The one in which Corey turns into a fangirl

[Coren Starchaser]

So much for retirement, was all Coren could think. Yes, the man was working with the Alliance, a Commander in, not of, the Alliance, advisor to the Supreme Commander on asymmetrical warfare and insurgency strikes. Sometimes he reached out to the Underground, and in return would “lose” some ships their way. The Underground helped the Alliance grow and now it was time to return the favor. And the pilots in the Underground definitely helped fill out the Merchant Fleet in the Alliance.

But today was just another meeting of leaders, kind of. There was a bit of work to get done, and spotting a few new worlds. What Alliance brass needed was someone who could assist with hyperspace routes. There were pirates that were closing in on the trade routes, and something needed to be done. Interdiction was occurring, and that was when the small team got dispatched.

Coren had made sure to meet with Jorus to see if he’d be willing to lend his hand, the trip, using one of the Forerunner Exploration vessels Coren had kidnapped from the SSC, they had a few fighters, Coren’s main freighter and whatever Jorus met Coren in as they were moving from Sullust on the way towards the Kathol Rift.

“So, you’ve been working how long on instinctive astro?”

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Coren Starchaser"]

The ship in question was the Gypsymoth, a flying brick of a '929, but it had dropped Jorus at Coren's ship via force cylinder before skedaddling. Miktik or Beyyr was at the helm -- one of the two. A little uncomfortable in Coren's copilot seat, Jorus sat a bit straighter than normal. Sometimes he caught himself rubbing his hands on the sides of his trousers, feeling the Corellian Bloodstripe rasp against his palms.

"A while," he said, "I guess. Tough to pin down."

He folded his arms to keep himself from fidgeting. Maybe answering the question would get his mind off the fact that this wasn't his ship and he wasn't at the controls. He could leave out being raised in a Warden family; that much almost went without saying. "Bottom line, I took some Jedi tests when I was in one of the old Rebel Alliances. I was real young, early twenties. Tests said I could learn, so I went to learn, and nothing. Couldn't swing a sabre, lift a pebble, nothing. What I could do was fly, but it wasn't me nor them that put two and two together, not for a long while. I always figured it was nothing more than latent sensitivity, just a knack that I couldn't turn into anything more. Then I spent some time wandering with-" Chloe Blake, secret Warden of the Sky. "-a friend, and then I guess I spent some time meditating. Reclining my seat in hyperspace and chucking a baseball at the ceiling. I started trying starjumps by gut instinct, and I got good at it. My wife and I -- she wasn't my wife then -- we used it to find salvage and such, and I used it with different rebel groups and the Omega Defense Force.

"Then there was this one time, this one fething time. Me and this archaeologist got caught in an escape pod while the Bando Gora were tearing our ship to pieces. We jettisoned, or got jettisoned, don't even remember, but the thing was, there we were floatin' along in hyperspace. And we weren't dead. In hindsight I shoulda seen that as a sign; there's not much that can survive getting dumped out of a ship's hypertunnel. We weren't going to get back to realspace anytime soon, though. I figured we were gonna die, but the lady with me, she got me mad. I hit the viewport, just like this-" He rapped the base of his fist against the nearest bit of transparisteel. "-and we dropped out of hyperspace without a hyperdrive.

"Well, that was kind of an eye-opener. I'd never really used the Force before that, not in any real way, but there I was being called a Master. There's more to it -- a couple of Duinuogwuin, one at the Graveyard of Dragons an' the Flamewind of Oseon, the other that led me on a chase clear across everything. Me and my wife made the Mara Corridor around then, jump by jump just to see if we could, and that helped. Never really had a master, or read much about all this. Not until I got the 'crons off Coruscant, anyway. I kept'em in a lunchbox under my seat, and they'd talk to me.

"That's it in a nutshell, anyway. How 'bout you?"

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Every pilot had their trademark vessel, no matter how much you tried, and experimented with other ships, there was one that was always you, no matter what you did. Han Solo had the Falcon, Dash Rendar had that Outrider, Michael Knight had KITT, Bo and Luke Duke had the General Lee, Coren Starchaser has Tachyon Rising and Jorus Q. Merrill had Gypsymoth. That was the thing with pilots, they loved their ship, and nothing else worked quite like what the bond. Probably why Coren didn’t upgrade the Rising to include Lexi from his combat ships, or why he didn’t just trade in the refurbished YT-2000.

A bit of a history lesson was what was coming up, it seemed, with the loaded question. And Coren could see, not really sense, but definitely see, the fact that Jorus was a bit out of sorts. They hyperspace trip here was going to have the Rising pulling into real space before the Forerunner, that had more ships. There were confirmed pirates here, but Coren wanted to get ahead of them to start getting targeting solutions for the larger guns and the fighters.

Starchaser was a bit younger, well by a margin, but his training had been strange, disjointed and since he had woken up post-Netherworld, he had to re-learn it all from scratch. That meant some real Rebellion-era style Force learning, and making things work. All previous data had pointed to Coren’s skills, with psychometry, energy manipulation and navigation, but he didn’t know the extent of what the latter could do. Sure, he was learning with the Aing-Tii, the ones that would come out of the Rift and a few volumes on how to fold space from his trip there a few years back, before the Alliance, but nothing like what Jorus could do.

When he did slam his hand on the ship, Coren almost jumped, he was fairly sure the other Captain wouldn’t rip them from hyperspace before they found this gravity well, but still… That was some next level stuff. Then it became his turn to talk. “Yeah, my father was ExplorCorps, back before Frontiers came into being. Taught me a bit of feeling my way through the world before I could even fly myself. After he fell, Sith, of course, I took up some odd jobs, got roped into a spot with a dark order, for a few years, got to hunt Sith, so I took it. But they still weren’t able to help me do some of the things most Jedi do. Now its… well, the amnesia, before I met you, I lost it all. And saber swingin’ just isn’t for me. But when I’m here.” He ran his hands lovingly over the controls. “I’m home. Took to freighters and fighters all the same, but they each have their own use. Was put in a Wing, made my way to XO after getting recognized that I could find people and things pretty well.”

He looked back to the tunnel, then to Jorus again. “And it was a lot of exploration with the Dawn Treader, finding ourselves a home when we got to be too much of a threat to the Sith we were supposedly monitoring. Found my way to the Aing-Tii, then we ran to the Unknown Regions. Then well, next I remember was showing up in Fringe space, then contacted by a Warden…” Yep, Coren would be safe here to say that, right? “And then found my way to your Underground.”

That was when he felt a little bit of chop in the ship. That ready grin, of a pilot waiting in an alert fighter, found Coren's face. "Ready? Looks like we'll get to see what these pirates are throwing at us." Yeah, that feedback was...

Real space.

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Coren Starchaser"]

Realspace hit like a slap in the face, shaking Jorus out of three states of mind. First, the nervousness he'd been battling. Second, his half-formed response to Coren's revelations -- the Aing-Tii?

And, third, his awareness of hyperspace. Whenever he jumped, he listened. Sometimes he swore he could see...things...moving in the crackling blue-white of hyperlight. Other ships, maybe, but he didn't think so. And Duinuogwuin and Oswaft were rare. No, whatever was out there in the deep blue...

Those were the thoughts that ended as the Tachyon Rising reverted. Jorus' head tilted as a familiar something registered in the back of his mind. "Pulse-mass mines," he said, before his eyes or the vessel's sensors could confirm. "Five...no, six of them. Hex grid. Any way we run, we're in the net."

It was, he supposed, typical of him that the hyperspace aspects came first. He hadn't even thought to look at the enemy ships yet, let alone determine flotilla composition.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Coren didn’t quite mind real space. Sure, there was something about hyperspace that just put his mind at ease, but with real space, it opened up all manner of possibilities for the student of the Aing-Tii and the Wardens. Hyperspace was comforting as the deep sea was, but real space? That was coastal area, and that was turf where what you could do made a lot of difference. He had a connection to hyperspace as any child of an explorer could, but not the same way Jorus does.

When his ship started to get that telltale jitter, something quite akin to when Starchaser used to ride wheeled boards down the hills of Corellia called ‘speed-wobbles,’ something there wasn’t anything he could do at that point, but let the ship fall back into real space. When the blue of hyperspace came to black and star-spotted, the pair of pilots both when to what they knew.

It was a deadly pairing, really, for any other pilot. Coren’s hands immediately linked the guns to auto-fire, when he gave the command. Mines? Wonderful. And there was the mine layer, heading back to the interdictor. Fighters were being deployed, but they were slow, not Imperial inspired, he was sure.

“Fighters coming, we’re not far ahead of the Forerunner. Looks like we need to keep them distracted until help arrives.” The Forerunner was designed by Silk Holdings with Coren Starchaser on the team. It was one of those ships that was designed to go anywhere, but with the mines here? They’d have to mark those ships if they couldn’t destroy them.

Coren started to scan the interdictor and mine-layer. “Fighters or mines first?” The Corellian smirked, not worried about getting them both taken care of, just doing it.

[member="Jorus Merrill"]