The Same River Twice

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Captain Rekali-[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is as follows. Take passage on a Clan-owned Connestoga-class bulk freighter to the planet Trevel’ka at the edge of the Unknown Regions, near several Sith worlds. The planet’s file is attached. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The ship has been outfitted for mass transit and life support. Your service escort will be composed of six armed freighters and six Tempus Ardet-class bulk freighters for loading purposes. Further support is available in an emergency. The flotilla will be under the command of Oren Beorn; he has his orders. Your mission is to leave the flotilla and proceed to a set of coordinates where we believe the One Sith may be building another one of their temples. Once the flotilla has completed its mission, you are tasked with evaluating the location and engaging as you see fit.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Bring the new filters from G.E.A.R., Shel’tah’s outfit, or wear your armour: air quality will be your primary obstacle. Avoid drawing negative attention to yourself if possible, until the flotilla has finished its work.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Love, Grandpa[/SIZE]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=14.6667px]He’d gone formal with the message, likely for the contrast with his signature. Alec found herself grinning as she cleared the slate. Humor wasn’t characteristic of Ember Rekali; it never had been. For a man with a litany of losses and a thousand reasons for pain, though, he was making a valiant if quiet attempt. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]She skimmed the attached file. Trevel’ka. Rach had gone there, spent time there during his tenure as a pilot and mission commander for Velok. Ashin Varanin had spent at least two exiles there, in hiding. Strange local Force tradition, planetwide slum, immense population, deplorable conditions. The Republic had made Trevel’ka its cause celebre about a decade back and then forgotten about the planet entirely, once the requisite amount of food and clothing had been dropped off. Local industries had been unable to compete, and employment rates had crawled ever closer to a hundred percent. A hellhole, its innumerable spaceports doing a constant business in flesh, people accepting a lifetime of transit indenture in exchange for passage to literally anywhere else. And for all the avarice of the traffickers, there were always more. Trevel’ka had something like half a trillion people -- nobody knew for sure. Lifeform scanners and census experts threw up their metaphorical and literal hands. The place generated enough despair to power a Sith temple in a serious way. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Alec tapped the slate in her palm. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Field Marshal Aliit’buir Rekali-[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]I’m on it.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Love, Alec[/SIZE]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=14.6667px]She could almost see the Connestoga with the naked eye from here, even through the layers of smog. The helmet of her Mandalorian armour filtered her air and magnified vision. She caught a glimpse of the supertransport’s outline, the two-kilometre orbital box and its back-and-forth flow of silver specks. Tempus Ardets, themselves big ships, reduced to remoras in contrast with a whale. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Resetting the magnification to 1.0x, she wrapped herself tighter in the battered, colorless cloak and pulled down its hood until only her mask’s faceplate was visible. Winds carried swirling grit and dense fumes. Trevel’ka was ecologically wrecked in every possible way. Drought, pollution, everything. People lived off bedjies and trash and occasional aid shipments -- much more occasional since the One Sith took Coruscant seven years back. Infant mortality rates couldn’t be measured. Refugee agencies had no mandate for this place: everyone on Trevel’ka had been born here, and qualified as an economic migrant. Trevel’ka citizenship wouldn’t get you in the door anywhere but Hutt space -- and even then you needed ‘sponsorship’. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Then again, the Clan’s plan might not be much better. These people had severe medical needs and no skills relevant to colony work. There would be a lot of death, no matter how many medical droids her grandfather provided. Death and misery. The Clan would take the blame for not taking enough or for taking too many. They’d get accused of importing the needy for worthless, dangerous jobs, and those accusations would be right. Of course, the Clan’s own people took those same worthless, dangerous jobs too. That was the nature of colonizing the virgin worlds of the Hard Roil. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]She grimaced. There was more to it, more ethical complexities, more points and counterpoints, but in the end she had one job and that job was not the recruitment of desperate colonists from Trevel’ka. That job was one for which she felt much more suitable. It involved ostrine-plated brass knuckles and a tri-barreled shotgun.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The Clan transport behind her opened its doors in earnest, and the waiting host streamed into the place that her swoop had just vacated. Whole families with their lives on their backs, waiting for a berth, any berth, no questions asked, any obligation accepted. Even if only one percent of Trevel’ka was [/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px]that [/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px]desperate -- and that was a low-end estimate, based on the trash-can lights that circled the spaceports at night -- that was still billions of people. Alec and her swoop vanished into the anonymity of infinity. [/SIZE]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Two hours’ high flight put her in a slum like any other slum on Trevel’ka. Broken empty factories, scrap-metal metropoleis, gutters turned to rivers and sewers at the same time. Misery, stagnation, dissonance, depression, anger. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Yes, quite a lot of anger.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Aware that she might not get her swoop back if she parked it, she left it hovering in a bank of thick smog and descended by repulsorpack. She landed heavily on the edge of a crumbling factory and peered out through the murk, re-wrapping her cloak to cover the pack better. Another quick burst put her on the ground, and she slipped through the asymmetric shanty-paths undisturbed. She didn’t belong here, in ways she didn’t feel like examining. All that mattered was that she got from A to B. A couple of toughs came her way and she flashed her beskar’gam, then put them down with her brass knuckles when they didn’t relent. Ostrine chilled and froze what it struck. If she’d laid into them she could have shattered their arms, or their heads. She preferred to save that kind of treatment for Sith.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]From her vantage point, she’d glimpsed a construction site and a perimeter. The latter turned out to be comprised of men and women in breath masks, with black bodysuits and a black-and-red patch on the shoulder or chest. Each wore a sidearm and carried a rifle. Some had lightsabres at their belts. She watched them from a distance, conscious that news of her presence would be carried by at least a couple of locals in search of tangible favour. She had to come this close, though, in order to get a look at the project.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]It was black stone: glossy, veined with green, broken some places and then affixed back together with epoxy or an equivalent. Various blocks held markings and other tells, and didn’t quite line up, making walls that would be a climber’s dream. This was old stone, and not from Trevel’ka, if the AUS UTE speeder trucks coming out of the nearby bulk freighter were any indicator. Imported stone, and those markings looked Sith, though the builders didn’t seem to care which way up those markings went. Force-imbued building materials, then, recycled from a place of significance. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Stonecutters living and droid sheared the blocks to size when necessary, right on site, and the crumbling scraps were re-collected. And here came more cargo: speeder-loads of soil, spread on the cleared ground, treated with wariness. There had been something here, not long ago. A wrecked building -- no, they’d have gone for dominance. A local gang boss’s headquarters, razed to the ground. That was what had probably stood here. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Nowhere was the insignia of the One Sith. That, and only that, prevented Alec from applying some of the Underground’s most useful ammunition to the scene and taking her chances. She turned and moved back through the press of huts, away from the perimeter. After a good distance, she engaged her pack and zipped up into the morass of pollution to her hovering swoop. [/SIZE]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=14.6667px]She commed the Connestoga in orbit. “Oren?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Captain Alec. What’s the word?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“There’s definitely something going up, but I’m not sure who’s taking possession. Uniforms with patches, but customized like paramilitary. Some lightsabres. Colour scheme’s all black. Looks like Dark Side-tainted building materials imported from offworld.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Dark Side private military contractors? Wonders never ceased. Only a matter of time until someone privatized being a Sith. Want me to send someone down to take a look?” One of his Vahla, or witches -- a Forcer.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I think they’re already tipped off, so I’d rather do it quick, aerial buzz. I’ll transmit from my helmet cam, relay it through the swoop’s comm, and send it up to you for a look whenever you or your people have the time.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Sounds good, but don’t get too close. There’s always something new gettin’ invented in the Dark. You have those special shells?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The Underground had -- through various convoluted means -- acquired ammunition that worked especially well against Sithspawn. Alec rarely traveled without it. “And plenty more besides,” she said with a nod he couldn’t see. “I’ll start with an air pass.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Right. I’ve got to run, Alec, but I’ll keep an eye on the feed and have some people keep two.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Got it.” She gunned the swoop and decelerated, skimming over corrugated plastic rooftops. Shouts and blasterfire rose as she passed the perimeter, and the swoop rocked with a jolt. She circled the facility, keeping her helmet and its camera oriented toward the construction project, then did the same to the ship. “You getting this?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Holy Typhojem you’re movin’ quick. All right, we’ve got the footage for analysis. Get out of there before someone-”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Thunder cracked and her world turned white. Lightning, a spear of it reaching up from the ground to snare her swoop. A dozen invisible hands yanked her to earth, overpowering her repulsorpack. The pack jolted her up again, and a thrown lightsabre cut into it, searing a line up her back. Lightning again, and she fell.[/SIZE]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Aliit’buir, this is Oren.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“What’s gone wrong?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“We’ve lost the feed from Alec. Electrical distortion, probably lightning. I’m heading down personally. The loading effort’s going well, no hostile attention yet, the permits are all in order.” Oren kept talking, kept the momentum, so as not to put Ember on the spot. Once a father and grandfather himself, Oren had some idea of what Ember would be feeling. That, in the end, was what bound them together apart from a common extended family: they were both old men who’d lost nearly everything of value to them. Wives, children, grandchildren. And though they’d had sharp words over ends and means, he knew Ember understood where he was coming from better than anyone. That, too, was why he served Aliit’buir Rekali.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Understood.” Force, but Ember sounded tired. “I’ll head out there right away, but I’m deep in the Roil right now, and Trevel’ka’s not exactly convenient. It’ll take me a good week.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Don’t sweat it, Aliit’buir. This is why you sent me.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Yeah. Yeah, take care of yourself, Oren. Bring my little girl home safe, but...take care of yourself.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Force, but Oren felt just as tired as Ember sounded. “I’ll do what I can, Aliit’buir.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I know you will. Keep me posted.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Will do.” As Ember cut the transmission, Oren’s pilot -- a Dathomiri boy trained in the storms of Yavin Prime -- arced the Mandalorian transport down toward Alec’s last known location. The building made of reclaimed stone, glyph-worked salvage, right in the heart of one of Trevel’ka’s ten-billion-soul slums. “Time to arrival?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Ten minutes, [/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px]consigliere[/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px].”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Oren nodded and reached into a belt pouch. He removed a pelko bug and pressed it to his carotid. Familiar pain blazed through him, a welcome sort of agony. He muttered a Calyphan rite and stretched out to the Force for insight. A vision swam before him: Alec, her helmet off, unconscious, in a standard interrogation room. A figure stood over her, looming over the table. A scarred woman. Her eyes flickered, and she looked straight at him.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The vision ended. Oren found himself shivering. He slipped the bug back into its tiny pouch and rose from the seat as the transport hovered to a halt. The efflux of its first pass had swept away part of the smog, giving a vague visual on the stone building that rose from the slum. Alec’s swoop floated nearby. “Get the swoop aboard and get some distance,” Oren said. “This might get cinematic.”[/SIZE]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=14.6667px]He dropped from the transport’s ramp, a good thirty metres off the ground. His robes fluttered all the way down, despite the valiant efforts of his repulsorpack. He landed heavily, old knees protesting, in the middle of a crooked street two paces wide. Frightened eyes stared out from the shacks -- frightened, or belligerent, or numb, or dead. This place felt like desperation and despair. A flicker of hope ran through it, but he wasn’t here to play hero. None of these people would get a berth on the supertransport: the loading ships were at work half a continent away. Luck of the draw. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Oren reached back over his shoulder and his sword rang free of its sheath. The sword was a battered old thing of black metal, but its edge had been honed with Svolten rhyolite like the chunk he kept in his belt pouch. That blade would take an awful lot of punishment before it dulled, and it would never chip, no matter whether he put a working or a wire edge on it. For a sword like this and a stone like that, a wire edge was a practical choice. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]He sensed fear from all directions. The sword’s fault. These people were living beside a nest of Dark Jedi. They had to know someone like him would arrive eventually.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The perimeter came into view: checkpoints and turrets, body armour over black jumpsuits with a black-and-red shoulder patch. Some kind of private military contractor, maybe, but that was an awful lot of lightsabres for a PMC. Between the recent farseeing and a basic adiabatic shield, Oren wasn’t exactly being dainty about his Force presence. Here came the attention.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Three men, cumulative age about the same as his. Young, angry, tall and strong: a Togorian, a Mon Cal, and a Mirialan, all surrounded by the faint haze of an adiabatic shield like his. Crimson lightsabres snapped to life. There was a turret back about twenty paces, and Oren had no illusions about its function should he manage to prevail against his three challengers. He kept his sword pointed at the ground, as non-threatening as a sword could be. “I’m here for the girl,” he said, a leftover twinge of pelko venom giving him a shudder. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“What girl?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“My name’s Oren Beorn. I serve Ember Rekali. I’m here to take back his granddaughter. You’ll want to talk to your superiors. I’d recommend doing it right now.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]His name was nothing to them, but Ember? Ember had done a good many things that Sith tended to remember. Fleets, command ships, citadels, Masters -- humbled and broken. All Sith. So it came as a bit of a surprise, then, that all three lightsabres deactivated immediately. [/SIZE]He kept his sword out as they escorted him through the perimeter. Turrets and eyes tracked him until he passed through the door of the black stone citadel.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=14.6667px]An airlock kept the stone building’s atmosphere clean, and he dropped the adiabatic shield for greater focus. The Togorian, the Mon Cal, and the Mirialan led him through various construction areas to a door like any other. The Mirialan knocked once and sent him in. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“You can sheathe the sword, if you like,” said a dry voice in the dark. Oren’s eyes adjusted quickly, though half of a wall was a bright one-way mirror into the interrogation room. Alec was awake and furious, her armour removed and wrists bound. The transparisteel didn’t convey sound, but her rage was like a sunny day back home on Tash-Taral: scorching even in the shade. Nobody was in there with her. Oren shared the darkened observation room with the scarred woman he’d glimpsed. At first glance, she seemed as young as Alec, but something about the way she stood suggested that she was older than she appeared. With a slow nod, he sheathed his sword across his back and placed a knuckle against the transparisteel. [/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px]Tap-tap, tap-tap[/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px].[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Rekali code for [/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px]friendly here[/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px].[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Alec’s head snapped up and her mouth snapped shut. Wariness tempered her hope, but the anger retreated a little. Oren withdrew his attention from her mind.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“So this is Ember Rekali’s granddaughter,” said the woman. “Whose daughter? It would have to be Rach, wouldn’t it? The oldest?” A humourless grin. “The one who left a trail of illegitimate half-Rekalis from one end of the Hydian to the other?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Well, this was a [/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px]pulka [/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px]of a different colour. “You’re familiar with the Clan.” It wasn’t a question.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I was Rach’s friend. And his mother’s, once upon a time. We saw eye to eye and fought the same fights, not too far away from here. Another lifetime, Mister Beorn.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Someone from the old days, then, long before Oren had become affiliated with Clan Rekali. Not many of Brembla Kol-Rekali’s associates were still alive; fewer still had ties to Trevel’ka, or a friendship with Rach, or the kind of cold power bleeding off the scarred woman like icebergs calving off a glacier.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Ashin Varanin, I presume.”[/SIZE]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I knew your grandfather. We fought once. I killed him.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Many people killed my grandfather. If I hear correctly, only your Aliit’buir managed to make it stick.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Oren offered a thin smile. “Baseless rumour. Shule Windspeaker died of a heart attack.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Naturally. And his twisted old curse just happened to come apart under a blast of Force Light prepared by one of the few people who could pull it off despite all of my grandfather’s self-deceiving precautions.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]That matched Oren’s own suspicions about the Jedi Master’s death. Well, suspicion wasn’t the right word. So far as he could tell, Shule had literally asked for it. But Ember wasn’t talking. “You act like you were there.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I know what was inside Je’gan Olra’en. I know what it would have taken to reveal and destroy it and let him finally die. I thought about doing it myself, but I suppose I didn’t have that much mercy in me.” She gestured, and on the other side of the transparisteel, Alec’s wrist bindings came apart. “You’re the one they call the [/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px]consigliere[/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px]. The counselor. Ember trusts you?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“How should I know what’s in his head?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Ashin turned to look through the one-way mirror. Alec was rising, massaging her wrists. “For auld lang syne, take your charge back to Yavin Four and forget you ever found this place. Go back to building what your people build.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“You hold building in contempt?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“This place won’t last. Nothing ever does. My business isn’t in creation, Mister Beorn. It’s the same business your Aliit’buir took for a few long years when he lost what he lost.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“And what have you lost, Master Varanin?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“The illusion,” she said softly, “of safety. What was done to Ember’s wife, to Kol, was done to mine. The difference is that while we both lost everything, there’s only one way to hurt someone who fits that bill.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Give them back something broken.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The scarred woman shot Oren a sharp glance. “Mind yourself, counselor. Some truths don’t need to be laid out bare.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I’ve faced what you both did. You, more than him. You’re after the Sith?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Mm.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I’ll be in touch.” It was his turn to gesture, and the doors opened, connecting both halves of the room with the hallway. “Alec,” he said, raising his voice, “it’s time to go now.”[/SIZE]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“...so in the end, I don’t believe any harm has been done.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The hologram of Ember Rekali didn’t look convinced, but that was probably the hurt boy inside him looking for a reason to lash out. Oren could empathize. “The swoop? Her armour?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Recovered. I’ve put her in a Jedi healing trance and had some of our witches sweep her for surprises. Nothing.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I want to talk to her as soon as she wakes up.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“She anticipated that, Aliit’buir, and recorded a short message. It’s...somewhat profane.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]A chuckle. “I can imagine.” The hologram’s eyes sharpened. “I can’t thank you enough, Oren. If trust was ever a question between us-”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Oren shook his head. “You had the right to distrust me after the Dxun stunt, Aliit’buir. I’m just glad to hear I’ve redeemed myself as far as you’re concerned.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“And more.” Ember’s gaze drifted away. “How did she look, Oren? Varanin.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“She moves like she has more scars than her skin shows. More years, too. Driven, I’d call her, like you, back in the day. She’s been hurt and recently -- not physically, though. The illusion of safety, she said. She mentioned that what was done to your wife was done to hers.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Ember cursed, a fiery Vahla oath. “Someone finally caught Spencer Jacobs.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The name didn’t register. “You know her?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Not personally. She built a serious reputation, once upon a time. Sith Empire, Fringe -- she’s shown up on both sides of the One Sith-Republic war, to help whoever she sees fit, pursuing some notion of balance. She’s strong, too. Stronger than me, maybe stronger than Varanin. The two of’em have been together for a real long time. If the One Sith got their claws into her hard enough to get Varanin out of retirement -- so far out of retirement that she’s building a private Dark Jedi army, which is something she’s always been good at -- then feth, Oren. I’m torn between lending them a hand and staying entirely out of their way. ‘Cause it’ll be as bad as if I’d gone after Aaralyn and Isolda with the whole Clan at my back. Blood and fire.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“You could look in on her. Your blood trails on me and Alec are close enough to her location that you could use them to guide your use of the Mirr. She was aware of my farsight; you could commune with her, if that’s something you’d find of value.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Ember mulled over that. “I think,” he said at last, “I should hold off on that. Just about nobody knows we have it -- Strider, Gil Skirata, Ordo, Anija Betna.” All top Mandalorians. “And the top echelons of AEI, who excavated the darn thing. I think Ashin Varanin’s the enemy of our enemy, and she was close with our family once, but it was giving sanctuary to her that drew the Sith who got my boy Faran on Ossus. She goes where she goes, and everyone else gets tossed in the wake. So let’s avoid what entanglements we can, for now.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Will she take it as an insult if you don’t contact her after this?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Oh, I’ll contact her, alright. With someone like Varanin, you don’t want her not knowing where you stand.” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I’d have thought you could send a pretty clear statement by not dropping Third Fleet on her head.”[/SIZE]