Operation Lava Jato

[Janick Beauchamp]

D'Qar. In the aftermath of the battle on Utapau, Janick and her unit had a poodoo-load of forms to fill out, roughly the same amount of paperwork they had to fill out after Dagobah. Bureaucracy was the bane of any pilot, the cost of glory. But while he was waiting for her neuropsychological evaluation, and, understandably, in the wake of an engagement of the scale that was experienced on Utapau, the backlog for those items was much longer, she decided that she would simply remain on garrison duty on D'Qar and only fly in emergencies, given that her mental condition has deteriorated. But there is one thing ORC airbases have in common: bars that are open to the general public (even though, in some cases, that's the only area the general public can access), so she was confident she could get someone to drink 95% Asobi tihaar. Oh boy, it's one thing to be drinking Asobi tihaar because I contributed alchemized drill bits to the company drilling it on Asop, it's another thing to be remembering the whole adventure I had with Griet when attempting to alchemize drill bits, and to realize that she was, in fact, a mining engineer, she thought, while having those flashbacks of her first trip to Asop being replayed in her mind in her bar seat, while she waited for the barman to take her order, once again ordering 95% Asobi tihaar.

"One serving of 95% Asobi tihaar, please!"

[member="Vam Rinav"]

 

[Vam Rinav]

[member="Janick Beauchamp"]


Of all the backwater rocks he could have landed on... D'Qar wasn't that bad, actually. He was getting paid to make sure some back channel supplies made it to the ORC base unmolested, and the fresh air planetside was a nice change of pace. Vam always enjoyed jobs that took him to the Outer Rim. He could get into the military bars, and nobody drank quite like a soldier. He just so happened to be in such an establishment, finishing his drink when he heard a voice beside him.

95, eh?

He put down the rest of his current beverage and rapped twice on the bar.

"I'll have what she's having."

He looked over at his new neighbor.

"Feeling brave tonight, are we?"

 

[Janick Beauchamp]

"Yes. There's a reason why the Asobi tihaar is 95%"

The servings of 95% Asobi tihaar both Janick and [member="Vam Rinav"] were drinking were tablespoon-sized. Not much, she knew, but hopefully some measure of azeotropic goodness will prevent those visions of her drinking 25 tihaar servings on Zonju V from surfacing too quickly. What instead surfaced as a vision in her mind was the memory of that physical chemistry course where she learned about azeotropes, perhaps as far as she made it in chemistry pre-Directive 12, or maybe a little beyond that. Azeotropes of a liquid mixture are points where the composition is the same in the and hence cannot be separated by distillation. Azeotropes are either positive, in which case the boiling point is minimal at a given pressure, or negative, in which case the poiling point is maximal at a given pressure, she thought, and, while Janick had, more often than not, visions of either the alchemizing of the drill bits and the subsequent drilling of the alcohol wells on Asop or of her drinking 25 tihaar servings that made her hung over all the way to a patrol of the Verdict on Asop when tihaar comes up. Yes, she referred to the 95% tihaar as azeotropic goodness on occasions, but when and how she even came across that knowledge in the first place never seemed to appear in her visions.

"I'm Janick, what's your name?"

 

[Vam Rinav]

[member="Janick Beauchamp"]


The mercenary raised his glass in a toast.

"The pleasure is all mine, Janick. Name's Vam."

He took a sip, relishing the burn as it crawled into his belly. This was promising to be a worthwhile night. Weeks on board a freighter with nothing to do but stare at the walls had left Vam more than a little stir crazy. Fortunately, the cure for cabin fever was copious amounts of alcohol and fine company.

"So, Janick, what's a girl like you doing all the way out here drinking liquor that could knock a trandoshan on his scales?

 

[Janick Beauchamp]

"95% is the maximum concentration one can reach by distillating alcohol using conventional brewing methods because you then reach the azeotropic point for a water and alcohol mixture. However, I just don't get the same feeling from azeotropic drinks vs. non-azeotropic drinks"

Really, azeotropic tihaar can cause Trandos to have their scales peeled off? I would think peeling off of scales is not so much about the concentration, but the total alcohol ingested by the Trando, she thought, while a new Trandoshan recruit overheard them talking about 95% tihaar, and attempts to sample it. Clearly the Trandoshan saw both Janick and [member="Vam Rinav"] drinking stronger stuff than he did as a provocation. Just as a precautionary measure, he drank only one tablespoon of Asobi tihaar, realizing that drinking a tablespoon of Asobi tihaar was, in fact, burning his nostrils, much like both of them even felt when they drank their own tablespoons of the stuff. As much as [Griet's] mind was an open book when it came to liquids mining, and its economics thereof, mine was an open book when it came to alcohol brewing and its economics thereof was flashing in her mind, much like the whole sequence on Asop that led to the drilling of alcohol wells. Where she learned that Griet was a mining engineer, in all but legal status, and another vision related to her learning of chemical separation processes was flashing in her mind right after the vision of Griet in Asop's alcohol fields.

"That specific variety of tihaar is, in fact, also known as mineral tihaar"