The Things We Lost

[Aeshi Tillian]

Aeshi looked at the datachip as she ejected herself backwards from the ruined cruiser. It was ancient. Metal was chipped and corroded from whatever battle had crippled the vessel. Droid attack, or possibly pirates. Could have been something the galaxy didn't know existed. She was off the map on this one, after all.

Only crazy smuggler's tales had told her of a Clone Wars wreck drifting in the middle of space, mostly intact save for a hole blown in the bridge and the fact the engines were floating several dozen kilometers away. Air hissed through her suit as she contemplated. Based on the records and blueprints she found on the Holonet, this was in fact the navcomputer's data-chip. Everything and everywhere the ship had gone was saved on this little piece of metal. Unless they had deleted it, which was a possibility.

But, this was the only lead she had. Activating the thrusters on her suit, she drifted backwards out of the wreckage and towards her own ship. It was a Corellian heavy freighter, kitted out and modified to haul cargo anywhere, even if it wasn't on the map, or if the local authorities didn't want her there.

Right now, it was loaded with supplies for a long journey with an uncertain destination at the end. According to what scant records she could dig up, the world she was looking for was allegedly uninhabitable and had been for millennia. Perhaps it had recovered. Or perhaps it had gotten worse. Nothing was for certain, except that she intended to find it.

Maybe there were supplies or resources there that she could use. Or, if all failed, she could hide out there as the galaxy burned beneath the Sith and First Order. Eventually, they would fail, and she could return, or she would live out amongst the stars and the wilderness, alone and with no government interfering with how she lived her life.

The tether to the Stardust spooled around her as she drifted back to the airlock. The first door hissed open and she jetted inside as the door shut behind her. A light on the wall counted the timer until it turned green. Gravity and air pressure exerted themselves on her and her feet landed lightly on the deck. Removing the spacesuit, she strode onto the bridge, inspecting the datachip. Despite the exterior damage, it looked like it would function.

A massive, slightly jury-rigged projector jutted from one corner of the bridge. Holding her breath, Aeshi slipped the chip inside and it darted into the machine.

Nothing happened. Seconds passed as she waited and her insides tensed. Has she wasted everything? A map of the galaxy sprang into being. Holograms of stars, black holes, and the galaxy drifted past her head as it spun around her.

"Computer," Aeshi added, "Bring up differences between this map and the most recently updated standard map."

The image vanished and a humming emerged from the machine as it calculated. Aeshi turned and strode away from the machine to the bridge.

It was a beautiful ship, despite the wreckage, and she mourned its destruction. Perhaps an ORC or Tillian salvage crew could come and grab the pieces. Rebuild it again. Make it a luxury retro yacht. Until then, it hung there, still against the void, while a nebula glistened in the distance. They were just at the edge of the nebula.

The computer dinged and she turned back as the machine highlighted multiple areas on the newly made composite map that differed between the two maps.

One stood out to her for a reason she couldn't explain, but it drew her attention. She leaned closer and looked at it. Upon reading the name, she let out a grin. That was the world she was looking for. Yet, something about it sent a prickle down her spine. It was important for some reason.

 

[Veino Garn]

He wasn't sure why the Saarai-Kar had sent him on this expedition, other than to perhaps keep an eye on the wayward Tillian once reaching their destination. She had confided in the family about her plans and what she was looking for, and unbeknownst to Aeshi, the Jensaarai had delved into their archives to see what they had. They had found records of an ancient Sith pyramid and Force nexus on the world, although long abandoned and forgotten. What exactly the nexus consisted of, they had no record of. Hopefully, Aeshi would leave it undiscovered. But if not, Veino was there to make sure she didn't fall into trouble. She would have made a great Jensaarai had she not been lost to the One Sith as a child.

Perhaps one day she would return and settle down to Susefvi, but he found it unlikely. Aeshi was too much like her cousin Roth. Rocket-fuel for blood and a hyperdrive for a heart. Those two would never settle and he wouldn't ask it of them.

He watched from where he lay against a box of supplies as Aeshi dashed about the business of captaining the ship. He knew how, of course, and had experience with piloting freighters, but this was her ship, and she flew alone. It had been made clear that she did not need his help. He respected that and settled into the role of passenger until they arrived at the planet. Assuming they did reach the planet.

Yet Aeshi was excited as she studied the charts and darted back to the bridge. He stood and strode over to the chart and studied it. No astrogator, but he could tell there were discrepancies, even before Aeshi merged the two, and he downloaded his own copy to his datapad. Those could do with more study and research. First his limited resources on the vessel and then the broader resources upon their return. But for now, an initial study would have to suffice.

 

[Aeshi Tillian]

"Double-check the first leg of the jumps," Aeshi said as she slid around the command console. As she spoke, her droid co-pilot input the coordinates again. Circuits buzzed as she crunched the data, and then with a nod. "Excellent." Aeshi slid into the captain's chair and activated the ship's intercom. "All passengers, prepare for jump to hyperspace. Route is stable and on the charts."

She pulled up the projected route and bit her lip in contemplation. "However. Further jumps will be uncharted. I'll be blazing and marking our trail as we progress into the uncharted space."

The hyperspace buoys were loaded and ready for transport, heavily encrypted, because as far as she could see, they were going to be in the border-marches of the resurgent Sith Empire. Inconvenient, but the information as forgotten. As far as she knew, nobody else had the data. And she hoped that would be the case.

As the others settled in, she made the jump. Stars turned from distant specks to streaks and then vanished entirely. With that out of the way, she stood up and strode back to her quarters. This was the easy part of the journey. The hard part would be after this jump. Enemy territory, uncharted hyperlanes. Everything that she had ever dreamed of.

She couldn't help but laugh at that part. It was the opposite of what she wanted, but she would make it work. Still, it was certainly exciting, and that was something she didn't have a problem with.

[member="Coren Starchaser"]

 

[Brooke Waters]

Savannah was a bit excited for this. She was being dispatched as part of a Shattered Jedi addition to the team that was being dispatched from… She thought Jensaarai space. Being a student of Coren Starchaser, the Thyferran had a lot to live up to. She knew that he was an explorer in the days before the war, and was working on it lately with the Outer Rim Coalition and the Exiled Alliance. She was a pilot of sorts, but primarily Sav was an artisan.

She could fix near about anything, and was working on enhancing anything she could get her hands on. The Force was more than light and dark, and the Jal Shey were showing her what she could do. And the Light Side? There were ways to set traps with that to stall others. Or enhance attributes of someone. Give a few skills…

The Jedi vessels were being sent to help trailblaze and set up shop along the hypespace route. But the Thyferran was sitting in the main cabin, working with a piece of metal and wood. She was trying to infuse some of the knowledge of instinctive astrogation, as well as just the general power of the Force, into he piece while jumping through hyperspace. She had an idea, but it was tricky to make it manifest.

She was wondering what other ships were coming with, maybe Stachaser was there, but not on this one. Wasn’t her pilot a blue Twi’lek?

[member="Veino Garn"]
[member="Aeshi Tillian"]
[member="Cambria Zadira"]

 

[Veino Garn]

Veino rollers his neck as he looked up from the data. The map was something he had never done a whole lot of work with before and it gave him a headache sifting through the differences. Some had been added since the older map while others had been lost. What he was trying to do was locate forgotten places that would serve as refuges.

But now, he needed a break. He stood up and strode back to where Sav was sitting. He’d only met her briefly, but knew she had trained under Coren. Taking a seat nearby, he stretched out his legs and pushed his rolled up spacers coat against the hull as a pillow.

“Find anything exciting in your times with Coren?” Veino asked.

Around him, the ship shuddered as Aeshi made the initial jump into hyperspace. This one was all charged in space. It would be the subsequent ones that weren’t. Once they were, it was all on Aeshi to make the expedition a success. Veino didn’t have the same skills as the Tillians, at least not as far as space was concerned.

 

[Brooke Waters]

Her tools in front of her, and a few kyber crystals scattered on the table, she was looking up periodically at the group who was coming and going. She was not much of a navigator, if you compared her to Coren Starchaser, or Merrill, or the other Jedi pilots, but she knew the Force, and while they were moving? It was going to help to work the Force into the kyber. A sort of Jal Shey, light side alchemy… thing. She could only hope it would work. But that was what this was, right? Trial and error. And error.

And Error.

But she was going to get there. The Thyferran understood that everything had a system, and finding the faults in it, the ways you could trouble shoot it, you could fix and repair, and sometimes even enhance, just about anything out there. She was watching the map from time to time, and noticed the appearance of the Jensaarai. [member="Veino Garn"] was one of those beings that Coren Starchaser placed a lot of trust in.

She looked at him, placing the crystals down a bit gingerly. “He had put me in contact with a lot of people. But his… path, I guess? Isn’t what mine is. He taught me a lot of the basics of the Alliance and needs of the New Jedi Order. And now its about finding where I am, since he seems to be a lightning rod for… combat.”

Or he sought it out, Sav didn’t have those delusions, she’d just prepare tools to help others fight,

 

[Aeshi Tillian]

Some time later, the ship dropped out of hyperspace at the edge of a known system. The Mon Calamari system, to be precise. It was well known, charted, and an excellent place for calibrating hyperspace navigation devices. This was the next task for the expedition to ensure the smoothest and clearest route to Auratera's last known location. She spun her chair around and pulled up the navcomputer and set it to run through a calibration protocol. This would double check the accuracy of the computer readings and ensure they were exactly where the computer claimed they were.

It would take some time for the computer to finish its task, but in the meantime, she still had her own to finish. Setting the ship to maintain a stationary position in the system, she strode to the cargo bay. A half dozen hyperdrive beacons sat there, ready to be primed and loaded into the airlocks for deployment.

Removing a took-kit from the hull, she approached the first one and set to work. She was setting the beacons to broadcast only on Underground channels. As far as she understood, Veino had some method of his own to link the location to the Jensaarai complex. Some weird Force magic, undoubtedly. s she narrowed the broadcast specifications and tightened the encryption, she prepped the beacons for auto-activation.

With that completed, the beacon would start transmitting as soon as it was launched from the ship. When she finished the first one, she moved on to the next one.