Private Deconstruction

[Colette]

There had been a time before when Colette had found herself in a state like this. When she had worked with corkboards and pins to sort information. Printed pictures and papers had lined the walls back then with a taut red string between each clue to sort trails and triangulations from assumption and fact.

Once it had been a problematic endeavour to find a white-haired Queen. Now it was a tool for balance, or so she told herself.

This was a part of herself that she refused to let die. The part of her that still craved the hunt, to stalk something and then execute a well-timed plan. The difference being that this time it wasn’t to kill a beast as much as it was to simply find a person. It brought with it a joy that she couldn’t put into words, as if the mere act of dipping her toe in it brought forth the person she truly wished to be once again. The Colette that was hidden underneath the many layers of politics and duty that had piled upon her shoulders.

She glanced around her rather bare bedroom with an inquisitive glare at the wall. The little holo-projector had come online and with it so too had the files of people of interest begun to spread across her living space. Rik Perris, Lorn Reingard, Briana Sal-Soren, Romi Jade, and finally Acier Moonbound. She had their dossiers, but beyond that it was like starting from the ground up.

The most sensible question would have been to ask where they were. In reality however she didn’t care to know, at least not for now. The threat to ‘see’ Acier had been a real one, and out of all the people involved he was the one she had the most doubts about. Not because she doubted that he was earnest in his willingness to help his former ‘master’ but because he had also seemed equally earnest about serving his sentence for crimes committed against the Republic.

That made him the person she needed to find first, to see if his head had come undone or if it simply needed a firm smack over the back to straighten itself out.

“I trust you.”

The footage played in the background. Colette’s eyes closed, her arm raised towards the footage. A disheartened grimace spread across her features, and with a neatly synchronized swipe of her finger the sound of a lightsaber cutting through the cell’s forcefield panel echoed in her small room.

“I need~” Lorn’s murmur faded into an unintelligible mess.

The kid stopped at the precipice but still took the plunge. Footsteps fell at a pace to catch up with Lorn who was already leaving.

“Whatever you~” The voice was too quiet to make out the rest. Colette’s eyes opened. Her head shook for what must have been the seventh time already.

She had made requests for more logs to see if she could tape together some sort of timeline of their escape, but nothing had come of it yet.

That was alright. Every hunt had to start somewhere.

 

[Colette]

Days turned to weeks. The hunt had to take a backseat for politics, but eventually Colette found the time to continue where she had left off. The request for more logs had come up empty citing risks for leaks, which she supposed was fair enough. With the state of the Order as it was it was hard not to blame them.

Colette put her canteen to her lips and took a sip. The caseboard was projected all around her again. Very little had changed except for the addition of a very recent photo of Acier. Admittedly her hunt had failed already, but she supposed that was fine. Xan had worked incredibly fast on establishing contact with the man and his former master, a feat that Colette still had no idea just exactly how she had accomplished.

On the surface that meant the hard part had been done already. What she had expected to be a month of solid legwork to find a trace had instead been distilled into a few weeks of waiting as an accomplished slicer did all of the hard work for her.

Some small piece of her resented that. No tracks to follow, no case built, just a clean delivery of information from a source she had merely stumbled upon by doing something unrelated. The more she thought about it the more she wished not to indulge. It blurred the lines between justice and vindication to an extent she’d never cared for.

Did Colette truly care about Acier or was this about something else? Was it that he escaped prison or was it that he joined something opposite to her? She held no illusion that he would have ended up there either way once his sentence was over, yet why did she need to hear him say it?

Maybe it was her own internal strife. The same thing that kept her anchored to the cause was the fire that had sent Lorn’s away. Ever since that day in the ‘Rest’ it had become her job to legitimize his claims. She understood for as long as she still sat on the council, she was the tumor. For as long as people still suffered and the Jedi remained dormant, she gave people the effigy to burn.

Colette looked at the picture of Lorn and Acier one more time and let out a defeated sigh. For a moment the world felt heavy again as if it would swallow her whole. Any day now she would have to give up the last few traces of who she’d once been. Let the tribal from Ophus V die with the rest of her past and embrace this rigid, political machine that had taken her place.

No.

Her hands dragged across her face to pull away at her skin. She let out a sharp exhale — an indignant huff — before turning the projection off and leaving her dorm room. Today was too good of a day to be weighed down by self-pity again. There was no point in mourning something that hadn’t happened yet.

 

[Colette]

A stylus tapped impatiently against the surface of her makeshift desk as Colette stood hunched over her datapad. She began with a quick swipe at the pad to shift between notes she had made before circling something on a paper bunch next to her.

She was close now, she could feel it. The first few probes into the expansion region had gotten her nothing. Supply runs had come and they had gone. Zero diversions. Hapes had given her much the same, albeit with warnings of unfriendly Mandalorian presences. The teams she had sent to Kastollar before meeting with Aiden had also returned empty.

Just when the whole thing had started to feel like a complete waste of time, something seemed to bite. Quence and Chommel were duds on paper. Flight logs recorded a successful departure from both Naboo and their intended destinations. No deviations. However, the engines told another tale and so did the fuel consumption.

Repeated efforts to send people towards Dagobah, Vero and Rugosa had borne fruit. While each journey's log had wiped their unplanned diversions it still pointed her in the right direction, and the pattern was right there.

Assuming the ships followed the Corellian Run as intended and exited Republic space from Adras as instructed, Dagobah trips used more fuel than trips to Vero. Vero trips used less fuel* than those to Rugosa.

She flattened the projection on her table and drew a triangle between the spots.

It couldn't be either of the systems she triangulated from based on the information she had. She marked them with red. And while she didn't doubt the bravery of the Vanguard, she still doubted they would place their main base of operations at risk of falling under Sith occupation without at least a heads up or chance of relocation, which meant that Seatos and Xagobah would go.

That left something between the three, towards the center. Vero was effectively on the path to the hideout, she knew that much. If it was Bordal, it would have been far more efficient to reach from Dagobah.

That left Sevarcos and D'qar. Potentially Svivren or Aynaboni if she had gotten the triangulation wrong.

A beep on her pad forced her to shift her attention to someone else.

"Oh!" Colette chimed up and sent a response back. Ala wanted to meet. She knew better than to keep her waiting. The holographic projection faded into its base and Colette quickly pocketed it.