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SIGNS & PORTENTS
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A TALE OF THE TWIN WORLDS, AXUM & ANAXES
It started in a cantina. It always does. [[music]]
Not really, though. It started a little before that. Rewind the holotape a couple cycles.
— somewhere in hyperspace :: Perlemian Trade Route —
Hieronymus rewatched the transmission for what had to be the hundredth time, smoke from a deathstick curling around him as it burned absently to a stub between his fingers, his face lit by the ember. Outside the Desevran Songbird, pinpricks of starlight stretched into grid lines cutting the void. The ship hurtled through hyperspace down the Perlemian Trade Route, bound for a region of space called the Arrowhead, a cluster of the most ancient worlds in the Core, the first planets seeded during the earliest waves of galactic expansion.
Of late instead of daily meditations he often found himself smoking and reviewing the old holonet news from Bastion and Dubrillion, the same dark past he thought behind him.
Before the message, Hieronymus was already working his way back Rimward after years coasting down the Perlemian, meandering off into the Slice as far as the jungle world Bimmissari before he let the galactic wind turn him around and send him creeping back up the Axis towards the Core.
His astromech BA-1N's persistent chirping about routine maintenance eventually brought the Songbird down on Taanab for repairs; before he knew it the days bled away into weeks, sunlight hours spent culling scathe begon to make space for immigrant camps, warm nights listening to the lore of the Agricultural Circuit beside campfires, hearing the roar of wild bantha kilometers away on the plains.
Overhead the constellations stretching out, clear as any star map, unhidden by the light of the ecumenopoleis. Falling stars twinkled in and out of the dark like the galaxy talking to him through the void.
Taanab was merely the latest in several long years of adventure. It became easy for Hieronymus' past to sink into the background, for the Jedi Order to become to him what they were to most of the galaxy: folklore and hearsay. The Taanabian plainsmen frequently remarked about how often comets fell these days, referring to the influx of starships bearing refugees that fled violence on Imperial worlds wrought by the Supreme Mongul Nor'baal. Migrant fleets poured onto the worlds of the Mid and Inner Rims, the latest victims of long cycles of interstellar war.
Four years had passed since his master died on Dubrillion and Hieronymus struck ties with the Order.
He couldn't quite believe it when he stumbled back into the Songbird one evening, head cloudy with drink, and saw the urgent notification waiting for him and BA-1N admonishing him with irritated beeps and chirps. He didn't doubt his astromech but nonetheless cleared his mind and checked the encryption codes himself to be sure, but it was real.
A Jedi transmission over the secret channels. The past reaching back for him.
A few days later and after much reflection the placid farmlands of Taanab were far behind him, growing farther every second.
Hieronymus watched the message so many times he memorized the minutiae of the ghostly Ithorian and their alien body language. The way they spoke through two mouths and four throats in a low, oceanic roar, like whalesong squared. Their gender and every other aspect of their identity remained utterly inscrutable despite all that observation, except for one detail engraved deeply on him: their gentle gaze communicated a compassion so profound that Hieronymus immediately knew he would aid the Ithorian Jedi, no matter what their request.
Decoding precisely what that request was proved to be its own endeavor. Phuson, as they presented themselves, wore the translator collar that helped render Ithorese in Galactic Basic, but their speech was "deciphered" with exaggeratedly overwrought metaphor and alien imagery, almost spoken poetry.
Hieronymus found it at once cool and kind of pedantic, but a few years wandering had made him appreciative of far stranger xenocultural divides. Galactic Basic scrawled itself in holographic glyphs in front of the apparition with a few milliseconds of latency after its speech.
The Mother Jungle is defiled. Parasite vines choke the roots of the innermost gardens.
Herds are broken and divided and shackled. Spring comes but rot withers the fields.
And so forth. Okay, maybe more pedantic than cool after all, but it didn't take long for Hiero to get the gist: someone needed help.
That was usually what it boiled down to in the end.
— near Anaxes, fringes of the Axum system :: Anaxes Station —
The Azure sector was an ancient region of space, its finger on the pulse of Coruscant herself, a single jump from the galaxy's gleaming diamond at the heart of the Core. The twin worlds Axum and Anaxes were both influential astropolitically in the sector and farther still, each an important center of industry and among the first ever colonized by humanity in a bygone age.
Docking Bay 9 was itself something of a historical location. In the early days of Anaxes Station it had been used as its namesake before slowly accreting a reputation as the local watering hole to slake your thirst and maybe play a hand of sabacc. The galaxy kept spinning and the centuries grind by, and a long list of legends had passed through the humble cantina on their journeys through the stars — and taken its best days with them, by the looks of things. Hieronymus noticed a pair of shady Weequay and a Cerean moving in and out of a backroom, sometimes accompanied by others.
Phuson's message included their meeting time and location. It would be evening on Anaxes, about twenty hours into its twenty-six hour cycle. Hieronymus arrived about an hour and a half early to watch the place, not paranoid but certainly cautious after four years out of the fold. He wasn't that worried about being detected; the years away beat him into a shape that didn't look much like a Jedi at all anymore.
He pretended to concentrate on a holoscreen broadcasting a Rodian and a Twi'lek playing professional sabacc on Nar Shaddaa, wearing mirrorshades to keep from being betrayed by their expressions. The Duros bartender grumbled something in Huttese about how long he'd just been sitting there smoking his deathsticks and Hieronymus ordered something fried to munch on while he waited.
At one point an Arcona approached him, eyes the characteristic gold of a salt addict. They dangled a philter glimmering with spice and promised a trip out of the galaxy and well beyond the Rishi Maze, if you catch my drift, and while severely tempted to wave his hand and tell the poor fool to catch the nearest shuttle to a planetside rehab center, Hieronymus was careful not to use the Force. Instead he politely told the Arcona that tonight he wouldn't be partaking and resumed waiting.
Phuson had indicated they'd be showing up in around fifteen minutes or so, but Hieronymus wouldn't bet on the Ithorian's sense of urgency any more than he'd bet in his favor against the sabacc players on the holoscreen.
@Logan @Zay
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