Private Free Them

[Helen Lupercal]

Helen strode through the halls of the Jedi temple toward one of the numerous gathering spaces contained therein. She had just been informed that there was an assignment she'd been selected for, and that she was uniquely qualified for this mission in particular. She'd been summoned by a Jedi Master Kargori to be briefed on the assignment, where she would meet the Jedi she would be working with on this task. She didn't know much about this Master Kargori or her soon to be partner Jedi Knight Seo Linn , but she looked forward to meeting them and getting this show on the road.

She'd been cooped up in the temple for far too long, and she needed to get out, stretch her legs and flex her newfound skills. She wasn't one for sitting down and meditating the day away like some of those she'd met here. She was a woman of action, field work, boots on the ground, actually getting things done. That was what she was meant for. And she was now getting the chance to do exactly that.

Helen would approach the door to the room she was told was where she was meant to be briefed, and tapped the panel next to it, opening the door in question with a hiss. Admitting the tall woman into the small room. She'd step in to find Master Kargori already there.

"Ah, Jedi Knight Helen. Good to meet you. Please have a seat, Jedi Knight Seo has yet to arrive, so just make yourself comfortable. We will get started once she's here."

"As you say Master." Helen said easily, taking a seat and leaning back in it. Crossing one leg over her knee and settling in comfortably as she waited.

 

[Seo Linn]

The door hissed open again a few minutes later, and Seo Linn stepped quietly into the briefing room, her presence calm and composed, dressed in practical tan and gold-threaded travel attire rather than formal robes, boots marked faintly with dust from patrol, her veil resting at her collar, and her lightsaber worn openly at her hip.

Her gold eyes swept the room in a single, practiced glance, taking in Master Kargori, Helen, and the layout of the space before she inclined her head respectfully.

"My apologies for the delay, Master," Seo said evenly. "I was finishing a report."

Kargori dismissed it with a brief smile and gestured for her to sit, and Seo moved to the empty chair opposite Helen, settling into it with composed ease before turning her full attention to the other Knight.

"Jedi Knight Helen Lupercal," she said calmly, her tone warm but professional. "It is good to finally meet you. I have heard positive things about your field work, and I am glad we will be working together."

At Kargori's signal, a small holoprojector activated, casting a blue image of a remote system and several marked locations into the air between them.

"We have confirmed reports of a slaver cell operating along this corridor," the Master explained. "They have been targeting isolated settlements and refugee transports and moving captives through unregistered ports."

Seo's posture stiffened almost imperceptibly as she leaned forward, her gaze locking onto the projection with an intensity that had nothing to do with strategy alone. Slaver routes. Unregistered ports. Refugee transports. The language was clinical, but the reality behind it was not. She had lived the other side of those words.

"Do we have confirmed holding sites?" she asked, her voice controlled and level, though there was a sharpened edge beneath it that had not been there before.

"Two possible facilities and a mobile transport," Kargori replied. "We are still verifying numbers."

Seo absorbed that in silence for a beat, calculating distances, response times, likelihood of relocation, and the narrow window between interception and disappearance.

"Then we move quickly," she said at last, her tone calm but decisive. "If they are rotating transports, hesitation will cost lives. Every hour matters, especially if captives are being processed or redistributed."

She straightened slightly, then turned her attention back to Helen, her expression steady and resolute rather than heated.

"This will not be a simple investigation," Seo continued, speaking plainly. "Slavers rarely operate without layered security, false manifests, and hired protection, and once they realize they are being tracked, they will not hesitate to relocate or eliminate evidence."

Her gold eyes met Helen's directly.

"There will be confrontation," she said. "There will be risk. And there will be people who have already been stripped of choice and dignity, depending on us to restore both."

A quiet breath passed through her before she finished.

"I intend to bring them home," she said, not as a boast, but as a promise.

Helen Lupercal