The dizzying idea of packing up her whole life was calmed as the two Jedi laid out the true parameters of her path, replacing her frantic excitement with a grounded sense of focus.
Matsu's smile remained light, but her guidance was incredibly practical. She laid out the real options for Olarra and her Forgeworks. She wouldn't need to panic or drop her tools into a storage crate by the next morning. The Order wasn't pulling her away by force. Instead, they were laying down an open invitation, offering her the coordinates to their one of their enclaves and stepping back to give her the breathing room to settle her outstanding affairs and follow, or not, her own path to them.
With a polite, graceful bow of their heads, the Jedi began gathering their cloaks, moving toward the open pneumatic doors of the Sanctuary to give her the space she needed to map out her transition.
"Wait....I just have to say thank you," Olarra said softly, her short, precisely styled ivory hair catching the soft white light of the stasis field as she bowed her head in return. Her voice carried a deep, unshakeable reverence. She wasn't disappointed or frantic anymore; she felt a massive wave of quiet relief washing through her chest.
"Honestly... knowing I don't have to rush this makes the whole idea feel a lot less scary. Like I said before, I have responsibilities here, people and droids, who help keep my forge burning. Never mind my creditors. It wouldn't be right to just up and vanish on them."
She walked the mystics out into the main hold, her heavy work boots stepping with an unbothered rhythm against the deck plates.
"I just need to finish a few more projects and send over some scan datas to somewhat clear out one of my bigger debts, and make sure Veecee doesn't suffer a total systemic meltdown over our budget," she added with a bright, wide-eyed grin, glancing back at her pristine anvil.
"But the absolute second my ledger cleans up, I'm tracking those coordinates straight to you. Trust me, I'm going to have a million questions by the time I get there."
Olarra looked over at Novac.
"I hope to see you there too big guy!".
She stood at the top of the boarding ramp and watched them disappear into the neon-slicked shadows of the Kafrene corridors. The ship was quiet again, the air still smelling faintly of sweet incense, but her world would never be the same. She wasn't just a blind scrapper anymore. She had a destination, a plan, and an impossible blueprint she was finally ready to solve.
The heavy airlock doors hissed shut, locking out the relentless roar of the docking terminal and plunging the main hold into a rare, ringing silence. Veecee's massive frame immediately stepped out from behind a stack of titanium sheets, his dual horizontal sensors glowing a sharp, highly suspicious yellow as his grilled vocabulator block emitted an annoyed hiss. Olarra completely ignored him. The intense, buzzed energy in her bones was still bouncing around, and there was only one person in the sector who could help her process the absolute madness of the last hour. She strode back into the cool, quiet air of the Archive Sanctuary, dropped onto her dark wood translation desk, and punched an encrypted frequency into the sub-space comm-array.
A few seconds of static crackled through the terminal before a miniature, flickering blue hologram flared to life above the desk. The hovering, pudgy silhouette of
Roqar Zatt
materialized, his stubby wings beating in a rapid, impatient blur as the Toydarian closely examined a palmful of gemstones using the magnification settings of his cybernetic eye.
"Olarra, my little jewel! You are lighting up my secure terminal during peak black-market auction hours," Roqar wheezed, his vocoder softening the frantic burst of standard Outer Rim grumbling with an undeniable, affectionate warmth.
"Please tell me this is about the Imperial fuel manifold vouchers, or that you've finally cracked the core lock on that ancient container I dropped off. The mid-rim syndicates are breathing down my neck for inventory, kiddo."
"Rocky, forget the dreggin' fuel vouchers for a second and listen," Olarra cut in, a huge, ecstatic laugh bursting from her lips as she leaned toward the projection, her short cream hair catching the terminal's glow. "
You are a total genius, and you didn't even know it. That shattered cuirass piece you sold me? The one you always said was so special?"
The Toydarian's wings stuttered for a fraction of a second, his compound eyes narrowing through the hologram. He huffed, though he didn't even try to correct her use of that forbidden nickname, a linguistic privilege strictly reserved for his favorite, though most frustrating associate.
"Of course I remember it, child. It has been sitting on your credit ledger as an outstanding debt for three rotations. Why? Did SAMI finally figure out how to melt the filigree down without blowing up the cargo bay?"
"No! It's so much better than that.... The math is completely real, Rocky," Olarra whispered, her voice laced with an intense, wide-eyed thrill.
"These two...I don't know...ghosts... just walked straight onto my boarding ramp. Like, actual ghosts or something...I cant explain....like, they didn't even register on my ship's thermal sensors. They just folded themselves out of the air right in front of my desk while I was steeping tea. One of them was literally hovering millimeters off my deck plates like gravity was a total suggestion."
"Olarra, dear... what did you put in your kettle tonight?" Roqar grumbled, his small hands crossing over his belly with a look of deep, parental worry.
"If you've been huffing plasma vapors again..."
"I'm completely serious! They looked at my anvil, watched me lock a Phrik-Laminanium matrix with my focus, and told me I've been using something called 'The Force' my entire life. They said it's how I do what i do." Olarra rambled out, the words tumbling past her cerulean lips with a frantic, joyful cadence.
"They called themselves Jedi. Isn't that the word from the old bootleg history slates you used to send me? They said the crazy emotional knot I get in my chest whenever I touch the Malachor cuirass...the way it fills me with soaring warmth and total sickness at the same time...is a literal energetic resonance. And my visions!...those crazy broken fragments I've been seeing since I was nine? It's part of the exact same toolkit!."
The hologram flickered violently as Roqar suddenly dropped his handful of stones, his snout pressing right into the transmitter lens in pure, frantic panic.
"Jedi?! You had Jedi on my cleared docking berth?! Little one, are you trying to get your entire operation targeted by the sector authorities?!" the Toydarian screeched, his wings buzzing at an absolute hyper-frequency.
"If the local syndicates or Imperial remnants think you're harboring Force-mystics or smuggling lightsaber components, they will wipe your beautiful little forge right off the grid! I am a simple relic dealer, Olarra, I cannot protect you if the big factions notice you!"
"Calm your flappers, Rock, they already left. And please, dont play coy with me. I know what you actually do, remember?," Olarra chuckled free-spiritedly, waving a hand to dismiss his panic.
"Besides, they didn't come to raid the vaults. They actually came to find ME. They gave me a set of unmapped coordinates to their enclaves. They offered to teach me the actual language of the lattice. They want to show me how to develop my Force...stuff. To finally answer these questions I've had for so long."
Roqar froze in mid-air, his frantic hovering slowing down into a cautious, deeply calculating drift. The paternal panic in his eyes slowly shifted back into the sharp, opportunistic gaze of a veteran antiquities smuggler, a fond smile tugging at his snout.
"Coordinates..." Roqar murmured, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly whisper.
"Do you have any idea what kind of high-purity crystalline data-slates and forgotten metallurgical texts are sitting in those temples? The corporate collectors on Kuat would pay millions for a clean scan of an ancient Artificer blueprint, dear girl. Maybe while you're there you remember your pal Roqar?"
"Oh please, I'm not stealing their library, Rocky," Olarra warned with a playful, sharp grin, pointing a finger at the blue hologram.
"This is a real opportunity for me. I'm going there to learn how to solve the Malachor puzzle once and for all even if it means relocating the ship once I get sorted here"
"Fine, fine, keep your fierce little heart," Roqar scoffed, a proud, affectionate glint in his compound eyes as he waved a stubby hand.
"But a deal is a deal, my girl. You still owe me forty-thousand credits for the piece, plus my cut of the diagnostic report job for the Remnant. Clear your ledger with me first, file the technical logs for the harbor inspectors, and then you can fly your kitchen straight into the stars. You'll need to send me something before you go. I'll trust you to keep making your payments, but I cant let you go just like that. Just... make sure you bring me back a souvenier from those enclaves if the Jedi let you go."
"It's a bargain, partner," Olarra smiled warmly.
"I'll come see you at your place tomorrow to talk turkey and say goodbye."
She tapped the terminal, killing the connection and letting the room drop back into the cool, silent scent of incense. She leaned back against her translation desk, her ivory hair shimmering in the stasis light as she looked back at her impossible armor piece. The ledger was waiting, the droids were grumbling, but for the first time in her life, the path ahead was completely illuminated.
Tags:
Matsu Ike
Seo Linn
Novac Lyrikal
Nolan ork
Olarra Zand
