Private The Ferryman

[Makko Vyres]

Pagodon

​

Makko had sent a relatively broad channel, open message. He had not named Jend-Ro Quill but had expressed that he was landing to talk to someone who had been an ally to those in need.

First and foremost, he hoped that this man existed. Like many people his age Makko liked to challenge the accepted wisdom of his elders. He had spent most of his life feeling as if he was rebelling against the establishment, even if that had not turned out to be true.

Secondly, he hoped - as the landspeeder glided over the ice through appalling visibility - that his message had been picked up by some kind of comm-unit and he wasn't going to be shot on sight.

The speeder slowed into an arc. Through the haze he picked out the silhouettes of low, squat dwellings. Makko came with no preconceptions about the home of this old friend of the Light, but somehow this still surprised him. Having already paid, Makko grabbed his bang and hopped off.

"Hey could you w..."

But with a sharp whine of its engines, the speeder had pulled away. Makko had grown up in the urban jungle of Denon's Districts. The taxi drivers were easily summoned with an app.

If there was no one here, he was going to have to break in to shelter from the conditions. Makko pushed that feeling down and stretched out with his feelings. Nothing made him feel as if he was in real danger. He approached the nearest door and knocked.

"Hey, I'm erm, looking for a Jend-Ro? Hoping you're in because...like...I didn't bring a flute to summon another speeder. Also...what's up with that?"

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

Professional hermitry required good perimeter motion sensors unless you were willing to forego proximity to a drug store. At his age, Quill was not. As soon as the sensors beeped, he called up his door's holocam on his datapad. The young man about to knock didn't look overtly hostile, and the temperature gauge said halfway to Hoth - balmy, but not for visitors - so Quill set aside a book that no human hand had touched before. He locked up the library and, as the young man spoke through the front door, went to open it. But just a crack.

"I'm Quill, yeah," he said through that crack. A cold gust carried the distant crunch of mating ravinaks from the ice fields. "What're you after?"

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

"What're you after?"

"Your clothes, your boots and your speederbike..."

Makko realised in a fraction of a second that this was not the moment for a joke.

"Sorry, it's film quote from...never mind."

Makko took a breath and face dup to exactly what it was he was after, why he was out here on the damned ice.

"I'm a Jedi. Not a very good one, but that's...er...how I ended up here. I'm on something of a journey to find out what I can learn. I know all the mantras about attachments and stuff...but I need to be able to protect people close to me. There are some scary fethin sith out there."

He had been a scrappy cyber runner. Back alley brawls and slicing databanks. War was coming. Even the Mandalorians were dangerous, when their equipment was shielded from his natural affinity with technology.

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

"Your clothes, your boots and your speederbike..."

Makko realised in a fraction of a second that this was not the moment for a joke.

"Sorry, it's film quote from...never mind."

Makko took a breath and face dup to exactly what it was he was after, why he was out here on the damned ice.

"I'm a Jedi. Not a very good one, but that's...er...how I ended up here. I'm on something of a journey to find out what I can learn. I know all the mantras about attachments and stuff...but I need to be able to protect people close to me. There are some scary fethin sith out there."

He had been a scrappy cyber runner. Back alley brawls and slicing databanks. War was coming. Even the Mandalorians were dangerous, when their equipment was shielded from his natural affinity with technology.

"I'm a hermit, son. I've seen a holo flick or two."

The door rolled the rest of the way open and let a brisk subzero wind shove Makko inside. Quill shut the door promptly for hospitality's sake. Pagodon might not be frigid by Quill's standards, but the Jedi looked like he had about half a percent body fat.

"I've heard Jedi Knights say that before," Quill said, "pretty much verbatim. Healing, gunships, sabers, mind control, war crimes — they meant all different things by it. So what you mean by it?"

 

[Makko Vyres]

"I'm a hermit, son. I've seen a holo flick or two."

Makko looked around the hut with a glance that asked: do you even get signal here?

Either way, he appreciated not having the wind at his back.

"I've heard Jedi Knights say that before," Quill said, "pretty much verbatim. Healing, gunships, sabers, mind control, war crimes — they meant all different things by it. So what you mean by it?"

Makko was slightly taken aback by the response. He had been prepared for disappointment, but not to be compared to someone who had carried out war crimes. His stubborn streak placed an affronted look before the retired jedi master.

In just a few moments, Makko had to face up to the fact that he had recently thrown himself into a Denon turf war as the price of having on evil man murdered.

His head tipped forwards and he looked at the floor.

"Feth. I dunno if I can even be trusted with anything. I try, but I just... I try and make the right call and when I do I want to be able to do my part. I'm just a piece of a big picture."

There were Jedi well beyond him, but even they couldn't save everyone. He wished he was a more eloquent man. Someone who could express himself properly.

"I don't want to be able to save everyone. If I can do better to save a few people?"

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

Makko looked around the hut with a glance that asked: do you even get signal here?

Either way, he appreciated not having the wind at his back.



Makko was slightly taken aback by the response. He had been prepared for disappointment, but not to be compared to someone who had carried out war crimes. His stubborn streak placed an affronted look before the retired jedi master.

In just a few moments, Makko had to face up to the fact that he had recently thrown himself into a Denon turf war as the price of having on evil man murdered.

His head tipped forwards and he looked at the floor.

"Feth. I dunno if I can even be trusted with anything. I try, but I just... I try and make the right call and when I do I want to be able to do my part. I'm just a piece of a big picture."

There were Jedi well beyond him, but even they couldn't save everyone. He wished he was a more eloquent man. Someone who could express himself properly.

"I don't want to be able to save everyone. If I can do better to save a few people?"

Quill sucked his teeth, a little 'tch' sound that might have been disappointment or critique or resignation or realization that he hadn't brushed today.

"I'm not talking motives, I'm talking means. You know how many Jedi I've seen butcher kids with noble motives, or warp minds, or tear up a crowd with a whirlwind? It's a far cry from zero. There's a reason I quit the Jedi before you were born."

His shoulder was bothering him, one of his old Bryn'adûl war wounds. He snagged a cane and stumped back toward the sealed library, a door like any other.

"What I'm asking," he said over his shoulder, "is how you want to be able to do the things you're hoping for."

 

[Makko Vyres]

"Oh," went Makko.

He had clearly missed the point.

"I mean...I don't want to be able to do it in any of those ways if it helps?" he asked rhetorically.

Makko was distracted by their surroundings for a moment, before continuing to focus on the question.

"Right now the only way I can really fight a sith or mandalorian is hope I can get close enough and...well you can't do much with a lightsaber other than take an arm if you're really good or go for a killing blow."

"I'm not really good. I want to even the odds. I'm good with tech, which helps with mandos. But I need to defend myself and others from the dark side and find a way to bring down a wall of Beskar without having to kill if I can help it."

Makko offered a shrug, knowing that he had rambled at the old man. One day he too would be frustrated by fast-talking youth.

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

"Oh," went Makko.

He had clearly missed the point.

"I mean...I don't want to be able to do it in any of those ways if it helps?" he asked rhetorically.

Makko was distracted by their surroundings for a moment, before continuing to focus on the question.

"Right now the only way I can really fight a sith or mandalorian is hope I can get close enough and...well you can't do much with a lightsaber other than take an arm if you're really good or go for a killing blow."

"I'm not really good. I want to even the odds. I'm good with tech, which helps with mandos. But I need to defend myself and others from the dark side and find a way to bring down a wall of Beskar without having to kill if I can help it."

Makko offered a shrug, knowing that he had rambled at the old man. One day he too would be frustrated by fast-talking youth.

"Hrm."

Quill pondered his visitor, took the measure of him. Seemed like a good-faith approach, just green and maybe not so wise. Nothing wrong with him a decent library couldn't solve.

Quill prodded the library door controls. The round door rolled aside into the wall, revealing a cozy good-sized room with many shelves. Makko might have visited Jedi libraries, and this was nothing like that: no orderly regular books and files and holocrons, just a mess of heterogeneity. There were tablets, records in knotted cords, things barely recognizable as records at all. There were scrolls, too, and handwritten hand-bound manuscripts. Virtually nothing here had been written by humans.

"There's a translation droid in the corner who can read all of this," he said. "Just be careful. Physically careful, I mean. Don't break anything, don't rip anything, don't bring caf in here." He settled into one of the scattered soft old chairs and leaned his cane against a shelf. "Know what, I've got an idea, something I could show you that wouldn't be easy to misuse in any serious way. There's a species called the Suerton, you ever hear of'em?"

 

[Makko Vyres]

Makko was both awed and apprehensive at the same time. He had grown up on the streets of Denon, his parents unhooked from holonet addiction and carried out by corporate security when he was small. He consumed in bytesized binary and took a long time to read analogue print.

He had also been raised in a world where asking for something nicely earned you nothing at all. It was hard to feel as if he had done something to deserve this.

"I won't damage anything," he promised. He stood some distance from another that looked valuable, which was almost everything.

"Know what, I've got an idea, something I could show you that wouldn't be easy to misuse in any serious way. There's a species called the Suerton, you ever hear of'em?"

"Nope," said Makko with a shrug. Denon was a smelting pot of cultures, but there were more species in the galaxy than stars in the denon sky.

Which was not saying much, given that one could count above 5 on a clear night.

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

Makko was both awed and apprehensive at the same time. He had grown up on the streets of Denon, his parents unhooked from holonet addiction and carried out by corporate security when he was small. He consumed in bytesized binary and took a long time to read analogue print.

He had also been raised in a world where asking for something nicely earned you nothing at all. It was hard to feel as if he had done something to deserve this.

"I won't damage anything," he promised. He stood some distance from another that looked valuable, which was almost everything.



"Nope," said Makko with a shrug. Denon was a smelting pot of cultures, but there were more species in the galaxy than stars in the denon sky.

Which was not saying much, given that one could count above 5 on a clear night.

The Suerton section of the library was a lockbox. Quill dragged it down and shoved it on the floor in front of his comfy chair, in a place where Makko could get a decent look from various vantage points, either standing or sitting. The box had all kinds of things in it - datacards, gambling accoutrements, notebooks.

"They're reptilian, two arms, two legs, short, harmless-looking. Some of'em have the ability to, consciously or subconsciously, affect probability."

Quill uncapped a tube of half a dozen chance cubes and tossed them out on the floor. All rolled blue.

"That's not telekinesis: I don't have that kind of fine-point control on a moment's notice, not many do. It's just probability gone wonky. Odds of all six of those going blue is, what, one in sixty-four? So chance cubes are useful for figuring out the fundamentals. Got a holo sabacc setup in here if that's more your speed. In a crisis, Suerton luck-bending's not bad stuff to know. Maybe there's someone who needs protecting and they trip into shelter from the explosion, or duck when the gun goes off."

 

[Makko Vyres]

Telekenesis had been difficult for Makko to pick up. Typically one of the first steps on the journey, it had been a source of frustration. Makko simply didn't connect well to the physical world through the Force.

When he closed his eyes the world was a dull, grey tone landscape through the Force. Only machines and living being stood out to him. Easy to access, to read and manipulate.

"I don't...er...I don't need to learn maths to do this right?" Makko asked. He had no clue how Quill had arrived at sixty four, but he got the sense of how unlikely that had been.

The tone of his voice made it perfectly clear that it would be a mountain to overcome.

Saving people through this kind of subtle manipulation appealed to him.

"Something you learn through sabacc and learn to save people from certain death. That's possibly the coolest thing I've ever been show."

For the nineteen year old, admitting that a lesson from an old man was cool, was not a thing to admit lightly.

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

Quill offered a slow grin. "Yeah, I seem to recall my boy saying something like that, once upon a time. He wanted to protect folks, wanted the tools to do it, but he was afraid of doing it wrong. This kind of thing worked out well for him."

The boy in question - his adopted son Tilon - was a man now, off on his own wanderings. He'd been twelve or so when Quill and company saved him from a Jedi massacre at a Sith academy. He'd gone on to be a Jedi Knight despite all that, and despite Quill's deep misgivings about the Jedi. Not all those conversations had been as straightforward or pleasant as practicing Suerton probability manipulation.

"Anyways," Quill said, "I don't know what it'll look like at a tech level to someone like you. Random number generators spitting out patterns, maybe. You should probably learn some probability math, the basics, but if a Suerton gambler walks into a casino, what gives him the edge isn't calculating odds, it's his state of mind. Folks from other species can figure it out if they're Force-sensitive and really give it their all. The key winds up being not caring if you win or lose, but there's a lot more to it than that."

He dug out a datacard and slotted it into a pad. It was a version of the intro materials that he and Auteme had put together once upon a time for a seminar on Hoth. He tossed Makko the datapad.

"Read that and I'll get some hot drinks."

 

[Makko Vyres]

"If I can't grasp this, I'll be happy to just have learned there's a whole species of people who cheat at cards with the Force."

Makko had a history of getting frightened of any academic study and lashing out. Enough of the edges had been knocked off the young man that he simply felt a little deflated at the chance of success.

"What's your son like?" Makko asked.

It was a clear procrastination technique because he was fundamentally nervous this was about to be about maths.

He could be excited about the lesson and apprehensive about exposing his deficiencies at the same time.

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

"If I can't grasp this, I'll be happy to just have learned there's a whole species of people who cheat at cards with the Force."

Makko had a history of getting frightened of any academic study and lashing out. Enough of the edges had been knocked off the young man that he simply felt a little deflated at the chance of success.

"What's your son like?" Makko asked.

It was a clear procrastination technique because he was fundamentally nervous this was about to be about maths.

He could be excited about the lesson and apprehensive about exposing his deficiencies at the same time.

"Well, it's not all of them, and the extent to which it's a conscious thing, a conscious effort..." Quill shrugged. "Most I've learned from just figured they're lucky in certain circumstances. I heard an old story of three Suerton brothers — alone they were lucky; if two were present, their luck turned bad; if all three, their luck was magnificent. This kind of expression of the Force isn't about will and study and rigor and so forth; that's just the lens my own past has brought to it, and it's been an obstacle as much as a blessing. Learn these things on their own terms if you can."

He busied himself making caf in an alcove.

"My son," he said in due course, "is a Jedi Knight, or was. Perhaps you've met him — Tilon Quill?"

 

[Makko Vyres]

"I've heard the name," Makko called back. "I don't think I've met him. Want me to, er, pass anything on when I go back?"

Makko had quietly set his mind on the task. Acknowledging his problems with formal learning and facing up to them was what had set him back on the path to becoming a Jedi Knight. He needed the right motivation.

He thought of the twi'lek at Ryloth. He thought of how they had needed him to slow down the invaders to escape through the tunnels. He rather acutely remember being shot for the first time.

Makko rolled some dice. He wasn't trying to alter anything, not yet. Following the guide, he was simply trying to let the Force give him a sense of a high or low roll before the dice settled. No maths, just feeling out what a result looked like.

Let go of you feelings of the result, the instructions said. Let it wash over you before it happens. Then you can gently and subconsciously start to change things.

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

There'd been long experiments regarding the best way to have a drink caddy in a library. A repulsor tray's power glitch had made an irredeemable mess; a wheeled caddy struggled with even the minimal carpet and was, furthermore, sloshy; Quill had enough years and battle damage that carrying a tray of hot liquids didn't always end well. So he'd settled on keeping everything in an alcove: only the mugs were mobile. The caf he brought Makko Vyres was bog-standard and hot. He settled down with something identical. The library had enough side tables and stools to hold all kinds of accoutrements, mugs included, within easy reach.

"That's nice of you, I'll think about it," he said. "Truth be told I"m not sure what Jedi faction he's with or what that landscape looks like today. When I left there was five new rival Grandmasters a week. What outfit you with? They any good?"

 

[Makko Vyres]

"I'm with Coruscant," Makko said. He didn't know much about the other Jedi in the Galaxy.

"I kinda thought Jedi with a story as a kid. I don't know what good looks like but Master Valery Noble is kind. She looked out for me in some pretty shitty spots."

For a Makko it was a pretty simple perspective to take on the situation. Perhaps, through a more jaded lens it would not be as simple for Jend-ro. Not with the chance of his son rushing off to fight a holy war.

Makko took a sip of caf. Dice clattered across the floor. One rolled beyond his reach and he gently nudged it back towards himself with the Force. With his limited grasp of telekenisis, he was quite proud of that.

"You don't have any sugar? Er, please?" he added, thinking of how Corazona von Ascania would look down at his lack of manners as a guest.

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

"I'm with Coruscant," Makko said. He didn't know much about the other Jedi in the Galaxy.

"I kinda thought Jedi with a story as a kid. I don't know what good looks like but Master Valery Noble is kind. She looked out for me in some pretty shitty spots."

For a Makko it was a pretty simple perspective to take on the situation. Perhaps, through a more jaded lens it would not be as simple for Jend-ro. Not with the chance of his son rushing off to fight a holy war.

Makko took a sip of caf. Dice clattered across the floor. One rolled beyond his reach and he gently nudged it back towards himself with the Force. With his limited grasp of telekenisis, he was quite proud of that.

"You don't have any sugar? Er, please?" he added, thinking of how Corazona von Ascania would look down at his lack of manners as a guest.

"Noble...I remember her. We've been in the same room a few times, had the same friends and allies, same troubles. Good reputation and never got caught up in the shit that broke me. Glad to hear there's some good people still operating," Quill added, watching the dice. "I may not agree with major parts of the Jedi way, or how that way can steer good people wrong, but I won't deny there's many that've done sincere, quality work. Coruscant Jedi always were kind of a grab bag of real good and evil.

"There's sugar in it, how much you need?" But he stumped up and got the sugar and gave Makko some more, gracelessly. Some aspects of hosting were instinctive to him. Others, less so.

"That's it," he added as some less probable rolls started turning up. "Getting the hang of it."

 

[Makko Vyres]

Makko tipped two more heaped spoons into the cup to make it taste more like a fluorescent energy drink than a good caf.

"Thank you," he said. He was trying.

"I'm kinda getting a sense of things moving, but..."

Makko would have been unable to work out the probability of throwing two threes. He was definitely not able to recognise that he was effecting a small, but statistically significant push down the bell curve of culumlative rolls.

Nothing too outlandish, but each roll was getting a little subconscious nod in the right direction.

"Can I ask...why don't you live around people? Also, do you like have a flute to call a taxi back yourself or..."

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

Quill eyed Makko's... revitalized... caf like it was an Imperial superweapon and refrained from further comment on sugar intake and the taste of things. Matters of taste, a blue bantha elder had grunted to him once past a mouthful of hay, were not to be disputed.

"You can ask," he said, settling back into his chair on a permanent basis. "I don't live around people because they hurt me. There's a rare Force condition named after a Sith lord named Odion. Being around other people, especially lots of other people, caused him pain. I've got the same deal. I can go into town or go for a mission with a team, or I could when I was younger - but any time I've needed to go into a city or aboard a big ship or station, or into something like a club or bar...I dose up. There's a few kinds of pills I use to cope with a situation like that. For calling a taxi, I've got a direct line to the flute guy. I exorcised his daddy a few years back. I push a button, he starts flutin'.'"

Makko Vyres