Sorel Crieff
Ready are you? What know you of ready?
A haze of smoke hung in the air, the residual sign of the pre-landing bombardment of the city below. The city had been damaged but it was not yet lost. And signal fires dotted its surface, rallying points for the defenders to congregate to turn back any vestiges of an invasion force.
Sorel had planned a visit to a nearby planet with her Padawan. A humanitarian mission. Relatively straightforward but typical of the work they did a large proportion of the time. She was not a believer in setting false promises. The life of a Jedi included a lot of relatively humdrum actions. Escorting politicians or medical shipments, being a calm voice at a negotiating table, researching, exploring - these were all more likely activities than engaging Sith or bringing crime lords to justice.
But a distress call had been issued - and she was the closest Jedi. Who was bombarding and why wasn’t clear. But the planet’s government was an ally of the Silver Order, and so she was requested to assist. And the mention that dark-siders were involved meant a Jedi presence was required.
Their shuttle roared low over the scorched landscape. Below them, buildings and bodies smouldered in the ruins of the town. Around them, local ships prowled the sky, flying escort.
The presence of a dark-sided Force user bumped up against her Force sensitivity, a sudden flare in her perception. She looked down and out the viewport. She saw nothing but charred ruins, buildings reduced to rubble and burnt out vehicles. She spoke into the comlink she wore.
“Please turn us around.”
“Around?” asked the pilot.
“Come about, cut speed to one quarter, and reduce altitude by one hundred metres.”
As the shuttle wheeled around and slowed, Sorel overrode the safeties and lowered the landing ramp. Wind whipped into the cabin, carrying the smell of a charred town, a town someone had intended to kill, but instead had only wounded.
She closed her eyes and sank into the Force. The burned-out buildings below stuck out of the scorched earth like rotted teeth, crooked and black.
“Slower,” she said to the pilot.
She reached out through the Force, probing for the presence she had felt.
At first there was nothing, and she wondered if she had been mistaken, or if the dark-sider had perceived her and suppressed his power. But then...
There.
She felt it clearly now. She shed her cloak and indicated her Padawan should follow suit. Then she stepped to the edge of the landing ramp. The wind pulled at them but the Force anchored them in place. She pinched her comlink again.
“Hover above the ruins until we return.”
Sorel deactivated the comlink and leapt off the ramp into the open air. She ignited her sabers as the ground rushed up to meet them. Using the Force to cushion the impact, she hit the ground in a crouch.
They stood in the centre of a street pockmarked with craters and littered with broken glass and overturned speeders. A vehicle burned ten meters from them, vomiting gouts of black smoke into the sky. Somewhere, a wind bell chimed furiously in the gusts.
Behind them, she heard the snap-hiss of an activating lightsaber, then another.
[member="Rukya Rexus"]
