Mika nods, "I couldn't get any sort of name out of him.  He seemed to think I should just up and tell him our entire life stories for the asking with so much as giving me a half decent glance at his face.  Sheila, he give you a name?"

Catch warbled quickly.
[Language unknown: "P Erilek n inneme i towi whelilch wicon i ou wiprdi re eveeenesstic rind rienennd, sonountio Nc elpo hiant osonei ol esielapo ourdinresblekor I oneughainint.  Esyin at onsli ughdayanyven overeaers N es thi t dernotera o and ithichsta vircomyin ceet ck lapr unrut on roadil un siriiv o laaion antherave ennot ivla outthathi ri milohi wh roil tiona seera e wermanshe carotrngio."]

Rolling forward, the droid projected a life-size image of a hooded, cloaked figure next to Mika.
[Language unknown: "A m atiatiwheournot pa werntivor n eraive'essthiman, m ma thuus waom thaoutvorlateve dinyiness icpl waecilil mithic ck halene ck adunosof pe P Ounconall."]


OOC:  I leave it to the GM to go into any specific description of the hooded stranger! :)

Cor eyes the holographic hooded man, noting whatever features she can (particularly his height).  She doesn't comment on it yet, other than to politely thank Catch for his work, addressing Kyvarr's question instead.  This, it seems, is a point she feels compelled to drive home without hesitation.

"Mon Mothma is the leader of the Chandrillan resistance and prior to her arrest was a member of the Imperial Senate, and the Galactic Republic Senate before that.  She is a brave advocate of opposition to the Emperor Palpatine and is arguably one of the most important figures in the Galaxy."  Cor's normally calm demeanour quietly shines with admiration.  There may be a little hero worship happening here but whatever the case the meaning behind her words makes it clear she's done her homework.

"Bail Organa is a member of the ruling royal family on the planet of Alderaan.  He has been a long-time friend and ally of Mon Mothma, as I understand it, and like her has been in the Senates.  His support was not as open as Mon Mothma's, very likely because it would afford him more leeway in acting without hard scrutiny, though no doubt the ambush on the Alliance leaders has changed that.

"Garm Bel Iblis was a Senator for Corellia, until he went into hiding following the murder of his family - his wife and children.  As I understand it he is a very proud and independent man who has been fighting the Empire with a well-organised resistance movement since his family's death."

Cor shakes her head slightly at some stray thought and straightens her shoulders.

"As you can see, Kyvarr, this is not merely a case of resistance groups coming together.  This is a matter of whole planets coming together.  Core worlds, no less," she adds, with the wry smile of someone who comes from well outside the Core.  "This is the start of something enormous - and while it may fall, like any such venture, the Empire has already attempted to deal a crippling blow to the new Alliance's leadership and has failed."  She particularly relishes saying this and given her normally passive demeanour this spiel is probably the most passionate any of the Talons have heard her when speaking about anything but droids.

"I have other considerations regarding the new Alliance to address," she adds, "but for the moment let us see if we can identify this hooded man.  Did he provide any method of contacting you or is he the type to mysteriously mutter, 'We will find you,' and walk off into the gloom?"

Devon lets out a long impressed whistle as Cor gives her who's-who of the budding Alliance.
"Man, oh man... Even when Marc said different groups were getting' together I never figured it would be this big - I mean, this ain't no bush-league anti-Imperial terrorism no more... this is gonna be a frakkin' war."

The ship-jacker turned to look at Cor, almost disbelieving.
"An' you were actually there - damn, I'm jealous."
A more practical thought crossed his mind.
"Hey, does you guys being there mean we're part the Alliance now?  How's this thing gonna be organized?  Or is it still too early to be thinkin' 'bout that kinda stuff?"
This message was last edited by the player at 09:06, Sun 27 Sept 2015.

"Those are aspects I intend to bring up later," Cor nods, "but first, this man."  She points at the static hologram again, awaiting an answer to her earlier question of how to contact him.

She taps several keys, looking for something, and then summons a holo of a man taken from a public Imperial Wanted bulletin.

"This is Jedi Master General Rahm Kota.  Is this the fellow you met?  I suppose his eyes may have been covered by something different, if they were ever covered at all...  Ah, and another picture, taken prior to losing his sight."  She taps some more and a second, earlier picture comes up.




This message was last edited by the player at 14:58, Sun 27 Sept 2015.

"That's him.  He gave me a signal  locator for Mantooine, southern continent, eastern region.  Five days from now at oh eight hundred local time, a beacon will activate, that tracker will shoe us where.  He wants one person, complete specs on equipment and people."  She picked up the locator to show it on the screen. "That's why there's a time limit for this."

Cor frowns very slightly.  "All information on our personnel and equipment?  You agreed to that without knowing who he was?  Either way if this is the man you saw then the Mantooine meeting is extremely unlikely to be a trap - or, at least, unlikely to be a trap set by him - so I suppose it comes to the same thing."  She nods a little, thinking hard.  "Very well, Mantooine it is.

"Back to your query, Devon," she tilts her head to the man, "regarding our status.  No, we are not part of the Alliance, nor have we been given an invitation - formal or otherwise - to join.  However I have it on firm unofficial authority that our group's past ties with the Chandrillan military put us in a good position to offer our services.

"I will oppose any suggestion that we join the Alliance until after we have recovered the Commander and Ms Jax; joining the Alliance will make us their assets to use and there is too much danger of Alliance Command deciding that two people are not worth chasing across half a galaxy for.  Once we have them or their remains in our care it will be their choice, not ours, to determine whether the Talons become a part of the Alliance - so all in all, whether to join the Alliance is not something we need concern ourselves with as a group."  She gives a small shrug; to her this seems very straightforward.  After all, the hierarchy formed within the Talons thus far is only temporary.

"Having said that, once we have our leadership back and our normal command structure reasserts itself I shall be strongly encouraging the Commander to facilitate our joining the Alliance.  A small, flexible group of specialists like ourselves could be of great use to Alliance Command, while their much greater pool of resources would help expand our capabilities."

Sheila answered Cor.  "I didn't agree to anything.  I said I would present the information, such as he gave me, and the conditions  to our leader.  He was unwilling to tell me where they were going, to try to free the captured people, and this was the way he would be willing to possibly include us..  We show up or we don't.  We could try going there and following any other ships there, or something else, but that was what he gave me."

"Hmm."  Cor ponders this, looking pleased.  "Then I am happy to stand corrected," she says with good grace, nodding to Sheila with a smile.

Mika shakes her head.  "I'm good with us going to meet this guy, but not of putting all of our sabacc cards on the table.  He knows about Sheila, Catch and me, probably Heigren too, not to mention this freighter, so maybe we go keep the appointment and the rest of you keep your distance, maybe one person as the designated leader, though maybe we can convince him that Heigren's the leader, no need to risk more of us than we have to.

If we go that route, we can go ahead and get off this mudball and head for Mantooine while one of you remain behind to pick up Fiarr whenever she's ready for pick up.  Maybe Cor, as our expert on all things involving this Alliance, could follow along at a safe distance, help keep an eye on things?

Even when we find Mark and Zyra, I'll need to know a lot more before I'm comfortable signing up, but we can argue about that later."

"Well, on the bright side there is no concern for arguing about it later," Cor points out, "as we do not have a say over whether the Talons join or not.  We can put our opinions forward of course but the Commander has the ultimate say.  If he makes a decision an individual dislikes then that individual will need to consider whether to continue working for the Talons or to find other employment.  But, again, we need not worry about that until we actually have the Commander and Ms Jax back."

She leans back in her chair.  "No doubt Devon and I will discuss the approach to Mantooine in more detail later but I agree, showing our entire hand would be foolish.  I will bring the Voidsong as I am our primary communications officer and information, in this kind of situation particularly, is vital.  A9," she adds, raising her voice slightly and tapping a button on her datapad, "please collate all available information on Mantooine and its home system and sector.  Route the information to my datapad, if you would."  There is an answering beep in Binary, a simple affirmative, over the ship comms.

Cor looks about the dining hall table at those present, in person and remotely.  "Do we know anything about our destination as it stands?"

While various people rack their brains or scour databases for information on Mantooine, Heigren receives a message.  Seeing it's a holomessage from Fiarr he switches it on for all to see.  On board the Voidsong, Cor switched one of her holoprojectors to show the message as well.


OOC:  Making the assumption Heigren will share this for expediency and that Cor will want to view it too.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:19, Wed 30 Sept 2015.

Heigren's M4 flashed up the seated figure of Fiarr.  She was dressed in some sort of utility coveralls, much like a janitor or junior maintenance worker would wear.

She smiled at the camera.  "Hi babe.  Sorry I couldn't call earlier but I only just went on break.  Work has me busy but if you wanted to call I'll be on break for another fifteen minutes or so.  Just keep it clean?  Don't want to put my co-workers off their lunch.  Love you."

The message ends.


**Posted by GM**
This message was last edited by the player at 04:04, Wed 30 Sept 2015.

"That answers that, then.  We've got a short window to make contact and let her know we need to get going, if we can do so tamely enough.  What d'you think, boss, want Heigren to reach back?"  She glances at Heigren with an impish grin, waiting to see what he thought of her volunteering his services like that.

"I think Heigren would be a bad choice to meet this guy. From what I see and Sheila ' s account, this guy is a warrior. We need a soldier to talk with him. I'd recommend Dohr. He's a former officer, a diplomat and seems to have some knowledge about the Jedi. Perhaps Dohr alone or Dohr and one other with Cor on secure comms."

Kyvarr said nothing initially when Fiarr's message was played. This was far from unusual for the Bothan. Clearly she'd found something to investigate or picked up a side job.

Heigren was amused by Fiarr's message and by Mika's grin. Was she jealous, or perhaps thinking she'd discovered some secret? Women were confusing.

"How should I respond?" There was no doubt in his mind Cor and Devon would want him to respond.

"Charm her, Heigren, but remind her to hurry up.  A couple of old... play-friends are back in town, or some such.  You will be able to extrapolate, I feel sure."  Cor's smirk is noticeable but good-natured.  "It is an unsecured channel, of course.

"Regarding the meeting, any number of options may be ideal but I agree a military-trained individual should attend.  That means Dohr, Sheila or Kyvarr. I omit Flash as I am certain he would have little patience for such a meeting.  Correct me if I am wrong, Flash," she adds.  She had ample opportunity to get to know the Duros better over the course of their romp across the Galaxy and the two relate somewhat better together than they did.

"Did the General make any specific demands that you recall, Sheila?  Limit of a certain number, no droids, humans only, leaders only, anything of that nature?  Either way unless he has particularly banned droids at the meeting I shall send R2-A9.  As he is a veteran of the Clone Wars I doubt the General would appreciate the team turning up with battle droids, no matter how... improved."

Heigren nodded.  "Is there some way we can set the holocomm up so you guys can see Fiarr but she can see only me?  Then you can listen in and even write stuff on a datapad or something to stay involved."

Mika quickly works to set up Heigren's M4 for a private feed while Cor sets up the various comm and data channels.  After a short amount of time they have a setup where everyone will be able to see Heigren's holo but Fiarr will only see Heigren.  They also have Heigren's Talon comm earpeice set on a seperate channel so people can speak to the Zeltron while the comm is active.

Heigren then make his call with a little over five minutes to spare.

Fiarr answers the call.  "Oh, hey babe.  Figured you'd be calling.  What's up?"

Heigren grinned.  "Oh sweetie, you need to get back here.  I got us tickets to Solar Battle Bots at the Forum.  Hottest gig in town."

He hoped his clumsy word play was good enough.

Fiarr stared silently for a few moments then nodded.  "Hmm, those are some big names alright."

She looked around for a moment.  "How urgent is it I come right now?  Could we make it to the gig if I finished my shift?  I got four hours left.  These jobs are hard to come by and you know how cranky these guys get if you leave early?  I mean I'll work something out if this is the only chance to go but if you think we can still get in after my shift, that would be awesome."

"We need to leave soon but I do not believe it is an absolute emergency," Cor interjects across the dining table, "let her 'finish her shift' if she cares to."

Heigren pretends to be checking a datapad while Cor talks to him.

"That should be fine.  Just no stopping off for drinks on the way home.  Get straight back here or we could miss our ride."

"Thanks babe, you're the best.  Promise I'll make it up to you later."

"Anyway I better get back to work so I'll be finished on time.  Love you."

She switches off the comm.