Picking up the broken pieces (Mack)

[Mara Tallen]

Slender fingers clasped the ID tags (http://www.polyvore.com/evi/set?id=71324806) hanging on the shiny new chain around her neck. They’d arrived in her home on Mandalore along with her letter of reinstatement from Alliance Command, spilling out of the package to land in her palm. She’d set them down and walked away in those first few minutes, wondering again if she’d done the right thing.

Staying on Mandalore would have been easier. There would have been no chance or need to face the past she’d left behind in the chaos of the Alliance’s first days. But that would have been the coward’s tactic, and if there was one thing she was not, it was a coward.

Major Mara Tallen, the tags read, along with her military ID number and the usual genetic information. She sighed quietly, dropping them against her chest and lifting her hands to slide through her auburn tresses. Amber eyes flicked over to where Mackenzie still sat, before returning to gazing out the viewport she was leaning beside. Arms crossed over her chest and she tilted her head to rest along the cool durasteel wall.

She wanted to sit back down and nap for the rest of the journey, but her memories wouldn’t let her. Mara had spent the better part of her time on Mandalore just trying to work through the mess of emotions Morgan had left her with. It had started as something purely physical, but it hadn’t remained that way for long. At least, not for her it hadn’t.

At first, she’d compared it to losing John, but that had been a vastly different relationship and a very different point in her life. Morgan was something special, someone who could understand the complexity that was her dual nature. Who had seen the worst of her and simply accepted it. At least, he had until he walked out of her life without a word or a backwards glance.

Pushing away from the wall, she cast her gaze down to the floor, absently following the durasteel seams as she paced back and forth.

[Mackenzie Tallen]

There was a saying, among certain human circles: not enough room to swing a cat. It was an odd expression, and an odd visual. Unless one was talking about some huge predatory feline, like a nexu or a vornskyr, the addition of a swinging cat didn't really add all that much to the radius of a humanoid's arm-span; and really, wouldn't that have been a much better metric? Not enough room to stretch out your arms without your knuckles grazing the walls. That was an observation with practical use. That was a saying that made sense.

Regardless, the interior cabin of the Kom'rk (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kom'rk-class_fighter/transport) fighter that he'd been given access to was big enough to swing a cat, just barely. His optics had taken the measurements, and his mind had run the calculations to help stave off the boredom of spending so long in hyperspace. It was also big enough for a cat to frustratedly pace back and forth, as his half-sister was currently demonstrating.

He should probably say something. He should definitely say something. This entire trip, and over the weeks on Mandalore beforehand, something had clearly been eating away at her, and as the elder brother it was his unspoken responsibility to do something about it. Except, he didn't know where to begin. He didn't know her, truth be told. They'd barely spoken in recent years, not since they'd found themselves on opposite sides of the Galactic Civil War, Mara becoming one of the very rebels that her Imperial Security Bureau brother had been duty-bound to apprehend. Things had changed, what with the Starkillers, the cold war, and the liberation of Mandalore. Their father had summoned them home, throwing around talk of family, honour, and unity that apparently hadn't much mattered to him for the vast majority of their lives. They'd tried: tried to live up to the illusion that they were good honest respectable Mandalorians, that they gave a crap about the traditions and the protocols; but they didn't. The fact that neither of them cared, that both of them had spent too long being something else to ever feel truly at home among Mandalorian society, seemed to be the only thing they had in common.

Instead he focused his attention on the controls and readouts. There wasn't supposed to be anything for a pilot to do while in Hyperspace - you set a course, hit the button, and let the automated systems do their thing - and yet Mackenzie couldn't help fussing over the helm every few minutes. Partly it was a distraction, a way to seem busy, to prevent the awkward silence between them from actually appearing like an awkward silence; but there was a practical purpose, too. This vessel was ancient, relatively speaking. Older than he was, at any rate. Constructed back before the Clone Wars by the Death Watch cult, and bounced around various owners and collectors for the ensuing decades before finally making it's way back to Mandalore. Mack didn't know the specifics, but at a guess it had found it's way into the hands of some try-hard wannabe Mandalorian, who took his far-removed heritage a little too seriously. No doubt the man had a full suit of antique armour that he'd acquired. No, not antique. Vintage. That was the kind of terminology that breed of frakhole used.

He let out a sigh as once again the nav console insisted that everything was nominal. He watched the distance to egress indicator slowly ticking down; estimated how many more hours and minutes he'd have to evade his sibling responsibilities before the two parted ways and he was liberated from them entirely. Mara could be someone else's problem. Let the Alliance clear up after her next time she got a little too carried away in a bar fight and landed someone twice her size in hospital, or needed collecting from the security center after sleeping off a night of binge-drinking in a cell -

Something in his mind snapped. A hand slid to the base of the seat beneath him and triggered a small latch, allowing the chair to swing freely, swiveling to face the pacing Mara. "Sit," he instructed, nodding vaguely in the direction of the copilot's chair. There was an edge in his voice, of frustration divided equally between the two of them. Damn her for putting him in this position. Damn him for being too inept to extract himself from it.

"I'm your big brother, damn it. Sit your ass down and tell me what the kriffing hells is wrong."

[Mara Tallen]

Without overthinking, or, really, without thinking at all, Mara abruptly dropped into the seat Mackenzie ordered her into. She sighed noisily and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes before sitting back and staring at him. Head tilted to the side in a very feline motion, the woman stared at her brother for several long moments.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t want to unburden herself, but the prospect of having to explain the Morgan mess out loud was...daunting at best. It had been a trial to get the words out when Beviin had asked her the same thing.

“Neverrrr fall forrr anyone, Mackenzie. It’s not worrrth the trrrouble.” She muttered, spinning in her seat to face forward. Amber eyes darkened to a burnished gold as her pupils narrowed to feline slits. “You would think I’d have learrrrned that the firrrrst time.”

Fingers brushed a stray curl from her cheek as she watched the lines of stars flow by in the viewport above the control panel. Hands folded together as she fell silent and hated herself for the way her accent worsened with the weight of the words tumbling past her lips. Mackenzie had saved her from herself more times than she could count in the last few months, she mused, but she didn’t entirely know why.

Certainly, they were siblings, but they’d never been particularly close. Never mind the years they’d each spent on opposite sides of the line drawn in the galactic sand. Their father tied them together, and their shared heritage..but even that wasn’t enough, really. She sighed again, head tilting back to rest against the back of the seat, a faint rumble of displeasure in her chest.

“What morrre do you want to know? That I was foolish enough to think I might have found someone who could accept what I am? That he was therrre one minute and just gone without a frrrelling worrrd the next? That afterrr holding people at arrrm’s length for yearrrs, the minute I let myself feel something, it all fell aparrrt? Well, therrre you have it.” Mara uttered with more bitterness and pain than she ever intended to show, but once begun, the words just hadn’t wanted to stop.

[Mackenzie Tallen]

Mackenzie's lips pursed, the screaming voice of dread wailing loudly in the back of his head. He'd presumed there was something rational afoot here, something that could be deftly resolved with the proper application of logic, sympathetic words, and assorted threats of physical harm towards the people responsible. He'd known it was personal, but not this kind of personal. She'd mentioned this Morgan guy before, but Mackenzie had just assumed he was just some frak you and frak off sort of guy who'd messed things up and provoked Mara into a reprimand or something. Damned kitten getting her feelings all entangled in things.

A long, slow breath escaped Mack's lungs. It definitely wasn't a sigh; more the kind of deep exhale you blew out when you were steeling yourself before some great feat of physical prowess. He supposed it was his own fault, in a way. He may have left the Empire behind when he'd answered his father's summons and joined the liberation of Mandalore, but that didn't mean he'd left the lifestyle and the mindset behind. Didn't mean he'd forgotten all the contacts and assets in his arsenal, either. Enough effort, and he could have unearthed all this information if he'd set his mind to it; could have had a solution prepared and ready in advance. Instead he'd respected his half-sister's privacy. Rookie mistake.

His fingertips rose and scratched at the eyebrow not covered by his optics. Anyone else, and he probably would have ribbed her: pointed out how stupid she was for letting her emotions get all wrapped up in a sexual transaction like that. The life they'd both led, opposite sides though it might have been, you didn't go falling in love. You didn't pin your hopes and your affections on someone who could go out and die the next day. You got what you could get, made the most of it while you had it, and then never looked back when it was gone. That was the way you had to be in his line of work. That was how you survived, and stayed sane.

Mackenzie said none of that, for two very important reasons. First of all, Mara was his sister, and out of his depth as he may have been, he was pretty sure that was the wrong sort of approach to take with someone whose feelings you were meant to be looking out for. More importantly though, Mara had a habit of shapeshifting into a giant deadly tiger creature whenever she got pissed off, and that was a level of sibling argument that Mackenzie wasn't even remotely prepared for.

"So, this guy," he started, before the passively analytical part of his brain corrected him. "Guys," he amended, recalling the first time that Mara had alluded to. "You loved them, but they didn't love you back. At least, not as much."

It seemed like a gross oversimplification, but there it was: all boiled down to a simple equation.

"And?"

Mackenzie shrugged, not dismissively, but in a way that attempted to crush the expansive despair his sister was feeling; to compress it down to a scale more appropriate for it's context. "People feel what they feel, Minxie. You don't get to choose who you fall for, and you don't get to choose how much. You know that. Every time you let yourself fall, it's a gamble: and sometimes you don't win. Sometimes your heart gets slapped in irons and thrown in the stockade. That's life. That's how it works."

He looked over in her direction, but only for a moment; sensing the motion of his eye beneath, his optics began to lock onto different targets, tiny aurebesh characters informing him of ranges, dimensions, readouts. Not something he needed to know; a distraction right now. He reached up and gripped the unit, his thumb depressing a recessed stud that powered the device down into standby mode; targeting scope became oversized eyepatch, half his vision obscured in darkness, but for right now it still constituted an improvement.

"Me? I never love anything, or anyone. Never have. Maybe never will. I've spent my whole life in boxes: the one the Empire put me in, and the one I put myself in. No one ever got close. Not sure I ever even had friends. But you?" A small chuckle escaped, and the faintest hint of a smile graced his lips for a moment. "You ain't like that. You don't hide your heart away, you lead with it. It's right out there for all to see. When you're happy, you smile; light up the whole damn room. When you're angry, you tear the room to shreds. When you care, you care 100%; and I figure you love the same way. You're digital. Binary. Do or don't. On or off."

He shrugged again. "Couple of assholes hurt you for it, and that sucks. That really sucks. But I've heard you talk about the Alliance. Heard the names you mentioned. The friends you mentioned. Saw your face when you said it. You're hurt, but you're not alone, no matter how hard you try and convince yourself. You deserve to be surrounded by people who care about you one way or another. Okay, so maybe it's not as much as you'd like, maybe the equation ain't exactly equal on both sides, but they do care. You know they do, deep down; I only know because part of you knows."

He paused for the briefest of moments.

"And I wouldn't be taking you back to them if I didn't believe it. Wouldn't be much of a brother if I was willing to dump you off on your lonesome."

[Mara Tallen]

Her hands folded together in her lap as her mouth opened to form a reply. A retort. Something.

Anything.

But Mara had nothing. So she closed her mouth and stayed silent. A tilt of her head saw eyes of burnished gold meet Mack's gaze and slowly filter back to their human amber. A minute or two later, and her gaze returned to the starlines outside the viewport.

She watched them silently for several long moment, perhaps even a minute or two. "Thank you." she said softly, turning the simple phrase over and over in her mind. It felt inadequate compared to everything he'd said. The insight he'd offered with words that shed light on corners of her mind she'd been avoiding looking at.

Mackenzie was not only right, but he somehow managed to get her to think without raising her hackles - which in light of things on Mandalore, happened all too easily and often as of late. Mara's normally short fuse had been nearly nonexistent the last several months, but that time...and Mack's guidance (normally in the form of caustic verbal barbs) had proven utterly invaluable. She'd actually gained a level of self-control and awareness that she'd not been able to claim before.

A trial by fire, of sorts, and she'd emerged all the better for having endured it. Amazing how that worked.

And amazing how much of that she owed to her brother.

"I have no idea how you do that. Or, for that matter, how the hell you've managed to put up with me these last few months. I owe you a lot, Mackenzie. No fething idea how in the hell I'm going to pay you back for everything you've done for me." Mara added softly, pivoting her seat enough to face him.

[Mackenzie Tallen]

"Make hot friends and introduce me to them," was Mack's quick reply, a deflective comment to allay the thick and viscous sense of intimacy and feelings that was trying to ooze it's way through the cockpit. Mackenzie's life had been well spent shielding himself from emotions and intimacy: usually it was of the romantic kind, but he was equally unequipped to hope with the kind of affection that came from family. Hell, even friendship was a struggle, when your first instinct was to firewall your emotions just in case the mission demanded something that affection would complicate. He knew how to fake it all well enough, knew the actions and motions to go through to create the illusion of fondness, but he was still fumbling around in the dark trying to learn the emotions that were supposed to cause such things naturally.

Force help him if Mara tried to lean in for a hug. There was no way he was ready to deal with that.

A few moments of silent followed, the obvious insufficiency of Mackenzie's response lingering in the air. His mouth tugged at itself a little, conflicting before he spoke. "There's no thanks necessary, Minx," he said quietly, a sort of somber seriousness to his words, mixed with the faintest hint of unworthy reluctance. "Lets just call it me making up for having been away your whole life, and call it even."

[Mara Tallen]

"But you already know Beviin, and the rest of my friends are men. Unless of course you want me to introduce you to a perky blonde Jedi." Mara grinned impishly and only just barely resisted the urge to lean over and hug him. This was a substantial development for the siblings, and she didn't want to ruin the good thing they'd just managed to create between them. She would pounce on him at some point, though...he wasn't getting out of hugs forever.

"Alright. Even it is." she said softly, before spinning back to face the viewport and watch the starts pour past. Fingers rose to adjust her ID tags and rest on the only piece of jewelry she ever wore, the glass pendant from Beviin, etched with a mythosaur skull. She may not have been able to live up to the ideal, but it still played it's part in her life and her best friend had recognized that even before she had.

[Mackenzie Tallen]

Mackenzie seemed to contemplate that notion as he reached up for his ocular again, waking it out of standby mode; or perhaps he was just fidgeting to hide his reaction to Mara mentioning Beviin. Mand'alor's sister was a woman of many adjectives, though interesting seemed the most polite and civil one. Mack had a certain appreciation for the way Beviin Goza had stood up for and sided with Mara - though how much of that was actual friendship, and how much was just a byproduct of sibling animosity he wasn't entirely sure - but, well, she was Mand'alor's sister, you know? Goza: Warrior Princess.

The thought of her tugged his brow into a frown, in fact, which was mildly perplexing, but it was what it was. He tried to push past it, focusing his attention on the hyperspace console again, his mental calculations including that yes, the readout was indeed correct about their rapidly-diminishing range to arrival. A few moments more, and he let out a sigh.

"Are we talking perky, or -"

He fixed Mara with a knowing look, his eyebrow asking the unspoken question of whether the description was about personality, or anatomy.

"- perky?"

[Mara Tallen]

She offered her brother a very knowing, very feline grin. "Both. She's almost as tall as you are with a pair of legs that I'm utterly jealous of. Jedi Healer, that one, and only half-human to boot. Probably why we got along so well before the Jedi went off to Ossus."

Mara made a mental note to send Kala a holomessage when she had the chance. She'd not spoken to her friend in far too long and spared a few concerned thoughts for the girl in light of the recent upheavals that had rocked the Alliance and Jedi alike.

Casting a quick glance to the hyperspace console, she rose from her seat and stretched in a decidedly feline manner. Fingers ran through her hair before she sat down again, deciding she really didn't need to shift into her feline form for the remainder of the trip. Wasn't often she got to spend this much time with Mack, and their duties would keep them both busy once they arrived to the station. Best to enjoy it now, she mused.

"I'm sure I could arrange for an introduction...she's sort of legendary for being places she shouldn't be. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if she showed up on the Station."

[Mackenzie Tallen]

A cautionary note sparked in the the center of Mackenzie's chest. "Easy there, Minx," he said gently, reaching out to silence the timer alarm on the nav console three seconds before it was due to start bleeping.

His mind wanted to continue with that sentiment. Don't set me up with your friends. Not if you want them to still be your friends. I don't do romance. I don't do dinners. I don't do close. There are a billion better men in the galaxy for whoever it is this happens to be. She's better off with someone else, and I'm better off alone. He kept the sentiment silent, his long-practiced command over his subconscious ticks and facial subtleties hiding it perfectly beneath a pensive frown. "I was kidding about setting me up," was what he ended up saying: nothing sad particularly about his words, yet the words managed to convey a little of it regardless.

"I've spent too long being the Empire's man," he clarified. "Need to work out how to be my own man first, before I go trying to be anyone else's."

Mack reached out for the hyperspace lever, pulling it back to zero. The ship around him hummed as the hyperdrive spooled down from power, his stomach lurching to a halt with slightly more ferocity than the rest of him as the Mandalorian transport reverted to real space. Immediately, the sensor display began to come alive with readings and proximity warnings. As per the the instructions he had requested via holocomm before their departure from Mandalore, they had appeared on the edge of Jovan Station's sensor range, still on the Imperial side of the armistice line. Peering at the display, Mack's gaze settled on a few senor ghosts at the rear limit of their aft scopes; Imperials no doubt. Their presence didn't quite make him nervous, but it certainly made him wary. While recognition of Mandalore's sovereignty was one of the many ancillary stipulations of the treaty between the Alliance and the Empire - while Mandalore was still on the Imperial side of the line, the sector's liberty was assured under some clause or other that Mackenzie didn't quite remember the number of - the same wasn't entirely true of it's residents, if they dared to venture beyond Mandalorian Space. The Empire wasn't openly hostile, but there were reports of alleged "mistaken identity" scenarios, Mandalorian pilots losing their lives under the premise that they were committing acts of smuggling and piracy. Mackenzie had no particular desire to be killed for a false accusation of either.

"Transmit that comm burst that I have queued up," he instructed, with a nod of his head towards the comm console. If Mara was sitting in the copilot chair, she might as well pay the part. "And keep your hand close to the shield controls. We've got our pants down and our butts hanging out over a tank of piranhas right now - I want us ready to whip ourselves out of here before the Empire gets the chance to chew anything off."

[Mara Tallen]

It was another one of those moments where she had a typical saucy reply lingering on the tip of her tongue, but she thought better of it and held the words back. Her caution was well founded a few moments later as he continued, and his tone belied the softness of his words with a touch of sorrow. Mackenzie was impeccably trained and perfectly capable of letting someone see only what he wanted them to.

But he was also right, and much as the thought of pairing him off with someone she knew was appealing (and also entertaining), she'd rather her brother find his own solid footing first. Then...then she'd see about making sure he was at least a little bit happy, too. Was her job as little sister after all.

Mara let go of a breath she hadn't realized she was holding as the lines resolved into stars around them. She knew what the protocol was, and where they had emerged from hyperspace, and if she were to be honest, she didn't like it at all in spite of knowing the need for it. Her hackles rose and her beast paced at the back of her mind, rousing the rest of her senses in the process. Amber eyes darkened to burnished gold and pupils lengthened into slits as she soundlessly complied with Mack's request, fingers flicking over the comm console and sending the burst. Her other hand had already slipped over to the shield controls, waiting even as her feline gaze narrowed.

"I don't like this..." she murmured, mostly to herself, but loud enough to be heard in the seat beside her. Teeth caught her lower lip between them as she fell silent once more and breathed deeply.

[Mackenzie Tallen]

"Remind me to let the Alliance know as soon as we dock," he quipped back, fighting the urge to throw a sidelong glance in Mara's direction, too busy instead focusing on the space beyond the viewport. A few control commands had wirelessly connected his ocular into the ship's sensors, overlaying tactical data across everything within range that he set his gaze on. At first there was nothing, and then an explosion of light suddenly resolved into the hammerheaded form of a Corellian Corvette. A yellow box resolved around the ship, aurebesh lettering informing him of it's name, and it's IFF transponder beaming out an Alliance symbol. He'd have to recalibrate his preferences in the ocular's software to consider Alliance signatures as friendly as opposed to will probably shoot at you if you're not careful.

That in itself was an odd feeling; one that Mara essentially embodied. For years he had worked for the Empire, for the Security Bureau, for Intelligence; for anyone who needed him, really. He had hunted people like is sister, and like the crew of the corvette; interrogated them, tortured them, even killed a few as and when the mission demanded it. That was all it was though: the mission. There was no personal investment there, no hatred for the rebel scum; but no sympathy, either. Perhaps it was growing up with a father like the one he and his sister shared; a man with little respect for rules, and little respect for feeble institutions like marriage and decency. The Empire had represented everything that Alec Tallen had not been as a father: it was reliable, it was dependable, it followed certain rules and it upheld them. Those rules, those laws, were what Mackenzie had bundled around himself like a blanket. They were dependable, resolute, always there, always reliable. If you broke the law, you broke the law: whatever moral principle you thought excused you, the law was absolute.

It had been a simple, easy to comprehend existence, that had been utterly ruined when his father had summoned him to Mandalore. The old man had known exactly how to manipulate him too: Mandalorian honour, a whole new set of rules that he was born to be beholden to. When the Mandalore called, the Mandalorians came: a rule that was supposed to supersede all other rules. It was an ancient rule, and it was a biological one: one his father knew Mackenzie wouldn't be able to disobey. Damn him for it. Damn him for bringing him to Mandalore, for turning him against the Empire, for forcing him to break one set of rules in order to uphold his obligation to more ancient ones.

Damn him for bringing Mara back into my life.

That was the worst of it. Mackenzie's service to the Empire had never been a matter of loyalty: it was all about obedience. Those giving him orders had every right to give him orders, and so he obeyed: that was how it worked. But Mara? The more he'd come to know her, the more familiar he was with the woman she was, the more he had begun to question. The more he had begun to wonder. The more he had begun to realise that rules and laws weren't black and white. The more he'd come to realise that the entire Empire was built on the corruption and manipulation of law, stretching all the way back to the Clone Wars. Nothing had ever been breached, nothing had ever been broken, but the rules that had always seemed so resolute and unwavering were now revealed as utterly mutable, flexible enough to be bent to any opinion as required.

So here he was: a man of the law now stuck on the wrong side of it, not for principle, not for morality, but simply because the rule of law had betrayed him. Worse, if law and rules could no longer be depended upon, if they were no longer infinitely reliable, then that left him in the most alarming of positions: he had to start depending on people instead; ambiguous, dubious, unreliable people, ruled by morality and emotion and all those hideous things that made people believe they could justify doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. These were the people he was part of now. This was the only life left for him to adopt.

How in all the hells did people cope?

An icon flashed up on his ocular; a representation of the query signal that the corvette had begun to transmit. "Send the comm burst," he instructed, still not letting his eyes stray to Mara. At least this procedure had some comfortable rules woven into it. "Lets let our Alliance friends know that they don't need to explode us just yet."

[Mara Tallen]

"Kindly do...this is highly unacceptable." she uttered with a completely deadpan voice, which would have been a delightful rejoinder had a smirk not chosen that moment to cross her lips. There were times when her body simply betrayed her, and her facial features just utterly refused to comply with anything related to humor.

Still, though, the peculiar feeling persisted and set her predator to pacing slowly at the back of her mind. It was likely nothing to truly be concerned about, she mused in a brief, distant moment of rationality. She'd been on Mandalore for months and out of the true 'military' mode she'd lived and breathed until then. Her senses were bound to be a little over active until she settled into a routine again. Mara breathed in deeply, her feline gaze flickering over the controls as Mackenzie gave the instruction.

The comm burst was sent with a press of the button, sending the prearranged message containing their official clearances and identities to the Alliance frigate hanging between them and the Station. It was a precise two minutes and twenty seven seconds before they received an answering burst from the frigate, containing a flight path and a docking bay to land in. Once they'd navigated closer to the Station, they'd be hailed by someone in its control room as was standard procedure. Nodding to Mack, Mara shifted forward a bit and picked up the headset, flipping a tiny switch on the side to send the audio through the speakers in the cockpit instead. Draping it around her neck purely for use of the microphone, she turned her attention back to the control panel as her brother guided the Mandalorian craft forward.

Jovan Station loomed in front of them a short while later, and she whistled faintly under her breath. There were ships of various sizes and origins coming and going in neat, orderly paths. None of them, she noted, was the Novgorod, but it was likely docked on the far side of the station she couldn't see from their approach vector. Shifting in her seat with her lower lip caught between her teeth, fingers hovered over the comm button.

"Mandalorian Kom'rk NCC-1701, this is Jovan Control. Maintain your approach to Hangar 42, there's some unexpected traffic coming in just below you."

Pressing the button, she replied swiftly, a smile edging its way into her voice. "Copy that, Jovan Control. Maintaining our course. Nice to hear someone pronounce that properly this side of space."

"Had the honor of serving beside one of your warriors aboard the Challenger and the Novgorod. I picked up a bit of Mando'a." the distinctly male voice rumbled in response, Mara's eyes widening in recognition and delight. The hanger bay entrance illuminated, guiding them forward as the force field dissipated to allow them entrance.

"Brandt? What the hell are you doing in Jovan Control? You were supposed to be part of my squad on the Novgorod when she docks." the feline replied, head tilting.

"Sorry, Major, but the wife is pregnant again and I needed a...different posting so I can keep an eye on her."

"Then congratulations are in order, Lieutenant. Is Elyse here on Jovan? I'd love to catch up with her."

"She is, ma'am, and she'll be happy to see you." A moment of static and the line cleared again. "Welcome to Jovan Station, Kom'rk NCC-1701, you're officially cleared to land. Jovan Control out."

"Thank you, Jovan Control. Kom'rk out."

[Mackenzie Tallen]

As Mara made small talk with Jovan Control, Mackenzie kept himself to himself and silently bristled, manipulating the controls to bring the Mandalorian transport onto an approach vector for the landing bay that had been designated for them. This was one of Mack's chief frustrations with the life he had now found himself in: groups like the Alliance, and the Mandalorians, they made play at proper protocols and procedures, but they didn't fully commit. You didn't chit-chat and try to make dinner plans with the LSO while on approach to a congested transit hub: not unless you wanted to soak up more than the handful of seconds that the officer was supposed to dedicate to you, and distract them from paying proper attention to the fight vectors for everyone else. That was how you ended up with air/space collisions, with compound delays when three seconds here meant another ship missing it's window and having to stay in a holding pattern for fifteen minutes waiting for another to open up. So sure, Jovan Station wasn't some bustling starport with lightyear-long queues for every entry corridor, but that didn't excuse poor practice, or the kind of overly relaxed amateurish approach that seemed to define pretty much everything the Alliance of Free Planets did. You certainly wouldn't have caught an exchange like that if the Imperials were still in control of the station, that's for sure.

It was hard enough coming to terms with not thinking of the Alliance as the enemy any more: that was already a difficult concept to grasp. That this unprofessional star-crash of a military had somehow managed to bloody the nose of the Empire enough for peace to even be a consideration; that boggled the mind.

Mack waited until the comm channel was closed before glancing across at Mara - just for a split second, mind you; not enough to deviate his attention from the task of flying in a straight line and not crashing into things.

"Since when do you catch up?" he challenged, the faintest note of disbelief in his voice. His mind strayed to a report that he'd managed to get his hands on a few years ago through a sequence of interestingly dubious exchanges and contacts, containing an incident report from the Alliance's elite Dorn Force, detailing an altercation between two of it's members that had resulted in 'claw damage' to certain sections of the base. The Mara Tallen that he'd kept covert tabs on all these years, and the bundle of anger that he'd become acquainted with on Mandalore, didn't strike him as the visitation with pregnant women type. "Or is that Mara code for planning to inflict grievous bodily harm?"