An Offer You Don't Refuse - 9.075

[Taataani Meorrrei]

Space travel was, is, and will always be for nunas.

It was necessary, but a necessary evil. Even in the best of circumstances it was a chore to endure, and these were far from the best of circumstances. The quarters were usually too small, the air too cold, too dry, too recycled, too not-quite-right. In space you had no natural day and night cycles. You didn't know what was early and what was late. When you arrived, you had to reset your biological clock to some other planet with a completely different rotational schedule. That usually involved stimulants, alcohol, and/or too much / too little sleep. These were just the major frettings. Forget trying to wrap your mind around dressing for a place with a cold climate or worrying about a breathable atmosphere. Holo-meetings could be done from the comfort of your office, barefoot, in luxurious plush carpet.

Still, Taataani had travelled enough to plan around these unpleasantries like a professional, and she had a series of rules in place:

• Charter your own travel: Mass transit, even first class or whatever they offered for preferential treatment, was for proles and rubes. Too many other people. Not that she wasn't a people person but that environment prevented mingling in a way she was comfortable with. Also you will never get a decent bit of sleep on one of those, no matter how hard you try. Also, private transit tends to be liberal on the eccentricities of the traveler, including and most especially the need to smoke while on board. This shouldn't even be an issue since they've invented air scrubbers, but if you have to suffer the hoi polloi, someone will always complain if you light up.

• Dress in layers: Being able to offset a drop in ten degrees on a new planet with a convenient shawl or a knit jacket kept the shock in transitioning down to a minimum. Also with a bit of coordination, dressing in a somewhat modular fashion could allow you to mix and match, and keep things fresh if you needed to extend your stay. Taurrifar was expert at choosing outfits, and the rule was no fewer than two a day, with another four outfits per week in case of special circumstances on a longer trip. Her favored mate always made sure to go over the arrangements with her briefly before they travelled, as he would have also taken the trouble of making appropriate alterations to outfits in advance, where needed.

• Alcohol: Almost any flight will serve it to you, sure. But they'll serve it wrong. Caridan crimets with Naboo varka and a vermouth that tastes like you could smear it on a pancake. No, crimets demands jirin, and jirin comes from Kashyyyk. No, Imperial embargoes do not change this fact. Even at a 400% markup, you order Kashyyyk or you don't order at all, because then you're ordering a drink that isn't a crimets but is in fact something you cry into as a consolation for drinking over-sweet grog with the subtlety of the fat person squeezed into the seat next to you. A crimets needs to have a dry, pithy bitter bite to pair with the right kind of subdued, barely-tasting-of-flowers vermouth, and that is from jirin, and it's not optional. There's at least thirty other drinks that are probably very important to have on a flight to avoid fraying your nerves to the breaking point, but use the crimets as the brief example. Suffice to say, you need the right alcohol, and the right person at the ready to put it all together for you.

• Privacy: Whether it's sleep, sex, or worst of all, business. You need it. You don't get it crammed in common use areas with every other plebian in the galaxy.

• A full sized refresher: Not up for debate and you should be killed if you disagree. This includes a sonic shower. Some lesser modes of travel try to mask the fact that you're going a day without a full cleanse with little towelettes. Even humanoids without a sensitive nose can tell, and they will avoid you. It's not even a big fuss about aromatic oils and salts because those can be brought along if absolutely necessary.

• Food: Even with the best-laid plans this one goes wrong. Of course, the Cizeri option for almost every in-flight meal consists of nervous laughter from your steward, and if you're persistant, a watery Bloody Amidala with non-fresh oysters chucked in the bottom as an afterthought, which neither food nor drink does it make. So if you choose to suffer, you stuff yourself before you travel, and endure a protracted starvation for however long it takes to reach your destination, or you make sure that amenities are stocked. Nothing grandiose, there's no need to butcher fresh venison, but a live well is lovely and a few small food pens don't hurt for variety. Oysters are fine, but only an idiot knows if they're not day-boat caught. If in doubt, snails keep better, and sajoi best of all.

• Don't fly alone: It's sometimes unavoidable when on business, but if you can afford to charter and have abided by the rules above, you should also have company with you. Unless you need absolute quiet to do busy work on your travels, you're not going to want to read a novel or watch some derivative dopey holo that is playing. The company of others (others that you choose to bring with you, that is) is infinitely more stimulating. Sometimes literally. Even if you have to resort to just chatting up the pilot, make sure you are capable of doing so.

With all of this said, none of it is guaranteed to keep you from being miserable, especially if you travel after getting bad news, like a summons to Coruscant because the Imperial Navy is eager to have your business bid on a contract to supply their cruisers with sublight thrusters. It's not sexy or headline-grabbing, but it both has the potential to be lucrative beyond your wildest dreams, as well as being destructive to your conscience when you supply people you morally oppose. But one thing is for sure. You don't say no. At least not in so few words.

Figuring those words out was going to take Taataani the whole damn distance from Carshoulis Prime to Coruscant, and she needed a distraction. First, a perfectly-prepared Caridan crimets. That helped. After a sip, she looked to her side, and to the pilot currently ferrying her on her way.

"What'ss jyourr name?"