Chapter 4- Preparations and the Enemy
A/N: I thought about how I want to do Dev Sibwarra and the Ssi-ruuk and I decided to go ahead and do some of the scenes with Dev in here.
The next morning Lena was ready to go. Her father and the other leaders had put Lena in charge of a command ship and Lena wasn't sure if, as a Jedi, she should be excited over a ship and that she was the one in charge. Talon came up to her on her repulsor-chair and squeezed her hand that rested on the armrest. "How do you feel, Lena?" Her father asked, his blue eyes reflecting concern.
"All right, I guess. Is Cora coming with us?" Lena asked, looking at her eight-year-old sister, dressed in her Jedi robes and clinging to their father's hand.
"Papa says I have to. Me and Lando may have destroyed the Death Star, but he says I am still a Padawan," Cora said gravely. Since Hoth, Cora had developed a more serious personality where she was eight seasons going on 30.
"Uncle Talon is right, Cora. You still have a lot to learn," Luke put in as he stepped up to Lena's chair.
"Well, let's board the ship. Mon Mothma told me that it was a new model," Lena said as they entered the frigate and Lena's second-in-command came to attention as soon as she saw Lena.
"Welcome aboard, Your Highness, Commander Skywalker, Master Jedi Skywalker, Princess Cora," Tessa Manchisco said, saluting sharply as she used all their titles. Captain Manchisco had black hair and a clean, white uniform. She had just come from the Virgillian Civil War and still had stars of winning against the Empire in her eyes, like Luke had when he first joined the Rebel Alliance and had thought he could take on the Empire single handed.
"She's ready to jump," Luke said.
"Ready and eager, Commander," Manchisco said. Lena looked around at the frigate. It was small considering the size of other ships in the Alliance. There was her father, sister, and Luke, of course. But there was Mancisco, some Virgillians, three other humans, and a Duro navigator. Beneath the bridge there was also 20 x-wing fighters, three A-wings, and four B-wing fighters. All of them looked out the viewport and saw two Corellian gunships and Han's ship the Millennium Falcon. The ship may have looked like junk, but as Han always claimed, and Lena had seen firsthand, there was more to the ship than met the eye. Even for a Jedi who disliked most technology, Lena had to admit Han's ship was more than it looked.
"Well, let's get going everyone. I want to see what this new frigate can do," Lena said. A firm, but gentle hand gripped the back of her neck.
"Careful, daughter. You are a Jedi and as such you should not be eager to prove this new technology," Talon warned.
"I won't, Father. I won't. I know my place in the Jedi world and the flaws of technology," Lena said.
"Just remember that you are a Jedi first," Talon said, brushing a warm kiss on her temple as he went to his station. Cora followed him and sat on his lap, burying her head in his broad chest.
Lena sat down, feeling slightly dizzy as the latest medication from her run-in with the emperor wore off. It was about time for a new dose of medicine if she wished to continue being on the bridge, instead of giving the command to Luke.
"Hyperdrive status, Master Jedi, you might want to strap down," Manchisco said. Lena strapped herself in and immersed herself in the Force to concentrate on which bones still needed healing.
Dev Sibwarra's day had just started and never ended. His master had just captured a shipload of new recruits, men, women, and children and his job was to use the Force to calm them down while they were being, what his master called, enteched. Dev laid a hand on the latest prisoner's shoulder in a soothing gesture. "It will be all right. There's no pain. You have a wonderful surprise ahead of you," Dev whispered gently, feeling the man's fear. Dev used the Force to calm down the recruits as all of them were terrified over what the Ssi-ruuk had in store for them.
Well, if Dev hadn't seen any of this before and he was in their place, he might have been scared too. Being attached to the entechment chair by bands and unable to move on account of being deionized, while magsol was being dumped into the brain to sedate was enough to frighten anyone. "Is it calmed yet?" Master Firwirrung asked in the Ssi-ruuvi language.
"Calm enough. He's almost ready," Dev said in the same language. He had lived with the Ssi-ruuk since he had been a small boy and he had picked up the language quickly.
The Ssi-ruuk looked frightening, but he had been the only human that they hadn't enteched on account that his master had had pity on a little boy. Maybe also because Dev could use the Force to calm people down, they had decided to keep him, proving they weren't completely vicious murderers. Firwirrung swung the catchment arc over the prisoner and Dev leaned forward to watch the man's eyes dilate; a sign he was calm and sedated. "Now," Dev said with a nod at Firwirrung.
Firwirrung threw the switch and Dev winced at the pain coming from the man in the chair. Or was it the pain he imagined as Firwirrung had told him none of them felt the pain because of the magsol putting them into a dazed stupor? Of course the body screamed, but that was all in his head too. All too soon, mere seconds the body of the man was dead and his energy was put into a droid or a new ship of Ssi-ruuvi making. The process repeated all through the night and with the exception of one woman all had been enteched without a hitch.
