Tares Vortex

His physical senses were gone now. Blackness took him when his eyes became too heavy to keep open. The last strands of sound his had taken in had been slight rumbles echoing in the room. The sound effects seemed as if they were coming from an other room. Eventually, those too faded away. His connection to the Force was also fading. The bright silhouettes of Jaina and Tirzah had dimmed. They were too faint now to even stand out against the lifeless outlines of the room. His brain was feeling sluggish as well. Self-awareness had given away to a general sense of being. He could remember his last thought of awareness, being suspended in an unknown space being spoken to by that mysterious voice. Questions filling is head about the particulars of his situation. Now, all that was gone. His connection to the Force was now just a thread. The outside world was gone. Only a tendril of awareness remained. Jaina... Then the tendril faded as well. Nothing was left.

"Wake up Mr. Vortex. We have a busy day ahead of us." The voice spoke again. Tares felt the weight of his eye lids pressing down, blurring his view of the room. Distorted shapes walked around him. They were all small, much smaller than the droid he had encountered on the shuttle ride. "What do they say, 'Time is money?' I'm sure you can appreciate the schedule we have to keep." The voice said again. His vision began to clear; the distorted shapes grew in resolution. The voice was coming from the direction he faced. It no longer belonged to the droid, but a man dressed in a grey Imperial uniform. Tares tried to speak, but found the muscles in his face immobilized by some invisible force. "Don't worry, Mr. Vortex. You won't need to say anything for this procedure. You just remain there and try to relax. It will all be over soon." He gave up the pointless attempt and closed his eyes once more. While his body remained unmoving, he found his senses in the Force to be present. Unfortunately, he found himself in a sea of life. The presence of atleast a thousand individuals, each one the same as the others. It was a common feeling for an Imperial facility. Why the Imperials? He thought to himself. Unless the Remnant was acting against its public word, it didn't make sense for them to do this. Most likely it was a rogue faction, an organization operating on their own in the Unknown Regions without oversight. He continued to search through the Force. The feeling remained the same until he stretched out to the furthest point he could. Then, a spike of familiarity hit him square in the center of his perception: Jaina and Tirzah. Their presence shone bright in the Force. They were close by. They were coming. They were in danger....

The commotion in the cargo bay happened in an orderly sequence of events for Atlas. Jaina and Tirzah returned. Jaina noted that Tares had been captured. Then she had collapsed. All while Atlas was issuing commands to the Ferro Re's navigation computer to plot a course to follow the shuttle. "Noted. Updating Tares's status to: enacting involuntary vacation. Activating medical and babysitting subroutines now." Jaina was lying on the cargo bay floor. The ship's interior sensors suggested she was suffering from a wound. Floating into the upper deck of the bay, Atlas descended and observed the wound with her own sensors. "Tirzah," She called to the preteen nearby, "Your mother is in need of medical attention. Please locate some bacta strips in the medbay nearby. Then retrieve those and begin applying them directly to the wound area. If you don't act fact enough, your mother may choose to follow the light to a better place." Leaving the young Jedi to tend to her mother, Atlas hovered back into the main corridor and took direct control of the ship. The escaping shuttle was on a vector for Acrid, the same destination the maintence logs had listed. The droid plotted the navigation route into the computer and executed the hyperspace command. Outside, the ship gracefully slipped out of Altyr Five's orbit....

The floor beneath Tares began to shutter. The vibrations lifted his limbs off of the deck plate as lay on his back. The battle was almost lost, being tossed around like a rag doll, until the vibrations began to decrease. Finally, he found enough stability to upright himself into a seated position. He was in a cargo bay of sorts, most likely on a shuttle or freighter. Judging by the rapid movements from the previous moment, they must have entered into the atmosphere of their destination, or at least a pit stop. That meant he had slept through most of the journey. Their departure, the length of their time in hyperspace, he hadn't been awake for any of it. As a result, he had no idea where they were traveling. The cargo bay was largely empty. He was sitting in the center of a bare floor. No crates or objects accompanied him except for the same droid he had seen before he had blacked out. The memory of the droid's touch wasn't exactly something Tares wanted to relive. So far, however the droid seemed to be deactivated or in a standby mode. Tares could sense a slight feeling of weightlessness. The craft was descending towards a landing. If he was going to act, he would have to time everything perfectly. Since he didn't know his current whereabouts, he would have to assume signs of civilization wouldn't be available for him to escape too. His best option would be to steal a vessel, perhaps even the very one he now stood on, and make an escape. Unfortunately, the droid seemed to read his mind as he thought about the specifics of his strategy. Before he could even reach for his (missing) lightsaber, the droid rocked to life and drained its photoreceptors on him once again. The droid moved away from its alcove while the injection spike Tares had felt extended from its grip. "Ah, Mr. Vortex, you are awake. We have almost arrived, but I'm afraid we're not quite ready for you. Please feel free to get a few more hours of rest. You will need them." Tares's reflexes failed him. The only action he had time for as he felt the familiar sting of the droid's needle digging into his next was to think a single thought: Damn it! Then the black returned....

Tares could hear the accompaniment of the sounds of a battle when Jaina finally replied. True to her form, her response seemed to under exaggerate the seriousness of their situation, “We are having a board meeting of sorts in the central complex…” The comm briefly cut out once more. Tares entered into another hallway and entered into a brisk stride to cover its long length. “...If you want to join us.” The comm sparked again. He could feel Jaina’s presence reaching out to him in the Force as she spoke. There was an undertone of mixed concentration and pain, as if she had been shot. Tares knew she would never admit that the situation was dire. It was difficult to say even from the specifics Jaina’s aural touch conveyed. Tares quickened his pace down the hallway. The mental map of the platform’s layout ran through his head as he moved. He could recall the series of turns that had brought him to the server room, but he struggled to recount where his path would diverge to lead to the central complex. Tares began to reply, “I'd be happy to join. Just don't end the party without…” All of the sudden, Tares felt his forward momentum come to a halt. His face and chest became engulfed in a dull pain as a vortex of energy swirled around him. He fell the ground and winced. The room began to spin around him. Moving his head around, all he could see was the dancing tendrils of the ray shield that had just blocked his approach. “Jaina? Jaina?” He called out to his still active comm. No response. Well, not the response he was expecting. “Sorry, Mr. Vortex. Your friends are occupied elsewhere. I'm afraid they won't be making the rest of the trip with you.” A mysterious voice said. Tares continued to look around. The ray shields visually skewed everything outside of his captive cocoon. The only thing he could make out was a faint outline of a humanoid standing in front of him beyond the shield. He began an attempt to press the mysterious voice, “Who are you? What is this all about?” The voice maintained a gentle, yet direct tone, “Don't worry about those details, Mr. Vortex. You are my guest.” Tares moved his hands and feet against the slippery floor. The floor offered little resistance to propel himself up again. The ray shield briefly flashed with an intense glow before it disappeared. Tares’s distorted surroundings refocused, and the faint outline grew in clarity. He found a large droid standing before him. The droid was expressionless, looking down with red photoreceptors placed on top of a upper heavy frame. The droid took a step forward and extended a large needle from one hand. In a swift motion, too fast for a human, the droid reached out and dug the tip of the needle into Tares’s neck. He could the cold, metallic point dig deep into his muscle tissue. And then, nothing….

Tares could feel the sweat starting to build up on his palms as he waited for the last few percentage points to complete the decryption process. The waiting time seemed drawn out, as if the progress indicator on the screen in front of him had slowed to a painful crawl. Logically, he knew only a few minutes had passed since he had entered the mainframe storage room. Atlas was efficient at navigating computer systems and was no doubt working at her peak speed to decrypt the file. Still, the pause he found himself in didn't help the feeling of nervous pain that had crept up in his stomach. Sometimes, he felt that he was better than this. Years of training as a Jedi should have prepared him for similar moments. Every now and then, however, he found himself in a situation that seems to throw all that training out of the window. If moments like this were meant to test him, he failed. Thankfully, he didn't have to wait much longer for salvation. When the indicator on the screen reached the one hundred percent mark, Atlas chimed in on the comm almost simultaneously. She indicated that the file was successfully decrypted and now waited on Tares' datapad for viewing. Tares brought out his pad and set it on the controls nearby. The file flashed into view and displayed a map of the local region of space. A technical overlay of the comm array's service history floated above the map. Centered squarely in the middle of the map was a flashing icon of a planet. The label "Acrid" flashed in tandem. Immediately, Tares reached for his comm unit and spoke, "Jaina, I have found the file that we are looking for. I now know where we need to proceed next. Where are you and Tirzah?" He asked.

The tension coming from Tirzah was something of a new experience to Tares. The backlash seemed out of place, almost illogical. Then again, Tares couldn't recall ever letting logic get in his way at her age. In fact, a verbal backlash during a mission didn't top some of the things he and Drake had done at that age. Jaina seemed to fall into her role of mother effortlessly. A quick "back in my day" retort followed by the summary of an improvised game plan. For all her skills in combat and the Force, it was clear that she had some hidden talents for the spoken word as well. "Tares, you'll need to move quickly." She stated. His notion of the plan kept changing as they acted, but the mother/daughter dramatic departure made things apparent all at once: Jaina was pulling the good old diversion routine. He hadn't expected this visit to resort to a grand scale slight of hand, but he wasn't surprised. No trip was ever normal. Why would it be? As the two made their grand exit, Tares quickly leapt into action. He scanned the garage to gauge the other occupants' actions. Most of them were reacting to the diversion. A couple went about their business making repairs as if they didn't get paid enough to care about anything else. He kept his pace slow as he began to cross the garage. With most of the guards in pursuit elsewhere, the trip to the storage node became a lot shorter. Resistance should be light, as long as he didn't draw too much attention to himself. His drawn out walk across the garage ended at the opposite door where he entered into an empty hallway. Unlike the fresh, salted sea air that blanketed the outside, the atmosphere in the hallway was dry and stale. It suggested to Tares that he had entered a less traveled area of the platform. Taking out his comm link, he keyed into Atlas's channel, "I'm on my way to the storage node. Get ready to run the decryption again." "Understood," The droid replied, "I am monitoring local security channels. There are reports of an erratic speeder chase. Did Tirzah take control of a speeder?" The prospect of the preteen driving caught Tares off guard. Someone driving erratically, however, did not, "No, I'm pretty sure Jaina is at the wheel." He replied. Atlas acknowledged before clicking off. Tares continued to walk down the hallway. The plain white walls seemed endless. The decor was worse than the service tunnels at Solaris HQ. At least those had some foliage. After several minutes of walking, Tares finally arrived at a nondescript door his datapad had marked as his desired destination. Keying the controls, the door slide open without resistance. On the other side, a small rectangular room with a single tower in the middle waited. He approached the tower and placed his datapad on the top. A screen nearby flashed to life as Tares began to comm Atlas to begin the process. "Decryption process has begun. ETA: four minutes." Atlas reported....

“Messy?” Tares asked to himself while looking around at the immediate surroundings. The oversized closet offered no hint of a solution, so he turned his attention to the outside garage area. Through the crack of the door, Tares noticed something… messy. “Wait, that?” He asked again, “No way, that will never work.” Through the crack, along a near side wall, a large streak crossed from an exposed pipe to the floor. Globs of grease congealed along the stain and slowly descended to the ground. The idea was crazy. It couldn't work. It would be too simple. Surely, no one would be gullible enough to fall for such a ruse. Tares noticed a small streak of grease collecting along the base of the closet’s doorway from another slightly exposed pipe. Taking his hand down, he ran a finger through the collection pool and then brought up his stained fingertips to eye level. The smell pierced his nose before the sight actually registered. It had the same tone of oil as a forgotten engineering bay of a smuggling ship. The idea slowly grew on him. The maintenance workers seemed to lack any distinct form of a uniform, so the ploy just might work with their street clothes. They didn't have much else to go on. Holding up his comm link, he keyed into his ship for a brief moment, “Atlas, lock the ship down and make sure no one can get aboard. We are going to make a run for the storage node.” Keying the comm link off, Tares spent one last moment staring at the grease stain, “Okay, if this is going to work, it will need to look natural.” Quietly, he activated his lightsaber and brought the very tip upwards. The blade caught the edge of the leaky pipe, forcing the crack to expand. From the hole, a steady stream of grease doused the entire closet and its inhabitants. Before long, all three of them were covered in the grime. The stream hadn't been large, but the results were just enough to simulate draining the grease traps of a freighter’s galley. Tares looked back at Jaina and Tirzah. “Okay, things got messy. Ready to blend in?” He asked….

The screen he had his gaze fixed to shattered in slow motion. The dancing letters blinked out of existence as a streak in the glass exploded out from one corner. The information he had been searching for vanished as a prelude to the chaos that was erupting. Tares found himself pushing the desk forward to its side. Somehow, he also had his saber hilt whipping in the air towards his free hand. With the desk now cover and his saber activated, he positioned himself over to intercept the space between Tirzah and the gun fire. Blocking a few stray bolts, he then corralled Tirzah to the waiting cover while watching Jaina. She had just dodged a bolt and was regrouping in a dizzying display of acrobatics. “Any other ideas, Vortex?” She asked. “One, but our new friend isn't going to like it.” Tares replied. Closing his eyes, he reached out through the Force and felt the edges of the desk. With a little pressure, he tested the furniture’s resolve before pressing hard against the durasteel. A loud scraping sound rang out against the floor as the desk was propelled forward by an invisible hand. The desk skipped across the ground before landing right in the doorway where their attacker resided. After another loud pop, the blaster fire stopped. The trio was now exposed in the middle of the room with the attacker nowhere in sight. “He’ll be feeling that in the morning.” Tares observed. A voice chimed in over the comm, “Assuming he survived.” Atlas said. Tares immediately reached for his comm unit, “Atlas, did you get the file?” “Negative. I have only decrypted 85% of the encryption. You will have to access the primary storage node so I can reestablish a link. Transferring the directions to your datapad now.” She replied. Watching as the directions came in on the pad, Tares motioned to the opposite door, “Looks like we’ll have a bit of a walk.” The path looked simple enough, mostly out of the way from the busier sections of the platform. “We shouldn't hit much resistance since no one has sounded the-” A booming klaxon emerged through the surrounding speakers, “-alarm… yet.” He observed….

The employee's introduction reeked of opportunistic greed. Granted, the trio didn't speak "native," but to his knowledge, no one was a true native here. In the aftermath of the planet's climate and surface changes, the planet had been largely abandoned. After that, a few enterprising companies had returned to mine the materials still located below the surface. This platform was one of few way stations built years later to supply mining operations. "I'm sorry, we aren't here to stay long. We just need access to your maintance database." Tares replied. The man took a moment and glanced over each individual in the trio. "Name, ID, and purpose of visit." He demanded again. There wasn't any particular reason to keep their identities and purpose a secret, but something about the way the man was demanding the information was off to Tares. The man was dressed like a mechanic on his break or lacking work. He wasn't the typical sort to greet visitors. "You don't need that information." Tares replied with a slight enforcing wave of his hand. "I don't need that information." The man repeated. "You need to allow us access to your maintenance computer." The man confirmed the instructions and moved away from the console he had been seated at. Tares took his place around the counter and positioned himself above the array of complicated controls. The console was more than just an information retrieval system. It appeared to be the controls of some kind of nearby machinery. Tares began to manipulate the main screen to begin the search for the information they had come for. The process was going quickly until he hit a snag, "The file is encrypted." He stated. He was at the final digital doorstep of determining where the comm array had come from. One final push of a button was all that was needed. Taking out his comm, Tares looked around while activating the channel to the Ferro, "Atlas, establish a wireless uplink with the terminal connected to the serial number I am sending to you. I need access to an encrypted file." The droid failed to acknowledge, but the screen in front of Tares eventually came to life seemingly on its own. "This shouldn't take long..." Tares began to say before an other voice rang out from the other side of the room. "You three, what the hell are you doing? You aren't supposed to be here...."

The descent into Altyr V’s atmosphere was almost as uneventful as the trip to the planet itself. Tares’s ship had slid through the air without much resistance, largely due to its aerodynamic shape. Finding the port and requesting landing clearance had all been handled by Atlas. Even the landing itself had been automated. As a result, Tares hadn't had much to do during this whole series of events. Jaina and Tirzah had been tucked away in their own private spaces, so he had been left to himself. After the ship had come to a rest, Tares finished up his last minute check over the final Data dump Atlas had downloaded from the Holonet. A few passive aggressive messages and a local weather report made up the bulk of the information. Closing the console in his stateroom, he made his way to the cargo hold and opened the landing ramp. The salty air quickly rushed in and flushed out the ship’s highly processed atmosphere. The space port they had landed on was on a platform suspended high above the planet’s liquid surface. Dry land was extinct, so the locals had had to adapt to the after effects of the SEED military forces so long ago. Tares walked down to the base of the landing ramp and looked around. The immediate platform was sparsely populated with only a few local mechanics working on smaller surrounding equipment. None of them looked like the type of individual to provide the information they were look for. Tares eventually heard footsteps from the other two as they arrived in the cargo hold. Turning around, he smiled, “Welcome to Altyr V. I think we're going to have to locate the central office….”

While Jaina and Tirzah were off for a morning of shopping, Tares spent the time making final arrangements before their departure. Despite his intention to avoid any major conflicts with the board, his delayed message hadn't been enough to prevent some tactful, yet angered replies from pouring in during the early hours of the morning. He decided to take as many as he could before becoming too overwhelmed with the situation. There wasn't much to be said or done since his mind had been made up. However, a little damage control wouldn't hurt either. By the time the two shoppers had returned, Tares had done all he could in the small period he had left. All the while, technicians from Solaris had refueled his ship and provided some last minute details on the only piece of evidence they had to follow on Drake’s disappearance. It still wasn't much, but it provided just enough assurance of their starting point in Tares’s mind. Jaina’s question brought Tares out of his mild trance of thought. He hadn't even noticed their arrival, nor the time that had passed since their departure. Had the pair not returned, he may have remained with his own thoughts for a lot longer than intended. Atlas… yes, the droid was going on this trip too. Before he could offer a reply, the droid quietly slipped through the doorway from the main decks and chimed a reply that echoed around the hold. “In a manner of speaking,” Atlas confirmed, “The subroutines managing my emulation of compassion towards living beings are still malfunctioning, but my combat functions are at 100%.” Tares felt a small chill at the droid’s casual report; perhaps even more at her selections in making the report. Brushing it off, he withdrew his datapad and began inputting commands for departure clearance from the tower control. “Atlas, close all hatches and prepare the engines for departure. I think it’s time we get going.” The Ferro’s automated departure system took only a few minutes to get everything worthy for travel. After a few moments, the ship had departed the atmosphere and entered hyperspace...

Tares made a note to gently probe Tirzah at some point on her state of feeling about everything. Jaina's feeling that Tirzah would likely open up to him more was probably just born out of the natural tensions that motherhood involved. The young Jedi hopeful had no reason to preference Tares over anyone else. Still, on the off chance she did, Tares knew the conversation might be helpful. Physically, he had adapted to the sleeping routine of Jaina's ship on the trip. This meant his sleeping rhythm was off from his normal Corellia routine. It didn't make much sense to try to force himself to establish his old routine yet since they'd be departing yet again. Instead, he spent the sleepless night in his stateroom in meditation. It was the first time in a while that he had the freedom and motivation to meditate. He usually spent a brief time centering himself before or after a workout session, but spending an extended period in meditation had been a rare occasion. Somehow, he easily slipped into a calm state where the fleeting thoughts in his mind quickly dissipated. This was unusual. Typically, thoughts of the daily grind or external events plagued his focus. He had assumed that this would've been even worse given the personal nature of their impending search. Instead, he lost track of the time and simply let the night pass away. By the time he came to from his meditate trance, the morning rays of light were piercing the windows of his room. Unfortunately, his newly found calm was immediately erupted by the longings of morning: the need for caffeine. For a true Jedi, such a need was unthinkable. For a CEO, it was a religious practice. For him, it had become routine. He made his way into the crew mess and placed a new pot to make some caf. While the pot began to brew, Tares sat himself down and began to thumb through the morning news feeds....

The prospect of differing outcomes hadn't struck Tares until Jaina had reframed the issue. Logically, this search was no different than his previous attempts. This time, however, he didn't have the natural hope of a positive outcome. The status quo, his status quo, had changed. Life without his brother had become the new normal. Even the pain had receded, at least most days. "I'll have no choice but to accept either outcome." He replied, "If there is one thing I learned from all this before, it's that life moves on. One way or an other, this is one ride that we can't stop." Tares removed himself from his chair in silence. Jaina's final statement, finding a measure of peace, had been another elusive thought. In many ways, he had found that measure of peace. If anything, this very search could be the thing government disrupt that peace. He could only imagine the type of peace Jaina might be searching for. This was one area where their paths diverged. She stood at a point where the future seemed uncertain after loss; he was living in that future after loss. Peace was relative, but often felt the same. "I guess it never hurts to try." He replied. "Maybe as the Jedi teach, finding that peace needs to start internally. Anything I can do to help with Tirzah?"

"I'm sorry to hear that." Tares replied as he crossed the threshold of the bridge and took a seat. "It's never easy to hear news like that, much less accept it. Time will no doubt help." In many ways, that was the truth. Time for the initial shock of any major news to wear off was often required to move on. Still, Tares knew deep down that some parts of that shock and the resulting pain would remain, regardless of the time that passed. The news Jaina had expressed to Tirzah was the kind that would leave a mark, especially on a young mind like hers. It was defining, potentially life changing. No one would know what kind of mark would be left until enough time had passed. Jaina moved on with smaller details. Shopping in the morning sounded like a great plan. Jaina was right: Tares needed a change of cloths himself, something less formal and more agreeable to intense physical activity. It would also give them the opportunity to enjoy natural daylight for once. Corellia was obviously different from Raxus Prime, but Tares hadn't realized just how much he had taken Coronet's relatively clean air for granted. "Did you find anything? A place to start?" Jaina asked. Tares brought his thoughts back to his research, "Yes, well, I think so. I found a log in the comm array's service record that came from Altyr V. The planet is somewhat close to the Unknown Regions, and the record was one of the first made after my brother's disappearance. It's really the best starting point I could find, but it may not be much." That statement also contained mostly truth. Tares withheld the slight line of doubt he kept at the forefront of his mind and focused mainly on the facts he had gathered. "What do you think?" He asked semi-rhetorically, "Do you think this search is futile?"