The Gates of Death : DJO Mansion

[Jet Almeara]

Welcome to
The Gates of Death.

This is the main residence and base of operations for the DJO.

The main house is composed of 6 levels:

The Basement:

The basement is the most secure area of The Gates. It is accessed by only one of the mansion's turbolifts and multiple security measures, including handprint and retinal scanning, voice ID coding, and several Force identification measures are needed for approval to the level. The Bunker, The Hive, The Computer Room, and The Security Room are all located in the Basement.

The 1st Floor:

The main living area for the DJO. The kitchen is fully stocked with anything you could want to eat. The Banquet Hall is adequately sized to hold large meetings and dinners. And the Game Room provides recreation for all members.

The 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Floors:

The layouts for these are all the same. Six bedrooms and 2 bathrooms on each level. Each Wing contains 3 bedrooms and a bathroom, laid out like a dormitory.

Training Room:
The center of the entire building is dominated by the Training Room. The Training room runs through the middle of the building from the Basement floor to the ceiling on the 5th Floor. It is magnetically sealed and structurally reinforced to prevent damage to the rest of the structure during some of the more rigorous simulations.

Hangar Info:
The Hangar is located behind the main house.

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[Jet Almeara]

The morning should have started out like every other morning, simple...routine and not prone to undue disruptions. Of course Jet had long ago learned that nothing ever behaved like it should.

This morning was no exception - or perhaps she ought to blame the night since that's where the disruption began. Jet rarely dreamed...or rather she was rarely disturbed by said dreams. Lets face it when you've done as much as Jet - it was hard not to have a random unconscious memory now and again.

But it was typically quite easy to shake off such events, the past was the past and regardless of the feelings it raised there was little point in dwelling in it for long. Though Jet wished for the past she was quite adept at living in the present.

This however was the first time she'd been bombarded with thoughts about the future, in her lifestyle such thoughts weren't worth having - after all lots of time for the people she knew 'future' was often measured in days or months rather then years.

It was an alien thought to suddenly be worried about not what she was building on Corellia..but what and who would be left behind when she was gone. True she had spent a great deal of time ensuring that the DJO legacy was alive - and to some extent flourishing, although not in living beings, but she'd never given much thought as to who would carry that flag when she finally dropped it.

Students had come and gone - died or failed at what she set before them, but she'd always thought she'd find another worthy to give a try...and now here she with her subconscious throwing such hope over the proverbial cliff and asking her 'now what?' She had no idea.

Descending onto the main floor and proceeding to the kitchen with furrowed brow Jet huffed out a breath as she fixed herself a drink, muttering to herself.

"Its not the end of the line yet...no need to worry about it, just a stupid dream"

When Ice joined her tootling a question about it she frowned at the little silver and purple droid.

"Its nothing Ice, just another pointless problem with being flesh and blood"

Which the droid seemed to take in stride - of course to him there were quite a few annoying and relatively pointless problems with being a mortal creature.

[Taaru Masako]

Taaru's arrival at the mansion was less grandiose, or destructive, as per usual. The general observation was that the less walls knocked down, the more earnest his mission. Chaos was an amusing side effect of boredom.

The heavy metallic drone of a repulsor engine was faintly audible from the kitchen, and heavy bootfalls signaled his progress across the mansion's hardwood floors.

He made a bee-line for Jet. He didn't have to extend his senses in the Force to probe for her. He need but follow the scent of alcohol, and the good stuff at that. Twenty-one year old Corellian whiskey was the smoothest poison a man could drown himself in, and Taaru had always admired Jet for being one of the three women he personally knew that enjoyed the stuff.

Flushed with laudatory musings, he was somewhat put off by Jet in her "lounging about" clothes.

There's something you don't see every day. Then again, even Palpatine scratched his shebs when he woke up in the morning...

Taaru nodded at Jet, and began with the terse immediacy sans introduction that he was known for.

"I need ship...."

[Jet Almeara]

Jet was aware of Taaru's approach, Of course even if he'd arrived silently, something she mused which was rarely the case - she'd have known he was coming. She'd had plenty of time to change as his footsteps echoed across the hall in what she knew was a straight beeline towards her. But considering her morning so far she'd be-damned if she was going to do anything....anything at all...before finishing her drink.

Taaru would just have to deal with her in her robe, it wasn't like he was an enemy she had to worry with - and if for some oddity he turned out to be well Jet was probably one of the only people in the Galaxy who had a lightsaber in a hidden pocket of her morning robe. Besides it was somewhat amusing to throw him off guard once in a while.

She was setting her glass down as he arrived in the kitchen and without preamble declared that he needed a ship. She arched a brow at him.

"You have a ship....you actually have a lot of ships, a whole battlegroup"

Even as she said it Jet closed her eyes and wished feverently...by the force please tell me he hasn't destroyed a quarter of the fleet by..what time was it? eight? eight in the morning? With Taaru it wasn't entirely impossible, doubtful maybe but not impossible. Opening her eyes she held a finger out to keep him from saying anything more.

"I'm going to go and get dressed before you tell me anything which might cause me to have another drink this early in the morning."

With that she vanished into a shadow and disappeared. She was gone only a few minutes before returning garbed in her more usual attire. One of the kitchen droids was making breakfast wasn't that lovely? a lovely normal thing for the morning. Sitting at the table while the droids served up another drink - this time some sort of herbal tea, she looked back at Taaru.

"Now tell me why you need a ship"

[Taaru Masako]

Stray dogs aren't to be left to their own devices.By the time it took Jet to flit away into the space between spaces, changer herself, and reemerge into what leading minds continued to obstinately call reality, Taaru had managed to dismantle two serving droids. Their various components and synthetic fluids lay about the kitchen, in no recognizable fashion, and Taaru was examining a servo as though he were some ancient anatomist, contemplating the auto-stimulatory capabilities of a heart.

He offered no explanation as to why he did this. It just seemed the right thing to do.

He glanced up as Jet reemerged, tossing the servo over his shoulder, which clacked against the kitchen's tiling.

"I do not require many ships. I need specific ship. For an expedition outside the galactic rim."


He snapped his fingers at a droid and pointed at an empty tea cup. Taaru rarely spoke to droids...indeed, he found it more amusing to see how well they could read human gestures. This could explain why two of the droids were currently dismantled...but no hypothesis is is ineffable without testable results.

"I need you to divert one of our Prowler's from reconnaissance duty."

[Jet Almeara]

Jet merely glanced at the destruction Taaru had wreaked in her absence, it wasn't really surprising one got used to such things when they invited Taaru into your inner circle. She was all set to hear him explain why he needed yet another ship, curious but assuming the usual. His explaination caughth er somewhat by surprise...it wasn't very often that anyone bothered to thnk of going beyond the Galactic Rim - and if they did it was even more unusual that they actually made it.

"Those ships are on Recon because they are still in testing, they're showing great promise - or at least none of them have blown up but I'd hardly call them dependable just yet..why a Prowler...and what are you looking for?"

She had to admit she was somewhat curious, probably a side affect of to long between action she told herself but still a slight flicker of that curiosity passed through her eyes.

[Taaru Masako]

He snorted, annoyed at the mere mention of any form of bureaucratic red tape that stood between him and his materiel.

"Prowler-class prototype vessels require no additional testing. I vorked personally vith design team on the first production run, and I do not deliver bad product..."

One of the remaining operational serving droids had learned by example from its dismembered colleagues, and set a cup of tea in front of Taaru, to include sugar and cream. Taaru shooed it away with a grunt and began mixing the ingredients to his taste, sipping thoughtfully as he composed his latest scheme in such a way that it didn't rob Jet of her faculties.

"I do not know if you haf been following minutiae in the news, but Prof. Heartshorn of the Obroa-Skai Xeno-archaeological Institute recently died."

He set the cup back on its saucer and added another half cube of sugar, stirring.

"Prof. Heartshorn was an expert on pre-Corellian artifacts. It is not common for me to take interest in academia outside of the few fields I entertain, but Heartshorn originally caught my eye with his paper on the Origin, Purpose and Glyphs of Centerpoint Station."

Taaru stretched a hand towards his overcoat, which he'd hung on a hook by the kitchen's door, and his datapad obediently flew across the room into his palm.

He called up the right file and set the datapad on the table between himself and Jet, allowing the animation to play.

It was the same animation he had formulated with Avery in the CCC. It open with a somewhat simplified hologram of Centerpoint Station, with special emphasis on the geometric lines crisscrossing its spherical surface. The image quickly warped along a set of established polar coordinates, and changed colors, revealing what appeared to be an ordered 3 dimensional planar curve with regular intervals. This was quickly superimposed over a galactic map.

The steps where Taaru had converted the galactic calendar into the calendar used by the Ancients was shown, and its input into the simulation narrowed the shape down to a single point outside of the galaxy, beyond the unknown regions, with a proposed hyperspace route Taaru had recently added.

Taaru looked up at Jet, offering nothing. He didn't have anything to offer...he didn't know what was out there either. But it was evident that he was determined to find out.

[Jet Almeara]

Jet leaned back in her chair and felt her lips quirk into a slight grin as she took note of Taaru's slightly ruffled feathers. They both knew that in the end Jet would, as always, indulge Taaru and give him the ship. But it as good to know what one was backing...just in case.

"Of course you do"

she stated to sooth his ruffled feather's about the ship and she would have continued except that he started in about that old professor with the intrest in Centerpoint.

"I had heard something to that effect yes"

She remarked with the news of the professors death, truthfully there had never been time to look into the mans work on Centerpoint, after all war was abundant and keeping Corellia safe had been more of a priority. But upon eyeing the hologram and watching his animation she was impressed it seemed to have more cloat then she had orginally given it credit for.

Of course the obscure point beyond the Galactic Rim could be anything...or nothing at all. She drummed her fingers on the table as she thought it over a small voice in the back of her mind began to whisper what if's, what if it was a threat to centerpoint? what if on the other hand it contained something about Centerpoint that would make it even more useful in Corellian Defense. a dozen more flitted through her head and in the end she decided it would be foolish not to at least investigate - even if it did turn out to be a foolish foray into the unknown.

A second thought occured to her then, when exactly had such a trip become a foolish foray? at one point it would have been second nature to jump onboard with the entire plot without a thought or a care. Her brow furrowed slightly at this revelation. It sealed her course of action

"Alright and what else would you require for this journey? Tell me everything you need and I'll give you my answer"

[Taaru Masako]

What will you require?

It was as easy as that. The same dance he had played with Jet since the moment he'd entered her august court. She phrased it like a conditional agreement, but they both new that the deal, aside from paperwork, as all but done.

Taaru humored her anyway, counting off on his fingers.

"One: Prowler-class vehicle refit with sensor package and stealth suite to my specifications. Crew to be chosen by me, with a mix of Fleet and Ground forces for operation as well as a small team specialized in xeno-archaeology from Coronet University. Weapon payload for long-range, deep reconnaissance. Provisions as necessary.

Two: One squadron of StarVipers, two ValCats.

Three: Two squadron's worth of Mk IV combat skins.

Four: Safe passage for my associate."

And he left it at that...

[Jet Almeara]

Jet leaned back in her chair fingers clasped as she considered his list, the ships she could of course agree too, the safe passage she had no clue about but in the end decided that very few were a true threat and the ones who were? well it was doubtful Taaru would compaign for thier allowence onto Corellia...it was his home too after all, better the devil you know and all that.She smiled.

"One Volcat...and the ShadowChaser, of course where The Chaser goes so do I"

[Avery Heartshorn]

There was no way to tell what was going to happen. If Taaru had his way, this mission was going to happen- but not knowing Jet or her personality at all...well, this would turn out to be interesting either way.

There was a slow rumble as her own ship landed in the hanger (after having given IFF codes to access it). She didn't want to go ahead and come in with a suitcase of her things, thinking she was going to be allowed in to stay awhile. So instead, she ended up packing a smaller suitcase full of books and papers... mostly old things of her fathers and copies of his paperwork. She wasn't dumb enough to leave Taaru with the only copy of his work. She had to take care of herself and that paperwork was probably worth more than her own father's life.

She walked around the place for awhile, making sure she knew the outside at least before she stepped up to the front porch and to the front door (or at least what she assumed was the front door). Avery was not a lady of many manners- she was the type to chug back as much whiskey as possible, burp, and then pass out on the floor by the end of the night- but she was taught a certain amount of things. One being- always come to a house that isn't yours by the front door, and always knock before entering. If anything- it was polite.

"Hello? Taaru?...."

She waited, turning around to look behind her before looking back at the door. What if Taaru wasn't there? Or what if he was there and just didn't tell Jet anything about her.

"Jet? You don't know me personally, but I'm Avery Heartshorn. I'm a friend of Taaru's and he told me to come here."

She set down her suitcase and rubbed her forehead for a moment. She was begining to get nervous.

[Taaru Masako]

He grinned.

He hadn't been sure whether Jet would take the bait...the opportunity to leave Corellia behind and go on an adventure suited the DJO; ministering to a planetary system didn't.

Now that she'd agreed to join, interesting things were assured.

A knock at the door...

"Speaking of devil..."

Taaru exited the kitchen and made way for the front atrium, pulling the rich, wooden door aside for Avery.

She was offered no salutations, simply: "The expedition is go."

He beckoned her to follow him, and as they both entered the kitchen, he gestured at Jet.

"Avery Heartshorn, meet Jet Al'Meara, Corellian Diktat and head of the Decertos Jugis Omnipotens, the only group of force-users that offers an alternate lifestyle."

And back at Avery.

"Jet Al'Meara, meet Avery Heartshorn, daughter of the later Dr. Benjamin Heartshorn. She renovates antiques. More importantly, she seems to have absorbed her father's knack for archaeology."

He pointed at both of them, drawing a line between them.

"Now mingle."

[Avery Heartshorn]

Taaru opened the door, and just as Avery opened her mouth, he told her the mission would go as planned. She closed her mouth, raising her brows as she walked inside with her case and followed Taaru's excited steps.

The introduction he gave her was definately an over-qualified statement, though she assumed Jet's was not.

"Obviously my dad was much better at this. I just learned from him... well, no, I mean..."

She paused with a sigh.

"I just fix old osik."

[Jet Almeara]

"Alternative lifestyle? is that what thier saying about us now adays...I suppose its better then some of the others"

Jet remarked as Taaru came in followed by the girl although she absorbed what Taaru as saying about her Jet did her own inspection. she wasn't a force user..and she didn't move like someone who was used to combat, none of the typical precautions were taken when she entered the room, she didn't check to see if anyone lingered in the corners, nor did she look for alternative exit routes.

Still not everyone who can be of importance is a force user or a warrior, Devlin proved that - and since Taaru clearly put faith in her then Jet was willing to at least not stuff her in a bag for hasty disposal out the back door. Besides her last comment was somewhat amusing and she grinned.

"Ah well, I believe Taaru is unfixable but your more then welcome to try...I haven't even managed to housebreak him yet"

She stated motioning to the broken droids which were still scattered about her kitchen.

"In any case your welcome to stay while we finish making preparations, theres an abundence of empty rooms upstairs, take your pick, Ice will show you around whenever your ready..or you can stay"

She motioned to the purple and silver astromech who tottled what was probably a hello at her, andthen to a seat at the table before glancing back at Taaru.

"I'll need to make arrangements for Coreillia in my absence, I'll call Amber home and Sagara..between the two of them and Devlin things should be well in hand...and The Chaser will allow me to be kept up to date, we'll bring a few relay satelights to ensure a connection for as long as possible, Plus Shadowchaser is the most technologically advanced ship in my hanger..if we're going into an unknown place she's the ship I want with me in case things go sour."

[Taaru Masako]

Taaru watched as the two women sized each other up: Avery with her wide-eyed timorousness, Jet with her mental calculations and practical considerations, possibly drawing upon her teeming encyclopedia of how to dispose of bodies in a worst case scenario.

Her retort was not lost on him, and he interjected at Avery: "I am housebroken....I break houses," and he sunk a fist into his opposite palm for emphasis," mostly those of ne'er-do-wells. Also anything labeled 'collateral'."

He allowed Jet to finish, then spoke up: "I vill send detailed itinerary later. I'll be here if you need me, though I may see Admiral Pinkala, since the Prowler prototypes are assigned to his fleet."

He extended a palm to Avery, a mute offer to carry her things.

"I show you room, yes?"