I did that,” said Ember mildly. “I was angry when I decided to do it, forty-eight hours earlier. In the moment, though? Total serenity. I’d decided the message still deserved to be sent that way.” His eyes tightened. “The Sith Council had a nasty reputation, Sam. They didn’t think too highly of consent, if you get my drift. So when Sio Kerrigan and I made that happen, we didn’t feel inclined to hold back. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Now, you stack up how angry I was before that, when I planned that, and you put it up against Aaralyn’s standard kind of angry? Well, I don’t rightly know. She’s always been pissy at anyone that crosses her. Can’t find the right target. Hair-trigger, though she’s mellowed some. Sad to say it, but I think her getting brainwashed into Sith Lordness let her get some of that nonsense out of her system and grow up a bit. The kids helped too, eventually.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Me...I keep it in, keep it down, try to tell myself it’s not real, try to hold back. And then boom, out it comes. I regret it pretty quick, most times, even if it’s what makes me do or say something that needs to get done or said.”[/SIZE]

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Ember Rekali"]

At this point he wasn’t sure if he should smile, frown, cough loudly or throw up. Maybe a hand full of things at the same time, but Sam kept it all in… if barely. Little Aaralyn a Sith Lord, so that’s what those glances to each other were all about. Not that he could really blame them for keeping it quiet, hadn’t been their show to tell, Ember’s shenanigans was different… a proud warrior-tale, a boast of how great the Rekalis were.

“Think we should keep that bit a bit quiet, no? Before we know it the Sith Lords of this world will start to use it as advertisement. “Angry? Want to blow off some steam? Join up at your nearest Sith Academy, you will find all the wanton-” he closed his eyes and cut himself off before he’d say more.

“Feth.”

Nobody could really be blamed here. Their pa had warned them about it all. Vahla were far more susceptible to the wiles of the Darkside than most. It was in their blood, in their culture, a part of what they were.

“How ya get her back?” afraid to ask. More afraid not to ask.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=14.6667px][member="Samael Rekali"][/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Told myself I’d do whatever it took to get her back, and I meant it. All but blackmailed a Jedi Council member, ran a metric fethton of raids to get out any prisoner I could, got a comprehensive picture of how things worked and where she’d be and what’d be around her. Spent a good while trawling in the Core Worlds, one step ahead. Then I found her, or she found me, and we fought it out. And then I hit her with enough Force Light to fry both her and the dark that’d been driven into her skull. She recovered, it didn’t, and I did what I could to fix her afterward.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]We fought it out[/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px]. One old retiree afraid to strike, against the Sword of the Jedi, half his age, covered in Sith armor, her natural fury channelled into the techniques of a Sith Lord, with absolutely no such limitation. She’d come at him with lethal intent and perfect technique and a load of raw power. And only one of'em had walked away.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Not a tall tale to brag about, though.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Yeah. That’s about the size of it, I guess.”[/SIZE]

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Ember Rekali"]

Sam shook his head, but didn’t comment right away. What was there to say to that? What was there to say. He never really cared all that much about alignment, dark, light, neutral; Jedi or Sith, or something entirely else. It all seemed irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. The war against the Sith oppression would always be there, maybe postponed by a few years or longer, but it would always restart.

What was the point of it all? Instead he had sought solace in the stars… in the act leaving Ember to deal with it all by himself. Sam didn’t know, but that was the problem. He hadn’t been there.

And he should have been.

“Sounds like ya still got a few tricks up your sleeve.” and there it was. The moment the last syllable was pronounced Sam felt it in the air. Almost an electrical current raging through, static running up and down his spine.

They were there. This was the spot, it was here that it would all happen.

“Alright. We are a go, going to be jumping in ten. Got anything to say before we go?”

At the end of the day instinctive astrogation was not an exact field. Every blind jump made was a risk, a calculated one, but a risk all the same. Maybe he would lose control, maybe the Roil would hit back at his assumption, maybe the Mass Shadows would be too thick to pierce. The only way to figure it out… was to jump and see.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Samael Rekali"]

Ember looked inside himself and found his own astrogation instincts were at peace with the jump Sam was about to make. That raised interesting possibilities for doubling up on Clan astrogators when possible. Fundamentally, after all, those missions were putting a good bit of profit potential in the hands of someone's hunch. Getting hunches to agree was a second point of contact, of stability. A single point of fixture could be swayed any which way, but a second point rendered attachment fixed.

Ember found he wasn't nervous at all. And, realizing that, he knew he should take better care of the Clansmen who relied on astrogators nowhere near as good as Sam. He'd have to do more.

He thought of Kol and the kids; last words didn't have much meaning now. They sure hadn't for them.

"Hit it."