Author's Apologia: This is the second main installment in my AU Fate of the Lost Jedi series, which takes place after the events of Knights of the Old Republic II. Already written; just uploading the chapters whenever I get around to it. One will need to have read the previous entry, Torchbearer, to get the context for this story. I will note however that Salvage Team Four is significantly shorter. And as for the genre—this one, too, is a Star Wars story.
- MPK - September 7, 2022 - Memorial of St. Regina
War has returned to the galaxy. Emboldened by its daring victory at MALACHOR V, the Republic Starfleet plunges into the Outer Rim, striking at lightly-defended border worlds of the Sith Remnant.
Though caught off-guard, the forces of the dark side are rallying as they prepare to blunt this incursion. Wary of the arcane powers wielded by their enemies, the Republic has dispatched many spies and scouts into the depths of Remnant space.
Two standard months after their first mission, the crew of the EBON HAWK has infiltrated the Remnant-controlled Gordian Reach, disguised as a band of smugglers.
Deep inside enemy lines and cut off from any outside help, their path takes them to the backwater mining world of GULVITCH to meet with Republic Intelligence agents, intent on uncovering the hidden plans of the Remnant Sith Order by any means necessary...
[Excerpt from Memorandum 726-A-110-U2032. Classified.
Origin: Tre Vermillion, Republic Strategic Information Service, Director. Recipient: Sargo Opelle, Republic Navy, Admiral. Timestamped two standard weeks after the destruction of Malachor V.]We've finished interviewing the members of Salvage Team Four. Notes and psych profiles are attached.
I agree with you that giving them a direct tactical role in the Malachor operation was a mistake. As you admitted, a better use of conventional forces could have yielded the same outcome. To be honest, I'm impressed that Rand, Kaevee, and Terrick all made it out alive. Aside from the external dangers they faced, SIS agents almost never mix well with boots on the ground.
Still, your motive in putting them there was entirely understandable. Handlers always want to give their new unit a hard first assignment, one whose results will tell them whether they're going to get their money's worth—so to speak.
As such, it's my recommendation that Salvage Team Four be given a proper trial by fire, one that is in line with the common SIS mission profile. In this regard, I have something in mind for your consideration.
A couple of stools down, Cole spotted a woman who was as hard to miss in Dono's Cantina as an ion flare in the shadow fields of Umbara: lithe and elegant, with pale skin as smooth as glass. The hem of her midnight dress trailed close to the floor, but the rest of it, and most of her, was swallowed up by the folds of her cape, which was a deep, dangerous red. Arctic-white hair spilled like an avalanche past her shoulders. The shimmering, blood-hued drink before her looked undisturbed; she stared down at it with smoldering eyes of gold, teasing the cup with the fingertips of one hand.
The first sight of her threw Cole into a silent, secret panic more or less equivalent to that of a brush-mouse upon realizing that it's wandered into the den of a Garollian ghost viper. The inhuman eyes and the black-red getup, what it all screamed was Sith.
But the choking fear was just as brief as it was ferocious. There was no way in the void that an actual, trained Sith—whether Dark Lord or lackey—was going to just walk into a cantina and have a drink, and even if one did, Cole would've been warned. After all, he wasn't the only one keeping an eye out.
A few breaths later he was calm again, and he looked at the woman with new eyes. Like himself, she appeared to be alone except for her drink. Unlike him, she seemed to have eyes for nothing else. For all she seemed to care, the whole galaxy could have been wending its way past her through that cantina. Whereas for Cole, it was.
Someone "respectable" would scorn Telthek Nest as one of the many slimepits of the galaxy—provided, of course, that such a person was aware that it existed in the first place. To be fair, it was no Vertical City: a modestly-sized shadowport owned by some local crime lord, sitting out in the wreckage-strewn wastelands of a barely-viable mining planet called Gulvitch, half a continent away from the nearest actual city. But Cole Terrick, who took pride in not being "respectable," appreciated places like this.
For one thing, the crowd in Dono's was great: relaxed, but decidedly awake. From a corner of the room, a jukebox was letting out jatz tunes in a low, endless whisper that stirred Humans, Near-Humans, and Far-Away-From-Being-Humans around the island bar like a slow whirlpool. There were data couriers, slicers, mercenaries, spacers, and cargo runners of every grade from the amateur to the seasoned, and with every reputation from the undesirable to the merely unscrupulous. Most of them were in groups, and whether it was a crew, a squad, or a gang, there was always room for one more, provided you had the right skills and a face that wasn't too dishonest—or too honest, for that matter. It was the same in Remnant space as anywhere else on the Rim. Cole could smell the opportunity in this place tickling his brain like narcotic incense.
Having to let it all pass him by, playing lookout like a good little stooge, was plain torture. Normally he dealt with pain by drowning it, but the glass of photon fizzle in front of him was no good for that. No drinking on the job.
Certain that he was not the only man in the room doing so, Cole watched the not-Sith woman. Tantalizing thoughts took form within him like holograms before his eyes; he smothered some, but let others kindle, wondering what a sufficiently suave and daring spacer might find under those blood-and-midnight garments. But he knew there was no point in trying. He wasn't on Gulvitch for pleasure any more than he was there for business. And just like he wasn't in business anymore, he also wasn't single. He was taken—by the Republic.
His eyes wandered left, stopping at one of a dozen barely-lit booths set into the far wall, and his jaw clenched. Atton Rand—the smug, world-weary, know-it-all Jedi-Sith maniac who had ruined Cole's life, gotten him almost killed several times, and finally roped him into playing secret agent for the Republic—sat there alone with a drink of his own, looking for all the galaxy like just another freighter jockey with something to hide. How had Cole been able to forget just how much he hated this guy?
And why had Lannik Mai and his partner still not showed up yet so they could leave this place behind and get on with their big, special, super-important mission?
Reminding himself to breathe, Cole looked back at the woman down the bar, who was taking a long sip from her drink and looking as perfect as a holopic. Pausing only to sneer down at his own impotent beverage, Cole slid from his stool. He took a meandering route away from the bar, then looped back toward the empty spot on the woman's right—thus giving himself time to clear his face of anxiety and adopt the posture of easy-going confidence which, if it hadn't exactly served him well over the years, had at least not gotten him into too much trouble either.
What the hell, he told himself as he came up beside her. Nothing's going on, and I've got a few minutes. It'll feel good to pretend.
