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Morgan Evanar
Apr 22nd, 2003, 08:58:50 PM
I-dent-ity. You think about it in subtle ways.

Who am I?
Why am I here?
Goddamnit, where did I put that spanner? The last question, while valid, has little to do with the question of identity, unless juxstaposed with Morgan Evanar, a gearhead geek Jedi.

He was getting to the point where he could call himself a functional illiterate, in terms of being himself. His memory was still overall broken, a vase smashed to a thousands pieces, and some of those pieces had been jumped on, while others hid beneath the couch. There was a little bit of a base now. 1- I am Morgan Evanar, Jedi. 2- Rie Mystt is very much in my best intererest. -aherm- 3- I'm from Tanaab... the stuff that let you get on with life.

The other factor that played into this memory is that some of the bits were nastily pointed and had razor edges. It hurt to metaphorically pick them up and glue them with the rest of the memory vase.

Morgan's eyes went sideways and rolled upwards beneath his half-speeder. He was remembering, and had no control over it. This bit was very, very pointed. His breathing was shallow and quick; bordering on hyperventilation. Spasm, gasp, spasm, twitch, head impact bottom of speeder. It was over, so he did what was natural: groan loudly.

The Jedi initially had no idea where the bump on his head came from. Memory + speeder bottom = ow. Very simple math that he could have done without the fundamentals of himself. The smushed spanner was a solid clue too. Too bad it wasn't that sturdy, well, I can always get one out of the Tea. He headed for his ship.

Usually, Morgan would remember whatever it was (such as his ship and a good deal about it), while not remembering that he had not formerly remembered. This confused everyone but Morgan, who sometimes saw his behavior as simultaneously more eccentric and less eccentric.

Number 15 spanner. Right. He headed to the hanagar the White Rhino Tea was kept in.

Morgan was greeted by several infuriated droid beeps followed no less than 30 words in four languages, all deemed inapropriate by the average galatic citizen.

"Hi CAD, nice to see you too."
"We're not happy Morgan. WHERE THE FRELL HAVE YOU BEEN THE PAST TEN WEEKS?" he winced as the combination personality/intellect of his ships computer and a very clever but grouch astromech made its intercom several decibles beyond comfortable.

"Kidnapped and then memory frelled." Morgan managed through wet eyes.
"Oh." CAD was too proud to say sorry. "Thats bad."
"Yes it was." He opened the drawer near one of the main power regulators, and pulled out a fifteen and something stuck to it.

It looked very old. The metal was pitted and worn. Whatever the device was, it was incomplete, missing some critical element. It also seemed somehow important, despite the fact he had put it in a drawer above a power regulator.

Morgan now puzzled over his past actions briefly, putting the spanner back, and shifting his focus to the mystery object. It was very important, but it was time for lunch. He stared at it the whole half hour walk to the Bar and Grill.

Pierce Tondry
Apr 22nd, 2003, 09:29:45 PM
The day was very bright, with a beautiful and clear sky and traffic whizzing by overhead. Pierce Tondry, who was on his way to the Bar and Grill to get some much needed food, could see absolutely none of it. It was too strong for his still-healing optical nerves, and therefore he had a blindfold on.

He nonetheless walked without stumbling or bumping into anything. During his captivity by Sorsha Kasajian, he'd had nothing to do but resist torture and practice his Force skills. The end result: he could make out what was around him in a general sense. What, and on occaision, who.

"Morgan?"

The voice was halfway between a rasp and actual speech. Pierce cleared his throat and tried again.

"Morgan Evanar?"

Still wasn't much better, but it was something. Pierce had gotten Morgan's attention and was probably on the receiving end of a very odd look. "I know, I look like hell and I'm wearing a blindfold, so how did I know it was you? Answer: gotten better at sensing familiar people."

Pierce adjusted the dark strip of cloth that bound his eyes to block out the light a little better. "I hear you had a little adventure recently. Must've sucked. What's the thing you're holding?"

Morgan Evanar
Apr 23rd, 2003, 06:14:39 PM
Morgan shrugged.
"I see enough odd things everyday that a blind man knowing my name doesn't even bounce my sense of wonder at all anymore. Allo Tondry."

He nodded about the suckiness. It had indeed.
"This thing? I dunno. Its very old, and its missing something. Artifact old. I had put it in my ship for some reason or another. Its bugging me now." Tondry looked at him questioningly.

"I do things with only half a reason. Most of the time I confuse myself. But I need to eat now."

Pierce Tondry
Apr 25th, 2003, 07:13:44 PM
"I need to eat myself." Pierce's throat itched. "And I need water. I'll go in with you and give that little dealy a once-over while we eat."

In fact, it was a while before the device came up again. Both Pierce and Morgan were too busy feeding their faces, with Morgan consuming massive amounts of meat and Pierce consuming equally large amounts of fruit and salad. They also consumed quite a bit of water ("Leave the pitcher and bring two more," Pierce had said) and by the time they announced their satisfaction with the meal by belching in unison, the device had been sitting on the table between them for over twenty-five minutes.

Morgan gave the device a double-take, remembering it was there. "Oh, right. This thing. Have a look?"

"Okay." Pierce gingerly removed the blindfold from around his head. Around his eyes were deep purple circles and jagged lines. The eyes themselves seemed normal, except for the blood vessels being slightly enlarged. The eyes took in Morgan, the empty plates, and then the device cupped in his palm.

Instinctively, his eyes widened, then Pierce squeezed them shut. "Ow, dammit, don't surprise me like that."

"Surprise?"

"Yes," Pierce said. His fingers lightly massaged his eyelids. "Or don't you know what this is?"

"I have no clue."

Pierce's eyes opened a crack. He reached over and plucked the device from Morgan's palm. "This is about two-thirds of a Jedi holocron," he said, turning it over in his fingers. "And knowing where you got this could be very important."

Morgan Evanar
Apr 27th, 2003, 06:48:10 PM
"Oh." He stoped for a moment, trying to remember where he got it. Morgan took a sip from his glass, swishing the water through his teeth.

Times like this were really irritating. Morgan knew he knew, but he couldn't remember.

Bleh.

A holocron that he had found.

That ruled out...uhh. Coruscant, Correllia... the list grew to over 50 worlds.

Morgan swallowed, and took another sip. Then he started to remember. Woods, burned down something. Charred stones. Creepy. Swamp a kilometer south. Rolling hills. Very familiar. He coughed as the water went down the wrong pipe.

"I found it on Tanaab." He looked a Tondry with an odd expression. He'd never heard of Jedi on Tanaab.

Pierce Tondry
May 2nd, 2003, 09:55:42 PM
Pierce's eyes widened- "OW! I need to stop doing that," he growled.

He rubbed his closed eyelids with a hand. "Tanaab? What the frell is on Tanaab?"

"Farming, mostly."

"That was rhetorical." Pierce gave Morgan an odd look. "Are you certain?"

"I looked it up," Morgan said simply.

Pierce shrugged. It was probably true. If the planet was agricultural, very little would have happened there and Pierce would have had no reason to commit anything about it to memory. Farming planets rarely attracted attention anyway, even if Pierce did recall it being mentioned in the same sentence as Lando Calrissian once.

Which all begged the question: what was half a holocron doing there?

"Have you checked the archives to see if there was any Jedi activity in the region?"

"Uh, no. You just told me what this was, remember?"

Pierce winced. "It's pretty sad when the guy who's lost his memory is more up to speed than you are."

Morgan just grinned.

"All right, then. Let's go do a little searching through the archives."

"The Jedi archives?"

"No. My archives."


######

A door slid open, revealing a large and sophisticated piece of machinery. Morgan smiled. "Pretty," he said.

"It has to be." Pierce seated himself in front of the monitor that was linked to the processing workstation. "It's linked to three different file servers- Republic Intelligence, Jedi Archives, and old Imperial Intelligence archives I brought with me when I joined the NR. If there's even a scrap of Jedi history on Tanaab, I ought to be able to find it."

Morgan gave Pierce an odd look. "They let you do this?"

"Oh, yeah," Pierce said, tapping away at the keys. "You're sworn to secrecy on anything you learn in this room, including the existence of this thing. I mean that."

He hit the enter key with a sharp clack and turned to look up at Morgan. "How about it, chief. Willing to keep a little secret in order to get some answers?"

Morgan Evanar
May 4th, 2003, 09:16:25 PM
Morgan laughed and nodded. Fact of the matter was that he could rig something like this up in a few hours. The annoying part was that he had no idea what to search for.

Fortunately, Tondry did. Peirce typed rather slowly, though. Then again, Morgan thought, everyone else seems to type rather slowly.

Tondry knew what he was doing, though, and right now, Morgan didn't.

Tanaab's was originally not populated. They were colonists who came over shortly before the Second Sith War.

Unfortunately Tanaab wasn't big on record keeping, and aside from some riots a few years prior to the Sith War, it was basically uneventful.

The big Jedi frowned.

Pierce Tondry
May 8th, 2003, 10:52:01 AM
Morgan's assent was all Pierce needed. Jedi were notorious for making unbreakable promises, and Pierce had always considered Morgan potentially trustable anyway.

Pierce turned back to the data terminal. "Let's see if I can't get you some answers, then."

There were five search queries operating, all of them searching for a link between Tanaab and the Jedi. Some of them had already finished. "Historical query came up negative," Pierce read aloud. "Same for xeno-political and planetary law."

"Planetary law?" Morgan asked.

"Jedi rulings in disputes set precedents that planetary governments tend to adopt as rules of law later on," Pierce said. "I was looking for some evidence of Jedi influence on Tanaabian law."

"What else are you searching?"

"Culture and economy. Culture searches tend to bring up tales passed by word-of-mouth that historical queries miss. Hey, here's something."

The culture entry in question was fairly old. It had come from seven hundred years in the past, before the Emperor Palpatine had made it his mission to eradicate all reference to the Jedi. This, it seemed, was something that effort had missed.

Unfortunately, the entry was also fairly short on data. It mentioned a night where Tanaab's fourth generation settlers had seen 'sky rumbling and earth exploding' that had gone down in lore as a "Fight of the Gods" but contained little that wasn't flowery description. Pierce related the information to Morgan.

"Maybe a Jedi Master and a Sith fought?" Morgan guessed.

"That's what I'd guess." Pierce clicked back to Tanaab's planetary settlement data. "Fourth generation. Puts it right around the ancient Sith War that happened 4000 years ago. That's perfect timing for a random conflict between Force users."

Morgan nodded. "Blinking."

The economic query had finished. "Got another line." Pierce scanned the entry. "Really short. Jedi Master Finx Grant investigated claims of mistreatment among farm workers. Logged as an official request, year PE 3997. That timing correlation is too close to be coincidence."

Pierce looked up. "Tanaab's not more than a half day in hyperspace. Want a lift?"

Morgan Evanar
May 13th, 2003, 07:51:28 PM
Morgan shook his head. "My ship gets very tempermental if I don't visit it now and again. It probably started to plot my demise as of last week." He grinned about the last part.

"Seriously, if you want a ship thats smart, loyal, sarcastic, adaptable and needy, let an R6 block B merge with a YT2400 computer."

Tondry raised a curious eyebrow, but looked slightly amused.
"Meet you at J45 then?" The large Jedi nodded, familiar with the government access only jump point. It was much lower traffic at times of relative peace than most other space lanes.

Tanaab:
A pair of ships set down, west of the Riappapat marsh. Frogs croaked, crickets chirped, owls hooted occasionally. Morgan's eyes glowed whenever Tondry's light flitted into his face. Oh, and the ominous buzz of mosquitos.

Slap. Morgan squished a bloodsucker with impunity. They had been walking for the better part of an hour through muck and mosquitos, and the occasional patch of razorbush.

"Could you please slap explain why we didn't land closer to wherever it is we're going." Pierce asked as he was harrased by the marsh air assault wing.

"The ground we're on here is the firmest path into the marshland." Evanar explained simply. "And I forgot about the bugs."

Pierce Tondry
May 18th, 2003, 12:08:40 PM
Slap.

"He forgot about the bugs," Pierce muttered as he brushed away mosquito remains. He reached up and wiped some of the sweat from the black goggles he was wearing. "Wonderful. He remembers he found an ancient artifact on a farming planet where nothing ever happens, and forgets about the bugs."

Morgan's reply was to shrug again.

"How much farther is it?" Slap.

"I dunno. Can't remember."

Slap.

Another hour's worth of travel revealed more marsh, more bugs, and, in the end, a large expanse of charred bedrock. Pierce and Morgan approached it cautiously and curiously. There was a massive crack in the rock that led down.

"It feels strange here," Morgan commented.

Pierce took a step forward towards the scarred land. "You hear that?"

Morgan listened. "I don't hear anything."

"Exactly. No bugs." Pierce grinned and climbed out of the marsh, glad to be on solid land.

Then Pierce tensed and froze. Every hair on his body stood up, every nerve screamed to attack what he saw in front of him.

"What's the matter, Pierce?"

It was alien, very alien. It had a smooth-domed head, slitted eyes, and a massive snout for a nose- all of which were contorted in an unmistakable expression of shock and hate. Two large fangs protruded from its upper jaw, down to the collar of the dark black robe he wore. A smooth, curved lightsaber rested in its hand-

"Pierce?"

"You don't see him?" he asked Morgan.

Morgan Evanar
May 18th, 2003, 09:15:01 PM
"No." He said after a moment, with steadfast certianty. "Old, angry energy?" Tondry looked like someone was stalking him with a small army.

"I don't see anything." Pierce seemed to relax, but only slightly. Morgan walked twoard the energy.

The curved saber tore through the air, humming angrily at Morgan's neck.. A chill went up the Jedi's spine. Abruptly, he felt cold. After shaking it off, he walked to a charred corner of the room, and pried up one of the stones with his returning claws.

"Well, this is where I found it." The dirt beneath the stone had an imprint that roughly matched the holocron base. Morgan stared at it for a moment.

"Pierce, where did Finx Grant go after Tanaab?"

Pierce Tondry
May 21st, 2003, 11:05:17 AM
"Search me," Pierce replied. The specter had vanished in the time it took to unearth the holocron's original resting place and he didn't like that one bit. "The records were sparse to begin with. There's not even mention of Finx Grant in the Order's archives, and that's really the only place that would pay attention to a 4000-year-old Jedi Master's activities."

Turning back to his current co-conspirator, Pierce caught Morgan frowning in disappointment. "Hey, don't look so glum. If you want to learn more about Tanaab history, you came to the right place. Let's go back to civilization, eat a barve, and then ask around. Someone's bound to know something about this and there's nothing we can learn by staring at this patch of rock any longer."

Morgan brightened. "Sounds good. Let's get walking."

"You can walk if you want." Pierce keyed a sequence of numbers on his wrist comm. "But I think I'll get my ship to pick me up and skip the bug food assignment."


######

"I did a bit of searching through Tanaab records on the way back from Riappapat," said Pierce, finishing off a large sandwich.

He stopped to lick a bit of sauce off his thumb. "Mm, that was good. Long story short, there's nothing official about Finx Grant anywhere. Whatever he was supposed to be mediating seems to be a sore spot for the locals. So, I followed the money."

Morgan paused in the middle of taking a bite from his lunch. "Money?"

Pierce held up a finger and fished through one of his pockets. He came up with a small holoprojector, which he set on the table to work with. "Funds make data go away. Fortunately for us, they also make it reappear. I found info on a historian who specializes in local culture. He's been poking into the planet's history for about twenty years with limited success."

The holoprojector activated, displaying an old male human. Atop his head was a shock of white hair. His face was not so old, though the spectacles he wore and his squinting gave the impression of a tried-and-true librarian who'd spent too much time reading texts. "Professor Chipoym Adly. Says he knows about Grant. Says he can arrange to meet with us later today. Hinted at wanting something in return, but wouldn't say what."

Pierce swallowed the last of his water and then set the glass down. "What do you think?"

Morgan Evanar
May 21st, 2003, 03:38:08 PM
Truthfully, Morgan wasn't thinking much. His head pounded as bits and pieces of his memory re-arranged themselves, sometimes relevant to what was going on, sometimes not. After his grey matter settled, he took another look at the hologram.

"I think we're going to have more trouble figuring out what bits of information are relevant. Chipoym Adly was-is the Associate Dean of Tanaab History at the Tanaab Agricultural Institute."

"You know him?"

"Unfortunately. He'd ramble more about his Early Tanaab project than what was supposed to be covered in class. Only four of us passed. He was a researcher, not a teacher..." Morgan paused. “...which might actually make him useful for a change.”


#####

The only thing that looked different about Chipoym was the extra wrinkles. He still resembled a skeleton wrapped in skin with a scowl and some white hair on his head, but stood straight (“Can't breathe or think with bad posture!”). Despite many advances in eye correction, he still held steadfast to reading glasses.

Morgan had long ago figured he was too far removed from recent times to be sane. No one who had one of Adly's classes would have argued.

Tanaab Agricultural Institute: the tall Jedi felt an awful lot of mixed emotion toward this place.

“These directions are terrible. Half these streets don't exist.” Tondry referenced the instructions against a modern road map, muttering half the time.

“They probably did about a thousand years ago. It doesn't matter, I know where he lives.” Morgan said as they climbed into the rental speeder. “I never understood why Kuat made this speeder so nose-heavy.” He commented as he brought the repulsors and generators online. It was a five seat family model with an extended trunk. Evanar reached down popped open the logic array, and pulled a chip free, putting it into the glove box.

“What are you doing?” Tondry looked up from the directions, already seatbelted.

“Pulling the turn radius override.” A scream issued from the generators, the car suddenly spun from its parking spot into the road, neatly sliding between traffic, backwards. When the speeder stopped accelerating, Morgan brought the nose about as they went through an intersection and gunned the powerplant.

Pierce Tondry
May 22nd, 2003, 08:13:43 PM
Pierce swayed in his seat. "If you keep pulling turns like that, I'll have to challenge you to a race," he said, his attention still fixed on the directions.

"Speeders?"

"I'm okay with speeders. Better with speeder bikes."

"I used to race those."

"So did I, on every planet I was assigned to with open terrain and a bike. Ride, shoot, repeat."

"I used to do that, too."

Pierce looked up. Morgan's eyes were on the road, but they were unfocused as though he was recalling the past without being able to remember it. "Yeah?"

"Tanaab has a population of like, 70 million. What else was there to do other than crazy stuff?"

Pierce laughed. "You haven't lived until you've done a bike attack on Vortex. The winds there make you feel weightless. Plays crazy tricks on your aim, too. It's one of the ways I got really good with a blaster."

The two of them drove in silence for awhile. "Any idea what this Adly guy might want?"

"No clue."

"Well, we'll find out soon enough." Pierce tilted his head downward to check the directions again. "I still can't make heads or tails of this map."

"It doesn't matter," Morgan said. The speeder jerked to a stop. "We're here."

Pierce tossed the datapad aside. It was time to get down to business. "Let's go."

Morgan Evanar
May 26th, 2003, 11:54:33 AM
Morgan barely refrained from just knocking the door in. After all, Adly wouldn't notice for a week or two. Thick pine shook with four solid knocks, just in case the professor's hearing had gone in the near twenty years Evanar hadn't seen him. He stood aside, letting Tondry take center stage: he had no history with Chipoym, and had aranged the appointment.

Morgan would be surprised if Adly recognized him: he never managed to take role correctly. A not uncommon thing was to pay a friend to sit in during that class while you "studied" biology. I'll have to write Rie and explain.

The door opened. Adly was skeletal, exagerating his large nose and sunken eyes. The shirt hung off him, a towel on a rack to dry.

Pierce Tondry
May 28th, 2003, 03:28:23 PM
"Professor Adly?" Pierce asked.

Adly did not respond immediately. "Yes? You look... familiar."

"I should," Pierce said. "I commed an hour ago to make this appointment."

"No, not you!" Adly snapped peevishly, his myopic eyes peering at Morgan's face. "You! Do I know you?"

"He's a Jedi Master, so I'd hope so," Pierce broke in. Already the old man was getting annoying. "Since your line of work is studying Jedi history, speaking of which-"

Adly blinked surprisedly at the firm tone in Pierce's voice. Pierce decided to moderate his next words, since they did need Adly's help. "- our time here is limited, so if you could please get down to business, we'd very much appreciate it."

"Yes, very well," Adly said. He sounded annoyed again. It was probably his natural tone of voice.

Pierce sighed and followed the elderly scholar as he walked oddly into another room. "You're seeking information on a Jedi Master, yes?" Adly asked as they moved.

"Finx Grant," Pierce replied. "We understand he was here around the time of what is officially termed the 'Sith War' to mediate a dispute of some kind-"

"Wages!" Adly exclaimed, with the sound of someone who has remembered something no one else knew to begin with. "Yes, those Tanaabian colonists were having troubles with their overseer. He refused to pay them a living wage, and anyone who complained, disappeared."

Pierce stopped in mid-stride and caught Morgan's eye. He knew they had to be thinking the same thing- the Sith.

"Yes," Adly nodded. "Not like today! Today, the troubles come from the Lead Chancellor! Too busy, too out of touch with the needs of the people! With the needs of historians!"

Then, they stopped walking.

The two Jedi had been led to a room filled with datapads and paper scrolls, with holodisplays and ancient maps. In the center of the room was a large transparent chart with an oblong shape directly in its' center.

"Tanaab!" Adly announced. "Four thousand years ago! I put the map up when you asked earlier. Yes, and been combing my notes from the period to refresh myself. I have such an organized system for my notes, you see, I index them with these markings in binary, wonderful for helping me find addresses on Flayt Street..."

Flayt street hadn't existed for about two centuries. No wonder Adly'd given them such wretched directions; the old scholar's mind had been in the middle of a bygone era when he wrote them.

"So, the wage issue," Morgan interrupted. "How did it get resolved?"

"An odd thing, yes, odd indeed!" Adly fixated on Morgan briefly before walking over to a stack of notecards. "The people were ready to revolt, but fear kept them in line, yes. Then the Jedi Master came, there was the Night of Fire and Thunder, and the very next day the overseer began meeting demands. Yes! Quite fascinating."

He's awfully fond of that word. "So where did Master Grant go next?" Pierce spoke up quickly, determined to cut down on the rambling.

Adly's eyes opened wide, then squinted, then opened wide again. He grabbed a stack of notecards and began shuffling through them. Eventually, his eyes lit up.

"Why, Vortex, of course!" he proclaimed.

"Vortex?" Pierce and Morgan asked in unison.

"And then he went to Tula! Yes!" Adly announced proudly. "And before that, he was on Coruscant, and before that, on Ukio, and before that, on Coruscant again, and before that, on Firenze, and before that-"

"By any chance-" Pierce asked mildly, raising a hand to cut into Adly's dialogue. "Do you know where he went after Tula?"

Adly stopped again and flipped through his notecards. His eyes lit up again.

"No!"

Pierce and Morgan gave each other another look. "Do you know why he was on Tula?" Morgan asked.

Adly's eyes fogged over with the effort of recollection. "Something about a holocron... checking up on... protecting..."

Pierce leaned forward with interest. The old bat knew something about this!

"... but then, Jedi have always been excellent protectors!" Adly finished. "Not at all like the city watch, which comes over and knocks on my door about silly things like rent, and the noise my beam drill makes when I work at night! I am a scholar! I cannot be bothered with such trivialities!"

Pierce massaged his eyes tiredly. "Can you remember anything more about the holocron, Professor?" he asked without looking up.

"I specialize in Tanaab history!" Adly pronounced. "There is not, nor has there ever been, any part of a holocron on this planet and as such, I know nothing about it."

Morgan Evanar
Jun 3rd, 2003, 08:46:51 PM
"Well, thank you, Professor. That should about do it. Have a good night." Morgan started for the door, and Pierce followed.

"Wait!" they turned slowly, like someone who was putting back a cookie they had just nicked.

"You need to do something about the City Watch."

"I don't really think we can do anything about the Watch. They're only following the law." Pierce pionted out.

"Trick the Chancellor's mind!"

"I don't really think we can do that either." Morgan added. Adly looked very annoyed, and began to grumble.

"You look sturdy." He pointed at Morgan, who blinked. "Move that shelf," He pointed at a massive wooden affair that stopped just short of the ceiling, "to over there." Evanar glanced at Tondry, who shrugged.

With a grunt, Morgan lifted the shelf up off the ground, keeping it perfectly level while shuffling over to the spot Adly had pointed out.

"How about a research grant from the Senate?" Pierce offered the eccentric old man.

"Yes! That will do fine!" The Professor's eyes lit up.

Morgan grunted as he set the shelf down, and brushed the dust off of them. He then noticed Adly was only wearing one shoe.

"When you publish I hope you'll remember to wear both shoes, Professor. Good night." With a slight smile, Pierce opened the door, letting Morgan out.

"Shoes?" Adly murmured as the door closed behind the Jedi.


- - - -

Pierce drove this time, only slightly calmer than Morgan's antics, mostly because he wasn't as familiar with the speeder as Morgan was.

"Thanks for the help, Pierce."

"I wish I could go to Vortex with you, just to beat you at racing."

Morgan smiled. "You probably would. I've got at least thirty kilos on you." Pierce laughed and patted Morgan's non-existant gut.

"Thats because you eat too much." He stopped laughing for a moment. "Wait, I didn't actually ask you if you could manage to get a grant." The tall Jedi waved dismissally.

"There is enough of the Senate that owes me or Figrin favors in one form or another that it shouldn't be too much trouble."

They shook hands and parted.

"Pierce!"

Tondry stopped at the shuttle's ramp. "Yeah?"

"Tell Rie I miss her, and I'll be back soon."

"You're a big softy, Evanar!" Tondry called back.

"I can't help it. I've got a thing for red-heads." Morgan said with a final parting wave.