As I Walk Through The Fields Where I Harvest My Grain

[Ashin Varanin]

The Jovan System was central to Clan Rekali's Gordian Reach territory. It lay between Yavin Four, their public headquarters, and the Hard Roil, the heart of their power and their actual headquarters. Old Jovan Station was a four-kilometre mass of durasteel where battleships and superfreighters docked. Mobile Clan Rekali waystations were being shuttled through the system, little space stations moving around the sector to form new trade conduits and shore up existing ones.

Near Old Jovan Station, and almost rivalling it for size, a series of red havod armatures was taking shape. Were taking shape? Grammar. Anyways -- the armatures. Spherical lattices of crimson metal, interwoven with struts whose concentric and convergent patterns made it clear that these things were supposed to handle the stress of gravity coming from within. They couldn't possibly have that kind of mass, so the fair assumption, the natural assumption, was that artificial gravity would be set up in such a way that you could walk all around the outside of the completed structure. Several layers followed that structure -- subterranean whatnot -- and farther in, far enough that the floor would start to curve, a main-axial stack instead. Basically, the Death Star, but no big guns and really fething tiny, and also there were superfreighters full of dirt.

[member="Mira Rekali"] / @Aaralyn Rekali [member="Anija Betna"] (flak cannons)

 

[Long Gone]

Over the past few weeks, Mira had become more enveloped in the Clan affairs than she had realized. Her grandfather had assigned her task after task and continued to throw things her way even when she didn’t desire anymore assignments. Maybe it was a sign of trust or maybe it was the constant rigors of being a Rekali – she wasn’t sure. She always thought Alec would be the one to throw things onto her lap, not the old man. Mira stared out blankly through the transparisteel port, her hands infront of her, clasped together. She watched as the world before her began to take shape – was it a world? What was this thing? Ember had a weird way of doing things and keeping her in the dark about it. Similar to the way he threw her up on that Auction and told her to go to town without really knowing what the kark she was doing. It didn’t really matter, apparently she had a job – oh, her job! She looked down at the supply list and brought a finger to her lips and then the datapad. “Let’s see here…” She walked forward to a terminal and began punching in various numbers to report.

Reports, inventories, datagrams – she felt like a damned quartermaster at times more than a Jedi or even a Mandalorian for that matter. The last time she felt something was when she was on the hunt for Fiore, or even on Coruscant when she destroyed nearly half of the Valley of the Dark Lords. Oh, but that had nearly cost her everything, to include her sanity. The speckles of deep crimson stained her garnet orbs – like the stars that flaked the skies at night. She was marked, forever and it wasn’t something she was exactly comfortable with. A burden she would have to bare – but for another time. Now, she had to focus on her job.

[member="Ember Rekali"] | [member="Alec Rekali"] | @Aaralyn Rekali | [member="Josiah Denko"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Mira Rekali"]

Yet again, Grandpa had called in Alec, from all the way across the galaxy, to learn some essential logistical detail of running the Clan. Never mind that he'd already assigned her to go to Naboo and buy Theed Palace Space Vessel Engineering Corps with her own truguts and run it, just for that purpose. Rekali finishing school took the punishing assumption that Alec could run Theed Hangar and make it home for family meals. And in this case, family meals meant contributing to the logistical support plan of Grandpa's newest project.

Tiny fething planets.

He'd grown quite animated about it over dinner, gesticulating wildly, only to wince as hand-talker instincts met the prolonged strain he'd suffered against that Detta joker. The main difficulty had been, and would continue to be, the recoil of firing half a clip from his mass driver -- on reduced power -- into Detta's torso point blank. Kid had to be made of rubber, 'cause he'd walked away with a couple cracked ribs and a strut. Moron.
Regardless of whether or not Detta knew he'd been made into hamburger, however, Ember's comparatively minor injuries were no joke. Serious strain to the left arm from recoil, burns on the right arm under the armourweave, a shin fracture. None of that was to Ember's benefit when he started hand talking. And nothing got him hand talking like tiny planets.

 

[Long Gone]

“You’ve got to be kidding me….” Aaralyn muttered softly as she looked at the screen before her and then the work being done and then the screen again. “You’re building this why…?” She questioned the air before her, expecting an answer but got none. Why question someone who would provide no answer? She grumbled and turned away from the viewport and moved over to a Foreman who was overseeing the unloading of supplies and obviously – dirt from one of the incoming freighters. Aaralyn brought a hand to her forehead, rubbing it gently through the suit that prevented her from being exposed from the vacuum of space. Unlike [member="Mira Rekali"], she was out and about, supervising the unloading of materials and the actual construction – and somewhere around here was Ember and the others. Aaralyn gently tapped him on the shoulder, causing the man to turn around abruptly and a bit shocked as she motioned to the pad before her.

“You were supposed to have that freighter unloaded half an hour ago, what is the hold up?” Her voice clicked over the comlink channel. The foreman simply shrugged, and made a slow gesture towards the unloading station. “Communications issues at the docks.” He replied. Aaralyn groaned loudly and gently moved passed him, slapping the datapad into his chest. “I suppose I’ll go fix it then since all you’re going to do is sit there and stare, huh?” She said with a grim tone before moving over several crimson stained beams and towards the unloading station. It would be a small walk – one she would make in a few moments time and by the time she arrived, the freighter would have been unloaded and the next was being prepared to be unloaded. As she approached, she was met by the Dock Foreman – one who was rather plump and sweaty in his own suit.

“Ma’am, we’re having issues with the communicat-“He managed to get out before she held up a hand. “I am aware, just show me where it is and I’ll fix it.” She said bluntly, and to her surprise, he moved faster than she expected – pointing her in a direction opposite of the docking area. “I expect that to be unloaded in ten minutes, no excuses.”

[member="Ember Rekali"] | [member="Alec Rekali"] | [member="Mira Rekali"] | [member="Josiah Denko"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Aaralyn Rekali-Gyndar"]

“Say again, Freighter Two-Nine.”

“We’re inbound from Maridun, and we’re carrying dirt.”

“That part, I got.” Alec massaged the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger in a vain attempt to stave off a migraine. “How much?”

“Well, ma’am, we’re a Connestoga-class. That’s a two-klick cardboard box.”

“I’m rated as a pilot on the Connestoga. You’ve seriously got a two-kilometre container transport packed full of dirt?”

“Premium soil, vacuum-sealed by crate, insulated to keep the probiotics happy -- yes ma’am, we have one billion cubic metres of dirt.”

“...you know, Two-Nine, I don’t have a calculator handy, but something tells me that if I set four-thirds pi-arr-two-cubed minus four-thirds pi-arr-one-cubed equal to one billion, set arr-two equal to two thousand metres, and solve for arr-one, I’m going to hear a really small number.”

“Well, it compresses, see…”

For her own edification, Alec consulted the engineering diagrams. All right, so the dirt would compress, and the volume of it was designed to handle wasteage, and there were several spheres to dirtify once things kicked into high gear, but even so. That was some deep compost.

 

[Long Gone]

The light duty Mira had been assigned to was for good reason – her injuries were not hidden from [member="Ember Rekali"], nor were her actions. However, she did not admit to him that she touched the dark side – she dared not to. She hadn’t spoke to her grandfather on that level – it was all about business and reports. Everything was kept nice and neat and nothing was ever on the level of her mother or [member="Alec Rekali"]. She couldn’t quite understand why; he was a grizzled old man – a very hardened soul. Mira was always confused by his inability to connect with her. Or maybe it was her inability to connect with him. She pursed her lips as she held the datapad with her left hand, punching in more numbers – a bit slower than normal.

Would he ever approach her? Maybe one day – when he was about to die.

“Hah, that old man would never even look at me!” She said loudly. Thankfully she was alone at her station, getting the inventory of the incoming supplies. Apparently there were several issues with communications down at the unloading area – she could only hope that her mother wasn’t involved in it somehow. Aaralyn had a tendency to do things that were rather rash at times. Mira sighed heavily and turned back to the viewport – so much was going on out there, so much she didn’t know about. This was like being grounded – except she was an adult. That only made the situation far worse.

[member="Ember Rekali"] | [member="Alec Rekali"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"I want to leave a legacy for my family. Is that so wrong?"

The statue he was carving -- a Watcher, Light Side variant, soon to become a quasi-aware construct on the order of a low-grade droid mind -- stared at Ember in incredulity.

"I know, I know." Tap, tap went the chisel. "So it's a little over the top. But two counterpoints. One: this makes a really excellent export product. Who doesn't want a planet that's just big enough to manage, and mobile? And two: we'd really hoped to find worlds, good colony worlds, inside the Hard Roil. And we've found decent ones, they're just not...perfect. So we need things like this, things that can't get tracked down in interstellar Roilspace." He tapped a little too hard, and the statue's nose fell off.

"Damn," he said mildly.

The statue gave him a longsuffering look. He applied glue to the nose and put it back on, then resumed work.

"And here's the other thing," he continued. "Can you just imagine seeing that horizon curve? Walking to the next farm and watching your barn disappear behind your crops? What a thoroughly messed-up unique experience. Rustic, futuristic, avant-garde, self-referential -- it'll sell like hotcakes. More to the point, it'll fire up imaginations. Why, I've never seen the kids so interested in one of my projects, not ever. It's always stealth plating this and Kenobi that."


[member="Darth Vulkan"]

 

[Long Gone]

Aaralyn was listening to the transmissions between [member="Alec Rekali"] and the incoming freighters – but wasn’t really paying attention to what they were saying. She would only pay attention should they have an issue, be delayed or something that would generally cause them to otherwise put this whole project behind schedule. She wasn’t pleased she had to come down and play babysitter to a bunch of grown men with engineering skills – one would think that one of them would have the ability to fix a communications relay.

In this age, apparently that wasn’t the case.

She continued her trek across the beams, walking as fast as the space would allow her, fortunately – she had gotten to an area where there was some gravity control which enabled her to move a bit faster than normal – and so she would. It wouldn’t be but another moment until she came to the slightly jarred open panel that belonged to the communications relay – and Aaralyn would immediately spot the problem. A baby mynock had attached itself to part of the relay, thus causing a power issue within the entire setup.

‘Well aren’t you something I didn’t plan on seeing today.’ Aaralyn grimaced as she ignited her lightsaber and brought it down upon the beast with a quick slice. The creature made some noise that Aaralyn didn’t catch and detached itself from the console. Upon its death and when the power was fully restored to the relay – the communications would begin flowing once again – this time without a hiccup.

[member="Ember Rekali"] | [member="Mira Rekali"] | [member="Alec Rekali"]

 

[Long Gone]

Maybe she was too hard on him at times.

Just maybe.

Mira wouldn’t give Ember enough credit sometimes, and that is where she gained a flaw from her mother at the same age. It wasn’t intentionally – she just felt like she could have done more to get to know him. Maybe she could atleast do something to make him proud, hell, she thought her little adventure on Coruscant would have atleast cracked a smile – but it didn’t really do much. Or did he maybe not get the fully report? She wasn’t sure, she wasn’t one to go about seeking attention from him or anyone else. Purposefully boasting about her deeds and flaunting herself about like some bright colored twi’lek for credits at a Nar Shaddaa brothel. No, she had other things on her mind – that hunt for Fiore was one of them and right now, she was focused on the task at hand.

Well, sort’ve.

With a simple toss, the datapad would be released from her hand and she’d move over to the small stack that awaited her and pick up yet another. More entries into the system for the final inventory – whatever this project was, was very important to Ember and the Clan as a whole. She would be proud to help, especially if it made her grandfather happy in the end. That is what it was all about, family. Yeah, she vowed herself to the Jedi but she also vowed herself to the Mandalorian culture. It was a dual life she sometimes struggled with - hard.

[member="Ember Rekali"] | @Aaralyn Rekali | [member="Alec Rekali"] | [member="Darth Vulkan"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

The warcry echoed through this pressurized section of havod sphere-lattice, and the skewed pipe snapped free at last. Oren dropped the massive wrench and wiped his forehead, hyperventilating with rage. The Dark Side flowed through him, as it had flowed through so many plumbers before. He adjusted the back of his pants, wary of stereotypes, and channelled his fury into the next constructive path. To wit: finagling the replacement pipe into the fitting before the vacuum-rated epoxy hardened. Vahla fire flared around the ends of the pipe, keeping the epoxy warm -- important for this particular brand. Oren grunted and shoved the pipe through the havod lattice, then torqued it into place and started rotating. He let the fire die down, mainly because it was toasting his hand through the work glove. These were good gloves, he noted. Not as good as the legendary Orcus-mittens, but more than sufficient.

His comm crackled at his belt. "Consigliere?"

"Yes?"

"The dirt is here. You asked to be informed."

"Thanks." He got his heaving breath under control and snugged the pipe. He had no wish to be here when dirtfall took place. This particular section would be permacrete bedrock or possibly just...dirt, the havod beams forming foundations. Frankly, they'd just called him down here because they needed someone who could remove the bent pipe, and the hydraulic setup hadn't fit around the bend.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Legacies were all that mattered in existence. Life was a painful, burning agony that ended abruptly. Vulkan knew these things, even if the remnants of Draco Vereen clung to false hopes like a child clings to their mother's dress when they are frightened. Even still, Vulkan only ventured away from Bothawui on rare occasion, and now, only when wearing a Taozin Amulet. It would not benefit anyone if his true nature was revealed before time had come to reveal such information. Especially not to Ember Rekali, who could Force Light him to death. The fact that his daughter couldn't come into the same system as Ember Rekali without suffering seizures and vomitting blood and maggots was a testament to the Old Warlock, and to the resilience of the Sith Spirit that resided in the girl.

The small corvette slipped through space, the blue tunnel of hyperspace giving way to the bright white lines of stars, returning to the pinpricks of light. "Hail the Alit'Buir. Let him know I've made it to the system, and ask him what he needs of Clan Vereen." An army was unlikely, but possibly a massive workforce, nearly infinite resources acquired from a former Techno Union Foreman, businessman, and so-so politician. The big man stood on the bridge os the small ship waiting to hear from clan Rekali as he watched what was happening in the system through grey eyes, ringed with a twinge of red, denoting his Dark Side corruption. What wonders was Clan Rekali building as a legacy to their old man this time.

[member="Ember Rekali"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"This is Freighter Six-Seven-Seven, inbound with the shield generators and powerplants, over."

Another Connestoga, this one loaded with immense, carefully packaged machinery. Ginormous reactors, for starters. Each havod sphere armature had a free-floating section nearby, a gap that would allow the reactors to be installed in the heart of each sphere. Then the three-dimensional slices of pie would be maneuvered to fit those gaps by a host of tugs. Each plug was the size of a Star Destroyer, a mile long or close enough. Alec's stomach growled at the thought of that much pie.

"Uh, I hear you, Six-Seven-Seven. I'm digging up the manifest now. What model of shield generator are we talking?"

"Ours," said Six-Seven-Seven definitively. "I'm talking about the Kar'ara'novor Multifunction Defense Emplacement."

"...that's a planetary shield generator."

"Yes."

Another comm, this one from Draco Vereen ([member="Darth Vulkan"]). Alec took the call. "Hello, Mr. Vereen. The Aliit'buir's in the middle of something." It had been through him that she'd come into possession of Theed Hangar, but they'd never spent a great deal of time together. "As for what we need of you, why don't you come aboard the flagship and we'll talk."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"Grandpa?"

Ember shook himself from his reverie. He was, he realized, covered in stone dust. Chips crunched underfoot. He'd been making Watchers for a good while now, both in the sense of the day's labours and in terms of his decades of familiarity with the wonky suckers. He'd sort of fallen into a rut, churning out crude statues that looked at him mournfully. "Yeah, Alec?"

"Draco Vereen's coming aboard to see what his Clan can do to help. You call him?"

Ember brightened and set the chisel down. He'd been hitting it with a hammerfist rather than a mallet. "That I did. He's got some brilliant tech and I think he just might want to buy one of these."

"Contributor and client?"

"Why not? Got the idea from you and Theed. Or didn't you just sell him a couple ships with his components aboard?"

"Well, yeah. How're the Watchers coming?"

"Not up to full strength yet. Not very bright, either. I shoulda done this on a planet's surface so there'd be more life force to draw from."

"All right, Grandpa. Anyways, he's on his way over, so...just, uh, make sure you're presentable."

Ember brushed stone chips off his shirt and removed his eye protection, leaving him with a raccoon-ring of stone dust around his eyes. "I'm fine."

[member="Darth Vulkan"]

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Vulkan nodded to the young woman that appeared before him via pale blue hologram. "I'll be seeing you shortly then young lady," a smile stretched across his face, feigning friendship as best as the Sith Lord could. With a motion, the hologram died, shutting off He clutched the taozin amulet and tucked it under his collar to hide it from view. If the Rekali's knew he was hiding something they would grow curious as to what he had to hide, other than a small family and a few billion credits worth of aurodium buried somewhere on Endor.

"Pull the ship to the Clan's flagship like she asked." He barked out turning his attention towards the boarding ramp. He wore simple executive suit and no tie, the amulet hidden underneath both shirt and undershirt for now. No reason to fly around in full armor, besides, armor was difficult to remove and put on quickly.

The ship slipped into the Flagship's hangar and the ramp lowered with a soft metallic ring and metal hit metal. Vulkan, under his given name Draco Vereen descended the ramp and prepared to greet the young Rekali woman he would be meeting with.

[member="Alec Rekali"]

 

[Long Gone]

Mira would begin her own dialogue.

“Eh, you got them manifests finished yet!?” She shouted at herself, making a face that she believed to resemble Ember’s.

Her face shifted to a polite and innocent look, speckled eyes widening like a child. “Why, no grandfather, I am still trapped in a pile of inventory hell that you have placed me in….”

“Oiy! Why not! You’re no good to me! Like that Detta kid! Poodoo!” She mimicked the face again, pretending to spit at the ground before her.

Her face would once again shift to an innocent look. “But grandfather, I’m just trying to do as you ask and make you proud of me.” She mocked herself. “Love me!” She rolled her eyes and tossed the datapad behind her. “Stupid notion, this family doesn’t know what love is – we’re so dysfunctional it isn’t funny. It’s only when we’re fighting and bleeding and killing that we band together.” A hand would reach down to retrieve another datapad – based off what Alec had been reporting through the communications channels, the more expensive items were arriving.

Well, she better not botch this up or otherwise she’d be scrounging the databases for months. It’d be like trying to program Pixel to do a dance on his plasma torch.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Vulkan"]


For her part, for the big meeting, Alec wore the same spacer jumpsuit she always wore on major work projects. The lucky one.

"Hey there, Mr. Vereen," she said with a grin, striding across the deck to meet him. "Welcome aboard the Rasho Mon." There were at least two puns in there, and some family dirty laundry. Long story. "My grandfather's down in the hold carving Watchers -- Light Side versions of the sentinel statues on Dromund Kaas. I've called ahead to make sure he's presentable. He gets kind of singleminded when it comes to carving, but every place he's ever called home, at least in the last good while, he's built Watchers. It's sort of his thing, apart from arm-wrestling rancors.

"He mentioned he wanted to talk with you about procurement -- some of your tech -- and see if you'd be interested in pre-ordering one of these. I'd give you the sell, but you're a salesman. You know what the pitch would be, you know what we're setting up here, and you already know whether you're interested or not."

She led him into the bowels of the Mandal Hypernautics Skira-class battleship, down to the cargo bay where Ember was taking a chisel to some marble and using his bare fist as a mallet.

 

[Long Gone]

Aaralyn hated space creatures just about as much as she hated [member="Falcon Gyndar"] at times. The man was a pain in her fourth point of contact but she had to admit – he had a way of wooing her out of her angry state. She remembered when he talked her out of divorcing him – that was an interesting Life Day celebration indeed, the night was even better. Aaralyn didn’t think that Falcon could sleep that hard, then again, he had been gone so long he probably forgot what any of that was like. Here she was now, back in the mix of things and helping the one thing she swore off herself – the Clan. It wasn’t that she swore them off in such a manner that she didn’t care for them, it was that Falcon had sacrificed his time so much for them and she got nothing out of it – now she was doing the same thing, wasn’t she?

No, this was different.

Ember was not the same as her deceased father-in-law, he was a family man and prided himself on such. She could only wish that Mira would see that, she wished somehow she could convince her that he was a good man – and not intentionally doing what she believed he was doing. However, Mira was a product of the Rekali family, bullheaded as a Rancor in it’s prime. It was a relatively common trait amongst all of them. Aaralyn took a breath and headed back towards the loading area – communications were coming through that they had begun unloading more sensitive equipment and she couldn’t miss out on this.

She’d expect that rather rotund foreman to have a coronary if something broke.

[member="Ember Rekali"] | [member="Alec Rekali"] | [member="Darth Vulkan"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Vulkan"]

As Draco and Alec entered the room, Ember found himself drawn back to the statue, the latest one anyway. Half-finished, it was well on its way to being a rough-hewn robed figure like all the rest. He had about twenty Witches and Vahla fine-tuning the details of the carving in the other half of the hold, learning the crafting of Watchers and getting used to Ember's methods. And there was definitely a method around here somewhere.

"Evening, Draco. How are ya?" He pulled off his eye protection again, leaving a dusty silhouette on his face. He'd only put them back on for a minute, just to knock off a corner here and a corner there. This wasn't the best marble, but he was aiming for quantity. On the qualitative side of things, he was putting a good bit of Force strength and finesse into each one. The last big batch he'd done had been the Lost City's guardians with [member="Chloe Blake"], years back. He'd meant to put some on the ships heading into the Hard Roil, but that had never materialized. Maybe once they got around to putting ramscoops and gravitic sensors and all good things on a proper prospecting ship.

"So I'm installing planetary shield generators on these suckers," he said, "and I like those shield donor nodes of yours quite a lot. I want to buy some, and I want to sell you a planet. You interested?"

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The big mandalorian sith nodded at the young woman. He had never had the pleasure of seeing the Sentinel Statues on Dromund Kaas, he had never been to the planet, nor had he ever had an inclination to do so. In fact his little history on Ziost and Korriban made him actively avoid those worlds. Through all his short years of roaming the Galaxy, Sith worlds like those seemed to give him terrible luck, leaving him impaled and his daughter possessed. Or worse.

"Sounds simple enough. It sounds like you and your grandfather have already decided what it is you are looking for from me, so really I guess its just haggling price." He could make a sales pitch for a number of things, but what the Old Warlock wanted he would buy, what he didn't want he wasn't going to be convinced to buy. That said, Vulkan might be able to pry some useful information of the old man on the down low without the Elderly Jedi realizing he was feeding a Sith Lord Jedi secrets.

Seeing the old man bashing at rock with his bare hands took some of that plan away from the Sith Lord. "Good day Vod." Vulkan said with a smile, doing his best to hide his Dark Side corruption, but the red rings around his eyes weren't going anywhere anytime soon. "How can I help you today?" He still wore the smile feigning friendship, trying to see how he could personally benefit from this situation.

[member="Alec Rekali"]
[member="Ember Rekali"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Vulkan"]

Dark Side corruption by itself wasn't a huge deal so far as Ember was concerned. Half his extended family were Vahla, after all, and even his right-hand man - a distant cousin - was a fallen Jedi. As far as he was concerned, everyone has their flaws and favorite sins. So Ember noted the eyes with a mental shrug.

"I do love those shield donor emitters you make," he said. "Best there is at what they do. I'd been wondering when someone was going to take a serious swing at those precedents. We're outfitting these suckers with full-scale planetary shields. I'm not one hundred percent up to speed on the technical specs of your donor modules, but I can't imagine the stock model can handle planetary shields. I mean, if it can, I'll be surprised and pleased, but I'm willing to pay for backup modules in case of burnout."

At the risk of being rude, he forged ahead.

"Also, might want to get some contacts." He indicated his own eye, tapping a fingertip against his temple. "Some people get hung up on color schemes."