JEDI HoloNet

The landing pads, which resembled a four-leaf clover, were anything but lucky as they slept under the orange, Anantapar sunset. Freighters and trawlers rarely make stops there, some even bypass it to stop at more stable ports for higher-price fuel, ridiculous landing dangers, and fees. It almost balances out in the end. Any ship that undertook the venture to land at the scarcely populated spaceport did so under the watchful and curious eyes of a young boy.

This boy got his name from an ancestor of his caretaker, whose name was Caleb Regin. An impoverished mother who had worked refueling the scant amount of starships that decided to land on Anantapar was unable to care for a child left the boy in the jungle amongst the company of an old friend.

Cel was shrewd, cunning, hard-bitten, forty years of age, with a face of the soil, brown eyes, bent shoulders, and well worn by hard experience. It was Cel’s experience that allowed him and Caleb to survive in such a place devoid of peace and economy, for the only places untouched by fighting were the dense jungles and the spaceport which was left unscathed due to a shakey cease fire accord. He was the only parent and mentor Caleb ever knew, and under his guidance and calm correction Caleb grew into a child of respect and control over onself. Caleb was now a young boy of about nine years old fed with the excitement of Cel’s anecdotes about war and how he had only nearly escaped being cut down in the crossfire of the largest small-arms battle to ever take place in Mundalin, the small spaceport-town. Every week or so, Cel would venture out of their protective lands with Caleb in his shadow in order to get what little supplies were available. Which usually involved breaking in to a local crime lord’s stash.

At the age of ten, Caleb’s fascination with starships was satiated when the Navarra touched down for refueling. Little did he know that the exciting event of the sleek salvage ship was about to ignite a whole new chapter in his life. Caleb watched the Navarra touch down on the landing platform and watching the town’s occupants get a little twitchy with their trigger fingers. Cel taught him to be observant. Cel returned and explained to Caleb where the ship was going, something he rarely did. The ship was returning to Coruscant from a salvaging mission with a waypoint set for Yavin IV to top off the tanks with Tibanna.

“Cell told me something I didn’t understand, something about following my legacy and living up to my father’s potential. I guess what I am getting at is that he sent me aboard with the salvaging crew in order to be taken and tested by the Jedi Academy on Yavin IV. I’ll miss him.”

Though the first leg of the journey to Yavin IV was uneventful. Caleb face many refining trials and tribulations along his path. Gaining a good friend by the name of Nat, a girl about his age… she became a symbol of his potential to make it in this new world. Yet, the fires of war hungrily reached out to destroy the Navarra as a shortcut to the Jedi Temple was a miscalculated trip through Ascendancy space. A game of Dejarik with Nat, which one of the shipmates taught the children on board, was interuppted by a fight for survival on board a dying ship as Chiss Ascendancy interceptors chased their prey.

Caleb managed to escape, but at the terrible price of his friend’s life. Nat had sacrificed herself to launch one of the few remaining escape pods that was occupied by Caleb and the other children. Shortly after the escape vehicle accelerated to a safe distance away from the Navarra the ship from whence it came exploded in a twisted pillar of fire. Calebs world seemed to drift away like a handful of sand dropped on a windy day as the reality of his friend’s passing hit him. The late arrival of a Coalition marked the end of the battle and their rescue. Their rescue in turn left Caleb as determined as ever to become a Jedi to honor his friend’s ultimate sacrifice.