Private On the Cold Edge

[Tilon Quill]

One message had bootstrapped off the old Longjumper's Mark comms relay line. Transmission quality was poor. In mixed Basic and Agrarian, or rather Basic droid translation overlaid with Agrarian interjection, it said something like: "Blue metal spores demand injection. Inedible incompatible. New synthesis angle. Catalyst required urgently."

The other message arrived in Jedi circles from a whole separate method: a contact report from an unaffiliated Jedi scout named Tilon Quill. He'd logged a dubiously successful trade contact with an Iskalloni armed freighter very far from Iskallon. He was trailing them to ensure they didn't plan to cybernetically enslave anyone, but he didn't think they had that as their goal, no matter how the Iskalloni had operated in past centuries. Their goal was something philosophical. He hadn't yet learned more.

Both messages came from the edge of the galaxy, a system called Vesskyzi.

Auteme

 

[Auteme]

She started as she always did: a gift. A hundred lightyears off Vesskyzi, she'd helped a Gran farm colony with an infestation problem; they'd gifted her with eight hundred pounds of fertilizer -- specially made for silvergrass, but rich in every nutrient any plant could want. She'd intended to bring it to Concord Dawn for the Treicolts, but that was a long way, and her ride off-planet instead took her further into the Unknown Regions.

It was a gift to them, too; the Cheeky Kowakian, an old bulk freighter, was on its usual run through the small ports in this edge of the Unknown Regions. The captain, Edwa, a surly near-human (half-Chiss, she guessed, though he was not forthcoming, and she did not pry) with a mean cybernetic hand, had been considering passing Vesskyzi entirely. His prior visit had required a particular diplomatic tact that he frankly did not have; despite coming away with a considerable haul of valuable comet isotopes, the loss of some other materials and especially their pet monkey lizard had soured the rest of their expedition. It was only Auteme's insistence that brought them here, and her assurance that their gift would be well-received.

That assurance was dampened slightly upon their actual encounter with the Agarians at the Narrow Pocket. For every language she spoke, there were a million more she did not understand; the huffs and puffs of their fungal hosts were foreign to her, and the translations the droids gave were not especially useful. Catalyst, they said; catalyst required urgently. But they accepted the gift, shoving the fertilizer onto a small repulsor skiff and carting it away.

"Tilon?" she asked tentatively. "An off-worlder. Blueish skin, purple hair." The Agarian before her was not forthcoming, but one huffed wetly and pointed down the Pocket, across the few other ships landed here.

"Don't go far," Edwa called, as they unloaded their own cargo. "Don't like this place, and it don't like us."

"We'll be fine. I'm sure." And she set off inside, half-followed by the Agarians who'd greeted them.

Tilon Quill ​

 

[Tilon Quill]

Vesskyzi didn't improve on a second visit. Glaciers and giant bones. Crevasses drank the star's sullen red light; down here in the Narrow Pocket was among the gloomiest places he'd visited. Fractional gravity and deep fissures meant moving carefully, an undignified bounce as often as not. Tilon had bought his safety with biomass, helped Agrarian scavengers tow the tentacle of a dead Purrgil down from orbit to a place up on the surface. This sector had few options in that vein.

Just now, space-suited against spore risks, he was sheltering under his father's old ship, the little expeditionary shuttle North Ridge, which filled a landing pad in what had been a cargo module, now wedged into ice. He was fiddling with an Iskalloni arm: blue skin and metal borg parts.

His suit twigged to approaching life. He looked up to see Auteme coming through the tunnels that connected Narrow Pocket's modules.

"Master Auteme! It's been ages." She's been his father's research assistant when he was younger. He couldn't actually remember, come to think of it, if she'd made Jedi Master. Oops. "Welcome to Narrow Pocket! You're who they sent about my report?"

 

[Auteme]

She hadn't, but she took his meaning. "I'm who came," she said, bouncing over, per usual, for a hug. It wasn't as intimate across a couple layers of atmospheric protection, but it was enough. "I wasn't far -- well, not far for places around here."

Another reason the captain had agreed to take her -- the condition of the galaxy was one in flux, and having a Jedi aboard seemed a safe way to not get lost on frayed hyperlanes. Not that she had done a whole lot of navigating; Edwa underestimated his and his crew's ability.

"It's been too long. How are you?" And then the rest of the questions came: "Is this your father's ship- ah. I'm... hoping you didn't take that arm from someone."

 

[Tilon Quill]

"I'm well, I'm well - and yes it is, and yes I did, but—" He held up the arm, which he'd avoided bumping against either of them incident to the hug. "—strictly consensually. This isn't an arm, it's a message in a bottle. I'm trying to figure out how to crack it without actually getting implanted with its implants, which is how it's designed to go. I met some Iskalloni yesterday in orbit, the same ones I'd been following, and they gave me this. They said it was an explanation for what they were after out here."

As a Sith acolyte he'd encountered an art called mechu-deru which could have been useful here, to will the electronics into compliance, but mechu-deru as he'd seen it was emphatically not a Jedi skill.

"What are you flying? Do you have quarters? I don't have a lot of room, but I could take the garden." Had she been around when he turned the whole back end of his dad's shuttle into a garden niche and slept back there?

Auteme

 

[Auteme]

"I, ah, travelled in with a trader- the captain wasn't too keen on this place. I suspect he'll want to leave soon, so -- no quarters." She gave a second look at the arm, briefly with more intent -- between her studies of anatomy and the Force, she found it incomprehensible yet operating with its own logic -- but decided to save further curiousity for later. One thing at a time.

"There's a garden?" She looked around a moment, as though there were greenery to jump at her from the steel and ice, before she looked at the- "Oh! He mentioned it to me, planning to do something like that. Never got to see it- I don't mean to displace you from your bed, if the garden's better for me I'll take it."

At the time she'd thought it a bit ridiculous to put a garden in so small a ship -- and she didn't know too much about starships, but she knew that space might have other, more functional purposes. And yet, she was excited to see it; it'd been a while since she'd seen Jend-Ro's work.

Tilon Quill ​

 

[Tilon Quill]

He took in her minimal baggage — "alright, let's put the arm on ice and get you settled" — and clunked in through the airlock.

Inside, the long-range shuttle was big enough to be a home for one or two or a mission-specific transport for four or five. The rear stowage was overrun by aquaponics and potted plants, natural-light generators and redundant jury-rigged inertial dampeners. Tilon shifted a couple of pots containing rosé amanecer flowers growing lightsaber crystals so he could fold down a standard shipboard cot from the wall. Any Jedi had slept in far worse.

"I've got the arm in a stasis locker back by the 'fresher. Feel free to poke at it. I think it's beyond my skillset other than the translation part — my Iskalloni's not bad today and I've got it hooked to an old iBorg Clarion translation module, so its interface is at least legible. It just doesn't want to talk about anything except breaking limits. I'm not sure what limits."

Auteme