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Iridonia


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Iridonia

 

Astrographical Information

Region: Mid Rim

Sector: Glythe Sector

System: Iridonia

Orbital Position: 2

Moons: 2

Grid Coordinates: J-13

 

Physical Information

Class: Terrestrial

Atmosphere: Type 1 Breathable

Primary Terrain: acid pools and seas, deep windy canyons, farmland

Points of Interest:

 

Societal Information

Indigenous Species: Zabrak

Immigrated Species: none

Primary Language(s): Galactic Basic

Faction Affiliation: neutral

 

Defense Rating: Level 3

 

JediRP Canon History: Iridonia was briefly home to an Imperial outpost, but is no longer under Imperial jurisdiction.

 

((Summary compiled by Amidala Skywalker. Thank you!))

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The monarch of madness has returned!

 

[Associate of the Illinois Mafia since March 2002.]

[2nd in Command of the Lords of Hate since March 2002.]

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  • 5 months later...

A single Imperious-class Star Destroyer from the battle group code named the punisher dropped out of hyperspace. It was not a mission of War however that brought the ship to the planet below. As the new republic had it's corellia. The Empire wished to bring in Iridonia into its galactic fold.

 

Situated near important hyperspace lanes, Iridonia was one of the key worlds that connected the Outer Rim to the Inner Rim. It would serve as a prime staging ground as well as hold station in the off chance it was needed as such.

 

Yet as the Emperor himself was unable to show up and demonstrate the might of the Empire to the native people and its colonies, he had sent an emissary of sorts. The Star Destroyer moved to an orbiting position and hailed the world below. Peace talks were established, as the idea of resources that the Empire had access to were dangled in front of the people living in such a harsh environment. Having been neutral in this war, the recent embargo had been tricky for them to navigate as accepting supplies from one side or the other was a political land mine, and as such they had been forced in to negotiating strictly with other independent worlds.

 

Being the first to offer them acceptance in to their respective Government, and after some hard negotiations, the Empire was granted access to set up military installations upon the world to help bolster it's defense. With such a peaceful arrangement and both sides happy, over the course of the next few weeks, planetary defenses were brought forth for both space and ground. the star destroyer having long since departed after the initial peace talks. An imperial garrison overlooking capital square was placed on world. A budget for Imperial academies were also placed on world including one for the imperial knights division, as Iridonia had always been a place filled high with force sensitives. With the trials of a few choice soldiers long since completed, the Empire was needing to move to be able to field soldiers with the ability to wield the force. Something it had experimented with in the past and had done so again recently. Naturally graduates of these initial academies would be sent off world to a secret location to actually complete the training.

 

Giving the warrior culture the ability to once again field warriors. Much like Foy, the Imperial presence brought about opportunity for training of the native population. Yet it worked both ways, for both the stormtroopers stationed there and for the native population. In space a ring of MDCs were wreathed around the planet's head so to speak, much like the horns the species was so notable in fielding. Seven of the mass driver cannons were fielded as to better protect the world. No orbiting space station but instead seven tie staging areas, fielding Tie Defenders and the scimitar bombers, were also built, meant to accompany each MCD. While the Iridonians were able to gain resources, get military training and weapons, and be apart of a Galactic military. The Empire received a strategic world and a military presence that was more or less able to with stand orbital bombardment by digging in deep under ground, with the modified garrison, and joining the local populous with resistance. The Empire also gained one more thing, and that was a training area to cycle special troops through, to train and learn in the harsh environment. There by allowing there to be companies of specialty troopers moving in and off world in cycles.

 

((If unopposed, I feel in three days real time, all actual defenses and the like would be fully completed))

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Two months later I hit the control room of CPS. Talk about a slog fest.

Former Emperor Rustic <--

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  • 6 years later...

The T’ad Kebbur set down near one of the many windswept canyons of the northern hemisphere of the planet. Vy’ika had directed them to one of the more moderately populated settlements where they were set to pick up the rest of their team, though not for an hour or two according to Rhys’s last check-in that had awaited them just as they’d exited Hyperspace.

 

“I don’t know about you two," Vy’ika remarked as he strode down the ship’s ramp, Cinva, his snow white sand hound companion, not far behind him, “But I could go for something to eat.” His beskar’gam lay concealed beneath his dusk blue duster and his hood was down, having stowed his and Mirdala’s helmets in a satchel that hung to his hip. His facial markings were clearly visible against the lighter brown of his skin, the overall effect marking his appearance as Kiffari. His dark beard obscured the lower half of his face making him look much less like Kandor at first glance.

 

Mirdala hadn’t said much when she’d emerged from her quarters on the HWK-290 once Vy’ika had informed her that they were beginning their approach to Iridonia. In similar fashion, she too, had concealed her armor beneath her duster and had completed the look with a long crimson and black scarf she’d fashioned into a sort of make-shift head covering to guard against the wind and help conceal her identity. Her cheeks now bore markings of their own as well, similar in kind to Vy’ika’s but a mix of vibrant red and black. Vi’ika, Mirdala’s raven-furred hound hunt-partner, strode out beside her as the pair joined Vy’ika and Cinva at the bottom of the ramp. “I take it you know a place? Kandor, you coming?"

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Ke barjurir gar'ade, jagyc'ade kot'la a dalyc'ade kotla'shya. - "Train your sons to be strong but your daughters to be stronger."

“A Mandalorian woman's greatest talent is not her charm or beauty, but her strength of body and will.” - Mandalorian proverb

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"Have I ever not been up for skraan?" he asked with a smirk, finding a black sort of heavy fabric poncho that was large enough to fit over his beskar'gam. Although it had been long ago, Iridonia had once been conquered by the Mando'ade, and there was still some deeply-rooted mistrust that would cause them to draw attention to themselves if they wore the armor openly. Plus every time they surfaced there was a bit of risk. He would have to leave his buy'ce behind on the ship, but in a strange twist on his old habits he gained useful anonymity by doing so.

 

The trio of verde set out into the streets of the dusty frontier town, finding them to be populated with a mix of Zabraks and humans along with a minority of a few other assorted alien species. All of them had a few things in common, however -- they were a rough but sturdy folk used to a harsh mountainous environment with acid pools and sparse farmlands. The town had a rugged feel to it that in a way reminded Kandor of Keldabe. The air was cool and the sun shone through a slight haze, sitting just above an overhead stone crag that promised that shadows would begin to fall over this part of town long before dusk.

 

The place that Vy'ika picked for food was a bar, a bit on the seedy side. The place had a dirty sign posted in faded Basic lettering that read "THE STAFF WOULD LIKE TO THANK YOU FOR CHECKING YOUR BLASTERS AT THE DOOR" bolted to the wall over a series of cubbies with plasteel bins in them and a beskar'ad keeping an eye on things. Kandor and the others dutifully checked their most apparent sidearms, but between wrist lasers and the concealed beskad'ike he knew they were each carrying, they weren't really walking into the place unarmed. They did draw a few glances as they entered, looking for all the oyu'baat like three beroyase, two of them similar enough in build and features to be brothers, the glint of their metal plates visibly peaking through their outerwear.

 

Kandor glanced around, surveying the other patrons. Mostly Zabraks and humans, like outside, but there was a Weequay spacer in one corner and a couple of Rodians chatting in their own language in another. He nodded at one of the staff members, who indicated a few empty seats at the bar.

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The three of them sat down, Mirdala taking the seat between the two men and pulling back the part of her scarf that had been covering her head. She wasn’t particularly thrilled with having their backs to the doors, but with no other seats available, they were left with little choice unless they wanted to wander the unfamiliar town in search of another establishment. “Sure you couldn’t have picked a more crowded place, Vy’ika?”

 

He shrugged. “How was I supposed to know when their dinner rush was?”

 

“You lot going to order or keep yammering?” The Zabraki bartender hissed stiffly.

 

“I’ll take the darkest ale you’ve got and whatever the special is,” Vy’ika waved his hand.

 

The Zabrak looked over to Mirdala, “And you Miss?”

 

“Tiffin,” she answered, looking over the dingy datapad containing the tavern’s menu, “and bowl of hugglepup stew.” She didn’t miss a couple of the side glances from the other patrons on either side of Kandor and Vy’ika as she handed the data pad to Kandor.

 

The bar tender snorted, "'Tiffin'? What kind of place do you think this is little lady?"

 

"Hot water then," She replied curtly, not quite liking the attention her drink choice was getting her. She usually carried at least a few sachets with her in one of her belt pouches. The man shook his head and looked to the other man.

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Ke barjurir gar'ade, jagyc'ade kot'la a dalyc'ade kotla'shya. - "Train your sons to be strong but your daughters to be stronger."

“A Mandalorian woman's greatest talent is not her charm or beauty, but her strength of body and will.” - Mandalorian proverb

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"Water as well," Kandor said, as always eschewing alcohol and unable to identify any of the non-alcoholic beverages listed. "And the special sounds fine."

 

He'd seen lots of bars like this one, and they hadn't changed in millennia. In his full beskar'gam, especially at the height of his beroya career, everyone would see him come in but pretend not to, hoping he wasn't there for them. Then there was the occasional punk who thought he would go down in the history books as the guy who stared down ShadowFett. That sort of thing didn't work out. This time though, he was just another anonymous human. No one knew or cared who he was in this out-of-the-way dive on this out-of-the-way planet. It was a nice change of pace, like Hapes had been, although the environment was almost as far as one could get from that pristine world.

 

The skraan was brought out only a couple minutes after they ordered, making Kandor think they probably just heated it up, but it wasn't the worst thing he'd ever tasted. As he started eating, though, there were a few raised voices coming from some of the tables behind them.

 

"Listen, you gotta pay me back. I need that money!" someone was saying.

 

Another voice answered. "I ain't got it yet. These things take time."

 

"Now, listen here," the first voice said threateningly. Kandor and a few other patrons turned to look at the exchange. There were two Zabraks and a human seated at the table, but one of them was halfway out of his chair.

 

A third voice, belonging to the human, cut in, as its owner glanced around at the attention they were getting, looking a bit embarrassed. "Look, Kal, you should probably cool off. Getting into a fight here isn't going to solve anything."

 

Kal looked around and sat back down, continuing the conversation in a lower voice as the patrons returned to their conversations. Kandor turned back to his skraan, which seemed to get a little worse with every bite. "Quite the place you picked, Vy'ika," he said dryly.

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The mercenary shrugged at him as he took a swig of his drink. “Don’t tell me your time on Hapes has spoilt you to the unique…ah…essence of establishments such as these.”

 

Mirdala fixed her brother with a look, then excused herself to go freshen up, thinking to take advantage of the diversion across the dive to make her way quietly to the refresher. It hadn’t escaped her notice that much of the clientele was among the male population of the planet and having owned a bar on Tatooine for a few years, she knew the type of hazards hidden within the crowd.

 

Vy’ika watched her disappear into the narrow hallway before turning back to Kandor. “She really had a rough go of it on Hapes, I imagine?"

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Ke barjurir gar'ade, jagyc'ade kot'la a dalyc'ade kotla'shya. - "Train your sons to be strong but your daughters to be stronger."

“A Mandalorian woman's greatest talent is not her charm or beauty, but her strength of body and will.” - Mandalorian proverb

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Kandor swallowed a the food he'd been chewing. "Not her kind of people," he answered. "I'm sure you remember how she felt about the Sivaara family and everything they put her through on Triple Zero. Hapes is a lot like that. We went in there looking to expose a former terrorist who I suspected was behind a series of assassinations, but by the end it turned out he was one of the only decent human beings we met. The assassins were offworlders who turned out to be working for the woman whom Mirdala had taken a job to protect and for whom she took a blaster bolt."

 

He took another bite and sipped his water. "I can't blame her for getting frustrated. Thankfully she kept a clear head when it mattered and things worked out well," he said. "But several days she'd get off her shift and you could tell she wanted to pummel something."

 

At least it wasn't all bad, he thought. The two of them had desperately needed that time together, and he wouldn't give that up for anything. Every time he thought he was getting to know her pretty well another layer would get peeled back and he would realize there was a lot more going on than he'd thought. And each time things would start to make a little more sense once he understood. Now they were closer than ever, and she'd shared some things with him that were at her very core, like the contents of the data crystal she'd been wearing. Still he could not say with any certainty that there were no more layers that he didn't even know existed.

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"She does have a temper, that's for sure," the Omicron mused absently as he stared at his drink for a moment before adding quietly so only Kandor could hear. As though to punctuate his point a crash came the direction of the hallway Mirdala had disappeared down and a Zabraki man could be seen staggering back holding his broken nose.

 

“You’ll be sorry you did that little bitch!” he growled, as his fists balled at his side as he blocked the corridor crouched and ready for a fight.

 

“And I told you that you’d regret laying a hand on me, di’kut,” growled Mirdala who didn’t appear to have fallen into a stance, though both Vy’ika and Fett knew first-hand that meant little.

 

“Oh this can’t be good,” Vy’ika muttered taking another swig of his drink and turning towards the exchange. “She didn’t happen to get any of that ‘pummelling’ out of her system did she?"

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Ke barjurir gar'ade, jagyc'ade kot'la a dalyc'ade kotla'shya. - "Train your sons to be strong but your daughters to be stronger."

“A Mandalorian woman's greatest talent is not her charm or beauty, but her strength of body and will.” - Mandalorian proverb

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He turned to watch, leaning his back up against the bar and crossing his arms. "Not enough of it," he answered.

 

Kandor toyed with the thought of getting involved, but for now just kept an eye on the developing situation to make sure Mirdala didn't get in over her head or someone did something stupid and pulled a weapon. They couldn't have her getting injured on their way to a difficult operation. But if everyone had observed the establishment's rules, this would just be a fist fight, and he knew firsthand that Mirdala didn't need his or Vy'ika's help to teach a couple of dikute a lesson about messing with her. Indeed, attempting to diffuse the situation would rob her of good sport.

 

As he watched a somewhat-inebriated human pointed and laughed at the Zabrak with the broken nose, and the Zabrak gave him a dirty look, then threw a punch at him. The human stumbled back against his table, but the two others he'd been sitting with took offense and stood up, their drinks overturned and dripping onto the floor. Meanwhile the Zabrak was at the bar with a trio of friends himself, and they descended on the situation. The Zabrak wiped more blood off his nose. "Screw them, get her!" he said, pointing at Mirdala. "She broke my kriffing nose!"

 

Meanwhile the argument he had witnessed earlier was starting to escalate again and Kandor was starting to think this would turn into quite a fracas.

 

Fett looked at Vy'ika. "Twenty credits says the human on the far right goes down first," he wagered.

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Vy'ika raised his glass and indicated the escalating brawl with a wave of his index finger, "My credits are in the Zabrak trio. She's pretty ticked, whatever the first one did to her. See how still she is? Those guys don't stand a chance."

 

Mirdala stood calmly and looked at the the on-coming trio of Zabraki as she used the narrow hallway to her advantage since they could only really get to her one-on-one. The one with the largest crown of horns mistook her lack of fighting stance as some form of submission. She was still being blocked from exiting the corridor to the wider dinning area and knew if this fool was as dumb as she figured he was going be, she’d initially hold the advantage in the narrow space.

 

Tension hung thick in the air for several seconds as Mirdala silently dared the man before her to act. Considering how his comerade had grabbed her rear as she’d passed him in the hall, he was lucky all she’d done was break his nose. She sensed her hound, Vi’ika’s, response to her agitation and gave the canine a mental command to stay put where she was with Cinva just outside the door to the tavern.

 

With a growl the Zabrak launched himself at her only to find that she’d leapt up to grab the beam above her head, leaving him to run headlong into the hallway. She landed and kicked out to assist in sending him on his way and shifting his balance so he fell forward and into the wall. He howled as he tried to pull back, only to find one of his head horns lodged into the wall.

 

For her part Mirdala strode out of the hallway, glancing at his stunned compatriots as she walked back towards her companions, stopping when a hand landed on her shoulder. With lightening speed, she gripped two of the fingers and bent them back as she twisted herself along with his arm behind a gold-skinned Zabrak man, slamming him down on the table as she ducked a sloppy blow from one of the others. The blow took the brute off-balance and landed on the back of the head of another patron, causing him to spill his drink.

 

Her Force-senses giving her a glimpse as to what was about to happen, Mirdala released her hold on the gold-skinned man and ducked again as Mr. Sloppy-punch found himself staggering backwards from a left hook delivered by the man he’d hit instead of Mirdala. The two of them were in a full-on tussle as they knocked into yet another table and the fight broke out across the bar from there.

 

Someone grabbed Mirdala from behind (the Zabrak who’d finally managed to free himself from the wall, she realized a moment later) and she laced her fingers together across the back of her head and jammed her chin into the man’s forearm a few inches below the elbow joint, easily finding the pressure point. Howling in pain once more, he released her. As soon as she was free, she raked her boot down the man’s shin causing him to bend over to where her right hook was more effective. The man’s head whipped around and he dropped to the floor.

 

The Zabrak with the broken nose, rounded on her as his friends soon found themselves in fist fights of their own.

 

Mirdala merely smiled and stretched her neck. “You want to play, too? Fine.”

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Ke barjurir gar'ade, jagyc'ade kot'la a dalyc'ade kotla'shya. - "Train your sons to be strong but your daughters to be stronger."

“A Mandalorian woman's greatest talent is not her charm or beauty, but her strength of body and will.” - Mandalorian proverb

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As the fight spread, glasses started flying like fists and tables got knocked over. The earlier argument about money had turned into a brawl with a little encouragement from the general chaos, and now Fett had lost track of who exactly was fighting who and it seemed that everyone else had as well. Meanwhile he and Vy'ika relaxed at the bar, unperturbed by the pandemonium. The bartender seemed to be in total dismay, seeing the damage his establishment was sustaining, and was ducked behind the counter, his head in his hands.

 

The Weequay Fett had spotted earlier approached him from the side. "Didn't the crazy woman come in with you?"

 

Kandor nodded. "If you mean the armored one who's merely defending herself from some degenerate's unwanted advances, then yes. What of it?"

 

"Aren't you going to help her?" the alien asked, confused.

 

Fett laughed, watching Mirdala whirl with surprising grace as she delivered a series of kicks. "She's not the one who needs help here."

 

A random combatant took a blow and came stumbling back out of the general melee, backpedaling directly towards Fett. He caught the brawler by the shoulders and gave him a push to send him staggering back into the fray. "Try hitting back," he called after him in encouragement.

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The Omicron looked at Kandor for a moment, one of his eyebrows quirked in amusement at the other man’s open enjoyment of the events unfolding before them. Apparently, spending time with Mirdala and the rest of the family seemed to be having a good effect on him. He ducked to the side as a bottle came flying out of the fray and smashed itself on the wall behind the bar. “You’d think they would have picked up on the fact she’s potentially the most dangerous out of that bunch, and she’s not even fighting at full strength.” Finishing off his drink he sat the empty glass on the bar and joined Kandor in his encouragement of the other patrons. "Oh come on man! You’re going to let her get away with that!?”

 

Mirdala had slid under one of the larger tables to sweep the legs out of another opponent that had thought her to be an easy target. The man fell forward and hit his head on the table, knocking himself out cold. Another charged her as she regained her feet, but a simple lowering of her shoulder and physics did the rest as the man’s momentum carried him forward and over her shoulder into another group of men.

 

Around them the fight was losing steam as the combatants slowly lost themselves to consciousness, or their resolve to remain in the fight. Some were still willing to try, however, one of them grabbing Mirdala by her braid that had fallen out of her scarf with her movement. Mirdala’s hand snapped back, wrapping her arm around the braid and with a swift spiral motion she broke his grip and positioned herself for a swift kick to his groin that staggered him back a few feet. She sprang after him, but he held his hands up in surrender, suddenly deciding that getting to her wasn’t really worth the injuries.

 

“I suppose you’re enjoying yourself Vod’ika?” Rhys’s familiar presence accompanied his words as his and two other similarly built forms darkened the doorway, each in armor and faces hidden behind their helmets.

 

“Just following the advice you gave me on Coruscant,” She ducked a swing and delivered another uppercut to one of the various opponents. "'Just nail him in the gettse until he changes his mind.’"

 

Rhys sighed, unable to deny his words. He waved the other two forward as they carefully navigated the remaining conflicts to take a few of the now-vacated seats at the bar only to watch the woman deliver a powerful head-butt to one of the last standing opponents.

 

“I thought I said to stay out of trouble until we got here, Verdeyui,” Rhys remarked, his voice low as he took in what he could only imagine as Mirdala’s handiwork.

 

“Hey. I did nothing,” Vy’ika protested. “Kandor here was actually encouraging them.”

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Ke barjurir gar'ade, jagyc'ade kot'la a dalyc'ade kotla'shya. - "Train your sons to be strong but your daughters to be stronger."

“A Mandalorian woman's greatest talent is not her charm or beauty, but her strength of body and will.” - Mandalorian proverb

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Fett shrugged, scanning the various collapsed forms on the floor until he found the original Zabrak, who'd ended up in a heap nearby, and pointed at him. "He started it," he said innocently. "We were just looking for skraan."

 

By now the brawl was coming to an end. Few were left standing, and those who were still conscious saw the Mando'ade that had entered with their buy'cese on and probably mistook them for some sort of authority figure -- at least new potential combatants they'd rather not mess with -- and the will to fight left them. A few of them started to file out to lick their wounds somewhere else, others started to tend to their friends. There wasn't a lot of talking. The bartender finally came out from behind the counter and started to survey the damage with a forlorn look on his face. At one point he gave a frustrated glance towards Mirdala, but clearly thought better about saying something.

 

Kandor glanced between the three that had joined them. He recognized Rhys' beskar'gam, but the other two were new to him. They were the right height and build to be more Omicrons, though. He figured introductions could wait, however. "If we don't want to explain all this to the cops, maybe we better talk somewhere else," he suggested.

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"That's a good idea," Mirdala said joining them, and stealing a quick kiss from Kandor. "Might I suggest our ship? It might be a bit tight, but we can fit enough to go over details for this assignment."

 

The group paid their tab and left, heading back to the HWK-290 ship. When they arrived, Rhys's two compatriots looked over Kandor and Mirdala appraisingly. The one Rhys introduced as Torne, was similar in appearance to Vy'ika, though hadn't opted for a beard. Valkieth, on the other hand more closely resembled Nek with his Bothan-hybrid appearance, all four brothers bore their facial markings, however.

 

"So you're Sarge's bratling?" Torne began looking Mirdala up and down. She crossed her arms and gave him a very TeVerd-like expression.

 

Valkieth laughed at his brother. "You doubt after the proof you just witnessed back there?"

 

Thorne shrugged. "I'd hoped you'd been joking when you said she'd partnered with a standard one-off."

 

"Does it really matter?" Mirdala ran her fingers through her hair, causing more of the strands to come loose. "Doesn't change the fact we're a team with a job to do."

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Ke barjurir gar'ade, jagyc'ade kot'la a dalyc'ade kotla'shya. - "Train your sons to be strong but your daughters to be stronger."

“A Mandalorian woman's greatest talent is not her charm or beauty, but her strength of body and will.” - Mandalorian proverb

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Torne and Valkieth. Got it, Kandor thought, still having no idea just how many Omicrons there were still around the galaxy. He'd met about eight of them so far, and knew of a few more.

 

He gave Torne a neutral look when he took the jab at Kandor's genetics that most of the Omicrons seemed to, having come to expect it somewhat by now. "Didn't pick it any more than you did," he said, then quickly changed the subject. "What do our travel arrangements look like?"

 

------------------

 

The answer was that one of the clones had brought a G9 Rigger-class transport, an older design but Corellian, so it held up fine. More importantly, it had enough space to accommodate two crew members and six passengers, so they actually had more space than they strictly needed to get to the whole team to Hoth. Kandor transferred his and Mirdala's bags and equipment over from the T'ad Kebbur while the others made sure the team had everything it needed as far as supplies for a multiple-day excursion to the ice planet.

 

It posed a unique challenge, as keeping warm was just the start. Basically nothing could live there, and there were no settlements, so everything they needed they would have to bring with them. They also expected combat, so everyone had to make sure they were fully prepared on that front, too. Kandor had been lugging around a crate full of ammunition and ordinance on the HWK since they'd left the Enigma, but he'd only been in a few scraps since then against Viba and the GenoHaradan, so he was still well-stocked. He held to his old axiom -- P for Plenty. Running out would mean suffering an effectiveness hit due only to unpreparedness, and he wasn't in the habit of accepting those kind of setbacks.

 

Additionally, he was pleased to find that the Omicrons had brought three ysalamiri with them, to him a must when hunting dark siders.

 

An hour or so later the team was ready to go, and the freighter left for a long jump to a world that only loosely held onto the designation of "habitable".

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  • 3 months later...

Boots thudded dully against the ramp of the Blank Nova, back to their home-away-from-home. As the door slid closed with a hydraulic whisper, the ship’s owner pulled off her buy’ce, shaking loose her shock of cropped dark hair. To Tresha Ad’Nort, the hiss of mag-locks releasing always sounded something like a sigh of relief. One more day where the beskar’gam had done its duty to ensure her survival, and could now rest from its labors.

 

She tucked her sniper into its compartment in the hold. The mark she had traced here to Iridonia had been little more than an inconvenience: certainly not a challenge to her skills. The pay had been good enough to warrant her attention, but she couldn’t help wondering if easy jobs like this were making her soft. When she had finished shedding the tan plates--her own personal dragon-skin--she headed toward the refresher for a well-earned sanisteam.

 

Halfway there, an electronic chirrup interrupted her. Quick steps brought her to the cockpit, and as she toggled the comm on, a familiar face came into view. The melody of her voice broke the silence aboard the ship.

 

“Mird’ika.” It was a statement and a question all in one. Mirdala was not in the habit of calling her just to chat, and her face had “news” written all over it.

 

Hey! her cousin began, attempting to keep things lighter than Tresha knew them to be. It had only been a few days since the two had parted on Chandrila. How’s my favorite cousin?

 

Tresha fixed her with a patient look. “Smart enough to know that this isn’t a social call.”

 

It’s not, a familiar voice came in over the feed, audio only. It was her eldest brother, Taen.

 

Taen’s voice sent a wave of dread through her that had nothing to do with her brother himself. “What’s going on? What happened?” A thousand possibilities ran through her mind--was Reska safe? Had Ab’ki found them on Chandrila?--but she knew better than to fix any of them as the truth of the situation.

 

It’s not so much something that’s happened as what’s about to. There’s an army headed for the sector and Kandor is calling in all the clan leaders. Our families’ war just got a whole lot more public and a lot larger of a threat since Ab’ki isn’t content with just taking me or mine out, but the whole damn sector. Mirdala’s tone was eerily calm, something that Tresha knew never boded well. Mirdala was too much like TeVerd in that regard.

 

“She’s waging open war on Mandalore?” Her brow furrowed. “Taen, are you going back?”

 

No. My presence would likely undermine anything that Kandor is there to accomplish. One of Ab’ki’s more recent attacks was on my credibility, as you might recall, Vod’ika. His tone was grim and she knew him well enough to know he didn’t like being sidelined like this. Which is why I need you to go in my place as our clan representation.

 

“Aluir?” she began, but as soon as she said it, she knew what Taen’s response would be. Their hot-headed vod would be no help for Taen’s reputation. Not to mention that Mirdala would likely much rather that Tresha be the one to answer Mand’alor’s call. But the dread hadn’t lessened, and without being sure of why, she was loath to respond in the affirmative.

 

Mirdala arched an eyebrow. With his temper? No. It needs to be you, Tresh. Level heads are what’s needed here and yours is the best I know.

 

She’s right. Taen confirmed. We both know you’re not one for the spotlight, but you’re our best option.

 

A melancholy smile crossed her features for a flicker of a moment. There would be no getting out of this. Her biggest regret was that the sanisteam would have to wait. “I’m as good as outbound. Ret’urcye mhi.”

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For timely responses, please direct PMs to JJS.

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  • 5 months later...

In a deep canyon in a backwater region of Iridonia, a small shuttle landed at a small compound built into the wall of the ravine. Both the compound and shuttle were unmarked, but the team of technicians that received a similarly undecorated man-sized crate from the shuttle was escorted by soldiers in digitally-designed camouflage and bearing carbines. The compound itself was under heavy guard, with E-Web emplacements built into its walls and armed airspeeders housed within an internal hangar. Very little air traffic trespassed anywhere close to this facility, and its funders spent a lot of credits to ensure that its location and blueprints wouldn't ever appear in any publicly-accessible databases.....

 

Within a surgical facility located in the heart of this illegal research farm, Armiena’s captors worked slowly to extract her body from the encasement of the abominable crystal around her. Releasing it from imprisonment was estimated, even in their most optimistic projections, to require weeks of painstaking labor. After all, ysalamir serum-infused drill bits and vibrosaws were extraordinarily expensive tools. The body of a former Jedi Grandmaster, however, was a unique prize and its death to an infected wound or an error in the sedative mixture would have been a loss of incalculable value. Their benefactors from CreoVive, a bleeding-edge technology firm of some unsavory repute, understood the inevitable delays and endured them with patience.

 

Each morning, technicians took molecular scans of the crystal and projected the ideal path of progression for their extraction. Throughout the day, they sawed away chunks of the crystal, watched over by armed guards with carbines, watching for any sign that the former Grandmaster had been disturbed by the extraction and was in danger of waking from the sedative.

 

Gradually, sterile-suited men in environmentally-sealed helmets worked to free the former Grandmaster from the prison. A vague outline of the body within eventually became became visible to the naked eye; soon after, their tools began exposing the steel of her armor and the pallid skin of her face. With great care, they cut away the plating of the armor from her body with vibrosaws to expose a skin-hugging bodysuit, which trailed away a number of gossamer wires that clung to the inside of the armor. Those were snipped away with a delicate set of scissors. Her weapons were also confiscated and placed in armored crates for safekeeping--it was highly unlikely that Draygo would ever awaken from the sedative, but in that improbable circumstance, it was best to ensure that a wrathful Jedi wouldn’t have her lightsabers and the rest of her arsenal at hand.

 

Once the bulk of the crystal was sawed away, leaving behind only a few residual bands that bound her ankles and neck, that improvised breathing tube was replaced with more reliable plasticine sedation mask. The bodysuit was cut away and her body was garbed in a thin medical gown.

 

Then began their real work.

 

Clearly, the body of the former Grandmaster had been placed in a type of metabolic stasis by the unusual nature of her imprisonment--it was the only plausible explanation describing how she had managed to survive years of isolation. Now, however, it was gradually wasting to death under starvation and dehydration. In yet another operation, a team of sterile-suited surgeons made a tiny incision in her abdomen for the placement of a simple, but reliable feeding tube that would deliver a nutrient slurry directly into her stomach. No longer faced with the imminent demise of the body under their care, CreoVive could finally begin making a return on their investment.

 

Over the next few days, the body of the former Grandmaster was prepared for the extraction of the resource that CreoVive was actually interested in: the nanomachines and implants that the biotechnology firm suspected to permeate her bloodstream and organs. A small tracking bug was implanted directly over her right femoral artery, a location where it would be nearly impossible to remove without the services of a trained surgeon--at least, not without putting her life in imminent peril.

 

Catheters went into various veins and arteries about her body. The harvested blood was fed into machines that isolated various components of the whole blood--platelets, plasma, various types of circulating cells--and some more exotic materials that were suspected to permeate through her body. A few samples were collected for analysis, then the blood was recirculated back. More samples were taken all over the body for examination: tiny pieces of bone, small volumes of marrow, miniscule samples of nerve tissue and cerebrospinal fluid, small slices of skin and muscle, lymphatic fluid, and lastly, a tiny scratch of corneal tissue, followed by a miniscule craniotomy, followed by a scraping of her neocortex for a sample of brain tissue that wasn’t likely to impair her neural functioning. Scans that penetrated throughout her body which identified potential sites of implants: the sutures of her skull, her retinas, a suspicious nodule between her vertebrae, and a curious artificial lining of her cochleae.

 

As it so happened, the woman’s body was thoroughly permeated with implants.

 

With the detached excitement that was seen only in scientists and other specialized professionals, the technicians sent their initial report, knowing what the response would be. Although festooned with pages of technical data, a brief summary was prepared in lay terms for the more financially-minded executives of CreoVive.

 

"Our conjectures regarding the origin of some of the subject’s abilities have proven to be correct. The suspect’s corpus has tested positive for the presence of complex nanomachines in a number of samples: whole blood, plasma, bone marrow, and cerebrospinal fluid are all confirmed to have populations of circulating nanomachines. Deep scans of the subject’s head have identified assembled constructs in the sutures of the cranium, the retinae and optic nerves, the cochleae, and a larger construct located between vertebrae L1 and L2. More detailed scans are in progress to identify the exact nature of these constructs, though it is possible that they constitute a communication or recording ensemble.

 

The behavior of the nanomachines appears to simulate the cells in our own bodies. Circulating nanites within the marrow and blood appear to be undifferentiated units of individual or small oligomers of nanomachines. Samples taken from blood decay in a matter of hours at physiological temperatures--it is likely that the machines require a signal from another implant in the subject’s body to remain viable, as only samples placed in stasis remain intact. Thus, we believe that the nanomachines migrate into organ tissue and differentiate and assemble into more complex structures upon reception of a signal from a communication device or another implant; it is possible that this same putative device could send a self-destruct signal to rapidly eliminate the nanomachines from the subject’s entire body.

 

Instructions?"

 

Two days passed before a response. The received directives from their superiors was clear.

 

Harvest all possible tissue while keeping the body of the subject viable. Continue investigation into maintaining the viability of the product.

 

And with those instructions received, the catheters were reattached to the body of the Alderaanian, her head was shaved. Sedatives and nutritional solutions were fed in. Blood and marrow came out. Tiny volumes of a gray slurry were extracted from the fluids before being recirculated into her body. The scans of her body continued to determine the precise architecture and function of the implants in the other regions of the body.

 

Over the days and weeks of being sedated and being cared for by doctors and technicians who viewed her body as a resource to be maintained and exploited, Armiena began to waste away. After all, to these people, she wasn’t a warrior and disciple whose mind and body were kept tuned like a finely-crafted instrument, but as an investment to be kept merely... alive.

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  • 4 weeks later...

As the weeks of the harvest continued, the CreoVive research team settled into a familiar routine in their study and recovery of the implants that the body of Armiena Draygo produced. Scans of the more complex formations in her organs and bones would take place in the morning; routine check-ups on the sedatives and nutritional solutions every few hours; collection and cryogenic freezing of the progenitors by the afternoon, and completion of simulations and reports by the evening. Under armed guard, catheters and clothing were replaced every few days to minimize the risk of infection and losing their subject to careless error. Marrow was only collected once every few days in alternating locations. It was, the researchers told themselves, the most humane way to perform this kind of research on an unwilling subject--she would suffer little for the intrusion, and once the project was completed, the subject could easily be dosed with a short-term amnesiac and returned to any location in the galaxy without anyone being the wiser. After all, encased in that prison, Draygo hadn’t actually seen any of their faces or have any idea where she was.

 

When confronted with such opportunity for technological advancement, they could afford to take some liberties with her sovereignty over her own body. Or so they told themselves.

 

However, their professionalism and self-delusion failed to completely remove the risk of human error.

 

In the depths of a drug-induced night, between shift changes of researchers, the technicians charged with their subjects care made their routine checks, replacing bedding, catheters, clothing; they replaced and refreshed solutions and sedatives. It was all routine, the same routine as always, and it truth rather dull work that nonetheless required unerring attention to detail to ensure the continuous function of the hissing pumps and beeping sensors. However, upon recharging the machines that kept the body of the veteran Jedi in a drug-assisted sleep, one of the masked technicians made a tiny, imperceptible error, momentarily snagging his gown on one of the tubes that fed the anesthetic gas. Cursing to himself, that bumbling technician busily checked all the joints and fastenings in the feed and was eventually satisfied that nothing had been breached by his moment of clumsiness.

 

As it so happened, that tug of the technician’s sleeve had loosened one of the connections in the anesthetic feed and had gone unnoticed despite the due diligence of the attendants. Over the course of a few hours, that imperfection worsened, eventually opening a tiny breach in the feed. The mistake was caught on the next routine check and corrected, meanwhile, that technician sweating bullets when she realized how close all her coworkers had come to having to cope with a vengeful Jedi Master on the rampage in their facility. However, upon checking the logs in her vital signs, there was no indication that their subject had ever come close to breaking out of the drug-assisted slumber. There was a momentary change in her neural activity two hours before the inefficiency in her anesthetic was corrected, but such fluctuations were common even in patients placed in a medical coma--unless a patient was permanently brain-dead, it was impossible to stop a sapient being from dreaming. Besides, she told herself, there had been no changes in Draygo’s blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, or respiration patterns.

 

The technician turned to the gurney that held their subject’s body and lightly placed her fingers on the sterilized, sky-blue sheets. There was no sign of perspiration or anything else to suggest physical activity or a sympathetic pain response. She pursed her lips, considering her training and what her coworkers had been briefed regarding the potential hazards of caring for their subject; Draygo, they had been warned, was a uniquely lethal and savage combatant amongst the Jedi Order. Any close contact with her conscious was likely to result in loss of limb or life… or, if they were truly unfortunate, more sensitive aspects of their anatomy--the former Jedi Grandmaster wasn’t above slashing genitalia, or so they had been told.

 

The technician scowled and took a closer look at Draygo’s face; it was scarred from near misses from blaster fire and shrapnel, somewhat pale and worn from lack of exposure and a subsistence diet consisting solely of a nutrient slurry, but not completely unpretty. Even the fact that the woman had been recently shaved and her scalp was crisscrossed with bacta-infused gauze couldn’t totally detract from some natural gifts. She placed a light touch on her bare forehead to tilt her head back and open her mouth; no evidence of increased salivation, no sign of jaw grinding. The technician peeled back an eyelid to reveal a brilliant emerald eye that stared blankly at the ceiling. There were no salt deposits around the eye to suggest a tearing response, and, shining a light briefly into the opened eye to check for a pupillary reaction, there was nothing to suggest that the momentary breach in anesthesia had awoken their subject. Satisfied, the technician jotted a few remarks on her charts and completed the inspection.

 

Unfortunately, that technician had forgotten that, perhaps unique amongst the Jedi, Armiena Draygo was a master in regulating her body’s functions through the Force. Far beyond merely being able to command her own heart rate and endocrine activity; Draygo, if she pleased, could stimulate the ability of her body to heal itself at a far greater rate than what was normal for a Human of her age. She could modulate her own metabolic processes, will herself into an adrenaline rush, alter her needs for atmospheric oxygen and even compel her own body to a stillness indistinguishable from death. Dulling her sympathetic pain responses was a laughable matter for a master of morichro.

 

For two hours, Armiena Draygo had been perfectly lucid.

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

“Armiena, I need you...” In the fugue of whatever cocktail of drugs that her captors were dosing her with to render her inert and harmless, Armiena Draygo could have sworn that she had heard the voice of her ex-husband. She tried to groan, lift her head and stretch as though awakening from an unexpectedly long catnap, but she found her limbs unexpectedly heavy. Another time; this long-awaited and undoubtedly painful heart-to-heart was going to have to to wait for another time.

 

“Armiena, I need you to wake up right now. You're in danger.” Her eyelids flickered, and the Alderaanian remembered her condition; she had been imprisoned, encased in a prison of imperishable (or so she thought) crystal by Vladimir Faust, then recaptured by an unknown party. Knocked out. Sedated. Probably extracted from the crystal. Her location… unknown, most likely some podunk world in the Deep Rim, away from the jurisdiction of the Galactic Alliance. Their purpose for abducting her was largely irrelevant; Armiena would escape from this indignity and anyone who tried to stand between her and freedom would pay dearly.

 

She had the Force to assist in her escape, and along with some other gifts, that would be enough. Her focus somewhat hampered by the weakening anesthesia, Armiena slowly gathered the Force to her and began to quicken her body’s metabolism of the anesthesia. Over the course of hours, the haze began to fade; she soon became aware of the press of the anesthesia mask over her face…

 

...and the fact that everything hurt. Her scalp was on fire. Her arms and legs smarted in a dozen places from being jabbed with syringes and catheters and Force-only knew what else. Something in her lower back was in agony, sending thrumming waves of agony across her spine with every heartbeat. But that was nothing compared to her hips and thighs; a deep, dull ache, gnawing deep in her bones, tore constantly into her flesh. It was all that Draygo could manage to not gasp on shock from the pain.

 

Armiena didn't dare open her eyes to take stock of what depravities these people had inflicted on her body. Undoubtedly she was being monitored for any sign of awakening from the anesthesia. Nevertheless, the Alderaanian felt her pulse begin to quicken, her breath turn shallow, sweat beginning to bead on her skin. If she allowed it, these sympathetic pain responses would betray her and her captors would be forced to relocate her… or worse. The former Jedi turned her efforts to quieting her body's thrumming nerves, to dissipating the tearing pain and suppressing her unconscious reactions. Gradually, her heartbeat slowed and the clammy sensation faded.

 

This wasn't likely to be a scenario that Armiena could fight through with her butt hanging out of a medical gown. She would need help from the Jedi, the Galactic Alliance, her mother’s friends: anyone who suspected her continued survival. For that, she needed time: enough to send a message, or for them to track her down and bring down the hammer on these scum.

 

With her eyes closed, Armiena swept her pupils along the rim of her sight. There was no response from any of her implants. Communications were gone; that was likely the cause of the burning over her shaved skull. Her Galactic Positioning System was down--with that out of commission, it would be impossible to determine what planet she was being held on without escaping from this facility. Her data storage was either malfunctioning or completely non-existent, which explained the throbbing in her lower back. The stocks of nascent progenitors in her bloodstream and marrow were almost completely depleted. Although… it was certain that these butchers had removed the interface lenses that Armiena wore on her eyes and any of her few intact implants would be inoperable and useless. That was a significant design flaw that would have to be corrected in the next iteration of the firmware, she decided.

 

At least these demagols hasn't harvested her retinal and cochlear implants. Armiena could still hear the gasps of working valves and beeps of whatever sensors she’d been connected to, and she could still perceive the brightness of an overhead light through her lidded eyes. Apparently, they'd deemed it inhumane to remove her eyes and inner ear organs to harvest those implant, and render her both blind and deaf.

 

It was an interesting definition of humane.

 

Only one tool was still available to her. Even if these bodysnatchers had succeeded in procuring enough anesthetics to keep her unconscious for weeks on end, they hadn't managed to maintain the presence of an ysalamir. That lack of preparation would ultimately prove to be their undoing. Armiena sank into her own Force-presence, keeping her breath steady despite the growing pain as she shifted her efforts from suppressing her reactions to the surgical wounds. The veteran Jedi focused wholly on a simple phrase, a proverbial message in a bottle that would hopefully be detected by anyone that she was bonded to: her mother, her son, perhaps even Aryian.

 

I need help. I need help. I need help. Periodically, she thought of what these butchers had done to her body--surgeries, injections--but there was no telling whether anything but the most abstract details would be understood by whoever received her message.

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  • 3 months later...

The news of a supposed terrorist attack on the corporate headquarters spread like wildfire in the CreoVive research facility on Iridonia, as well as a great deal of speculation concerning the parties responsible for the raid. The usual suspects were all proposed: neo-luddites who foolishly believed that the humanoid body was a sacred form, corporate raiders from a rival firm who were trying to destroy their research and gain a competitive edge, even Sith who might have found their progress in cybernetics useful--although that last option seemed rather fanciful, given that the Sith Order seemed to be flush in liquid assets at the moment. Then directives from corporate leadership came from Coruscant and laid to rest all speculation, even if they supplied few answers:

 

After recent events on Coruscant, we have ascertained that the safest course of action will be to transfer the subject. Prepare the subject for immediate transfer to the Kaalakiota Research Campus on Sullust. Transfer all data concerning the subject to the Viziam Skyhook, then all devices that may have been used to store data concerning your research. An escort will be provided from Iridonia to Sullust.

 

Few answers indeed, but the directive to transfer the entirety of their work to Sullust suggested that the most likely motivation was corporate espionage. The next day consisted of frantic activity to transfer Draygo’s body to a repulsorlift stretcher and to transmit exabytes of data to their facility on the volcanic world--and for their techies to tear their hair out in their attempts to ensure that their compression algorithms didn’t destroy any files. Eventually, however, the transfer was completed and a squadron of starfighters arrived to escort their freighter, and the repulsorlift stretcher was hauled out towards the hangar…

 

Unfortunately for them, a freak mechanical fault caused the feed of anaesthesia to not pump as much gas to their ward as was reported on the displays of the hissing respirators…

 

____

 

Armiena Draygo felt a slight bump on the back of her head as her body was gently lifted from one set of sterile sheets to another. Or so the medtechs thought; her body was so overstressed from months of being pumped full of hormones and having blood and marrow harvested that even the gentlest touch was causing her to bruise. She kept her eyes closed, carefully controlling her breath and heartbeat as the Force filtered the remnants of whatever knockout drug these butchers had been pumping her full of from her system. She heard muffled conversations around her, the whisper of sterilized slippers and heavy boots pounding away at a steel deck, the familiar rattle of firearms being hefted, but wasn’t quite able to make out words. Armiena wondered for a moment if these creatures had removed her cochlear implants and damaged her hearing in the process.

 

Occasionally, the glare of overhead lights filtered through her eyelids. After a few minutes, she still wasn’t able to make out anything that being spoken by her escort, but the scent of nervous sweat permeated the air and several of her captors were practically radiating their unease through the Force. These creatures were terrified of her.

 

Eventually, Armiena made out the unmistakable whine of repulsorlifts being warmed up and the hum of sublight engines being tested. She was near a hangar, and a vessel of some type--most likely a shuttle or freighter, judging from the pitch of the sublights--was being prepared for launch, nearly having completed its preflight checklists. Something had frightened her captors, and they were transferring their ward to an alternate facility. If someone from the outside galaxy was searching for her, being moved to a secondary location would be disastrous. There was no telling when anyone would find her if she was relocated.

 

“Don’t let them move you.” She heard her ex-husband warn her.

 

“I won’t.” The Alderaanian croaked through dehydrated lips. Emerald eyes, flecked with sparks of brown and yellow, cracked open, and she was appalled to find that she couldn’t see anything--only shades of light and vague, nondescript blurs of color.

 

Panic, visceral terror exploded around her as her escort, cursing in fright, realized that their subject was conscious, coherent, and undoubtedly screaming for vengeance. Two guards taking lead at the foot of the repulsorlift stretcher whirled around and brought the barrels of their carbines to bear on their ward. The two at the head were slightly quicker, undoing the safeties on their weapons and raising their weapons in a half-second. Armiena reached for the Force and found her oldest and most faithful ally begging to be at her disposal, to be wielded and to destroy the atrocities that these creatures had visited upon her life.

 

Its Master clenched her fist, and the Force roared.

 

The two guards behind her were suddenly knocked unconscious when an invisible, yet titanic hand seized the sides of their plastoid helmets and threw their bodies into each other, their heads colliding with a painful crack. Both swooned and were either stunned or unconscious, but not before one of them fired off a few panicked, unaimed stun bolts into the wall of the corridor. Armiena rolled--with more effort than she would have liked--to the other side of the stretcher and fell to the floor in a jumble of scattered machines and tubing, agony coursing up her side as she landed. The first two shots from the vanguard went wild, splashing into the sterile bedding of the stretcher--those landing harmlessly with a splash of azure light.

 

Armiena seized the carbine of the guard to her right with the Force and attempted to jerk it away, but either the corporate peon had a magnetic gauntlet that secured the weapon to his hands, or his grip was simply too strong. Regardless, instead of simply wresting control of the blaster and thrashing his squadmate across the jaw with it, the entire body of the guard followed the weapon and both went spinning into his fellow sentry. Both went down in a tangle of limbs, but not before one of them accidentally discharged their weapon into the other, stunning both of the corporate minions in a single burst of stun fire.

 

As for the rest of the escort, Armiena only heard incoherent screams and whimpers in various tongues as they fled, dropping pieces of equipment and hyposprays behind them.

 

She tried to rise to her feet, but her unused, frigid limbs buckled when the former Jedi put any weight on her legs. A series of tubes hooked up to catheters in her arms, legs, and hips dragged painfully at every movement. Cursing, Armiena seized the feet of one of the two fallen guards through the Force and dragged the mercenary towards her. Crawling over his inert form, the crippled Alderaanian began to grope blindly for anything useful. The guard began whimpering something incoherent, his lips and tongue not able to make out anything more than gasps for mercy.

 

“Oh, go die in a fire. I said, shut up or I will kill you.” She hissed out as she patted him down. He fell mercifully silent as Armiena continued her search. The blaster was tempting, but she doubted her marksmanship even with the help of the Force in her half-blinded state. Spare ammunition, spot-luma, comlink--that Armiena seized--a couple of ration bars, a vibroblade on a shoulder holster--clearly, this mercenary thought of himself as some sort of elite war machine, but this weapon found a more useful home in her hands. The boots were far too large for her, and the former Jedi doubted that she would even be able to lace them up properly.

 

Shouts began to approach from behind and in front of her--a security detail, undoubtedly, had been summoned to subdue her. Armiena could recognize the pitch and tempo of a rushing security response even half-deafened. An order to do… something was bellowed, probably a shout to remain perfectly still or place her hands at the top of her head or something similar. She remained perfectly still. With a few hundred kilos of medical equipment dragging from her limbs and hips, she doubted her ability to move with any alacrity. Instead of an enraged Jedi captive flinging her body at the security response, they found a repulsorlift stretcher spinning through the air and a few hundred kilos of medical sensors and various medicinal probes flying at them.

 

The Force-driven barrage was effective, but not without cost to her. Even as the assault team collapsed with concussions or sank to the ground with broken ribs, the cords and tubing from several of the sensors tore free from Armiena’s body, blood and other bodily fluids leaking from the catheters in her limbs. Crying out with pain, she doubled over, not sure which part of her body was in the most dire need for cradling.

 

Then she ran. Barefooted, bruised, tubing trailing behind her feet and with her butt hanging out of a sterilized hospital gown, she ran. Armiena couldn’t make much out of her surroundings beyond the vague outlines of the corridor and the fallen bodies of the unconscious security detail, but she could clearly hear the roar of the sublight engines in the hangar ahead of her. The tile of the medical facility gave way to the reinforced steel of deck plating under her bare feet, and Armiena doubled her pace, the Force fueling her unsteady legs as she sprinted towards a vaguely saucer-shaped freighter--probably something Corellian. She vaguely made out the hiss of a boarding ramp’s hydraulics engaging, no doubt its pilot attempting to lock her out of his ship--Armiena reached out with the Force and wrenched the boarding ramp open, metal joints screaming against the abuse. Her feet found the thin metal of the boarding ramp.

 

The veteran Jedi gritted her teeth in a thin-lipped smile. From here, she would easily be able to access the cockpit and overpower the pilot, force him to take the ship to Borleias or Gala. Assuming that she didn’t die of sepsis or blood loss, she would be able to make contact with the Jedi Order and--

 

--none of that would happen, however. Halfway up the boarding ramp, Armiena’s legs lost all feeling and simply stopped working, pitching the Alderaanian to the deckplates. Falling clumsily to the ground, her head collided with a seam in the boarding ramp. Darkness immediately overcame her, and she lay at the top of the boarding ramp, blood pooling around a gash in the side of her forehead.

 

A few minutes later, another security detail happened upon her unconscious body, though they cautiously waited before risking close quarters combat with a presumably wrathful Jedi Master. After confirming that she wasn’t an immediate threat, a pair of medics knelt beside her body to ensure that their subject wouldn’t die of an infection or something similarly foolish.

 

At the end of the day, a response was sent to their corporate masters.

 

Subject attempted escape and wounded several guards. Neural suppressors were engaged and subject was incapacitated, sustaining minor injuries. Will require a larger escort for the transfer.

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Only a few seconds after the Journeyman popped out of hyperspace and began its scan of the system's sunlight traffic, Misal began to suspect that this mission was about to go horribly wrong. The usual smattering of freight traffic was traveling to and from Iridonia, with a eclectic mix of tramp freighters, shuttles, and heavy freight liners loosely filling the spacelines of the Mid-Rim planet. The volume of the traffic wasn’t what concerned the Miraluka and her fireteam, however, but rather the unexpected presence of military vessels idling in orbit. A pair of corvettes were present in orbit, including the ubiquitous CR90 and an unidentifiable Ugly with a heavily-armored prow that gave the frigate a resemblance to one of its ocean-bound ancestors from primeval times.

 

Stationed in the copilot’s seat at Misal’s side, her Corellian copilot growled as he pored over the most recent intercepts from the skyhook on Coruscant. “They’ve… increased the escort. Draygo really spooked them. They called in some of their private military contacts--CR90 Corvette Thundershrike and a supporting squadron of Z-95 Headhunters. Transport… GR-75 Medium Transport Maturin.” Renn Hamis ran his hand over the surface of three days of stubble on his cheeks.

 

“Prepare your fireteam, Mister Hamis. EVA suits, everything. We may only have a few minutes to act.” Misal murmured into the glow of the planet beneath them, a thoughtful tone in her voice. So this was it, the culmination of four years of searching; of probing the tremendous void of extrastellar space for a drifting hulk that might have been destroyed or salvaged; of poring over transcripts of intercepted messages and faint murmurs in the Force; of sudden, chaotic outbursts of violence and mayhem, when Misal was half-convinced that she or one of her students was certainly about to perish to a Sith or a soldier with a less storied background; and of interrogations, torture, and murder.

 

Misal took one last opportunity to scan the atlas of Iridonia to confirm the location of the CreoVive research facility. That was simply last-minute nervousness, but the Miraluka’s stomach dropped again upon viewing the topographical charts of the region. There was a deep sandstone canyon that had been carved into the badlands by billions of years of wind and water erosion, and more than a little corrosion from the planet’s pockets of acidified water. If Misal had her choice, she would have fortified the entire structure by excavating directly into the canyon wall and building hangars and turret emplacements into the reinforced stone. Given a week and support, the Miraluka was confident that she and her men would have been able to defeat the facility… but they had only a few hours, at most. And with that corvette holding a geosynchronous position over the entire region…

 

Misal gently nudged the throttle of the shuttle forward, sending the Journeyman into a gradual, civilian-like descent towards Iridonia. Behind her, she heard the clanking of armored boots against deck plating. The Miraluka nodded her head downward and allowed the black cloth of her veil to slip off of her face and onto the the controls.

 

“You have the controls.” She murmured to her copilot as she retreated into the crew quarters of the shuttle. It was her time to suit up.

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With a flicker of pseudomotion, a small Jedi Ace fighter appeared out of hyperspace over the red world of Iridonia. In the cockpit, Darex cricked his neck and attempted to stretch within the small confines of the fighter, loosening up his tight muscles. He really needed to go to the bathroom. Unfortunately, that would likely have to wait. His fingers closed over the controls of the ship, and he began his approach towards the planet. As he did so, he sent out a comm ping, searching along the same frequency he had been contacted on--a private channel encrypted with Armiena's old encryption pattern. If he got a response, he'd link Misal into a new channel he had created only last week as part of the new fleet he was building. That would guarantee they could speak and coordinate without anyone listening in.

 

He also kept his scanners active for any signs of Xae. Mandalore wasn't far from Iridonia, and he wouldn't be surprised if she had beat him here.

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Grand Master of the Jedi Order

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Darex's scan turned up a Lambda-class shuttle with a Sith registration transponder who appeared to be making for the same coordinates that he was.

 

Xae hadn't left the Mandalorian world with much fanfare, not that she'd expected to. The family connections she'd recently discovered were still slightly foreign to her, despite meeting the two men face to face. She hoped her father and brother could find some sort of common ground rather than Tros continuing to cling to his hatred for their father. Both now had her contact information, and it looked like Tros was finding purpose again after so much loss.

 

"Good to see you again Grandmaster," Xae-Lin transmitted as soon as she'd checked out the fighter. "I hadn't expected to receive your comm so soon after my conversation with Jaina. She mentioned that I should also fill you in on my involvement on Onderon. Later though. Let's go get Master Drago."

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Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.

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An encrypted comm arrives for Misal Draygo.

 

 

Misal,

 

I can't readily come in person, or I would. Darex Trevelian and Xae-Lin Ardel, both Jedi Masters and trusted friends, are en route to Iridonia to assist with her extraction. If anything should sour, alert me immediately and I will head them off at the CreoVive facility on Sullust.

 

May the Force be with you.

 

Jaina

 

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...why are the pretty ones always the most hazardous to your health?

May the Forth therve you well...

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For the next few minutes, Misal had been scrambling to don her armor with the assistance of three of her students in the cabin of the Journeyman. Although the grey plate offered a reasonable degree of protection against blaster fire and its active camouflage was invaluable, the infiltration suit was not exactly quick to don, especially when one’s knees and back tended to complain at vigorous movement. While the Miraluka twisted her body to allow the pauldrons and breastplate to clasp over her robes, the voice of her fireteam’s leader rang out over the shuttle’s PA system.

 

“Space-mom, two ships so far. A Jedi Ace--spast, Trevelian showed up--and another Lambda. No sign of the Wolf Spiders. We’re being hailed.”

 

“No time left. Brief them!” Misal called out as the helmet slammed down over her head and a momentary hiss whispered in her ears to test the suit’s environmental control systems. A hand patted affectionately between her shoulder blades.

 

If either Ardel or Trevelian had been present at the Battle of Coruscant several years ago, when the the triumph of the Rebellion had allowed the first establishment of a Jedi Temple on the ecumenopolis, they might have recognized the voice of Renn Hamis as the Lambda’s copilot switched to the encrypted Jedi frequency. However, it was more likely that his was yet another voice lost in the madness of space battle. In his baritone rumble, amplified somewhat by the enclosure of a helmet-based comlink, he explained carefully that their intelligence was outdated. Both ship’s received an updated tactical package regarding conditions on the ground and the bolstered escort.

 

“From what we know, Draygo is being transferred from a lab built into the walls of this ravine formation.” The topographical maps indicated a ravine that would have been a wind-swept natural wonder of many planets, but with Iridonia’s harsh geology, it was just yet another product of the tortuous forces that wrought the planet. “Escort consists of twelve Z-95 Headhunters and that CR90 Corvette, the Thundershrike. Transfer vessel is a GR-75 Medium Transport--the Maturin. It’s not showing up on our sensors, so I’m thinking that it’s probably in a hangar somewhere and loading up." His voice tightened at the thought of the veteran Jedi being treated like chattel. "Conditions on the ground are… tolerable.

 

Tolerable was a rather optimistic estimation. As Trevelian and Ardel would find in their starcraft's sensor readings, the facility was situated on the hemisphere of Iridonia that was currently in the middle of an unusually harsh winter and the badlands were experiencing something of a cold snap. What the Corellian had just summarized as tolerable was high winds with substantial gusts, subfreezing temperatures, and isolated pockets of snow. At least there were still several hours of meagre daylight remaining before the night came and plunged the entire region into unsurvivable frigidity.

 

Having completed her armor check, Misal Draygo returned to the cockpit and seized control of the comm unit. “If you can keep those fighters and that corvette off of us, my team can handle things on the ground.”

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"Copy that," Darex replied, relieved to hear from both Xae and Misal's people. He drew near the Lambda-class shuttle, then direct-commed Xae. "Switch to channel 8475.2, encryption Besh-5."

 

Once they were set up on a private tactical channel, he set both that one and Misal's team one to play though his cockpit. "Coordinates received," he told the ground team after a moment. "Good luck down there. May the Force be with you."

 

He kicked in his sublights and sent his fighter down towards the planet. "That bucket of bolts have any weapons on it?" he asked Xae. "We'd better run a screen fairly close to the extraction shuttle. In the meantime, maybe we can cause a distraction." If the CreoVive people kept their attention on the two Jedi in space, perhaps they'd miss Misal's team. Darex knew Misal worked best in the shadows, slipping in and out, although he wasn't exactly sure the details of her plan.

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At Darex’s order, Xae flipped over to the private tactical channel. “Weapons. Right,” she said hesitantly as her gaze skimmed over the vast array of buttons in front of her. “Probably? I kind of borrowed this ship from a Sith Temple and they aren’t known for their peaceful habits.”

 

Should have grabbed a damn droid while I was at it, Xae thought as she finally located the switch she hoped would power up the weapons. Nothing happened. “This is why I never flew much in the war,” she grumbled and tried another one.

 

<<Hail unidentified ships. This is a restricted flight zone. You will identify yourselves and remain where you are or we will fire. >>

 

Well, this is just great, Xae thought, looking for the source of the transmission on her scanners, very much reminded of why she hated space travel. Between her and Darex and the dustball planet of Iridonia was a Corvette that was making way for their position.

 

Long-forgotten echoes of her memories with Joreel surfaced. They'd owned a ship like the one on her scanner. It had been their home during the war - their refuge and place where their love had grown.

 

Why does his damn ghost keep popping up all of a sudden? Xae wondered, though remembering what he'd shown her of the Cabur's controls gave her an idea of what to look for in the shuttle she was flying.

 

She flipped another switch and a new section of the panel lit up. “I’ve got weapons!” she responded back to Darex’s comm. “I’m guessing now would be a good time to let you know I’ve never actually flown in combat. Or flown much at all. But we’ve got the Force on our side and that will have to be enough.”

 

To the Corvette, she transmitted, "Sure, if you think getting into a fight between a Jedi fighter and a Sith Shuttle is a good idea, then be my guest. You keep to your job and we'll keep to ours."

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Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.

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A set of indicators lit up on the Journeyman’s control boards, alerting its crew to the fact that the shuttle was being scanned by the CR90 Corvette Thundershrike. Misal’s co-pilot glanced at her Miraluka mentor and placed a finger directly over the controls to the shuttle’s comm systems. Sure enough, an alert chimed a moment later to indicate that the Lambda-class shuttle was being hailed by the larger vessel. The Corellian endured five seconds of the chiming, then keyed a switch to receive the transmission. Misal remained silent, allowing her copilot to handle the matter--her kind was somewhat uncommon in the galaxy.

 

“Shuttle Cassandra, you are entering restricted airspace. Divert immediately or we will be forced to fire upon your vessel.” So their forged transponder had held up and their ersatz identity hadn’t been penetrated.

 

Misal’s hands clenched tightly around the control stick and she fought the urge to take a sharp intake of breath. The shuttle’s sensors had just detected the ignition of the sublight engines of a large vessel on the planetary surface. The Journeyman hadn’t yet detected the transponder of the transport, but the Miraluka knew without confirmation from technological sources that her daughter was down there. She tried to estimate the amount of time that it might take for a GR75-medium transport from taking wing to calculating its jump into hyperspace--not long enough.

 

The Miraluka flinched when a hand clenched around her shoulder.

 

“CR90 Corvette Thundershrike, can’t comply.” Her copilot responded in a practiced drawl. “We have orders to try and take the crew of that Lambda alive. If you can think of a way to transport a Sith on a starfighter, I’d be glad to hear it.”

 

“Captain--”

 

“We’ll play nice with your boys. The pilot in that fighter is one of the best.” With that, Renn Hamis cut the transmission and glanced over at his mentor with his eyebrows raised, as though asking whether she thought that they bought the ruse. Misal nudged the control stick downwards and drove the throttle forwards, sending their shuttle into a course that would intercept Ardel’s misappropriated shuttle. Within minutes, they would enter Iridonia’s atmosphere, and her copilot would be needed with his fireteam.

 

Another blip appeared on the Journeyman’s sensor boards. The GR-75 Medium Transport Maturin, having just launched from its cliffside hangar, had just been detected and was making all possible speed for Iridonia’s exosphere… as were a dozen Z95-Headhunters. At the same time, the Thundershrike was descending to unite with its charge.

 

“Mr. Hamis, good luck.” Misal’s voice was uncharacteristically high-pitched. She keyed the comm system for the encrypted Jedi frequency. “My team is ready. If you can knock down that transport’s shields, we can breach and get my daughter out.”

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Knocking out shields is an Ace's specialty, Darex thought as Misal's request came through. His lips twitched in satisfaction and the never-ending surprise he always felt at how the Force worked everything together. Xae's lack of flying ability would be troublesome unless they could come to a quick solution. An idea sprang to his mind, and he reached for Xae through the Force. After she responded, he opened a battle meld. The Force would flow between the Jedi in the system, linking their reactions and allowing them to work together in a way that would impress even the most veteran pair of wingmates. Or at least he hoped it would. It was easier to do if the Jedi knew each other well, but despite Darex not having had many interactions with Xae, he knew it would still be beneficial. He even found he got a sense of Misal, lurking around the metaphorical edges of the meld.

 

Xae was playing the Sith, and Misal's team seemed to be siding with Darex. So he held nothing back as he triggered a burst of speed, heading directly for Xae's shuttle. He fired, timing his shots so that the ion cannons missed, driving the shuttle closer to the surface and towards the CreoVive ships. He ignored the increasingly frantic pinging on his comm as the company ships tried to hail him. Xae was maneuvering the shuttle as if it were a wild bantha. He wasn't sure just how much of that was deliberate and how much was her inexperience flying, but it didn't matter. Through the Force, he could predict where the shuttle would move next. Suddenly, the Lambda and the GR-75 formed a perfect line, and Darex took the shot. Xae dodged at the last moment, and the ion fire spattered on the transport's shields. He flipped his comm on a broad-spectrum channel. "Oops," he commed. "Sorry about that." He closed the channel and grinned. "Now let's keep it up and get those shields down."

 

Hold on, Armiena. Hold on.

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It was an odd thing to willingly open your mind to another person, even if they were trusted to use the ability for keeping you from pulling the wrong maneuver and getting yourself killed rather than exploring the reaches of your mind. However, Darex Trevelian was a Jedi Master - The Grandmaster no less - so if she wasn’t going to trust him, then she likely had no business in the Jedi Order.

 

She allowed the Force to flow between her and Darex and to allow its guidance and Darex’s experience behind the yolk of a ship guide her actions and movements. It wasn’t elegant flying. It didn’t have to be. It had to be functional and serve their ends well enough.

 

As the burst from Darex’s ion cannon bypassed her ship and headed for the GR-75, she acknowledged Darex’s command and opened fire on the ascending GR-75 - because that’s what a Sith would do, right?

 

The GR-75’s shields popped and sparked with every shot as she threw all her little Lambda had at it.

 

Xae-lin had a little Lambda, little Lambda, little Lambda

Xae-lin had a little Lambda, and it goes pew pew pew...

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Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.

PM Mirdala if you'd like a timely response.

Leave anonymous IC feedback here.

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