Chapter Text
The BoSS Files
Chapter 1.Inspection
I was a walking dust ball as I made my way toward my dorm and my glorious refresher. The rest of the Corps might complain about the lack of personal vid-screens, and holo-game tables, but there were plenty of those things at the recreation center. Kriff I’d vote to close down the rec center last week if it came down to that and our rooms and refreshers. Even those chosen as padawans by Masters didn't get their own room with locking doors, and the refresher, real water! I doubted there was a single real water shower in the whole temple back on Corusant, I never saw one at least.
Throwing my boots on the stank pad, I stripped and threw everything else down the laundry chute. Jedi Agricorps issue briefs, socks, an undershirt, and a disgusting greasy tan jumpsuit. I had been underneath an Industrial sized automatic grain container all morning and had just finished it up before the mid day meal. I could have finished it much faster but I had wanted to spend as much time on the field that morning as possible. According to the chatter on the open comms channel there was some kind of big surprise inspection that had essentially shut down the port. The last I had heard just as I had parked my speeder back at the garage, was that there were over two hundred ships backed up waiting for grain.
“And all on Seed-Science’s big day.” I laughed to myself as I turned on the water.
It's not that I hated the Jedi Agricorps Seed-Science Center, most of the people there were nice enough, and they gave out bars of real chocolate whenever I gave blood. Which was often. But were too serious about everything.They were always testing the reactions of plants when exposed to midichlorians, and not to toot my own fanfar, but my blood had a few more midichlorians than the average Agricorps member, more of whom were here out of a lack of force potential rather than any real faults in their character.
“Midichlorians Shmidichlorians” I remember my mom said to me after the results of the first blood test the Jedi ever did on me, back on Tatooine. “They may be blinded by that big number, but that's not what makes you special. You are special because you are my son and you are a good person, and someday the whole galaxy will know it too.”
Well the Jedi were certainly still obsessed with that big number, but it didn't feel like anybody else in the galaxy gave two credits about me anymore, except Mom of course. That was the best part about Agricorps, letters. Our datapads had mail accounts! The stated purpose was to help with future employment opportunities, but so far no one complained about all the messages I exchanged with an account registered to a Tatooine junk dealer. Probably the career path they saw me in. Kitster and I had exchanged a few letters. I had tried to write to Padme, but her address must have changed because it had bounced back immediately with a non-deliverable notice.
I should make sure to send Mom a letter this week since I had forgotten to write last week. Admin had been running everyone ragged to make sure Seed-Science was ready for their big presentation today: Future Annual Cereals. It sounded like something an old person was asked about by someone at a physicians office, “Have you scheduled your Future Annual Cereals yet? My cousin had them take a look up his back end and sure enough Future Annual Cereals were in there.” But it turns out it was a big deal, or they hoped it would be. They hadn't actually made any Annual Cereals which is why they stuck the word Future on the front.
It all came back to the jorgan fruit seeds. jorgan fruit grew on mature jorgan trees and had seedy cores, but if you took those seeds and planted them the trees would produce different jorgan fruits that usually were no good for eating. In fact breeding different strains of produce was most of what the Seed-Science Center did until recently. About three years ago, before I got here, they had bred a jorgan tree to produce fruits with seeds that grew trees that bore fruit identical to the ones from which they had come from.
A true breakthrough according to Admin and all the people at Seed-Science. I didn't see the value in it until one of the Docs explained it when a bunch of us were there giving blood. Sure there wasn't a need for a new source of jorgan trees. But if they could find a way to turn grains and cereal crops into plants that grew back at the right season without needing to be replanted, and acreage could be expanded on from the first harvest, eliminating one of the big reasons many colony worlds failed.
Even if a colony made enough food to feed itself, one bad growing season and they can't afford enough seed to keep up with their real and projected growth, two bad seasons and next thing you know people are headed elsewhere and the planet, having a failed colony on the record is opened up to more “aggressive exploitation” which at this end of the Hydian Way means the Corporate Sector Authority gobbles them up.
Anyway, that's why a bunch of Senators were here on Telos IV, to look at a slideshow presentation by Admin, to be shown some fruit trees by Admin, and finally to listen to Admin beg for more credits, millions and millions of credits. I grinned at the thought of the Terrible Trio having to hop through hoops for a change.
Turning off the water, I engaged the sonic function for half a minute till the silent sound waves had done their job. I threw on a fresh tunic and some leggings, Agricorps tan of course, grabbed my datapad, and headed to the spaceport to check out all the ships that were piled up. I took the long way out the far end of the dorms and across the quad, along the edge of the nearest field and walked through the open fence of Grainport-West.
The grainport wasn’t much to look at, just a massive duracrete pad, rectangular in shape .5 km by three km with a fifty meter wide shaded awning running down the whole three km of the eastern side and a paved road on the western side breaking up the Pad from the vast fields, on which the grain bins would arrive to be carried away to feed the galaxy.
I walked along the awning, as close to the teeming mass of spacers and ships as I could get while still staying out of the early mid-afternoon sun and thanked the Force for the inspection. Admin had been too busy to process this morning’s work reports during lunch like they normally did, therefore they had been completely unable to assign any maintenance work for the afternoon shift, giving me the time off to see this feast of faster than light vessels that the backlog had created. A real which came first? The Hutt or the Huttlet situation I guess.
With so many ships my fingers were a blur on the datapad. I checked off three HWKs I'd never seen before, including an old series 111. It wasn't a pre-Russan ship or anything truly ancient, but they had stopped making them 300 years ago. This one had a decent paint job and was far from the most unsafe looking ship all things considered. The next few checks were for some old CEC modular light freighters with Bothan markings.
I always loved the modular Correlian ships, the YT series were great ships but expensive to maintain and even worse to upgrade. Sure they had some component overlap between models but nothing like CR line and all the other ships CEC had been best known for before the saucer shaped YTs had become the craze. For about twenty-five percent of the cost of an older CF series from CEC you could add: a pro level survey mod, a double med bay, more crew space, extra escape pods and many more options . If the purchaser upgraded the reactors they could combine most together to essentially up class their ships from light to heavy freighters all the way up to the bigger CR series of corvettes which could be modded into respectable frigates.
The next ship I checked off was the first I stopped walking to get a closer look at. It was a YT and a very distinct one. I knew it from sight but I looked at the registration numbers like any good shipspotter worth his spice before I checked it off my list. A YT-1101. It had thinner spines and smoother lines than previous and later YTs, maybe if it had been a success the newest YT-2100 (checked off last month) would look like large Naboo fighters. But the YT-1100 had been recalled by CEC after only 5,000 had been sold, and almost all of those were scrapped instead of being refitted into YT-1101s. Their Captains were more than happy to take a newer 1200 that had the bonus of no gimmick escape pod/ cockpit/detachable shuttle that liked to detach unexpectedly in hyperspace.
Speaking of Captains, the operator of this YT-1101, a human man with blond hair that looked to be in his thirties, noticed my interest and waved me over.
“Pretty ain't she?”
“Yes.” I agreed. “And not very common.”
He hummed back an agreement to my agreement.
Since we were being so agreeable I decided to ask if he would agree to show me where the cockpit had been welded onto the frame, he seemed to not be very agreeable to that at first. His eyes looked me over for a moment, before settling on the datapad in my hand he said “Of course right this way sir.” With a surprising lack of sarcasm. Real shipspotters respect real shipspotters I guess. I followed him up the ramp.
As we ascended the ramp he pointed at the rear landing assembly which he described as “Freshly greased.” Making our way through the main cargo hold he waved at a wall mounted fire extinguisher “Up to date, and easy to reach. Want to see the engine? We can stop on the way.”
I just nodded, it was his ship. I had been looking at the safety charts in the hall we had just entered. The first was mostly diagrams about not dropping crates on sentients, but there was another chart next to it, also issued to every ship, that had the same block of basic hyperlane safety written out in smallish print in the hundred most common languages in the galaxy. About twenty of which used common characters. I could read seventeen of the hundred and of that seventeen I could speak twelve, which is not bad for an almost thirteen year old human I think, especially since I had spoken eight fluently before I had ever seen the inside of a classroom.
When I left Tatooine I could speak: Galactic Basic, Huttesse, Jawa, Rodian, Dug, Tatooine Slave Talk, And two spacer tongues: Galactic, and Hydian. I had learned to speak Old Naboo in my free time during my “temple stint”. It paired easily with the Jedi curriculum of High Galactic. Ry and Bothese had been challenges but I had had other younglings to practice talking with then. Lately I have been running a program on my pad in the evenings to learn both the Permian and Corellian trade talks.
As we entered the engine room he pointed to a first aid chest on the wall. “Fully stocked, another in the galley.” I just nodded, guy loves his safety equipment I guess. Finally I got to get a look at the engines, they were not the stock issued 1100 engines but a slight upgrade.
“Did she get the new engine in the refit?” I asked, pointing to a few of the adapters that had been used to disperse the increased capacity.
“Ha, no, that's the engine it left CEC with. Upgraded upon purchase, they are notorious at CEC for under-powering their stock offerings. Personally I think they just know their customer base, a Corellian walks into CEC demanding a spiced up spacecraft and flies off happily with an ‘upgraded’ engine that fits their ship, and the salesperson is happy with an extra commission.”
I laughed, It was probably also due to a bunch of other things as well, like class and engine size based marketing and purchase restrictions, but I could easily picture it, a sales rep just nodding along as a stereotypical Corellian space jockey pounds his fist on the table and rants about statistics.
Having seen the upsized but otherwise boring engines the Captain led the way back into the hall, we passed through the lounge, past nutrient storage and a couple older food synths. He pointed to the roof access hatch “It's got a collapsible pod on the roof now, good for three more years.” A few steps later we were at the scene of the seam. I crouched down and ran my hand along the smooth weld that permanently sealed the cockpit to the frame.
I snapped a picture with my datapad of the seam, maybe I could send it in to Rare Ship Quarterly. I had sent in a few action shots of that new YT-2100 I had seen and they had posted one of it taking off on their holosite. They hadn't credited me on the site, but RSQ had sent thirty credits to my account which was nice. I had about 400 republic credits in there, almost a hundred had been in there when I had received it along with my datapad upon arrival at Telos. I had gotten another thirty from RSQ, and the rest had been paid by the Seed-Science Center, ten credits anytime we gave blood.
Not wanting to take up more of the Captain's time I thanked him for his time and for letting me see his ship. I was just getting to the bottom of the ramp when he caught up with me “I have all the current filework, right here sir. Please pass me, I need to make to shipment on time”
“Pass you?” I asked.
“Why not?” He exclaimed. “Everythings up to date, I showed you all the safety systems, you saw that I haven't undone the refit, why won't you pass me?” something seemed to click in his mind as he looked past me “Is he not with you?”
I looked behind me and as soon as I saw who he was talking to I realized what was going on. Waiting at the bottom of the ramp were two men in all black uniforms with black caps and the silver logos and rank indicators of The Bureau of Ships, shaking their heads at the spacer.
“No, he's not with us. If I had to guess you just gave a very serious young shipspotter a tour of your ship. Don't worry, I know my way around.” Without a pause the older man walked up the ramp datapad in hand and began to inspect the YT-1101. The captain followed hurriedly behind him no doubt to point out all the safety features he had just shown me, leaving the more junior BoSS inspector with me at the bottom of the ramp.
We shared a few moments of awkward silence. I was about to just give a mod and continue my way along the landing pad checking ships when I noticed his speciality by the red square on the end of his rank plaques. “Why's a medic doing ship inspections?” I asked.
“You know your plaques too.” He quipped. "Everyone in the BoSS wears multiple hats when needed, besides I'm not really inspecting any ships.” He held up his left hand which held a tracking nodule. “I’m on anchor duty, if that captain lifts off with the Colonel still inside, I throw this tracker at the ship, and hope it attaches” He waved the nodule. “And point this.” Patting the blaster pistol on his right hip. “at the port authority till they give me access to the comms so I can call in the big blasters.”
I just nodded, wished him good luck with his inspections and started walking again. not to judge but this guy looked like he'd be more likely to miss the ship with the tracker or accidentally shoot himself in the foot if he took his blaster out of its holster. He was thin as a reed and young, he couldn't have been twenty. Not that I could put him down for that, even after almost two full standard years I was still young for a Jedi washout, even more so for a Agricorps member. Most who weren't picked up as padawans spend a year between different branches of the service corps, exploring career paths and attending academies before being assigned to the Agricorps or whatever branch they ended up in. The next oldest kid to me here was over fifteen, it was only by a technicality that I wasn't the youngest Agricorps member ever.
Technically I was a Jedi youngling still, officially studying at Seed- Science, though the force lessons had not continued, and I spent most of my day working on broken down agricultural equipment… But I knew the Jedi didn’t want me long before formal lessons stopped. The Jedi wouldn't have sent me away from the temple two years early, they wouldn't have laughed at me and denied me... The whispered words of Ki-Adi-Muni’s snooty Padawan, overheard as the ramp closed on the Jedi cruiser that had brought me to Telos, replayed in my head again.
“Did you see his coat?” Followed by a snort of laughter from her Master. “He really thought we were going to Ilum.”