A text? Unusual...

As Terrin approached Galen he paused to check the message. As Jasyn's text scrolled through he frowned, not liking the appearances of what was going on. Not knowing that Galen had already spoken with Jasyn, he figured she needed to know what was going on.

"Sounds like there is trouble on Khar Delba," he opened with, showing her the commlink so that she could read Jasyn's message. "Doesn't sound good, but I think if he and Shawn, who I'm assuming is still there, sit tight and try to smooth things over that might be the best thing. We already know we're going in to K'eel Doba in a less-than-friendly situation; having a good link on Khar Delba would be useful."

He paused, pursing his lips thoughtfully. "And it sounds like Matt and Panthar haven't returned either. We should try and make contact."

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"That's just what I told him to do, to sit tight and wait until we called back," I exclaimed, letting annoyance edge out over incredulous as I spoke.

"I mean, sheesh Terrin, the comm came in right as I was landing the ship. Then you bustled Link off to the meds before I could grab you and tell you anything. Great hopping womprats, it's only been like--"

I shot my chrono a fast glance.

"Fifteen minutes or so, give or take. Ok then, maybe closer to thirty. But Hell's Seven Circles, he called back already?"

I paused a moment, my brows bunching.

"I dunno; maybe he's jumping to conclusions here. I mean, maybe there's something else happening that he thinks is bad or something; we know he does like to tip more than the occasional bottle, and he's got absolutely no patience whatsoever. I mean, this last comm proved the latter, right?"

I chewed my lip, hoping I wasn't offending Terrin in my assessment. But dammitall anyway, I could tell a rancor from a bantha ya know; Jasyn was easier to read than a book.

"If there was something really wrong going on, or at least peculiar, don't you think Shawn might be the one to give more of an objective explanation?"

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Terrin paused, shaking his head a bit. "I wonder how much brandy he's had to drink?" He frowned. "Why do I think he's hoping I'll tell him to get out of there? Unfortunately for him, if Shayla and Erik have both left one or the other of them probably took the ship. But then again, that might be a good thing to keep him pinned in place."

Terring paused, chewing his lip a bit. "I'm going to remind him to do what you said, try and keep the peace there...

...and stay away from the brandy. Then I want to go check in on how the work on the transciever is going so it'll be all set for Link whenever she is ready."

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It took him little time to find no one on the ship besides himself and proceeded to the entrance hatch to find it already open and the boarding ramp lowered. Stepping out into the hanger he was greeted by the sudden gasps of what he assumed was a mechanic of deckhand of wherever this place was. Turning toward the sound Kyan found he was indeed correct, for lying on the ground staring up at him with his mouth hanging open was a mechanic judging by the hydro spanner he was carrying. It was a human male probably in his twenties and with the expression on his face Kyan wagered that this was the first time he had seen a Mandalorian in full armor before. Before the mechanic had a chance to runaway Kyan carefully bent over and offered the young man a hand.

"Well, I'm not sure where the Captain and Ms. Danner are, but I think I can help you out."

After saying that, the technician raised his wristcomm and keyed in a frequency he knew by heart. He raised the comm to his lips.

"Main deck, this is Technician Raimes in the main hangar bay. I have been working on Eagle II. Seems that a passenger aboard her was left behind. He is requesting to be reunited with Captain Danner and Galen Danner. Please alert the Captain that he and Ms. Danner are being looked for by..."

The technician trailed, arching an eyebrow at the man clad in Mandolorian armor, realizing with sudden embarassment that he hadn't even asked his name.

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"They are being looked for by a Mandolorian Jedi named Kyan Jestiisad."

With no further ado, the technician sent the message off and waited for a reply.

--------------------------

On the main deck, the technician's message was received. Although the communications chief was suprised by the words he heard, he dutifully sent the message away to Captain Danner.

"Technician Raimes, hold and wait. Your message is being directed to the Captain."

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"What the...? Don't tell me this is Jasyn again..." he started, pressing a button or two on his wrist comm. The message from the main deck came through.Have the technician walk Jedi Jetiisad to the main turbolift; Galen or I or both of us will meet him there, he responded to the main deck.

Then he sent a quick text to Jasyn:

Just keep doing what Galen said to do. Lay low and try to smooth the waters. Mind what Shawn might be thinking and feeling, he is more of a negotiator than you. We may need friends on Khar Delba; stay civil.

Sending that message off then, Terrin turned to Galen. "Allright, told Jasyn to be good and listen to Shawn. You want to head down to the main turbolift with me to meet Kyan? It's on the way to the transciever room, and I think that it's only fair to find out what he wants to do or where he wants to go from here."

----------------------

On the main deck, the communications chief quickly responded to Terrin's reply by relaying the message that the technician bring Jetiisad to the main turbolift.

[ 09-29-2008 09:37 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Terrin Danner ]

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Erik Kartan was jarred from a restless and disturbed slumber by the insistent beeping of his TIE fighter's proximity indicator. After rubbing the little bit of sleep he had gotten from his eyes, he surveyed his controls, realizing he had perhaps taken some time to rouse by the nearing of his reversion window.

Ten seconds...

Shaking his head to clear the remaining fog from his mind, Erik sat up and scanned his controls more carefully.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

The TIE fighter reverted with amazingly smooth precision considering its size. The dark sky before him, interspersed with stars, was marred from its beauty by the massive structure of the Eclipse-class SSD the Hornett.

Erik had to shake himself as less-than-found memories of the ship surfaced in his mind's eye from back in the day when he and Shayla were dealing with Terrin and Moff Krenoff.

You've gone from loving her to conspiring with the enemy, a demonic imp that popped out of seemingly nowhere snorted. Erik did his best to ignore it, and opened a general frequency.

Hornett, this is Erik Kartan requesting permission to dock from the Captain of your ship.

Sending the message off, Erik sat back a bit and waited, clearing his mind from all thoughts of Shayla and Zackary and focusing instead on what he was going to do in the here and now...

...and in the near future as well.

[ 09-29-2008 09:58 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Erik Kartan ]

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"I trust you've rested well, and have recovered," I said, thinking that a "regular" jedi would indeed by now have bounced back to normal. This guy, though... I really was a little uncertain about it. But I sure as Khaandon made lil green worrts didn't want to annoy him by assuming the opposite.

"Is there anything you'd need at the moment; food, drink? Or should we escort you to your quarters?"

I gave Terrin a sly elbow in the ribs, voicelessly informing him that the quarters to be assigned to this man had better be good ones.

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Kyan thoughts kept drifting back to the young twi'lek in the holo. How he found her in the slums of Nar Shada and knew the force had led him to her. The down trodden child of the streets that became a Mandalorian then a Jedi. But the image that stuck the most was the first time she called him Buir.

Surely she didn't perish in the attack on the Jedi Academy, like me she never stayed at the Academy longer then necessary, but she would also be the first to volunteer for a rescue mission.

Shaking these thought from his mind knowing further speculation would serve no purpose then to frustrate him.

After all, this was concerning Tarnus, and the Sith. Not to mention the truth behind the sudden widespread loss of any abilities. Something major was coming down the spacelanes, and anyone who was willing to help would be needed if they were trustworthy.

"As for communications, there is a station you can use right on this level," he then stated, nodding his head marginally at a small corridor just a little ways ahead of them. He turned for a brief moment to the somewhat anxious-looking technician. "Thank you for your assistance in rejoining this man with us," he said with a nod before motioning once more for Kyan to follow him. Only a few short steps later they were in a nearby communications port.

"Let me know when you are ready to speak with Petrolu," Terrin reiterated, taking a step away then to give Kyan some privacy.

--------------------

Then all hands on deck waited for the Captain's response before doing anything further.

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"This better not be Jasyn again," he growled pressing the accept button. Erik's request to dock played out, and Terrin's brow shot up in surprise. So far as they had been told, Kartan had left the Sith worlds to bury his son...

...so why in the universe was he here?

"Allow Mr. Kartan to dock in the main hangar bay," he then told the officers on the main deck. As he sent his response off he knew Kartan would be granted immediate clearance.

"I wonder what he's doing here?" he then asked aloud before keying in a familiar frequency into his wristcomm.

"Aaron, just checking in to see if you have quarters on Red Level for Captain Joao set. We also need to have quarters for one other for certain...

...maybe two. Have you heard anything about Erik Kartan coming here, because he is currently docking."

Sending the message off, Terrin waited.

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"Kartan contacted me not long ago wanting to rebuy Stargazer Coorporation. I was going to sell it back to him and make us a little bit of profit on the resell; after all, the company has been sitting on the back burner since I bought it from him."

He paused a brief moment to stand up and begin heading for the office doorway. "I'm coming down there to meet him now., do you want to meet with him as well?"

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...and they might be able to use someting like Stargazer Coorporation at the moment.

"I forgot about Aaron buying Stargazer Corp, he then said to Galen. "An information smuggling agency would be handy about now..."

He trailed, chewing his lip a bit, "...and I owned stock in the coorporation long before either Aaron or Kartan did since I helped start it up."

He shook his head. "Not sure I'm liking this move on Aaron's part. We might need a good connection with Stargazer Corp. Gods know we've used her knowledge base in the past and it's helped greatly."

[ 10-09-2008 09:17 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Terrin Danner ]

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She has a child how much have I missed, I should have taken her with me but then I might not have a... and anyways she is a Jedi knight and a Mandalorian warrior she has responsibilities to and the we both decided the Force wanted us to part ways at that time.

Reading on she went on to explain that she convinced a few Mandalorians to come along with her to see if they could find any Jedi survivors on Yavin 4.

Opening the second letter he had hoped to find news of his apprentices success but found the letter to be dated only a few months ago. At the head of the letter was an embedded video upon playing the video Kyan heart sank like a stone. There stood his apprentice shackled to a post in front of a firing squad of imperial stormtroopers. Kyan wanted to yell at the screen for her to use the Force to escape but knew in his heart what had happened. Almost if on cue the stormtroopers open fire on her leaving several smoking holes in her chest. When her body finally ceased to move the closest stormtrooper was about to unshackle her body when it slowly faded away and left only an empty set of robes. Then suddenly the video stopped. Kyan finished reading the letter then shut it off and returned to the others.

“My apprentice is dead,” Kyan coldly stated. “I received a letter from her daughter on a channel that only I and my apprentice used, and it was written in Mando'a then encoded with a Jedi cipher so there is noway it could have been fabricated. She... Pria, led a small twenty man strike team comprised of Mandalorians and a few Jedi she could find they tried to run an imperial blockade but where caught and publicly executed to warn the Mandalorians not to side with the Jedi ever again. Her daughter is now a Mandalorian warrior who is hunting down the man who gave the order to execute her mother... my daughter.”

“As a Mandalorian I should go and find Kani... my granddaughter to help her, but right now I have a responsibility to the Jedi Order and the Force I must take care of first. If it isn't to much to ask from what I've seen you seem to be the people who can help, no one has seen my granddaughter for several months if your organization could keep an eye out for her if she pops up anywhere... Shes a fully trained Mandalorian warrior about 16 years old and carries her mothers lightsaber even though she has no ability for the Force according to her letter.”

Sorben... he wouldn't have, he simply couldn't do such a cold-hearted thing...

No. I couldn't believe it. Not after the little bit Sorben had explained to me, back when, little Darra in hand, I had been foolish enough to run away from Terrin, fleeing with Sorben to Coruscant.

He told me the initial killing had been on Actar's orders. That it was only in the beginning, a coup de force necessary to upset the grinding gears of the galactic republic long enough that he and his governing body could take its place. He told me there had been no other butchery, no other killing, that Actar wanted order only...

Something hardened in the very depths of my being.

Actar lied. Not that this didn't really surprise me...

A shudder ran through me as images of the brief but mind-wrenching horror the man had brought upon my person burst across my inner eye like shrapnel. Memories of being confined, tightly balled, crunched away in a mental box, assured that I was the absolutely and positively only living thing in the entire plethora of universes...

It had to be Actar's doing; surely Sorben wouldn't go that far.

Another heart-shrinking picture: that of a Mandalorian-armored bounty hunter of my too-close acquaintance approaching the house where I had hidden clones of myself and tiny Darra. Clones of which he at the time had no idea were not the real us. Me, watching from the safe haven of my hidden treetop perch, aghast as his blaster was raised once... and then again, both clones then disappearing neatly from my view.

I shook my head briefly, trying to clear it, trying to bring some semblance of sense back into it.

Everything was a lie. The Empire wasn't the benign Big Brother Sorben professed it to be. It's goals were not about order, but rather the complete and utter domination over every planet, every system, every living being. Why else would what few rag-tag jedi still haunting the galaxy be seen as so great a threat as to warrant cold and public execution?

And where did Sorben fit into all of this?

I blinked, opened my mouth, worked it a little in a feeble attempt to say something meaningful. But for once in my life I was tongue-tied; closing my mouth with a swallow, I shot a sideways glance Terrin's way before returning my gaze to Kyan, the look I now set upon him being filled with heartfelt commiseration.

[ 10-11-2008 01:06 AM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Galen ]

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After all, he knew what it was like to find out that someone you loved had been killed on Actar's orders.

"We will do everything we can to help you find her," Terrin finally responded to Kyan, realizing that a connection with Stargazer Coorporation and Erik Kartan might be the best way to do this. "There is an information smuggling agency that I have connections with that should be able to help," he then said aloud. "We can talk more about this, but for now let me get you in contact with Petrolu."

Quieting then, Terrin motioned Kyan to follow him back to the communications room, inputing Shawn's personal frequency into comm device. Then he opened with a message.

"Shawn, this is Terrin. I have a man here named Kyan Jtiis'ad who is a Jedi and was stranded on the same world as Yaoksi when we found him. He is with us now, and would like to speak with you about some matters that are concerning him. I am connecting him with you now to do that."

Leaving the message at that, Terrin nodded that Kyan proceed, stepping out once again to give him privacy to talk to Shawn.

Only then did he key in Aaron's comm frequency again. "Aaron, before you make any final deals with Kartan, I think we all need to have a talk together. Some things have come up which he might be able to help us with, and I have a feeling he will want to do that."

[ 10-11-2008 10:28 AM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Terrin Danner ]

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...and the family JedCred he had taken from his home in Correllia. He paused a moment,removing it to look at it before returning it and closing the bag and beginning to disconnect the safety restraints in the small ship before popping the hatch of the fighter to disembark.

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"Jedi Shawn," Kyan began. "Like Terrin said I am Jedi Master Kyan Jetiis'ad. About 25 years ago I was the Orders Battle Master and head combat expert. About that time the Jedi Order was attacked by a fallen Jedi and in the process of stopping them I was stripped of the Force."

"Unfortunately there are few of us left that I am aware of, although there may be those who remain under cover. At present, I know there once was one man who was going to assist me in recreating a Jedi Temple on Tatooine, which was approved by the Empire, but I have not heard from him in some time and fear the worst. Other than that I know of at least two others who are not full Jedi but force sensitive, those being my brother-in-law Erik Kartan and my sister Shayla Petrolu Kartan. I have encountered an individual here or there who longs to be trained in the Jedi ways but does not remain. Our status, I fear, is grim. And at the moment I, along with all others that I know, have lost our connection with the Force...

...so we are no more able to deal with anything tto come than the next person other perhaps applying our training in ways that does not require Force-usage."

--------------------

"I trust you had a good flight...

...although I see you've had little chance to move and stretch your legs," he said simply, nodding towards the small fighter. Kartan cocked his head a bit and nodded in response, seemingly curious as to the reason for Aaron's banter. Aaron inwardly cringed, wondering if the other man thought he was about to back out on his promised deal.

Maybe that all depended on what Terrin wanted to talk about, he couldn't help but think.

"Terrin and Galen arrived here shortly before you did with some others, and he would like to meet with us about something concerning something you might be able to help him with before we close any deals."

Aaron paused. He wasn't sure, but he thought he denoted the slightest bit of a storm brewing in Erik's eyes. He quickly tried to deflect it.

"So while we wait I thought you might like to clean up?"

--------------------

"Allright," he then replied. "A shower and some food might be nice," he then continued, trying to remain civil. "And you know, there is something Terrin and Galen should probably hear from me as well...

...so I guess it's good he wants to talk."

Nevermind he probably wants to get his hands into Stargazer Coorp while the getting is good, a shoulder devil snorted.

"I hope, however, I don't have to wait long. I have some concerns of my own I'd like to attend to and I need Stargazer Corp to do so."

Falling silent at that, Erik fell in step as Aaron then motioned him to follow, still trying his best to not be disappointed about the wait...

..and hoping that he could somehow use Terrin's sudden interest to his benefit.

--------------------

We'd gone from a somewhat good chance of uniting the Sith with the Empire to discovering that all simply might not be as we supposed, and on both fronts to boot. The way things now stood there was a serious possibility of all-out war erupting between the two, whether the threat of in-coming Vong was real or not.

And if that threat was indeed real...

I shuddered, and spoke my concerns to Terrin.

"I hope there aren't any big ears listening in on the other end," I continued, nodding toward the niche where Kyan had been led.

"I mean, an overheard partial conversation can be easily misinterpreted, ya know. Not to mention there is a possibility of a Sith-Vong union; what if someone hears what Shawn and Kyan are talking about? Sheesh Terrin, the Vong about wiped our clocks the last time they were here, and that was with the Force on our side.

"But now...?"

I trailed, hoping that whatever servant that might be hovering about would be one on a bottom rung of Temple hierarchy, and if having overheard anything choice would merely dismiss it as something of no great importance, and therefore not worthy of report.

[ 10-12-2008 12:56 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Galen ]

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