Chapter 12: Serren
"Hmpf. There's a lot more guards than I was counting on," Kai muttered, drumming her fingers on her thigh. "I guess we'll have to do it extra quiet-like."
The three youngest Solo siblings were crouched on the far side of a substantial basalt boulder, one of several colossal stones that had been placed by ancient engineers in an uneven row along the cliff's edge, forming a windbreak for the broad clifftop beyond. In addition to shielding them from the strongest of the ocean breezes, the girls' position gave them a partial view into the walled compound of the Areti royal residence below and the handful of palace guards and staff moving about the darkened grounds there, but kept them out of sight of the reporters milling around the main gate. Through sheer luck, they had managed to slip past the thinning cluster of paparazzi encroaching on the Falcon when they set out for the castle; they couldn't risk drawing the attention of the galactic media hounds now, not when they were so close to putting their plan into action.
Serren slanted a glance at her sisters. She had managed to convince them that performing a thorough reconnaissance as the first phase of their mission was the sensible thing to do, before rushing headlong into such a potentially risky venture, but Serren could tell that Kai was already growing restless with that plan. Nimble and energetic, she craved action as a matter of course, and she'd been a tightly coiled spring of latent energy ever since they'd sneaked away from the shipand initiated their rescue efforts. Serren was closely attuned to her spirited sister, and knew she wouldn't be satisfied with maintaining a watch-and-wait approach for much longer.
True to form, Kai angled around to face her twin, her boots scraping against the rock underfoot. "What are we waiting for?" she complained. "We're wasting time. Let's just get in there, and get out."
"Are you crazy? Look at the size of that place. It's huge. And we're not even sure where he's being held," Serren sighed. Even as the words left her mouth, though, she was seized by an idea—something so obvious she was surprised and mildly chagrined that it hadn't occurred to her sooner. Scrambling around, she lowered herself to sit on the uneven ground and flattened her back against the craggy rock. "Okay," she said, feeling a little thrill of anticipation. "Let's at least try to figure out more precisely where he is first. That will make things so much easier."
Kai stared at her for a moment, open-mouthed, clearly stricken by the same realisation that Serren had just had. "Damn, why didn't I think of that?" she muttered as she settled down on her knees to observe her sister.
Closing her eyes, Serren dug her fingertips into the spongy layer of cool moss that covered the rock beneath her, grounding herself and clearing her mind as she allowed her consciousness to drift and connect to the current of life energy flowing all around them.
"Find him yet?" Kai whispered a heartbeat later.
Serren cracked open one eye. "Noooo," she drawled sardonically, "and it might go a little faster if you'd help out, instead of sitting there bugging me. Two heads are better than one, right?"
Kai sighed and rolled her eyes, feigning reluctance. "Maybe for a Troig," she grumbled, even as she crawled forward and turned herself around to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with her sister.
"Brin," Serren asked, "keep a lookout, will you?"
Brin glanced at her sisters, her gaze flicking back and forth between the seated pair, and then nodded her understanding. As she turned her attention back towards the palace grounds, Serren linked her hand with Kai's and closed her eyes once more.
In the span of a heartbeat, Kai was there in Serren's head, a buoyant whirl in the calm eddy of her own consciousness. Her mind now united with her twin's, Serren took the lead and projected their combined Force-entities toward the castle grounds, spreading out to flow over its weave of living energies. There were countless numbers of them, sentient and non-sentient alike, contained within the walls of the stone edifice; even the walls themselves were vibrant with minute pinpricks of life resonating from inside the tiniest cracks and crevices of the colossal stone structure. A scattered handful of brilliant beacons—fellow Force-sensitives, Serren recognized—stood out from the rest, but the remainder were nebulous and indistinct. To Serren's dismay, the unique aura of their father was nowhere to be found, at least not on their first pass.
He's further away than we thought, Serren projected, trying not to let her disappointment seep through into her connection with her twin.
Keep looking, came Kai's answering thought. Spread out, look deeper. We know he's there somewhere.
Serren gave a mental hum of affirmation, a sound that carried through to her physical form. Redoubling their efforts, the twins focused their combined consciousness at the scintillating mass of energies, gliding over the wisps of life and the emotion emitting from each complex sentient, delving further into the deepest regions of the castle.
And then, there it was. On the topmost level of the palace's southwestern tower: distinctly human, mature and masculine, the swirl of emotions that emanated from the signature were a little muted, but Serren could detect a fierce devotion bracketed by a vague sense of worry that she recognized at once. Confident that it was their father, Serren opened her eyes and stared at the castle, visually pinpointing the faint life glimmer that her mind had latched onto. Through the Force, she drew her sister's focus to it, marking its location by the levels of sentients around it. She and Kai grinned in unison.
Gotcha, Dad.
Blinking away the lingering effects of her incorporeal excursion, Serren's gaze then fell upon her younger sister. She scowled, even as Kai started to chuckle.
"Brin," Serren ordered in stern tone. "Put that thing away."
Brin tossed the stun grenade from one hand to the other and gave a nonchalant shrug. "I was just checking it out again. You guys were gone for like..." Brin made a circling motion near her temple, indicating her older sisters' use of their mental abilities. "...ages! What else was I supposed to do?"
"You were supposed to keep watch," Kai chided, scrambling to her feet.
Serren rose gracefully alongside her twin, clapping at the seat of her trousers to brush off the grit.
"Well, we know where he is," she said. "Now all we've got to do is figure out how to get in there without raising the alarm."
Although the sun had long since set, the narrow bridge joining the castle rock to the mainland was still brightly lit and lively with moving figures. There was no way the girls could simply saunter over it without being stopped, and there was no other obvious way to reach the sea stack where the castle rested. Far below, they could all hear the crashing of the waves against the cliff face, a sound that only emphasised how tricky it was going to be to gain entry to the castle grounds.
A muffled shout that seemed quite nearby sent all three girls ducking for cover behind the boulder. Serren's heart pounded and she held her breath, her wide eyes darting from Kai to Brin and back again.
"Did you hear that?" Kai whispered.
"We all heard it," Serren hissed back, rolling her eyes.
Brin tightened her grip on the grenade she still held in her clenched fist. "It came from over there." She jerked her head in the direction of the cliff's edge. "Someone's down there, in the water."
"Not likely," Kai dismissed. "It's a sheer drop straight down to the sea on that side, as far as I could tell. And it's dark."
The sound repeated, a human voice that echoed off the walls of the bluffs from somewhere well below their position.
"Brin's right; there's someone down there." Keeping her body pressed flat to the jagged rock, Serren poked her head out to peer around the massive stone. Seeing no immediate signs of danger, she edged forward, stepping gingerly toward the precipitous drop.
"What do you see?" Kai whispered.
"Nothing yet. It's hard to make out…" She squinted, straining into the darkness below. "Wait; there's a light...".
"Where?" Kai asked, grabbing a fistful of Serren's jacket to hold her steady while leaning over her shoulder.
"There." Serren pointed to the water below, where a single bright light bobbed up and down in the waves, drifting with the turning tide and moving further away from the cliffside. When it rounded the end of what appeared to be a sheltered inlet, moonlight on the water revealed the elongated shape of a small skiff.
"What is it?" Brin asked in a hushed voice.
"It's a boat," Kai said. "And it came from somewhere practically right underneath us." She glanced from one sister to the next with a gleam of excitement in her eyes. "Do you realize what this means?"
"It means you've just come up with another one of your bright ideas," Serren said.
Kai grinned. "It means there's another way in." She bent to retrieve her pack and then slung it over her shoulder. "Grab your stuff, girls; we've got a bit of rescuing to do."
