Flight of the Navigators (Jorus Merrill)

[Vaudin Miir]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

Vaudin decided to not worry about it but Jorus smelled a bit like Trixxy.

'Ah Trixxy...' Vaudin shook his head and focused on his gut. The moon wasn't far he could calculate a micro jump in a minute or two at worst, but that wasn't the task.

Vaudin took a breath looked at the navigation consol and let his gut do the talking. He punched in coordinates to the ten thousandths place and turned to the pilot's consol.

"Hang on to your boot straps bub." He said and he engaged the hyperdrive.

There was a bright flash and a bit of disorientation but they ship hadn't blown up. They were slightly off to the port side of his intended spot but the were just outside the gravity well of the dirt ball moon.

"For once I'm glad to say you were right." He said grinning at Jorus.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Vaudin Miir"]

Jorus clapped Vaud on the shoulder. "Pure inspiration, right there. Told ya you had the knack. OK, take us down easy."

The airless moon offered no atmospheric resistance to their descent; no reentry fire. The vessel settled down into pale gray dust, before a huge stone statue of a Krevaaki. Jorus squinted through the viewport. "Is that a lightsabre at his belt? Feth, we come all this way off the beaten path and everything's still all about the Jedi. Welp, let's get out there."

He shrugged into a space suit and made for the statue.

 

[Vaudin Miir]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

Vaudin shook his head and thought about the stories of Jedi compared to the majority of what he had seen.

"Could be worse." Vaudin said getting a funny feeling that they had stumbled on something big, "we could be dealing with current Jedi and not statues of old ones."

He stood still feeling good about his successful jump and headed for the spacesuits. It didn't take long before he had shrugged the suit on and stepped to the airlock. It took mere seconds to seal the lock and open the hatch to the dirt moon. Vaudin stepped out. The heavy boots of the space suit sent puffs of grey dust into the air of the low gravity planet and over to the statue.

"What do you make of that?" Vaudin said pointing at the 3 meter statue on a one meter base of some kind of stone, "I don't know how ypu feel about Iktotchi but something tells me they didn't have this placed marked and locked in a vault so they could stare at it. Something is more than it seems here."

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Vaudin Miir"]

Dust puffed up around his boots as he tromped up to the statue, but without air resistance, the dust moved differently -- more free, maybe. He shone a worklamp up at the script. Basic and Krevaaki both. "Bodo," he said. "That's all it says. But every generation thinks their legends will stay legends forever. Remind me to toss you a book on the Daragon family and Mungo Baobab -- important people for you and I to know about, but you'll never hear of'em. Hold on-"

He squatted beside the plinth, easy in the low grav, and applied his knifetip to a seam in the stone. Without full grav, leverage eluded him, but after a couple minutes of work, a square of stone grated free. Something gleamed gently, blue-green, behind where the square plug had been. Mindful of traps, he slid the cube out on his knifeblade rather than reach inside, and when he straightened up, he held a holocron.

I am Baas, said a voice in his head, and a Krevaaki silhouette appeared over the cube. He nearly dropped it, and he did drop the knife. It thudded into the lunar dust beside his foot.

 

[Vaudin Miir]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

Vaudin searched around the back of the statue while jorus searched the front.

"I'll take anything to read you've got, Jor." He said as he bent down to inspect a seam of some kind, "I need something to read in those senate sessions."

Vaudin pulled his knife and began trying to work the seam open as Jorus was doingnon the other side and a small square came out of place. The block fell slowly to the ground revealing a small opening containing three more small rolls of flimsi sheets.

Vaudin gently guided them out with the knife tip and picked them up as Jorus pulled out the cubical box. Vaudin moved around the side of the statue in time to see a silhouette above the cube in Jorus' hand. Vaudin's vision swirled with a myriad of colors then cleared and he stood staring at Jorus.

"Jor, is that what it looks like?"

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Vaudin Miir"]

"Well, it's either the holocron of one Baas Bodo-"

Bodo Baas, friend.

"-or a paperweight. Personally, I'm leaning toward the latter. It walks like a paperweight, it talks like a paperweight, it's made of wood and floats like a duck-" Was that hypoxia? He checked his seals and oxygen supply, and opted to slog back toward the Gypsymoth. "-it's a a paperweight for your Senatorial desk. Do me a favor and set up a hidden cam for the next time a Jedi winds up in your office. I'd love to see their faces."

 

[Chloe Blake]

[member="Jorus Merrill"] [member="Vaudin Miir"]

Aurora Hawk


Two feet were perched on top of the piloting console, while a soft voice sang a distant diddly of the past, a stylus in hand while a large sheet of loub-paper set against a small wooden slab as a makeshift desk. In it she charted the areas she traveled.

"Ohh the deserrt dreams of a river... that would ruuun down to the seaaa..."

Wandering the black of the 'verse was just something the Warden of the Sky did, no true destination other than the distant frontier of the fringe of space.

"...like my heart lonnngs for an ocean... to wash down over meeee..."

Cast in the faint ambient light of the lights of her cockpit, the young blonde was keen on charting what she'd found thus far like the navigators of old.

"ohh won't you take me.. from this valley... to that mountain high above... "

A small beep would stir her from her focus, but not from the melody. Big blue eyes went rising to look in mild curiosity at what swept across her sensor. The transponder code floating on by was enough to bring a bright smile to her face. It was the Gods will after all.


"...oh I will pray, pray prayyyy... til I see your smiling face... "

It was the Gypsy.

"I will prayyy, pray to the one I love."

Boots went sliding off the console and she drew up to take the comm in hand. A quick flip to the proper channel and soon she was broadcasting.

"Nu ain't Valle Ihn vid Fho ulceret oculo, Gypsymoth..." «Well ain't you a sight for sore eyes, Gypsymoth.» came the drawl in Olys Corellisi.

 

[Vaudin Miir]

[member="Jorus Merrill"] [member="Chloe Blake"]

Vaudin took the hand sized cube and tuned it over in his hand for a moment. "either a paperweight or a doorstop" he mused as he tucked it away beside the three new star maps. His oxygen was still good and seals were nominal but he didn't see the sense in sticking around any longer than he already had. Would he ever just find some jewels or ship schematics? He began the slow trip to the "Swarthy Bantha" his one true love and gave Jorus a wave.

"I've had a holorecorder set up for months you should see some of the footage I have one of these days." Vaudin said over the suit com as he pulled himself up into the airlock. Bodo Bass? He would have to look that up some time...maybe...when he was bored. The hatch sealed and pressurized before Vaudin shrugged out of the heavy suit and hung it back up. His grey eyes looked at the items again as he walked toward the cockpit. He carefully put the star maps and coordinates away then tossed the holocron on the copilot's seat like it was just another shiny rock. he flopped in his seat and began a quick systems check before prepping to lift off. with another wave to Jorus and a close eye on the ship that was coming up on his scanners, Vaudin guided the modified TL-1800 off it's struts and into open space. He saved the coordinates in his nav computer so he could comeback and mine the asteroids.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Chloe Blake"]

Jorus' Yuuzhan Vong eyes flicked from the departing TL-1800 to the beeping light on his comm. A slow grin crossed his face, and he turned the Gypsymoth's pilot seat to the comm panel. "Looks like Levantine space's still treating you well. How you been? I've been out here with Vaud -- you remember Vauden Miir from the Vagrants, back in the day -- fether's a Senator now. Been teaching him a bit of what I do. We just found a thing I think you'll like. Sending you some holos now."

He sent over a bit of exterior holocam and spacesuit footage -- the Gypsymoth and Swarthy Bantha setting down on the airless moon in the shadow of Bodo Baas. The statue with its inscription, the secret compartment, the holocron, he and Vaud chuckling over using it as a paperweight.

"We were out running salvage on Krevaaki derelicts," Jorus explained as the files transmitted. "Found hardcopy star maps that led us here. Vaud was hoping for gemstones or something, but I was glad to find the box. Whoever this Baas Bodo fether was, his little holothingy seemed to be the patient sort, and I'm hopin' he'll help Vaud walk right. Goodness knows a Senator needs it."

 

[Chloe Blake]

[member="Jorus Merrill"] ’s voice always had a way of washing over her with nostalgic pleasure, one Chloe perhaps was still a bit too keen on, but a love was a love that remain. Time may dull the ache but the emotion would linger. Love was a gift from the Gods and it wasn’t something Chloe was keen on wasting.

As long as Jorus was happy, the Warden had no issue.

“That it has,” Chloe would say with a smile in her voice, confirming that her little exploration of Levantine Space had indeed been productive. She’d discovered lost worlds, remapped ancient star maps, and made a few friends along the way.

“A senator? Well I’ll be…” came a merry chuckle, as her holo array lit up with the incoming transmission. Big blue eyes would dance merrily at the footage, until the statue with the inscription of Bodo Bass.

Oh blessed Kalahira…

Shock would go dancing over Chloe’s face, lips parting in surprise at that bit of news. So much both feet would land flat upon the ground as she sat straight on her seat. Electric tingles of awareness would shoot through her body, more so as the tale of the Great Bodo Bass came pouring to the fore of her mind.

“Bodo Baas…” she said in a low whisper, correcting Jorus. “Blessed Kalahira… Jorus. You found the holocron of Bodo Baas?”

And being used as a paperweight.

The humor, had she’d not been in so much shock, would have made her laugh aloud.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Chloe Blake"]

"Well, the statue said Bodo, the 'cron called itself Baas, I figured Baas Bodo -- who puts a first name on a statue? Unless, I guess, there was more than one Krevaaki Jedi named Baas. Who was that fether? Whose 'cron's on Vaud's desk?"

 

[Chloe Blake]

Leave it to [member="Jorus Merrill"] to develop that train of thought process.

Then again, it was one of his most endearing qualities. A ghost of a smile would perk at the corner of her mouth. Haven't changed a bit.

"Ain't no other Krevaaki Jedi of the likes of Bodo Baas the galaxy's ever seen Jorus," came her smooth drawl over the holo, her image flickering slightly under it's cerulean glow.

Her expression grew to one of nostalgia. In her mind, she dug deep, bringing that bit of lore the Warden was well used to storing like an oratory lore master.

Her head would dip a bit, a lock of blonde hair falling over her temple, catching just the edge of her right eye. Her smile would widen before she began, "There are few folk in the galaxy that are as blessed as he with prophetic gifts. Some say that Bodo Baas knew all probable futures... from his time until a time lost in mists and shadows."

Her blue eyes went glancing up, a crooked whimsical smile in her face, "As a Jedi master he inherited the Tedryn Holocron, the very holocron that had once belonged to Vodo-Siosk and had been passed down through generations of Jedi."

Her body would curl forward a bit as she brought her forearms to rest against her thighs, fingers interlocking lightly together. "By the time he'd received the holocron, it was already overflowing with such an enormous amount of data, done made it rather difficult to deal with."

She let a finger slip from her hold and pointed over to him, "Jedi Master Bodo Baas be the one who took it 'pon himself to reorganize every single recording Jorus."

There was a small pause, "Every. Single. One." the depth of information held within the Tedryn Holocron could span lifetimes to attempt to organize, much the less every single variable for every probable question.

"Done lived over six hundred years using that wisdom gleaned from that there holocron for the Jedi Order....until Palpatine had him killed."