Encrypted Comms

Natunda, 10 Melona, 12731T | 1008 RR
got to be close to 00:00 by now, right?
_{hoo, it has been a day.}

"Here?"

Fluid Systems Technician Artin Feenta -- Second Class!, she always hurried to append at the end of her name, which told me this had been a title-case Issue over the past few years -- nodded at me. Then she looked around the octagonal common room again. "No one uses this for anything," she said. "Is it lacking something?"

"No, no. This is fine. I'm surprised that a space this tidy is worth avoiding, that's all."

Tech Feenta shrugged at me. "We're a skeleton crew," she said bluntly. "We don't have the staff to spread out any more than we have. Cleaning droids tidy everywhere. Environmental maintains the filtration system. But, honestly, this is not worth restoring to full function when there are less," her voice started to trail off, then came back strong, "disturbing facilities on the forward half of the deck."

I glanced at the aft wall decor. That script probably was ancient Sith Imperial. The font was designed to give the impression that parts of its shape might continue outside the visible light spectrum of most sentient species.

"This will do me fine," I repeated. "I need to be out from underfoot for a standard hour or so, that's all. Thank you, this is a great choice."

She did not flush mightily; she is not part of a crew that stints on the complements or the courtesies. Also good signs for my near future. Feenta headed brusquely back to the exit passageway.

I mistrusted the center of the octagon. I felt like Sith-appropriate Drama might happen there. As I strolled partway into the room, I rolled my shoulders a bit to loosen my posture. It was not warm enough in this chamber that I needed to drop the cloak in order to be comfortable. On the other hand, it was not chilly enough that I would miss having the hood pulled up over my head. I did not want to make our new allies struggle to spot me in this partially-lit area.

"Ahhm. Did you want the door closed, or...?"

I returned my full attention to her eyes. "I am not going to mind if people want to check up on me," I admitted. "Honestly, I may not notice. I'm told that from the outside, I either look like I'm asleep, or I look like I'm rehearsing my notes for a licensing exam. What do you think? Will it bother your people more to not be able to glance in, or will I be a tempting distraction?"

"I, ah, hmm." Her momentary glance down the hallway told me that potential sneak-peekers, maybe peers assigned to intervene if I tried to wander around, already lingered at the nearest intersection. "Might as well leave it open," she said. "If an officer comes by, we're already in trouble."

Beaming, I gave her a quick half-bow. "I trust your judgment. If you need me early, make that Sir Tam's problem."

First, she would have to find Davish. Then, she would have to get his attention long enough to convince him to interrupt me.

As Tech Feenta moved off to her current duties, I turned in place one more time, slowly, studying the furnishings. Nothing gleamed; nothing reflected the light fixtures in the ceiling. Even the viewscreens in the north wall were matte.

Sith grumpy aesthetic, probably.

I picked a spot on the floor away from the octagonal room's center. I wanted to be easily spotted by someone who stood in the door and looked around, but not in the most dramatic pose.

For that matter, my "pose" was also as undramatic as I could manage. I left my cloak's hood draped between my shoulderblades, my hair free to fall past it. I turned my back to the doorway. I knelt, then settled back on my heels, my hands resting on my thighs.

Emotion, yet peace.

The low hum of the engines carried up from the deckplate into my legs more than it carried through the air into my ears. Just a low, faint buzz, really, as easy to overlook as orbital generators on a space station. The occasional pop of distant welding work barely served as punctuation.

The shape of the room led me to suspect that ship designer put this common room here because they could think of no more intelligent use for an empty space on their blueprint. The eight wall corners looked to be the standard hundred-thirty-five degree angles, but that only meant they used prefabricated components for most of the decks and bulkheads.

I have no idea how we are going to handle the pilot problem. If Davish succeeds in getting his colleagues to board the Night Sparrow and dock here in the Sun Spear, we are already ahead of the game. Maybe one of them will be inspired.

That is a worry for a future hour.

Now is not for worry.

Now is for clearing my head of the accumulated nonsense.

The entry to port, the one by which I arrived, connected by a short passageway to a main corridor. Each wall in my sight to starboard contained a doorway to a crew quarters chamber. The aft wall, currently to my right, had another doorway to quarters, which made me wonder what might have gotten installed in the bulkhead to my left behind those synthetic "viewports".

I set that curiosity aside. Put it away for later, if ever.

I recalled the control panel for the overhead lighting being right of the entry door, on the next wall section. It mattered to the moment no more than the aged benches bolted along the walls, the fabriwood tables bolted to deckplate and magnet clamp chairs left in tidy clumps for future diners.

It was a lot of slightly dusty, dull stuff to ignore.

It had been a long time since any life happened in this room. Mostly, life passed by in the main corridor. The absence left this chamber colorless, tepid, forgettable.

Light seeped into me with every slow breath. Soon I was cognizant more of the everyday flickers, colors, intensities, shadows, of a living community on a living planet in a living star system all around me.

Ignorance, yet knowledge.

"Encrypted comms" are not a Jedi thing.

No matter how many times over the past nine years I have taken a careful look, no matter how much I have learned through observation, I have never found a comparable system to this wispy societal network. Unlike most social connections, which live and grow or wither and die in the physical galaxy, this one particular family grew their spiritual, societal network completely inside the overlap where the Living Force becomes the Cosmic Force. Much like navbuoys planted through a hyperspace trade route, every point in the network connects to at least two other points. They each contribute some amount of sustaining existence.

Mostly they don't expend themselves at all, any more than grass wears itself down in the process of staying connected to other grass in the meadow.

The network developed to contain and to support specific members.

I am, by deeply-rooted definition, not one of them.

The network is resilient; when I established that I would touch lightly, avoid taxing or bending any node within it, it adapted to let me visit. I am not truly a part of it. I will never fully fit. But I can flit in, if I am circumspect. I can submit a request for information, which any given member might choose to provide. I can offer up my own notions for their consideration, or not, as suits their current needs.

One way or another, all connection lines in this network pass through the network's originator -- and it is him that I need to find today.

Good thing, too! In the past, I have always slipped into communion with their network by following the connective lines from a member in physical touching range of me. I think Jenkins may well be the closest member to me right now, and he is five days' travel away in hyperspace.

It would be more difficult if I were still in Hutt space. We are in different sectors, but not half the galaxy apart.

Jenkins, I tell the Force. Serious; reticent; calculatingly clever; finally relaxed enough in his life to trust in us and trust in himself. Happiest when he has at least four longtime close family members within lean-over-and-yell range. Loyal to people first, principles a distant third. Sometimes struggles to translate the concepts in his head into communicable symbols, whether writing or gestures or words or body language.

Gifted in the Force, in a way that has been carefully camouflaged with the assistance of those who love him.

I need to commune with Jenkins, I tell the Force. I need to meet him where he is, how he is, who he is, so that he has his best chance to take in the message I carry and put it to good use.

Given the late hour on a standard day's clock, Jenkins is probably doing one last project at his current duty station before he goes off-duty. Chalcedonian local days are not exactly twenty-four hours, so he might have a few hours of sunlight left.

I picture him in the center of my thoughts.

I let my physical reality fade away.

I let the Force move me as it will.

Passion, yet serenity.

If a typical meditation feels like resting on a supportive cushion that floats over calm waters, then this is a fast-spiraling bubble through whitewater rapids. I can neither say that I am pulled, nor that I am pushed. I simply go. It's exhilarating. It's exhausting. It is not a safe thing to do, not for people who still plan to live inside their bodies.

It's like flying. Giddy and bodiless. Dashing through a "hyperspace" current swirled with colors I can barely imagine.

I wonder if this is what the masters of my order experience when they commune with the Light?

Between one twirl and the next, my thrill ride settles down for its final approach to the landing station. I blink, trying to orient myself.

The ambient lighting was duller than I imagined it would be. Either clouds filtered out the desert light, or the sun was closer to the horizon. Small workstation-mounted fixtures splashed peach-tinted light off the duracrete interior walls.

In the distance, beyond the walls I barely saw, the regular noise of a Port Etmar side street carried through the anti-dust filters of the air baffles. Here in the room, I heard the same beeps and static pops as any previous visit I made to the portable communications hub. Synthleather creaked. Swivel joints clunked whenever they pinched grains of desert sand. Scattered flimsiplasts flapped slowly in the occasional breeze. Compressed air hissed in short bursts, between the telltale sound of a nut rotating into place on the threads of a crossbar.

The man I sought was no more than four strides away from me. He sat in a swivel chair that once kept passengers still in a pleasure yacht's lounge.

Paler eyes than many of his siblings, ruddier hair, narrower body language. Usually wearing a commset whether or not he also had the rest of his armor in place.

He glows. Always. He prefers that his presence be subtle, which tends to keep his glow in the Force understated.

I took a heartbeat to look at him:

• doing work that suits him
• more often content with his days than not
• secure enough in himself to test out small risks
  (witness: the mystery snack dish in its cheap takeaway basket, no longer intact, discarded to one side of his workstation while his attention absorbed into a digital report)

"I need ten minutes, if you can spare them," I said as kindly, as affectionately as I could manage.

Chaos, yet harmony.

He glanced up from the communications board almost instantly. It took him a minute to spot me. This space was not designed to include me at first. I concentrated on the sensations nearest him, trying to better fit his surroundings.

Jenkins narrowed his eyes in my direction. A frown put a light crease in Jenkin's forehead. That frown wasn't for me; that was his too many simultaneous inputs frown. I followed his head tilt to the other person in the room.

I met Gelvin the morning of my first day in Chalcedon system. Self-described Chief Staff for pirate radio station THE WAVE in Port Nevermore, he had maybe two people working for or with him -- and one was the database admin who left her "receptionist" desk to run his board while he and I interviewed one another.

I am glad Gelvin found his way into Jenkins' shadow for now. Many people from Port Nevermore have not turned up among the refugees.

At the moment, the top half of Gelvin sprawled under one of the sensor consoles. He made satisfied sounds as he fastened half-cylinders of insulation back into place around various electronic innards.

Jenkins reached for a tablet that rested just to the right of his main communication terminal. After a quick check of its contents, he tapped the back of it idly with a couple of fingers. It was a habit of his that replaced a previous habit of fast muttering under his breath, shrinking behind Rico or Ruk while he did so. Bossman Anakin took him aside one day and taught him the tapping thing instead; he explained that it gave the body someplace to put its tension when the mind raced faster than was comfortable. Tapping might be as loud, son, Ani said, but it draws in fewer nosy acquaintances. Jenkins knew that I would identify the sign of rapid thoughts, which left only the radio jockey ignorant.

Jenkins did not entirely trust Gelvin.

Hmm.

Might mean nothing. Jenkins has a lifetime full of good reasons to be wary.

I still probably ought to make a note for later.

"Gelvin?" Jenkins said.

"Yeah, Chief?"

Gelvin's voice sounded muffled to me, like sound traveling through thick layer of still water. Maybe the surrounding console components caused part of the effect. Most of it was probably the distance between us, because the quality did not improve as he extracted himself and clambered to his feet.

"Don't call me 'chief'," Jenkins said wearily. "You'll make trouble for both of us. My name is 'Jenkins Vorysadora'. You can even use 'Master Sergeant' if you need to be formal."

The once and future radio jockey sauntered over. "It's a wild new galaxy, Boss. What did you need?"

Twitching theatrically, Jenkins handed him the tablet. "'Boss' is worse. We'll workshop this later, but I'm telling you now: 'boss' and all variants of same are absolutely off the table. Take these intelligence updates to Captain Vorysadora over in the Chancellor's building. Tell Rico that I will have at least one more update in a couple of hours. This is enough for Rico to work with for a while."

Gelvin nodded.

"You got it, Skipper."

The skinny radio jock hurried out of the room. Of all the Chalcedon locals who had spent time working with Jenkins since I made it back to the planet last month, the local pirate radio reporter made the most sensible choice to me -- even if his relationship to "standard operating protocols" was ninety-nine percent adversarial in nature. I could see that helped them get the right information out to people without it getting mangled. Gelvin also probably heard things that the Roughnecks and most of the new government might miss.

Jenkins stared after the vanishing reporter. "Fremen must have a neutral word for 'person in charge', why can't we use that?" he muttered at the closing door.

Dismissing the interorganizational relationship problem to his future self, Jenkins swiveled to face me.

"I can smell the caf," I said, "but what's that in the takeaway basket?"

Jenkins looked at the half-eaten snack on his desk, then back at me. "Aqua-haggis on some noodles," he said. "I got it from a food truck."

I grinned at him. "I don't know what an aqua-mahoozie is, but I'm glad you decided to try it! Do I like it?"

"This is definitely too spicy for you, Vanya," Jenkins said. He sounded so much like his closest sibs that I had to squelch my giggles. "You'd want to lose the Ronto spice if you ever got your own basket. But you'd like the noodles. They're kinda ramen-like."

The communications room was a low tide of sound from nearby tech gear. It washed ashore at the edge of his hearing. That split-focus expression returned to his face. One that I had seen a dozen times before. The one where his mind cataloged each and every noise, even now, in seconds.

Judging by the steady line of his gaze at me, the way he leaned very slightly in my direction, the turn of his chair to more accurately face me, Jenkins dropped his awareness of ongoing ambient sounds down to trained reflex level. Most of his focus was on the space of nothing where I was. I'm sure to him, I was a ghost-hologram shaped something like 'slightly shorter adoptive sibling'. Where I knelt, where he sat, our eyes met at the same level.

He could have pretended that I perched on one of the visitors' stools, if he kept his gaze strictly above elbow height.

He squinted at me across the gulf of a few meters and thousands of light years.

"So, bored? Or are we talking one fracking plasburn of a sitrep?" Jenkins asked slowly.

The young clone pursed his lips.

"I'm getting the feeling it's the second one, right? One bad enough to make Rico want to swear in three languages? Though, I wouldn't mind being wrong."

"Let's find out," I said. "Do you already know about the heavy-grav assassin droids clad in near-human skinsuits?"

Boy oh boy, I did not know before this conversation that it was even possible to spittake one's pasta dish across the Cosmic Force.

Jenkins wiped the errant noodles from his mouth, then made a weak attempt to clean the keyboard in front of him. After two tries, he gave up and just held it up by one side to let the sauce drain into a wastebin.

"A what with the who now where?" he replied in a rush. "There was some static on the line, you want to repeat that?"

I gazed at him with as much sympathy as I could muster.

"I have this directly from Danar," I said. "His ability to communicate point-to-point with any station in Port Etmar was disrupted somehow. Don't ask me if it was jammed. For all I know, he used his orbital-range antenna to whack somebody. He was able to send a signal to his current favorite Mentat-Advisor, anyway, and I got copied in."

"Where."

Jenkins put across plenty of emphasis in that one word. He did not bother make it into a request.

"Chalcedon," I said. "Same continent as you, I think. If he got more specific, I missed it -- go requisition some truth about where General Kerplocken hied off to."

"He's not in-system any more," Jenkins said.

Well, that probably made things harder. "Okay. Get BuShips to tell you where he left from, then."

I saw his attention veer toward his keyboard.

"I hate to interrupt genius when it's just getting started, vod'ika, but before you do that?" I had to wait to be sure I still had his attention.

"This is why I don't go to all-you-care-to-eat commissaries," he complained: "they keep bringing another dish. They don't listen when you say you're done."

"Suck it up, Master Sergeant," I advised. "Danar reported that they were there, wherever 'there' was."

"I'll find out," Jenkins promised grimly.

For a few heartbeats, I concentrated on the respect and affection I feel for this man. I let my opinion of Jenkins tinge the color of the ambient Force around me, between us, passing through him and then outward into his network again. "I know you will. That is not my current point. Danar was upset because he believes they might also be in Port E. If not, he thinks they might be en route. And, see previous: he was unable to transmit sufficient warning to the city."

I watched his expression go jumpety-skip through several of the pejoratives I first learned in Mando'a, back on Dendarii. Jenkins kept his face coldly blank. His emotions lit up his glow in the Force like a multicolor strobe.

"We can turn the floor plating in some natural choke points into passive weight sensors," he said at last. "See if the mass detected matches the volume of the pedestrian. It will only work inside buildings, though. I doubt we can equip every building without giving the game away."

"There's our genius," I said, relieved. "I like it. A good start. Goss is hooked into the translator project for the Aur'rook. Assign him to add a filter to the sand density sensor network, the ones checking for Aur'rook tunnels. Really heavy footprints are just another kind of sand vibration."

Jenkins blinked. "I do outrank him, don't I?"

"Why do we keep having to remind you of this?"

Jenkins made a vague curving hand gesture. "He's, he's loud!" He sighed. "Also, big. Did I mention loud? Like grenade loud sometimes. In a mess hall filled with mashed kale."

"He pushes the nerve-wracking parts of life away through force of personality," I agreed, "and also ignited rocket fuel."

I checked my internal To Do List.

Interesting: Jenkins saw me do so. His gaze flickered down to where my hand would usually be holding a flimsicard, back up to my face.

"Other than playing relay comms officer, how is your mission going? Did you airlock D'Joy? Find all of Davish's missing people?"

"Ahhm. No, and no. But. D'Joy is learning to be a functional person through cosplay. We did find a squad that missed out on the drama." I thought for a second. "Rescued an Eborrean. Aggravated a Sith. Infuriated a bunch of fundies."

Jenkins stared at me.

"I'm waiting for the punchline," he said at last.

"We're confiscating a shipful of noncoms from the Katana Fleet," I added. "Hey, there's a good point: Can you teach me, right quick, the abstracts of piloting a capital ship?"

"Now?! No!"

Man, I wonder whether his bucket is currently recording Highlight Reel. It would miss most of his words, all of mine, but it would for sure pick up that full-body response.

"I'm not trained in piloting a ship of that class!"

I nodded in regretful acceptance. "We'll figure something out. There's got to be a new user guide that the Mentats can unlock from the firmware."

Jenkins waved that away. "Can we go back to this 'Katana Fleet' part?"

"I don't really know any more about them than you do, vod'ika. Yet. Give me another six hours." I considered my current state of being. "Give me twelve hours," I corrected myself. "I haven't eaten or napped in a while."

"I'm telling Doc!"

I laughed. "I promise that I will have done self-care by the time Doc can get hands on me."

Jenkins' frown was the poster child of 'unconvinced'. But he visibly bit back a dozen replies before he settled on something that approached 'agreeable'.

"Fine. Ok. So long as you do that, I won't tell Doc. Even though he might figure it out anyway."

Jenkins let out a long suffering sigh. That was punctuated with a hand over his eyes that ended by pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Hey. Wait. We can see each other, and hear each other, because you're a Jedi."

I had wondered if this puzzle would pop up in his mind. I smiled. "Don't short yourself here, Jenkins. Not with me. Not on this. We can have this little visit because of who you are."

He blinked at me. "We'll come back to that another time. Hear, yes, I might have something to do with that. See? That is a rarer option. I can do that with very close siblings, not just everybody. But." He glanced at the stale caf mug at his side, glared back at me. "Are you, like, using my nose? Reading my mind to pick up on what I can smell?"

I play-acted a particularly terrible bout of indignation, because I was too amused to suggest offense. "Do I look like I was scripted by tawdry holodrama trash? C'mon, vod, I am not a 'Vorvon'. I can smell your caf and your aqua-pasta because they are right there." I helpfully pointed at them. "At your elbow. Like I can hear your signal scanner whine because it's right here on your workstation. They are here. I am here. With you."

We looked at each other in silence for a minute. I waited for him to take the next step. I was not sure that he would let himself think of it.

"Can I do that?" he asked me at last.

"Let's find out," I invited.

For a few seconds, I thought he would take me up on it. I could see the tension rise from elbow height to shoulder height as he piled up the courage to try it.

"Even if I pull it off," he said abruptly, "it's going to tire me out. Isn't it."

I shrugged a little. "Might be a bit of an uphill hike, yes."

Jenkins pushed the idea away. "Not today, then. I have murder-tinnies in meat suits to detect. I'll need to get some buy-in and clearance to set up these security systems. Vondromas would be the one I'd tell, since he got drafted to be the Chancellor's own 'security trainer'. But he's not here, so, I'll go tell Derma. Maybe Trenloe first, he's easier to talk to and doesn't quiz me on orchids."

Jenkins shook his head while a thousand words crowded into his mind. Those condensed down into something more reasonable.

"Thanks for passing the word, Vanya. I need to go and make sure all this quietly crosses the attention of important people who do the important things."

He tested out his still-developing 'stern gaze' on me.

"Also, you need to like go eat and sleep. Especially after doing this. If you burn yourself out doing this kind of thing, you can't solve the stuff happening over on your end. Stay safe, ok? I like my Jedi friends to stay, y'know, intact," he added with a vague hand wave.

I grinned at the comment but didn't offer an immediate reply. It was rare enough that any of the clones called me 'Vanya', let alone 'friend'. I knew the 'Jedi' part was him just needing to stick a rank in there somewhere from all that flash training in his head. That was okay. They will always need a smidgen of emotional distance between us.

"No worries, Little Brother, I do recognize my limits today. I'm going to meditate for a while. Later, when it's safe to do so, I'll scrounge up a protein bowl and a bunk. You be safe too. Get some more noodles while you zip around being brilliant. May the Force be with you, Jenkins."

"You too, Vanya," he replied.

I felt the soft 'disconnect' of the mental connection while I returned to my proper place in space and time.

Death, yet the Force.

Which, as I expected, was the dusty gray, ill-advised Sith decor of the common room aboard the Sun Spear. Stretching, resettling my weight, I gathered my wits around me.

I carried Danar's warning as close to his preferred destination as I could get it. It was the best I could do. Jenkins was more than capable, more than he often gave himself credit for. I knew he'd do the wise thing and get the most effective people motivated.

Food would be coming, but first some proper monkish attunement: let's get spirit, mind, body, and the Force all harmonized again.

The word 'friend' stuck with me like a warm cup of caf on a cold morning. It was nice to hear. I closed my eyes and let myself drift into the Force, carrying that fragile moment with me.

I am one with the Force; and the Force is with me.