Beyond the Sea

[Jorus Merrill]

RAKATA BETA
IRON CROWN ORBITAL SHIPYARDS

"I want to do it myself."

Rave looked at him like a teacher examining a recalcitrant youth. "You sound like Mara. 'I do it myself.'"

"I'm not doubting your crews' ability to..." He glanced down through the transparisteel at the Rakata work crews. "...tackle the issue. And I'm not saying I have the technometric touch like your boy Ovmar."

"'My boy' Ovmar?"

"You know, I'm glad you and I have survived long enough that I can be the subject of your exasperation as something other than the big brother."

 

[Velok the Younger]

"Well, Jor, you're not my kid." Rave folded her hands on the table, and her smile actually reached her yellowed eyes; she felt it, both the smile and the physical corruption. A reminder, if she needed it, that they had approached life as differently as they had approached business. "Even if I understand that these are your toys."

The refit bay held components from half a dozen manufacturers -- Silk Holdings countermeasures, Iron Crown field disruptors, Mandal Hypernautics drive and maneuvering modules, bargain-bin ECHO Esprit telesponder stealth, half a Republic Engineering Corporation Redstar-class patrol ship, plus some odds and ends. The Rakata techs had been building ships with, you know, actual tech for a good while now -- these were good shipyards, productive shipyards, profitable shipyards -- but they looked at the array of components like it was a Lugubraa jihadi horde.

"Then again," she added, "you do have a flair for these things."

 

[Jorus Merrill]

Jorus grunted volubly. "If by 'flair' you mean 'Thanks, bro, for designing my entire modular shipyard setup over Annaj,' then yeah, I've got a flair for this stuff. Alna ain't the only one who can rip a ship down to the fundamentals. Like I said, I'm not saying I don't trust your crews, but I really don't have a problem working with Rakata, Rave."

"I'm sure you don't." His little (Night)sister shrugged. "All right, I'll call down, tell them the designer is on his way, let them know he's on the Permanent Inedibles List."

"Please tell me that's not an actual list."

"My first night on this planet as CEO of Iron Crown, there was a banquet in my honor. The menu was sentient. Not humanoid, but sentient. Cost of doing business with a culture like this, distasteful as I find it."

"Distasteful..." Jorus grimaced, cybernetic eyes scanning the Rakata below. "That's one way to put it."

 

[Velok the Younger]

"Anyways," she said to fill the silence, "my crews can fit all that junk into that hull, that's not a problem. What is a problem-"

"Yeah, I know, not liquefying myself."

"Beyond that. We're talking serious power issues, Jor."

"You're a Nightsister and a CEO. Power issues probably have to be very serious before they get your-"

"Ah, shaddup." She shared an unexpected grin with him, the first time in...maybe years. Nomads, the Merrills, no matter how much stability and security they tried to build for themselves. Nomads forever. Peregrines, if you went by the old Corellian mythos, and she knew Jorus did to some extent.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

"Power. Won't the Redstar generator punch this up enough?"

"The Redstar's generator's better than stock," she admitted, "and then some. I'd take REC over Rendili any day, though why you didn't just try to work with a Redstar in the first place is beyond me."

"Toughness. The Protector will take a pounding that the Redstar won't."

"Fair enough." She tapped her chin. "There's a technology I've been working on in concert with, of all people, your old boss with the hat."

"You've been working with Cater? What happened to the Neutral Zone?"

"The siren song of credits...and mutual enemies."

 

[Velok the Younger]

"So this particular technology -- it's something we worked on for the Grave Wind, Varanin's new flagship, and for the Noble-class Star Defender. I know you have no love for Varanin, but amusingly, most of what you're trying here, she tried with similar gear...on a Star Destroyer. Frankly, I don't even understand the physics of the generator tech that Ayden cooked up-"

"Ayden, is it?"

"At this point? Yes, it is. But not like that. There are rumors about Darke."

"I didn't think it was like that -- you mean Lorelei Darke? Kuat?"

"Rumors, nothing more."

Jorus shook his head. "Feth, Rave, the connections you toss around."

She shrugged again. "You could have had them too. Instead..." She pointed at the half-gutted Rendili light corvette.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

"Instead I run, is that it?" He stalked back over to the observation deck's viewport; Rakata stared up at him, then resumed work. "Instead I build myself the ultimate blockade runner, and run. Wild Space, the extragalactic straightaway-"

"You don't like being in charge."

"Not like you do."

Rave barked a laugh. "Jor, if I could liquidate AEI without looking like a fool, I'd do it in a heartbeat, and I could walk away tomorrow -- easily. This company has been a means to an end. If I had time to myself, you can't imagine the things I would do. I'd alchemize..." She looked away.

"You'd alchemize what?"

 

[Velok the Younger]

"I would alchemize time, Jor. You know what thaissen crystal is? And void stone?"

"Yes to the first, no to the second."

As sparingly as she could -- a process of about half an hour -- she explained the experiments that she and Dissero had conducted, based loosely on Plagueis' work. She explained the aperion double-slit findings, and watched wonder, fear, and respect transform her brother's face.

"And that, right there," she said, "is what I did it for. That look, right there."

"Rave...you've never needed to prove yourself to me. I've always respected you."

"You wouldn't if you knew the whole story, Jor, but..."

 

[Jorus Merrill]

"You think I don't know whose beskar-plated corvette that was -- or whose toxin that was, that got Chloe sick in the middle of a Selabite vault ship -- that you're a member of the Order? You think I don't know about the Zerek Strain, or how many tuk'ata died before you finished making the qo'saarai, or about the Vongspawn? I've been to Tash-Taral, Rave. I know what you've done, and it tears me up, because this dren you're talking about, this is you, this frontier." He gestured around. "Not some empire of leather coats and dictators' chariots."

She let that sit for a long moment. "Would you like my empire of leather coats to finish rebuilding your ship?"

He knew what she was asking -- about blood trails, about Force bonds, about trust. "Yes. And that's not why I asked to oversee it."

"I never thought it was, Jor."

 

[Velok the Younger]

Later, as she watched her presumed-dead brother and her Rakatan and P'w'eck employees tear the microcorvette apart, she kept to the shadows. Moments of closeness were transitory, unscientific in their irreplicability. For all that they'd shared, she didn't want him to see her watching him as if to burn his memory into her brain. She'd thought she'd grown used to the chance of his death when he was only a hyperspace explorer, throwing himself from star to star.

Now the word was out, among the well-informed: Jorus Merrill had been Master of First Knowledge to the Jedi Order, and now every holocron and Force artifact in the Order's possession had been secured by Jorus, in ways that nobody could crack just yet, not even Rave. She knew what he had done for those victories, and had her suspicions as to what he was capable of doing.

Slowly but surely, the vessel came together, its speed and elusiveness a testament to just how hard Jorus Merrill was running from himself.