Brother's Keeper

[Jaden Luka]

There were probably more high-tech solutions that he could have resorted to. Datapads. Comm checks. Heck, he could have just memorised it. Such things weren't the way that Jaden Luka approached life, though. Such solutions were the domain of engineers, strategists, people who lived lives filled with thought and rethought, planning and contemplation. Jaden wasn't those people. He wasn't an idiot; wasn't brainless. He could calculate a hyperspace jump if the situation presented, patch up a damaged fighter well enough to limp home, plan a surgical assault on a military stronghold, devise a strategy to overcome unbeatable odds; he was many things, but intelligence wasn't something he was lacking. It was a different kind of intelligence though, a swift intelligence, equal parts wisdom and instinct, the kind of intelligence that may not have yielded the best solution, but certainly led to the fastest one. The cockpit of a snubfighter wasn't the place for indecision and overthinking. If a crisis presented, you thought of something fast, and you went with your gut. If something broke off in the cockpit, you didn't waste time with a fancy repair, you whacked a length of mesh tape on it and hoped for the best.

It was that mentality that led Jaden to where he was now, standing with a furrowed brow in the middle of a corridor intersection, peering at the sweat-smudged cabin number that he had scrawled on the palm of his hand. "Back of the hand," he muttered to himself, an insistent mental note for next time. The palm had been a rookie mistake: that was for people who wanted to conceal their scribbled reminders, not for people who had just spent twenty minutes with their hands clasped behind their back waiting for a turbolift to arrive. He wasn't used to all this stuff. Wasn't used to having things that needed doing while he was out and about: if you were a pilot, and your duties required something that wasn't sitting in a cockpit, a briefing room, or behind a desk, it was a very strange day.

He sighed a frustrated sigh, and squinted. Was that a six, or had he just fat-fingered a five and closed the loop on the bottom? He took a guess and picked a direction, striding off down the corridor with faked confidence. No time to stand and dwell.

Another impulse moment took hold as he reached the door, his knuckles rapping against the closed durasteel. There was a door chime, probably. Didn't matter. Might have been the smarter option, but knocking was the instant instinct, and he'd already finished the task before his mind would have been able to identify the right button. Besides, Cizeracks had great hearing, right? Surely they did, with ears like that. Knock or chime, didn't matter. She'd hear it regardless.

Jaden squinted down at his palm again, twisting the angle of his hand slightly... maybe it was an eight?

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

Endurance running was the worst. It wasn't something Cizerack were particularly built for anyways, and T'yeellaa in particular seemed to lag behind the pack. Still, she'd been egged on by some of the joint senior staff to participate in a daily 5K challenge, and she was only one of two Cizerack officers to accept the challenge. That showing was abysmal, and poor running or no, T'yeellaa wasn't about to excuse herself from the team-building workout.

Just over half an hour later, the K'ohta'rrou was back on her way to her quarters. Her PT gear showed the rigors of her run, sweat streaked in a dark swath down her back, under her arms, and tracing down her abdomen. Her functional ponytail was now ragged and framed with loose strands of hair. Though she'd caught her breath on the walk back to her quarters, she was still quite tired. Clocking in at 28 minutes was pretty good time for her, but the Humans, Rodians, Iridonians, Twi'Leks, and most everyone else put in minutes ahead of her. She'd ended up fourth from last, in front of only Ensign Gnoracca - a flat-footed Wookiee, Midshipman Tin Deem from Sullust, an Ishi-Tib whose name escaped her, and Preita'rrou Inataani, the only other Cizerack who tried her luck.

A humbling place to start, to put it midly. The K'ohta'rrou quaffed down another fourth of her water flask as she turned a corner, pausing to see an unfamiliar face loitering outside her quarters. Human male of a fairly strong frame. She didn't recognize him. Not one of her junior staff. As he pivoted, she caught the pips visible on his chest. A Commander's pips.

"Can jI help jyou?"

[Jaden Luka]

...huh.

As Jaden turned to regard the Cizerack who'd spoken to him, all the thoughts in his head shattered into teeny tiny pieces. There was absolutely no mistaking the fact that this was T'yeellaa, the woman he was looking for. Sure, the markings on her face were a little different, the stern expression made him wonder if there was some Vansen Tyree in her bloodline somewhere, but the eyes especially, and the facial structure around them, that was unmistakable. There was no doubt that this was Cirrsseeto's sister. Cirrsseeto's hot sister, no less. Okay so granted, Cirrsseeto wasn't exactly an objectional-looking guy - objectively speaking - but if Jaden didn't know any better, he'd have a hard time believing the two Captains were even part of the same gene pool.

He crinkled his nose, trying to dislodge the started expression that was starting to take hold. Just... hot damn.

Recovering quickly, he adjusted his features into a more genial expression, though a quick flash of remembered sociology knowledge halted him from the traditional human act of extending a hand in greeting. "I certainly hope so," he replied in a warm and nonchalant tone. "I'm Jaden Luka from the Novgorod and I'm looking for T'yeellaa Meorrrei... who I think I've just found?"

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

The sonic shower would have to wait a little while longer. T'yeellaa capped her water flask, extending a hand to Jaden as per the human custom. At the last moment, she withdrew her hand, slid it on her shorts to remove the trace perspiration, and offered it again.

"jYou have..."

She hung on the last word, not quite punctuating as her ears raised a little. Novgorod was her arr'uhai's ship. What did it mean that the Commander of Novgorod was seeking her out? The sway in her tail slowed to deathly still.

[Jaden Luka]

A Cizerack volunteering to shake hands was an unexpected twist, but it made sense Jaden supposed, what with her being the second-in-command of a station like this. No doubt they'd selected her out of all the potential candidates in the Cizerack military because of how familiar with human customs she was, and how seamlessly she'd be able to work alongside them. Must have been a family trait: her brother was one of the least alien aliens that Jaden had ever met. Probably all that time he'd spent hanging around with that Corellian guy, who Cirr never mentioned and Jaden was wise enough to never bring up.

Not one to turn down an offered pleasantry, especially one that was born out of intent rather than reflex, Jaden hesitated for a moment, repeating T'yeellaa's motion of wiping the palm against his leg before he reached out to grip her hand with just the right amount of sincere firmness and gentle caution. He wasn't sure if that was some special permutation on the custom, some sort of middle ground between the human way and the Cizerack way, but better safe than sorry; and besides, it had the added bonus of smearing away the inked cabin number from his palm. Probably not a good impression to make, letting her see that.

"Excellent," he said warmly as his hand fell away and back to his side, but before he continued speaking, something sparked in his mind. One of the fundamental skills of an ace pilot was the ability to conceptualise and keep track of 3D space, and when something changed within Jaden's peripheral vision, he noticed it in an instant. Not so great when you were assigned to a sweaty jungle planet where flying bugs and creepy crawlies kept fluttering and shuffling around on the edges of your vision, giving you the shudders every time you tried to sit down and use the 'fresher, but pretty useful when naive idiots tried to throw things at you from across the room or sneak up behind you with damp towels.

It was also, as it turned out, a really useful skill to have when you were talking to a woman whose body language included tail swooshes. The instant that thing stopped wafting around, Jaden clocked onto it, and his mind raced to one a handful of possible conclusions. It was certainly conceivable that Captain Meorrrei had been struck into stunned stillness by his overwhelming masculinity, his radiant aura of charm, and his irresistibly alluring aphrodisiac musk; but unless there was something about Cizerack physiology to explain why that reaction hadn't been instant, it didn't seem like the most likely explanation. That ruled out the possibility that T'yeellaa had grown still in preparation for pouncing, too: sexual pouncing he'd already ruled out, and how could anyone possibly want to attack him within a few seconds of meeting him? He was charming, and undeniably likable. No, the only conclusion that made any kind of sense was that concern and worry were the reasons: apprehension at the first officer of her brother showing up at her door for unexplained reasons.

"I'm sorry!" he said, with the kind with the kind of apologetic wince when you accidentally started talking to someone before discovering they were already in the middle of an important holocall. "Did I catch you at a bad time? This is no big deal, I can easily come back later. Or you could come find me at my place, or we could even meet up somewhere else entirely. I could even take you to dinner! I would love to eat -"

The one problem with thinking quickly was that often your verbal velocity was so fast that you found yourself locked on a trajectory, and there was just too much inertia to course correct, no matter how hard your brain tried to jam on the thrusters. In this instance, Jaden found himself inadvertently torn from cognitive hyperspace into the middle of a veritable Maw cluster of conversational black holes. If there was a navigable course to get out of this, he'd have to plot it quick before he found himself on the receiving end of an uncomfortably painful crushing sensation.

"- station food. On the station. Instead of on my ship. In a restaurant, but -" He winced, trying desperately to swerve away from the accretion disc that currently filled the entirely of his viewsreen. "- in a totally platonic way, not in an interested in you way, because I'm actually much more interested in your brother."

Jaden blinked. The last sentence replayed in his brain, nowhere near the way he had intended it to sound. His mouth finally clamped closed, complete and utter surrender at the total catastrophe he'd managed to create. A sigh escaped, and Jaden's head and shoulders slumped as if he was slowly deflating, his gaze redirected towards the floor.

"I should have stopped at I can come back later, shouldn't I?"

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

Initially, the pit of T'yeellaa's stomach lost cabin pressure at the implications of Cirrsseeto's executive officer giving her a personal visit. Her breath caught in her throat in preparation for what terrible news he might be carrying about her brother's loss at space. It didn't take long for Jaden's fumbling, scattered introduction to arrive at all points except somber for T'yeellaa to let that breath go. There was relief, then annoyance, then bewilderment. Commander Luka's face was taking on that rouged tone she'd seen a few times on Commander Akiena - usually heralding some manner of emotional comeapart.

Either way, this was all too jumbled and bizarre for T'yeellaa to simply put a pin in it. Wait - I'm actually much more interested in your brother?!? Commander Luka now looked positively Zeltron by his color. Absent any constructive means to console the increasingly-flustered human, T'yeellaa offered him her water bottle. Maybe that would cool his head.

"jYou'rre not herre to tell me mjy brrotherr'ss dead, arre jyou?"

Probably not, but the K'ohta'rrou always trusted a first impression, and she wanted to quash the worst case scenario outright before figuring out just what the hell was wrong with Commander Luka.

[Jaden Luka]

Luka's contemplation of the water bottle that T'yeellaa offered lasted about half a second, before he defaulted to his usual anthropological strategy of it's probably considered rude to say no. To the K'ohta'rrou's credit, the swig of water that Luka took had more of a beneficial effect than he would have expected: a little of the heat in his cheeks seeped it's way into his mouth, and disappeared down the back of his throat, his face returning to something a little closer to it's natural colour.

"Not yet," he replied with a grateful smile as he handed the water bottle back. "He can be a bit of an infuriating CO at times though, so I wouldn't rule it out indefinitely."

A heavy sigh escaped from him, his shoulders sinking further. Gone was the confident swagger of a rocket jockey, and in his place stood a man who could only be described by one adjective: tired. "I'm sorry about this," he began, the jovial sheen gone from his voice, genuine apology in it's place. "You have far more important things to worry about, I'm sure, and I shouldn't have tried to come to you with this. It's just -"

He trailed off, a moment of silence passing before his eyes rose and found T'yeellaa's. "I'm supposed to be a starfighter pilot," he said, a glimmer of pride finding it's way into his voice, enough of it seeping over the edges to straighten his posture a little. "I was with Rogue Squadron. I led Rogue Squadron. It was my passion; my pride, y'know? I worked my way up the ladder for that. I earned that. I owned it. Belonged there. And then?"

Jaden shrugged.

"Then the war stopped, and suddenly Commander of an elite starfighter squadron isn't good enough anymore. They dragged me out of my cockpit, shoved me into this uniform, and had me report aboard the Novgorod, and I just don't belong there yet. Don't get me wrong, your brother is a great guy, but I don't know how to be his first officer. I don't understand him, I don't understand his species, and so I had this stupid notion -" He let out a brief chuckle, rolling his eyes and shaking his head at how absurd it sounded when he said it out loud. So much for spur of the moment tactics. Maybe he should have lingered in the briefing room on this one a little longer.

"I figured I would find you," he finished, with a gesture at T'yeellaa, "So that I could learn a little more about my CO, and maybe work out how to be better at my job. Pretty stupid, right?" He shook his head dismissively. "This is probably the most absurd thing you've ever heard. I mean, look at you. Prestigious assignment like this, all meticulous and smart-looking even though you're all frazzled and sweaty... you've probably never felt out of your depth for a single second your whole life."

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

Something Jaden said gave T'yeellaa pause. Not about Cirrsseeto, no. About transition. One day feeling that you were the master of your domain, and the next day being plucked away from your comfort zone kicking and screaming, and deposited into strange circumstances with no clear way forward. That resonated. T'yeellaa seemed to stand a little taller at the thought, and she re-evaluated the motor-mouthing human standing in front of her who was trying, like she did, to make the most sense out of a confusing situation.

"Commanderr." she bit out with a little force, trying to head him off before he could continue to ramble. "Do jyou want a drrjink?"

Her eyes traveled down to the water bottle, and her ears leveled a bit.

"A rreal drrjink."

[Jaden Luka]

Okay, so ear motions. Captain Quez did those. Unfortunately, Jaden hadn't quite learned to decipher them yet. He'd sussed out the way they shifted whenever the Captain's wife walked into the room - he was just going to go ahead and assume that was an affectionate thing, because thinking about any other twitching parts of the Captain's anatomy went well beyond his mandate - but most things beyond that were an enigma. In this instance he took a guess that it was something to do with sincerity, or maybe damn you water for not being alcohol scorn.

"Assuming that's not a do you want to come inside for coffee type of drink invitation," he responded, not entirely serious, but still partially, "And it's more of a lets go find a bar and consume enough alcohol so that Jaden can forget how much he embarrassed himself kind of drink, then hell yes, sir-slash-ma'am."

A tug of a smile found it's way onto his lips. "I may not get to sit in a cockpit anymore, but there's still enough pilot left in me to never turn down the prospect of alcohol."

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

The way he was eyeing her in some kind of studious analytical way made T'yeellaa suddenly feel self-conscious, which was stupid. She knew she looked a fright after her run. She resisted the urge to check the level of hair muss around her right ear with a pass of a hand.

"jI need to get changed. jYou'rre frree to come jin and wajit."

Although, T'yeellaa thought, she'd need to firewall the flustered human's eyes if he were any way as fragile as Commander Akiena.

[Jaden Luka]

Jaden's expression flinched, an awkwardly long pause hanging in the air as his mouth shaped itself to speak but didn't manage to follow through with words.

"Probably best if I don't, all things considered," he countered, a slight hint of apology in his words. His mind worked carefully now though, like an uneasy pilot testing out an unfamiliar plane at half throttle, rather than barreling in at full thrust. "I'm sure things work differently in the Carshoulis Cluster, but humans have weird hang-ups about personal boundaries and personal space, especially when it's between the genders. I'm just gonna end up standing around awkwardly trying not to notice the pictures on the walls, or the underoos drying on the convection heater -"

He shrugged, and offered a perfectly amenable smile. Most of the awkwardness from earlier had faded: having overcome the baseline obstacle of approaching his Captain's relative, Jaden was back to simply interacting with another sentient of another species, and that was a theatre he had far more experience operating in. Being drawn from the best and brightest, the Rogues were already a melting pot of cultures, but during his time aboard the Challenger over Moonus Mandel, Admiral Tyree had sent up a flair and rallied pirates representing every space force in the Alliance to make themselves at home in the Venator Destroyer's ample bays. Some humans struggled interacting with other races, because they didn't accept the fact that it was going to be a struggle right off the bat. Jaden openly accepted his oblivious status, and treated everything as a recon assignment. On a reconnaissance flight you were patient, you were cautious, you kept your eyes open, you jumped to as few conclusions as possible. Interacting with an unfamiliar race was an opportunity to learn: and step one of learning something knew was to accept that you knew jack all.

"I'll wait outside - I'm sure you won't be long. If this is you at your worst, normal and presentable can't be too far away."

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

Fortunately the Commander had enough good sense to spare the chance of theatrics. T'yeellaa merely offered a smile at Jaden's flattery, and disappeared behind her door.

Fifteen minutes passed, and the doors parted again to reveal T'yeellaa in her off-duty splendor or lack thereof. Her attire was plain and utilitarian. No makeup, no jewelry. A no-nonsense ponytail, boots, jeans, a crew neck tee, and one other item. A thin windbreaker jacket which sported Huntress Navy crimson and gold livery. Jaden couldn't read the Cizeri glyphs on the breast and the back, but he'd likely seen enough navy attire to know an issued garment. The outline of a galleon beneath the glyphs only served to reinforce that assumption.

"Sso, now that jI know that jyou'rre not herre becausse jyou'rre notjifjyjing next of kjin, letss get off on the rrjight foot wjithout sscarrjing the hell out of me."

Once again, she offered a hand as per the human custom.

"jI'm K'ohta'rrou T'yeellaa Meorrrei of Jovan Sstatjion and fellow vjictjim of caprrjicjouss navjy posstjingss. Now, about that drrjink."

She gestured to the walkway ahead, a moment before taking the path with the expection of him following.

[Jaden Luka]

That clinched it: the Captain's sister was definitely hot.

Admittedly it was in a slightly intimidating, borderline scary sort of way, but it was there none the less. Not that he planned to do anything about it of course, aside from file it away for possible use as an offhand comment at a later date to make the Captain uncomfortable. There was an unspoken bond between pilots about the sanctity of siblings, and all things side, Cirrsseeto was the closest thing to a wingman that Jaden had right now. He'd sooner dive in front of blaster fire than betray his boss by banging his sister, even if scientific curiosity was making a very compelling case to that end.

Not that T'yeellaa was some piece of meat to be bartered and contemplated over. A sizable part of her allure came from personality rather than genetics. She was strong, confident, successful, and seemed to be pretty well in control of her situation. That pesky respect word loomed in the aft scopes of Jaden's mind, trailing distractingly behind his thoughts as they tried to stray where they shouldn't. That word was on the forefront of his mind as accepted T'yeellaa's hand again, doing his best to emulate her poise and togetherness.

"K'ohta'rrou?" Jaden echoed, as he followed the Captain's lead down the corridor she had indicated. Even he grimaced at how badly he had butchered the pronunciation there; hopefully his earlier spat of awkward panic had left him with a few credits of sympathy and patience to cash in on. "I'm not familiar with that term. Is it a rank? A position?"

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

T'yeellaa faltered a pace as she attempted to find the most seamless equivalent to her title in Basic.

"Vjice Captajin? Executjive offjicerr." T'yeellaa's expression turned taut-lipped and cynical as attempting to translate her present reality only served to irritate her. It's not a demotion, the Huntress Admiralty assured her. Just like it's never a retreat, just repositioning to the rear.

"jI'm Commanderr Akjiena'ss fjirrsst offjicerr. Rreconcjiljing Alljiance and Cizerack prrotocolss jiss less tjidjy than the rrealjitjy of the ssjituatjion. That ssjituatjion now putss me on a sstatjion jinsstead of commandjing a galleon."

The reflection came off bitter, so T'yeellaa salved it over.

"Sso jI empathjize wjith jyourr cljipped wjingss to ssome rresspect."

Reaching the end of the walkway, T'yeellaa tapped the call button for the lift, leaving a few seconds for the newly-introduced disgruntled officers to commiserate.

"The ssecond thjing we have jin common jiss that we apparrentljy don't underrsstand Cirrsseeto. Mjy brrotherr doessn't make that eassjy."

[Jaden Luka]

Vice Captain, huh?

Jaden liked the sound of that. It was swankier than XO or first officer; or at least sounded that way. He supposed it was the same style of misleading corporate nomenclature that led to people becoming the Associate Junior Vice President of obscure subdivisions of multistellars, the kind of title that made people with disheartening jobs feel a little better than themselves; deceptive as it was, the situation seemed to warrant it in his case - a little token platitude would be welcome about now.

Plus, it'd freak the hell out of the Captain if he happened to casually drop it into conversation at some unexpected opportune moment, and that alone was worth it. He chewed the word over in his mind, trying to commit it to memory. K'ohta'rrou Jaden Luka, of the Alliance Frigate Novgorod. Had an awfully nice ring to it, as a matter of fact.

Jaden's heart sank slightly as T'yeellaa admitted that she wasn't the repository of Cirrseetto wisdom that he had been hoping for; the solace came from the way that T'yeellaa presented it. Not only something that they had in common, but the second thing; not the other thing, or the last thing. It was a simple, subtle difference, and one that most people might shrug off, but Jaden noticed such things, especially when they came out of the mouths of people for whom Basic wasn't their first language. Such people chose such words far more carefully. There was no finality to it, no limitation: it was the second thing, and that didn't preclude the possibility of more. Most people might have looked at the stern expression and the meticulous dress, and assumed that T'yeellaa was some uptight cat and never take the interpretation further; but Jaden could already tell that there was a lot more substance here than that.

"A galleon?" Jaden echoed, skipping over the unfortunate diminuendo she'd ended with, and swerving back to their first similarity, as she'd defined it. "One of those big, badass things I saw floating out there when we docked?"

In truth, Jaden didn't have the first clue about Cizerack starships: his knowledge of naval vessels was limited mostly to identifying which particular breed of Imperial starship was shooting at him, and working out how to most expediently blow it up before it succeeded. He could certainly appreciate the scale of the Cizerack vessels he'd witnessed, but had no idea how they measured up in comparison to their Alliance or Imperial counterparts. The way that T'yeellaa had rendered it though, the way she had explained it as her Rogue Squadron, there was pride there; a hint of prestige that she felt she'd missed out on. Regardless of comparisons, the Vice-Captain certainly seemed to think the position was respectable, and that was all that mattered. Besides, there wasn't a Captain alive who didn't appreciate an outsider commending their ship's coolness.

"Damn," he continued, with an appreciative nod. "Kinda puts our little Marauder Corvette to shame."

He pondered a little further, allowing a few more strides to pass before he spoke again. "So, you introduced yourself as K'ohta'rrou. Is that the form of address that I should call you by? Do you prefer sir, or ma'am, or is there some Cizerack equivalent instead?" He mustered a lopsided, sheepish grin. "I figure I've burned through my inadvertently disrespectful quota for the day."

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

"Korri classs sstarr galleon. The Haifa'Iro'Iro."

In a sign of her affection to her first capital command, T'yeellaa fished out a small holodisc from her pocket that she never let stray far from her grasp. They entered the lift, and she tapped the activation diode, allowing it to project a spinning miniscule representation of her old ship. Even in the telling, T'yeellaa couldn't help but smile as she looked down on her old cruiser.

"Njine hundrred forrtjy two meterrss. Twentjy-two sshjip combat vjictorrjiess, overr thrree mjilljion ljight jyearrss logged. Dependable sshjip. He'ss olderr than jI am."

She let the hologram linger a moment more and then reluctantly switched it off, returning the holodisc from her pocket. At the mention of a Marauder, she took on an expression of the cat that swallowed the canary.

"Rrepubljic Ssjienarr Corrvette, ne? jI faced a pjirrate marrauderr overr Bjilbrrjingji. Forrtunateljy, jI hearr jyourrss jiss betterr equjipped than ussual."

To put it mildly. T'yeellaa heard exactly how much treasure her mother had expended in turning Novgorod into a ship with few peers in her weight class. It was like watching one of your siblings get a new MandalMotors speeder for Solstice, while you kept your five year old Sorosuub on the road.

The lift slowed to a crawl as they approached the concourse, and T'yeellaa realized he'd sent another question her way.

"Call me T'yeellaa."

She made a casual gesture towards her non-regulation attire.

"jI'm off dutjy."

[Jaden Luka]

"In that case, I'm Jaden."

The smile that had flickered on T'yeellaa's lips had infected Jaden as well, and he made absolutely no effort to dissuade it. Out of reflex, he leaned back against the edge of the turbolift; probably not the most presentable of postures to adopt, but T'yeellaa had said off duty. Idly, he mused over how he would describe this little encounter to the Captain, if he enquired about Jaden's downtime. Met up with T'yeellaa. Had drinks. Nice lady.

His eyes caught a glimpse of the still thoughtful look that graced her features, and his mind changed course. This wasn't some power play. It might not have been the fact-finding mission that he'd originally embarked upon, but it was still something. He'd seen the look in T'yeellaa's eyes as she'd described her vessel; the proud jab she'd made at the class of craft that her brother commanded. He knew that look; knew the sentiment that lingered behind it.

Delving into his flight jacket, Jaden's fingers wrapped around a tiny image viewer, and tugged it out into view. "Mine isn't as fancy as yours," he admitted, a statement that referred both to the device itself, and it's contents. "But -"

Swiping through 2D images, cycling past wingmen, squad mates, familiar faces from the deck crew, and more besides, Jaden finally found the dirty grey-brown hull of what he was searching for, an irresistible smile growing as he turned the screen to face T'yeellaa. "She may not look like much, but this is the Astral Queen. She's Corellian, a YT-2000. Finest ship I've ever flown, without exception. She may not have had the performance of a starfighter, but she had real heart: you could trust her to hold it together until you got where you were going, and she never once let me down." His smile turned wistful. "A buddy and I, when we quit the Scout Troopers we sunk all of our credits in her. Tried to make an honest living trading back and forth across the galaxy; everything above board though, so of course we barely managed to scrape together a living, but it felt right. Felt like we were honest people, doing the best we could."

He shrugged. "Then we found the Alliance, and found out that we could do more. I wound up in the Starfighter Corps; Amos wound up in SpecForce. Not sure where he is now, but -"

Jaden trailed off, and it took genuine effort to stop the smile slipping from his face too far. Ever since Amos had taken his sabbatical from SpecForce to explore his freshly discovered Jedi heritage, he'd mostly fallen out of touch. There had been stories about the Mandalorian liberation, and while Jaden had never managed to find anything detailed enough to mention Amos by name, it felt like he would have been there. His father certainly would have been, and would have demanded his son be at his side; having met the man, Jaden knew that Amaros Koine was not the sort of guy you said no to.

He tilted the screen away already cycling through to find a different holostill. "- wherever he is, I'm sure the Queen is taking care of him."

Jaden's smile returned a little as he made it to the next still, and there was far more pride as he flipped the screen around to face T'yeellaa. "This on the second hand, is the second finest ship I've ever flown. A-Wing Interceptor... and those are Valkyrie Squadron colours she's flying there. Don't get me wrong, the Rogues are some of the best pilots in the galaxy, but they're all suffering from the delusion that the X-Wing is somehow superior to the A-Wing which is -"

His expression faltered, as he realised he was delving a little too far into the pilot equivalent of bigging up your favourite sports team. He shook his head dismissively, bringing the train of thought to an abrupt end. His eyes still lingered longingly on the A-Wing though: the sleek curves, the blue squadron colours, the inverted white triangle that distinguished his and Oolan Valx'ir's fighters from the rest of the squadron. While plain white to the naked eye, through the ultra violet sensitive vision of his Verpine wingman, the paintwork displayed a somewhat undiplomatic message to any fighter pilots who had the misfortune of glimpsing their fighters head on. A nostalgic whiff of a sigh escaped as his eyes peered over the name work, stenciled along the rim of the cockpit: OFFICER JADEN LUKA - "SPACE MONKEY". No one had called him that in far too long.

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

Jaden was a talker, but for once T'yeellaa didn't mind one bit. He showed his history freely to her - a near complete stranger. And it was as far removed from her experience as could be, yet still running on strangely familiar rails. Where her career began in rebellion to the inexorable future planned by her mother and developed under the rigors of Cizerack military order, Jaden was a leaf on the wind, plucked from a bayossa tree and sent off into capricious uncertainty. A scout trooper with the Empire. An outer rim fringer. A fighter pilot in the Rebellion. A commander in the Alliance. His tumultuous journey reminded her of Commander Akiena and of Samus. Thrown into the fire and asked to face the longest odds without a dress rehearsal. The soldiers and sailors of the Alliance all seemed to have a common denominator. There was this ragged irreverence, a somewhat cheerful disdain for order and procedure that had infuriated T'yeellaa to her wits end in the beginning. But no matter all that, almost every single man and woman serving under the star phoenix had been tested and made it through. She'd yet to find a useless one among them, which was more than could be said of her own experience in the Huntress Navy.

It was romantic, and it left a taste of envy in K'ohta'rrou Meorrrei's mouth.

Still, that introspection wasn't for sharing. She had pride, after all. Instead, T'yeellaa fixated on the last image, and the aurrebesh stencil set against Jaden's A Wing cockpit. She blinked, her ears going askew.

"Sspace Monkejy?"

The doors to the lift parted, and T'yeellaa had to remind herself to step through the threshold while she waited for that particular story.

[Jaden Luka]

A note of laughter escaped from Jaden. It wasn't entirely mirthless, but there was quite the mix of other emotions in there too: a little nervousness, a little embarrassment, a little tiredness at a story oft-recounted, but a wiff of nostalgia in there too.

"You ever met Admiral Tyree?" Jaden asked, as he followed T'yeellaa out into the corridor. "Old, grumpy guy. Eye patch. Never smiles."

Jaden turned himself slightly side on: not fully perpendicular, but enough so that he managed to walk beside T'yeellaa but angled towards her, relying on the length of his strides to make up for any potential difference in speed. "He was the Captain of the first ship I served on and, well -" There was a little more nostalgic amusement in the laugh this time. "- lets just say that on one of my first days of proper flying, I got into a little trouble for unorthodox tactics."

The pilot held out his hands, a flat hand hovering in position, aimed towards a clenched fist. "So there's this civilian transport. Dinged up pretty bad after getting too close to the trailing edge of an asteroid field. Engines shot. Life support failing. Comm array barely working. Ugly looking crack across the main viewport. I picked up the mayday by sheer fluke, and I can see on my scope... this ship is not going to make it. By the time I get a signal back to our ship, by the time the Valiant launches a rescue shuttle, it's going to be game over."

The patter of his voice had changed, the wistful nostalgia of before replaced by the fast-paced, eager tone of a seasoned sports commentator. "Actual orders us to stand down, but I'm new. I'm stupid. My service uniform is so fresh, it hasn't even needed a wash cycle yet. And I figure, the cargo compartment on an A-Wing, that's got an emergency toolkit in there, right? Sealant to patch the viewport, welder for some of the meteor holes - give me a couple of minutes, and I can at least patch up the transport enough to stop it leaking so fast. By the rescue shuttle the time it needs."

"Problem is -" Jaden's voice trailed off as a Twi'lek spacer, her cropped and revealing outfit made mostly of straps and revealing a tantalizing abundance of pale blue skin; tantalizing enough for Jaden's angled walk to strafe around, a few backwards strides as a lingering gaze and an appreciative bite of his lower lip followed her back into the turbolift they had just vacated. Effortlessly, he span back to his original orientation, and continued his gripping account. "- cargo compartment on an A-Wing is on the outside. Repair kit is for when you're landed. Our flight suits are for emergency EVA only, only got enough air for a few hours, and enough thermal power to keep you going a few minutes before you're due a dip in a bacta tank. But, well -"

The smile turned into a grin. "I get this stupid notion in my head that we're the Alliance, we're the good guys, it's my duty to save these innocent bystanders. So I do it anyway. Pop the canopy. Crawl across my fuselage to the cargo compartment. Grab the repair kit. Ascension gun across to transport. Weld. Seal. Even managed to sign my name on the side of the hull with a laser scribe by the time the rescue shuttle arrived. Wound up grounded for two weeks by medical for frostbite and exposure trauma, and another two on top of that for breach of protocol and general idiocy as Captain Tyree put it."

A brief moment of silence settled over Jaden, a flicker of somberness creeping into his expression: the kind of look that let you know he knew it had been worth it. "The call sign comes from when Tyree was chewing me out in the medical wing. Told me that a pilot's place is in his cockpit, not clambering around outside like some gorram space monkey. Guess he yelled loud enough for the medical staff to hear, the medical staff told my squadron, and the name kinda stuck."

He shrugged, a sudden change in his demeanor making it seem like he wanted to downplay the entire thing. "I've heard cooler call signs, but I dunno. Doing something stupid and dangerous because it's the right thing to do is the whole reason the Alliance exists. I'm okay with being reminded of that every time I check in over the radio."

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

A much better perjorative than T'yeellaa was expecting. Humans seemed to constantly wonder if Cizeracks tended to lap milk from a saucer or sniff each other's backsides in greeting. With a moniker like Space Monkey, T'yeellaa had been momentarily guilty of the same bias, wondering if it involved some base devolution such as defecating into one's hand and flinging it. Thankfully, she was light years off the target. Once again, the casual telling of the tale proved that uncommon valor didn't seem to exist in the Alliance. It was quite common.

"Well, jin casse that fooljissh feat djidn't net jyou a rround of frree drrjinkss, let me be the fjirrsst to offerr one."

Up ahead, a bar could be seen situated between a spice shop and a Furrier. It's neon sign wasn't nearly as flashy as the few up and down the main drag. That, combined with it's comparatively narrow frontage and dim, somewhat-smoky interior made it easy to overlook. Yet, from the crowd inside, it wasn't that much of a well-kept secret. The advertizing glyphs were in Cizeri, but the clientele seemed to be mostly aliens. T'yeellaa pushed onward with purpose, kicking back one barstool as she took to the adjacent. A plain-looking Cizerack woman with a bad haircut was busy leveling off a row of four cocktails and barely gave the newcomers a glance.

"Ta u'rra sinda'rrou?"

T'yeellaa reached for a napkin to clean off a damp section of the bar in front of her.

"Ul'daai faa'sheei."

The barkeep didn't miss a beat, flicking four garnishes across each glass rim as her eyes traveled from T'yeellaa to...another alien. She seemed to pause with smoothed-over annoyance, as if mentally switching gears, the transition to basic making her words come out with trepidation like treacle.

"Aand...jyou good ssjirr jyou would ljike?"