A Loner
Ruso stood outside his superior officer's office, waiting to be ushered inside. He had been called there, presumably on account of the recommendation he'd written in reference to Raven Suul. It had been a hard report for him to write, since he didn't really know where to put her. The hierarchy of Special Operations was a tricky area, covering many obscure needs of the IntCorps. Where she was now wouldn't suffice, unless she was assigned a new partner, and Ruso's instincts told him that making that decision would be disastrous, not to mention excruciatingly painful for his subordinate. Administration, a job like the one Ruso currently held, didn't seem to suit her personality or her abilities. Dismissing her was just plain stupid, giving the same abilities. Ruso had made the recommendation to transfer to another arm of the Special Ops, one where she could work alone, at least until she found her feet again.
The door opened, breaking Ruso's train of recollections, and brought the shorter man face to face with another Jedi of average height, with a shock of blond hair and deep blue eyes. The man, one Iri Tuche, was his captain, one of three in this arm of the Special Ops. He was a formidable man, known for profound silences and extreme talent with reasoning and rhetoric, when he chose to give his thoughts words. The man's face was angular, mostly planes interrupted by sharp lines. He gestured that Ruso should come into his office.
The door swung shut behind them, and, again in silence, Tuche motioned for Ruso to sit in a chair across from his desk, a large table scattered with flimsies and data pads. A few styluses were contained in a cup, and Ruso was also surprised to see a blaster sitting, lacking a cover of any sort, upon the other man's table. His face remained passive however as he sat, waiting for his superior to begin the conversation.
Tuche sat behind his ample table, idly picking up the blaster and running his fingers along its barrel, taking note of its clean lines and perfect curvature. His mouth quirked for a moment, as though a thought occurred to him, and then the captain set aside the weapon to peer his blue eyes into the depths of Ruso's brown. "This," he said finally, indicating the blaster, "is a weapon that serves our agents very well in certain situations, ones that betraying their occupations as Jedi would be hazardous, don't you agree?"
Ruso nodded his assent before vocalizing it. "Of course, Captain," he responded.
Nodding once in a satisfied gesture, Tuche indicated a flimsy on his desk, one that Ruso couldn't see but guessed was his own report. "You've stated that you believe your agent, one Raven Suul, would serve our purposes best as a loner, doing some leg work without the encumbrance, or benefits, of a partner." This time, Ruso merely nodded, not needing to vocalize what he had already explained in writing.
Heaving a sigh, the taller man stood, turning his back on Ruso to peer for a moment ou the picture window located behind his desk. "I can't say I agree with that statement, Ruso," he commented, still looking away. "Within that girl's mind, she holds a wealth of experience and knowledge on her particular line of work. It would seem to me that it would be a waste to abandon that to retrain her for something else." He turned away again, a haze forming around his silhouette, the man's front darkly contrasted with the light coming from the window.
Ruso shrugged in response, gathering his thoughts together. "I'm aware of her knowledge and talents, sir," he replied without disrespect, "but I fail to see what you are proposing to do with her. Knight Suul is an excellent field member, always executing her objectives nearly flawlessly and in more than reasonable amounts of time. Despite the need to retrain her, I fail to see where she could serve the Order better."
Tuche moved away from the window to pick up the blaster again, sighting it to his right, towards a wall with a few holos on it of the Jedi Temple. He fired the blaster, and instead of a clean bolt issuing from its muzzle, a click emanated from its inner workings, indicating that the weapon lacked power to shoot. "Lacking the proper preparations, one could die from making mistakes like this. Were I to be in a situation meriting the use of this weapon, I could easily be dead by now."
Throwing the blaster back onto his desk, he looked into Ruso's eyes again. "She's untrained for being a loner. I suggest that we move her into a commanding position in something she's intimately familiar with, a job not unlike your own."
Ruso nodded slowly again, not overly happy with his superior's conclusions. "As you say," he replied. Personally, he harbored doubts about Raven's abilities to direct. She was somewhat of a rogue within the ranks, having taken to Dooku's disapprovals of Council policy and her own master's tendency to be vocal about things with which she didn't agree. Quiet in many circumstances, something about politics just rubbed the girl wrong, probably just irritating her sense of justice. Raven worked better in the field, with her hands, out of the reach of such weighty, angering matters. Behind a desk? Ruso didn't know whether she would merely be resentful or flat out fail. But clearly, Tuche was going to do as he saw fit. And perhaps he was right. Maybe he saw something that Ruso missed in his years of acquaintance with the Jedi Knight.
***
Days faded into weeks, and with the passing of the time, Raven's grief seemed to mellow out from burning, white hot flames of suffering to glowing embers of remembrance. Her life settled back into routine, with the exception that she was still on leave, and it disturbed her how unaffected her Temple existence was. Still, she found solace in the practice rooms flanking the arena, honing her various weaponry proficiencies. The keel of her life had found an even heading again.
The receipt of the datacard outlining her promotion didn't truly surprise the Jedi Knight, although she felt a slight disappointment when she realized that the honor signified her removal from the field. A pang of regret accompanied this knowledge, as Raven acknowledged that she would probably never again feel the thrill of chasing an adversary to bring him to justice. Instead, she would be living vicariously, reading the reports of her agents on their adventures. Yet, she meant what she had told Ruso; she trusted his judgment and his assessment for her new appointment.
A couple of days before her leave officially ended, another datacard was delivered to her door, this one outlining the story behind the mission she would be supervising. As she read, she discerned that the Council was not making up the strife within the Senate that they constantly cited. The situation was a disturbing one in many respects. The Senator from Ord Mantell, as far as Raven could infer, seemed to have made himself an enemy. There had been vicious debates (over what, the card failed to expound) in the Senate recently, and this senator had been in the middle of it. However, his three children, not one over five standard years, had been taken hostage and threatened to be killed if the senator didn't pay.
Raven paused, wondering about the ambiguity of the information. What did this have to do with the fact he was involved in the debates? Was it suspected that another politician had perpetrated the kidnapping? With what was the senator supposed to pay? Credits? Votes? Support? Some kind of favor regarding trade routes? The Jedi Knight shook her head, trying to clear it of the extraneous thoughts.
The location of where the children were being held was discovered, and Raven's job was to supervise a group of Jedi to rescue them. The group would consist of two master-padawan teams, one set being named Aine Minins and her master Gre-Kier Arran, and the other Demian Emil and his master Robas Coun. The real problem was that, once Raven officially went off leave, she would have two days to organize her teams and get them into the field, leaving the teams with a mere day to get in, get the children, and get out.
Raven sighed and tossed her datapad with the card inside onto the counter and moved to the couch. She sat down, propping her head in her hands. The Jedi Knight reeled for a moment. She had four days to throw the group together, getting them working like a team, if she chose to take that much time. That would leave only one day to scout the field, find out the exact location of the children, the people guarding them, their strengths and weaknesses, and any number of other pieces of information that would make this mission successful. Four days. It must have been rather difficult information to collect, she mused.
Pulling herself from that prospect, Raven stood back up again, her mind already moving ahead to think about what she would need to do and how to get it done. Grabbing the datapad again, she left her rooms to find Ruso and question him, already planning to meet with her teams tonight. Four days was too short an amount of time for her to finish everything that needed to be done.
***
It was extremely early in the morning of the third day when Daré finally managed to track her former padawan down again. Ruso had informed her about Raven's promotion, as well as her first assignment. The older, raptor-faced Jedi had expressed concern about the girl. Admitting that the timeframe was deplorable, Ruso was afraid that Raven might have been throwing herself into the mission a little too much. Bearing an insulated flagon of soup and some bread, Daré had finally found the dark-haired Knight in one of the rooms that was jokingly referred to as a command center; a Spartan room with little more than a table, a few chairs, and a comm center.
The table was covered with flimsies, laid out with what Daré could only presume was some kind of order. Some of the corners of the sheets were anchored by data cards, her own pad tossed into the seat of one of the chairs. Raven's outer robe was thrown over the back of one of the chairs, her boots kicked off beneath it. The lightbanks lining the edge of the ceiling were somewhat bright but not to the point of making the light harsh and glaring. The Jedi Knight didn't even look up when her master entered. Her dark hair, normally combed neatly or pulled out of her way, fell messily over her shoulder as she leaned over one of the larger flimsies, evidently a map of some kind. Daré quickly found the reason for her former padawan's hair; she would scrub a hand through it in frustration at something on the sheet, tugging it free of the tangles.
"When was the last time you ate?"
Raven lifted her head to regard her master, her eyes betraying fatigue and frustration. A wry smile crossed her face at the contrast between herself and her master. Daré stood, her robe in a deep purple, the wide, long sleeves concealing her hands. She wore a matching skirt beneath her normal beige tunic, her utility belt hugging her hips beneath the robe that hid her lightsaber and the various other things on the belt. Her copper hair was braided intricately, as always, without a hair out of place. Raven shook her head. "I will never understand how you always look like you just stepped out of your rooms en route to a Council meeting," the former padawan replied.
Daré raised an eyebrow in question, not missing the fact that Raven hadn't answered her question. "It takes patient and a lack of desire to rush out and save the galaxy. Sometimes you realize that the galaxy will wait. You can't save the galaxy if you are asleep on your feet or starving yourself. 'Tisn't practical."
"I haven't the time, Master," Raven replied, straightened from her position over the flimsies to indicate them. "My team leaves in the morning, and ..."
"What are they doing currently, Raven?" Daré interrupted.
The Knight shifted her weight slightly, seeing where her master was going with this. "Sleeping, I presume," came the response, although the tone indicated her belligerence.
The shorter woman snorted quietly, a faint noise that spoke volumes about how much she had gleaned from Raven's last statement. Instead, she pulled the flagon from beneath her outer robe, as well as the bread she had brought. She laid out the cloth the bread was wrapped in, placing the bread on top of it. Then, she poured some of the soup from the flagon into a cup that fit over the top of it, also setting it on the cloth. Daré gestured to it, silently indicated that her padawan to eat.
With a sigh, Raven shook her head and began to shift the things off her flimsies. "I haven't the time, Master," she said quietly, defensively.
"Nonsense," the Jedi Master replied. "I know for a fact that you haven't slept at all since you read your summary. I also know that you will be sending your team out in the morning. They need you to be able to think clearly and make good decisions for them. You can't make good decisions without taking care of yourself." Daré reached down and took one of the pieces of bread, breaking it, and handing part of it to her padawan. "I'll eat with you."
Shaking her head slightly, Raven accepted the bread and tore off a piece, putting it into her mouth. She chewed slowly, her face thoughtful and troubled. "Master, what do I do if my information never agrees?" the Knight asked when she had swallowed.
Daré's face furrowed for a moment. "I don't understand what you mean."
"This," Raven replied, gesturing towards the table entire. "Nothing agrees. I have five scouts in the field to find out about the area, and all of them have different information. They don't agree on number, location, or armaments of the men holding the kids. I'm not supposed to pass along information without verifying it, but how can I verify it if no one agrees? Surely some information is better than none."
Master Shioc's face set, making her appear stern and unyielding. "I'm afraid I don't know what to tell you, cailín," she replied quietly. "It's one of those situations where you have to make a judgment call. They are your responsibility, and only you can discern what you think is best. Different people make different choices. You must just make the one that you think is best, the one upon which you can't improve."
Raven slumped into a chair, absently eating the bread. As Daré watched, the sleepless hours and work of getting her team ready caught up with her, Raven's eyes were drooping. She slouched in the chair, her face still concerned, until the older woman walked over and took her arm, easing the younger from the chair. "Sleep, Raven," she said with a wry smile. "It will all be here in the morning." And, impressively enough for the young woman, she followed without dispute.
***
Raven was up with the morning's light, dressed in her traditional robes. Her hair was neatly brushed, a far cry from the mess it had been a few hours before, pulled away from her face in a half-ponytail. Her clothes were neat, freshly hand pressed, and she looked every inch the Jedi Knight that she was. The lightsaber hilt hung clipped to her belt, and even her standard issue blaster, more from her days with Nathanial, among other various articles had been attached to it.
The Knight shifted slightly to move out of the shadows that the rising sun cast over the landing platform. Her team was standing slightly behind her, waiting in the doorway that led out onto the platform. She could sense their nervousness, the Masters' carefully maintained, restrained and controlled, the Padawans' leaping out ahead of them, mingling with excitement and anticipation. The group was waiting for a taxi that would take them from the Temple inconspicuously.
Turning back, Raven regarded her team, feeling a small flair of pride in them. Robas Coun was wearing rather non-descript peasant garb, soft greens and tans that might have come from a leafier planet than Courscant. He had a large knapsack slung over a shoulder, filled with other innocuous items, like clothes and food, for himself and his padawan. Demian Emil was standing next to his master, his impatience showing on his face and in his deep blue eyes. His clothes resembled Robas's, only that they were threadbare, resembling something he might have gotten from a nonexistent older sibling. The older padawan turned, giving a grin to the younger, Aine Minins. Her dark hair was pulled back messily from her face, also wearing worn clothes. Hers had more tans and browns in them, and she looked like she had come from some kind of menial labor; the tunic was too big, the leggings a hair too tight. Gre-Kier Arran matched his padawan in garb. The idea was that the two masters were brothers, one widowed with the two children. They were finding a new existence away from the hard memories of their old home.
The taxi pulled up, and Raven beckoned the Jedi from beneath the doorway. "May the Force be with you," she murmured quietly, maintaining the image that the family had sheltered there for a few days, and now the noble Jedi must send them on their way. Gre-Kier gripped her arm before he moved away, replying with a few words of reassurance, which appeared as gratitude. Then, the foursome disappeared into the taxi, and it eased away from the platform.
Raven stood, her arms crossed over her chest, and watched the small craft until it was lost into the crowds of traffic that crossed the sky. A knot of disquiet had settled into her stomach, but she attempted to dismiss it as first time jitters. Mentally, she reviewed her team's timeline; they had one day, a scant twenty-four hours, to survey and come up with a plan for retrieving the children. By tomorrow morning, they would have what information the Temple could offer to match up with their own. Early afternoon was the time they would move, right after the midday meal.
The Jedi Knight watched the sun rise for a few minutes, the light reflecting and refracting off the buildings, sending crazy patterns across Courscant's surface. She sought the Force, the calm, Unifying Force, but it was elusive, almost beyond reach. Its currents swirled around her, and Raven felt small and lost. She was but one person, one sentient being, and it was so much greater than she, beyond her comprehension. Raven shook her head, her thoughts scattering with the gesture.
Walking briskly back inside, Raven made her way through the halls and went into a small room set up for receiving and sending communications. A couple of technicians sat at comm centers, and one turned around when she walked in. He shrugged, his gesture saying that nothing had changed since the last time she had spoken with them.
"No reports, then," she said, her voice indicating that it was merely a reaffirmation of what the tech had just wordlessly told her. "I'll need something to give them tonight. I can't send them in blind."
The tech, unofficial spokesman, shrugged again. "I don't know what to tell you. If the scouts don't give us reports, we can't give you information to pass along to your team. It's a game. You have to wait your turn."
The dark haired woman sighed, pursing her lips in annoyance. "I don't enjoy waiting," she replied. The tech just grinned in response, not daring to verbalize a response to her comment. "I don't like waiting at all."
***
Morning faded into afternoon, and late afternoon found Raven in one of the practice rooms, wrecking vengeance on a set of practice droids. The staff in her communications room had all but kicked her out after she had spent the afternoon hovering and fretting over the lack of information. As hours passed, her tension was mounting, and the Jedi Knight eventually disappeared to rid herself of some of her energy.
Stripped down to her undertunic, Raven slashed and parried her way through yet another intensive program, managing to keep all three of the droids at bay. It was the third scenario she had run with them, and the Living Force was coursing through her as strongly as the blood in her veins. She was one with the Force, at least, that aspect of it, and it was like flying to her. She was higher, comfortable in the area of sweat and blood, toil and fighting, the fundamentals of the service to which the Jedi Order was dedicated.
A bolt sizzled from her lightsaber as she reflected it, deactivating one of the droids. The other two hovered just out of range, making a small formation to rush her both at once. Raven jumped and flipped neatly, slicing one of the droids into halves before running the other one through. The room filled with the smell of burnt plastisteel and cables. Wrinkling her nose in disgust at the scent, Raven collected the remaining functioning droid and left a note on the message board by the room indicating the state of the other two droids. She left the remaining one at the desk where a padawan took it and stored it away.
Raven wandered back to her rooms after having had to go back for her outer tunics and tabard. She felt good after her workout, something she hadn't done for a while. Getting ready to send her team out had completely consumed all her time, and before that, she hadn't really felt a great desire to go near a practice room.
Once in her rooms, she stripped out of her sweaty clothes and stepped into the refresher, enjoying the cool water across her overheated skin. Raven luxuriated in this for a while, also taking time to shampoo her hair hair, getting the salt out from it as well. Eventually, she stepped out and dried off, locating some clean tunics and leggings. It was as she was slinging her utility belt around her hips that she noticed the message light on her commlink flickering.
Walking over to it, she keyed in the code for it to play back. "Hey, Suul, this is the communications room. We've heard from three of the scouts. Two of them agree on numbers and locations, although the third does not. We're about half a standard hour from needing to contact the team. I need you to get down here to finalize the report we're to send them. Get down here as quick as you can."
Looping her damp hair away from her face, which was creased with concern, Raven made her way to the small room, resisting the urge to run. Mentally, she was berating herself for not paying closer attention to the time. As she pushed open the doors to the room, several heads swiveled around to regard her entrance, and the tension in the room was palpable.
"Welcome back, captain," a tech, the same one as before, said with a terse look. "Here are the reports from the three. Still haven't heard back from the other two. We're going to have to send the team in the data at the top of the hour. Tell us what to give them." As he spoke, he tossed her three datacards, which she caught easily, and leaned back in his chair.
Raven perched on a table edge, drawing her legs up to cross them beneath herself. She took the first datacard and put it in her pad. Taking a deep breath to center herself, much like she did before sparring, Raven cleared her mind and focused on the task at hand. Then, she read through the information, annotating notes on a flimsy she found one the table.
The information, as such things go, was straightforward. The scout had counted heads and positioned them within the building to the best of his ability. The second card contained the same kind of setup, with the exception of some personal differences in style between the two scouts. However, the number of people weren't the same, although close, and their positions suffered from the same discretions. The third card was completely different. The numbers varied within a score of people, their positions off by decameters.
Her mind racing, Raven gnawed on the end of the stylus. She moved away from the table, locating the blueprints of the building in question and flinging onto the table. Then, using the stylus, she marked down the positions and numbers from the three scouts. The two overlapped while the third didn't.
"No confirmation on any of this?" Raven asked the tech, already knowing the answer before he shook his head in a negative. With a sigh, she looked at the map again. Gritting her teeth and feeling a knot of uncertainty form in the pit of her stomach, she found a clean flimsy piece and carefully noted what she thought was the likeliest positions and numbers of the adversaries. 'You must just make the decision that you think is best, the one upon which you can't improve,' Raven thought to herself, quoting her master. Still, the words sounded hollow, lacking her fiery master's conviction. She read the information over three separate times, each time checking it against the map again. Then, the Jedi Knight pushed herself away from the table.
"Send them this," she said tightly, handing over the flimsy to the head technician. Then, Raven showed him her commlink. "I'll have this. I'll be in one of the practice rooms if you need me. Let me know if anything happens. Anything at all."
The tech nodded slowly, taking the flimsy from her, unnerved by the look in her eyes. Raven, meanwhile, took one last look at him and then the flimsy and left, unnaturally stiff and quiet.
***
By all rights, Raven should have long since been abed. She had had a total of about four hours of sleep in the last three days, going on four. However, her mind and conscience could not let her rest. The warrior within the Jedi Knight found it completely unacceptable that she should remain within the Temple out of harm's way while the two pairs were out doing her bidding in a dangerous situation. So instead of spending the night in her bed, she was in the main arena, fighting droids and her own thoughts.
By sunrise, Raven had completely decimated six droids, an unheard of number with their shielding systems and the fact they were designed to survive the activities implied in improving combat skills. Still, the Jedi Knight drove herself onward, despite the fact that she was stripped to her leggings and an undertunic, completely slicked with sweat and some burns. Her hair was soak from the sweat of her face and scalp with small tendrils curled by the salt framing her face. One of the droids had even managed to inflict blood, although she had only been bloodied once.
Beyond physical appearances, Raven was bone-weary. It was unheard of for a Jedi Knight to train continuously for more than three hours, but it had been about 2000 hours when she'd left the communications room, and the sun rose around 0645 in the mornings on Courscant. Still, she pushed herself onwards, determined to find the absolute limit of her strength and reserves. In any case, it was preferable to standing around with nothing at all to do. The waiting was brutal.
My master was always a wreck when his teams were at work. He would fret about them having trouble because of some oversight of his.
Nathaniel's voice sprang unbidden into her mind, the memory of his gentle rebuke and soft tone, the friend that she had thought he was. But the betrayal was there, tainting the memory that had been untouched. With an explosive grunt, Raven jumped from the ground and swung herself around, kicking out one leg to savagely bring down a droid. Her foot and the droid connected solidly, and it skittered away in a shower of sparks. The move ended with her landing on one foot, the momentum carrying her just far enough around to reflect bolts back onto the last remaining droids, deactivating, although not damaging, them both.
Raven dropped her lightsaber hilt, not carrying to notice that it deactivated when it hit the floor of the arena, bouncing slightly before coming to rest a short distance from her feet. Her legs were shaking beneath her, showing their displeasure for the last eleven hours. Her muscles burned as well, her shoulders and back, but she ignored it stoically. Idly, the Jedi Knight speculated on whether any other Knight had done such a strenuous routine merely for the doing of it, but she dismissed the thought as being unimportant. Instead, she eased herself down to sit and do some stretches to warm down.
She was interrupted about three quarters of the way through the warm down by her commlink. Raven swallowed slowly and counted to ten before answering the link. Then, the Jedi Knight listened in stoic silence as the tech, in a shaky voice, explained that an ambush had taken place. The information had been unreliable on all three cases, that the teams had been caught unaware. However, the children were safe. Demian Emil was dead, killed by a blaster bolt to the chest, and his master had been seriously wounded in an attempt to defend him, although the extent of Robas's injuries was as yet unknown. He was unconscious and being brought to the Temple by Aine and Gre-Kier. But the senator's children were safe.
Very slowly Raven stood up, after making some kind of intelligent response to the tech and clicking off her commlink. She was in shock, to say the least. Demian Emil, dead at her hand. Inadvertent as it was, the statement was true. The Knight couldn't imagine how Robas felt either; a Master's first duty was to his padawan.
A half-formed thought occurred to Raven as she began to leave the arena, instinctively going to quickly clean up so that she could meet the transport bringing Robas back. A lot of the act of being a Jedi was the unspoken; the promise to defend those who could not do it themselves, the honor, the duty, the dedication. Raven had an overwhelming sense of failing in all those regards. The Knight turned around, looking at her lightsaber lying in the middle of the floor where she had dropped it. She took a deep breath, feeling uncomfortable with the image of it in the empty arena. But more than that, she felt dead, as though something vital to herself had been taken away.
Ruso stood outside his superior officer's office, waiting to be ushered inside. He had been called there, presumably on account of the recommendation he'd written in reference to Raven Suul. It had been a hard report for him to write, since he didn't really know where to put her. The hierarchy of Special Operations was a tricky area, covering many obscure needs of the IntCorps. Where she was now wouldn't suffice, unless she was assigned a new partner, and Ruso's instincts told him that making that decision would be disastrous, not to mention excruciatingly painful for his subordinate. Administration, a job like the one Ruso currently held, didn't seem to suit her personality or her abilities. Dismissing her was just plain stupid, giving the same abilities. Ruso had made the recommendation to transfer to another arm of the Special Ops, one where she could work alone, at least until she found her feet again.
The door opened, breaking Ruso's train of recollections, and brought the shorter man face to face with another Jedi of average height, with a shock of blond hair and deep blue eyes. The man, one Iri Tuche, was his captain, one of three in this arm of the Special Ops. He was a formidable man, known for profound silences and extreme talent with reasoning and rhetoric, when he chose to give his thoughts words. The man's face was angular, mostly planes interrupted by sharp lines. He gestured that Ruso should come into his office.
The door swung shut behind them, and, again in silence, Tuche motioned for Ruso to sit in a chair across from his desk, a large table scattered with flimsies and data pads. A few styluses were contained in a cup, and Ruso was also surprised to see a blaster sitting, lacking a cover of any sort, upon the other man's table. His face remained passive however as he sat, waiting for his superior to begin the conversation.
Tuche sat behind his ample table, idly picking up the blaster and running his fingers along its barrel, taking note of its clean lines and perfect curvature. His mouth quirked for a moment, as though a thought occurred to him, and then the captain set aside the weapon to peer his blue eyes into the depths of Ruso's brown. "This," he said finally, indicating the blaster, "is a weapon that serves our agents very well in certain situations, ones that betraying their occupations as Jedi would be hazardous, don't you agree?"
Ruso nodded his assent before vocalizing it. "Of course, Captain," he responded.
Nodding once in a satisfied gesture, Tuche indicated a flimsy on his desk, one that Ruso couldn't see but guessed was his own report. "You've stated that you believe your agent, one Raven Suul, would serve our purposes best as a loner, doing some leg work without the encumbrance, or benefits, of a partner." This time, Ruso merely nodded, not needing to vocalize what he had already explained in writing.
Heaving a sigh, the taller man stood, turning his back on Ruso to peer for a moment ou the picture window located behind his desk. "I can't say I agree with that statement, Ruso," he commented, still looking away. "Within that girl's mind, she holds a wealth of experience and knowledge on her particular line of work. It would seem to me that it would be a waste to abandon that to retrain her for something else." He turned away again, a haze forming around his silhouette, the man's front darkly contrasted with the light coming from the window.
Ruso shrugged in response, gathering his thoughts together. "I'm aware of her knowledge and talents, sir," he replied without disrespect, "but I fail to see what you are proposing to do with her. Knight Suul is an excellent field member, always executing her objectives nearly flawlessly and in more than reasonable amounts of time. Despite the need to retrain her, I fail to see where she could serve the Order better."
Tuche moved away from the window to pick up the blaster again, sighting it to his right, towards a wall with a few holos on it of the Jedi Temple. He fired the blaster, and instead of a clean bolt issuing from its muzzle, a click emanated from its inner workings, indicating that the weapon lacked power to shoot. "Lacking the proper preparations, one could die from making mistakes like this. Were I to be in a situation meriting the use of this weapon, I could easily be dead by now."
Throwing the blaster back onto his desk, he looked into Ruso's eyes again. "She's untrained for being a loner. I suggest that we move her into a commanding position in something she's intimately familiar with, a job not unlike your own."
Ruso nodded slowly again, not overly happy with his superior's conclusions. "As you say," he replied. Personally, he harbored doubts about Raven's abilities to direct. She was somewhat of a rogue within the ranks, having taken to Dooku's disapprovals of Council policy and her own master's tendency to be vocal about things with which she didn't agree. Quiet in many circumstances, something about politics just rubbed the girl wrong, probably just irritating her sense of justice. Raven worked better in the field, with her hands, out of the reach of such weighty, angering matters. Behind a desk? Ruso didn't know whether she would merely be resentful or flat out fail. But clearly, Tuche was going to do as he saw fit. And perhaps he was right. Maybe he saw something that Ruso missed in his years of acquaintance with the Jedi Knight.
***
Days faded into weeks, and with the passing of the time, Raven's grief seemed to mellow out from burning, white hot flames of suffering to glowing embers of remembrance. Her life settled back into routine, with the exception that she was still on leave, and it disturbed her how unaffected her Temple existence was. Still, she found solace in the practice rooms flanking the arena, honing her various weaponry proficiencies. The keel of her life had found an even heading again.
The receipt of the datacard outlining her promotion didn't truly surprise the Jedi Knight, although she felt a slight disappointment when she realized that the honor signified her removal from the field. A pang of regret accompanied this knowledge, as Raven acknowledged that she would probably never again feel the thrill of chasing an adversary to bring him to justice. Instead, she would be living vicariously, reading the reports of her agents on their adventures. Yet, she meant what she had told Ruso; she trusted his judgment and his assessment for her new appointment.
A couple of days before her leave officially ended, another datacard was delivered to her door, this one outlining the story behind the mission she would be supervising. As she read, she discerned that the Council was not making up the strife within the Senate that they constantly cited. The situation was a disturbing one in many respects. The Senator from Ord Mantell, as far as Raven could infer, seemed to have made himself an enemy. There had been vicious debates (over what, the card failed to expound) in the Senate recently, and this senator had been in the middle of it. However, his three children, not one over five standard years, had been taken hostage and threatened to be killed if the senator didn't pay.
Raven paused, wondering about the ambiguity of the information. What did this have to do with the fact he was involved in the debates? Was it suspected that another politician had perpetrated the kidnapping? With what was the senator supposed to pay? Credits? Votes? Support? Some kind of favor regarding trade routes? The Jedi Knight shook her head, trying to clear it of the extraneous thoughts.
The location of where the children were being held was discovered, and Raven's job was to supervise a group of Jedi to rescue them. The group would consist of two master-padawan teams, one set being named Aine Minins and her master Gre-Kier Arran, and the other Demian Emil and his master Robas Coun. The real problem was that, once Raven officially went off leave, she would have two days to organize her teams and get them into the field, leaving the teams with a mere day to get in, get the children, and get out.
Raven sighed and tossed her datapad with the card inside onto the counter and moved to the couch. She sat down, propping her head in her hands. The Jedi Knight reeled for a moment. She had four days to throw the group together, getting them working like a team, if she chose to take that much time. That would leave only one day to scout the field, find out the exact location of the children, the people guarding them, their strengths and weaknesses, and any number of other pieces of information that would make this mission successful. Four days. It must have been rather difficult information to collect, she mused.
Pulling herself from that prospect, Raven stood back up again, her mind already moving ahead to think about what she would need to do and how to get it done. Grabbing the datapad again, she left her rooms to find Ruso and question him, already planning to meet with her teams tonight. Four days was too short an amount of time for her to finish everything that needed to be done.
***
It was extremely early in the morning of the third day when Daré finally managed to track her former padawan down again. Ruso had informed her about Raven's promotion, as well as her first assignment. The older, raptor-faced Jedi had expressed concern about the girl. Admitting that the timeframe was deplorable, Ruso was afraid that Raven might have been throwing herself into the mission a little too much. Bearing an insulated flagon of soup and some bread, Daré had finally found the dark-haired Knight in one of the rooms that was jokingly referred to as a command center; a Spartan room with little more than a table, a few chairs, and a comm center.
The table was covered with flimsies, laid out with what Daré could only presume was some kind of order. Some of the corners of the sheets were anchored by data cards, her own pad tossed into the seat of one of the chairs. Raven's outer robe was thrown over the back of one of the chairs, her boots kicked off beneath it. The lightbanks lining the edge of the ceiling were somewhat bright but not to the point of making the light harsh and glaring. The Jedi Knight didn't even look up when her master entered. Her dark hair, normally combed neatly or pulled out of her way, fell messily over her shoulder as she leaned over one of the larger flimsies, evidently a map of some kind. Daré quickly found the reason for her former padawan's hair; she would scrub a hand through it in frustration at something on the sheet, tugging it free of the tangles.
"When was the last time you ate?"
Raven lifted her head to regard her master, her eyes betraying fatigue and frustration. A wry smile crossed her face at the contrast between herself and her master. Daré stood, her robe in a deep purple, the wide, long sleeves concealing her hands. She wore a matching skirt beneath her normal beige tunic, her utility belt hugging her hips beneath the robe that hid her lightsaber and the various other things on the belt. Her copper hair was braided intricately, as always, without a hair out of place. Raven shook her head. "I will never understand how you always look like you just stepped out of your rooms en route to a Council meeting," the former padawan replied.
Daré raised an eyebrow in question, not missing the fact that Raven hadn't answered her question. "It takes patient and a lack of desire to rush out and save the galaxy. Sometimes you realize that the galaxy will wait. You can't save the galaxy if you are asleep on your feet or starving yourself. 'Tisn't practical."
"I haven't the time, Master," Raven replied, straightened from her position over the flimsies to indicate them. "My team leaves in the morning, and ..."
"What are they doing currently, Raven?" Daré interrupted.
The Knight shifted her weight slightly, seeing where her master was going with this. "Sleeping, I presume," came the response, although the tone indicated her belligerence.
The shorter woman snorted quietly, a faint noise that spoke volumes about how much she had gleaned from Raven's last statement. Instead, she pulled the flagon from beneath her outer robe, as well as the bread she had brought. She laid out the cloth the bread was wrapped in, placing the bread on top of it. Then, she poured some of the soup from the flagon into a cup that fit over the top of it, also setting it on the cloth. Daré gestured to it, silently indicated that her padawan to eat.
With a sigh, Raven shook her head and began to shift the things off her flimsies. "I haven't the time, Master," she said quietly, defensively.
"Nonsense," the Jedi Master replied. "I know for a fact that you haven't slept at all since you read your summary. I also know that you will be sending your team out in the morning. They need you to be able to think clearly and make good decisions for them. You can't make good decisions without taking care of yourself." Daré reached down and took one of the pieces of bread, breaking it, and handing part of it to her padawan. "I'll eat with you."
Shaking her head slightly, Raven accepted the bread and tore off a piece, putting it into her mouth. She chewed slowly, her face thoughtful and troubled. "Master, what do I do if my information never agrees?" the Knight asked when she had swallowed.
Daré's face furrowed for a moment. "I don't understand what you mean."
"This," Raven replied, gesturing towards the table entire. "Nothing agrees. I have five scouts in the field to find out about the area, and all of them have different information. They don't agree on number, location, or armaments of the men holding the kids. I'm not supposed to pass along information without verifying it, but how can I verify it if no one agrees? Surely some information is better than none."
Master Shioc's face set, making her appear stern and unyielding. "I'm afraid I don't know what to tell you, cailín," she replied quietly. "It's one of those situations where you have to make a judgment call. They are your responsibility, and only you can discern what you think is best. Different people make different choices. You must just make the one that you think is best, the one upon which you can't improve."
Raven slumped into a chair, absently eating the bread. As Daré watched, the sleepless hours and work of getting her team ready caught up with her, Raven's eyes were drooping. She slouched in the chair, her face still concerned, until the older woman walked over and took her arm, easing the younger from the chair. "Sleep, Raven," she said with a wry smile. "It will all be here in the morning." And, impressively enough for the young woman, she followed without dispute.
***
Raven was up with the morning's light, dressed in her traditional robes. Her hair was neatly brushed, a far cry from the mess it had been a few hours before, pulled away from her face in a half-ponytail. Her clothes were neat, freshly hand pressed, and she looked every inch the Jedi Knight that she was. The lightsaber hilt hung clipped to her belt, and even her standard issue blaster, more from her days with Nathanial, among other various articles had been attached to it.
The Knight shifted slightly to move out of the shadows that the rising sun cast over the landing platform. Her team was standing slightly behind her, waiting in the doorway that led out onto the platform. She could sense their nervousness, the Masters' carefully maintained, restrained and controlled, the Padawans' leaping out ahead of them, mingling with excitement and anticipation. The group was waiting for a taxi that would take them from the Temple inconspicuously.
Turning back, Raven regarded her team, feeling a small flair of pride in them. Robas Coun was wearing rather non-descript peasant garb, soft greens and tans that might have come from a leafier planet than Courscant. He had a large knapsack slung over a shoulder, filled with other innocuous items, like clothes and food, for himself and his padawan. Demian Emil was standing next to his master, his impatience showing on his face and in his deep blue eyes. His clothes resembled Robas's, only that they were threadbare, resembling something he might have gotten from a nonexistent older sibling. The older padawan turned, giving a grin to the younger, Aine Minins. Her dark hair was pulled back messily from her face, also wearing worn clothes. Hers had more tans and browns in them, and she looked like she had come from some kind of menial labor; the tunic was too big, the leggings a hair too tight. Gre-Kier Arran matched his padawan in garb. The idea was that the two masters were brothers, one widowed with the two children. They were finding a new existence away from the hard memories of their old home.
The taxi pulled up, and Raven beckoned the Jedi from beneath the doorway. "May the Force be with you," she murmured quietly, maintaining the image that the family had sheltered there for a few days, and now the noble Jedi must send them on their way. Gre-Kier gripped her arm before he moved away, replying with a few words of reassurance, which appeared as gratitude. Then, the foursome disappeared into the taxi, and it eased away from the platform.
Raven stood, her arms crossed over her chest, and watched the small craft until it was lost into the crowds of traffic that crossed the sky. A knot of disquiet had settled into her stomach, but she attempted to dismiss it as first time jitters. Mentally, she reviewed her team's timeline; they had one day, a scant twenty-four hours, to survey and come up with a plan for retrieving the children. By tomorrow morning, they would have what information the Temple could offer to match up with their own. Early afternoon was the time they would move, right after the midday meal.
The Jedi Knight watched the sun rise for a few minutes, the light reflecting and refracting off the buildings, sending crazy patterns across Courscant's surface. She sought the Force, the calm, Unifying Force, but it was elusive, almost beyond reach. Its currents swirled around her, and Raven felt small and lost. She was but one person, one sentient being, and it was so much greater than she, beyond her comprehension. Raven shook her head, her thoughts scattering with the gesture.
Walking briskly back inside, Raven made her way through the halls and went into a small room set up for receiving and sending communications. A couple of technicians sat at comm centers, and one turned around when she walked in. He shrugged, his gesture saying that nothing had changed since the last time she had spoken with them.
"No reports, then," she said, her voice indicating that it was merely a reaffirmation of what the tech had just wordlessly told her. "I'll need something to give them tonight. I can't send them in blind."
The tech, unofficial spokesman, shrugged again. "I don't know what to tell you. If the scouts don't give us reports, we can't give you information to pass along to your team. It's a game. You have to wait your turn."
The dark haired woman sighed, pursing her lips in annoyance. "I don't enjoy waiting," she replied. The tech just grinned in response, not daring to verbalize a response to her comment. "I don't like waiting at all."
***
Morning faded into afternoon, and late afternoon found Raven in one of the practice rooms, wrecking vengeance on a set of practice droids. The staff in her communications room had all but kicked her out after she had spent the afternoon hovering and fretting over the lack of information. As hours passed, her tension was mounting, and the Jedi Knight eventually disappeared to rid herself of some of her energy.
Stripped down to her undertunic, Raven slashed and parried her way through yet another intensive program, managing to keep all three of the droids at bay. It was the third scenario she had run with them, and the Living Force was coursing through her as strongly as the blood in her veins. She was one with the Force, at least, that aspect of it, and it was like flying to her. She was higher, comfortable in the area of sweat and blood, toil and fighting, the fundamentals of the service to which the Jedi Order was dedicated.
A bolt sizzled from her lightsaber as she reflected it, deactivating one of the droids. The other two hovered just out of range, making a small formation to rush her both at once. Raven jumped and flipped neatly, slicing one of the droids into halves before running the other one through. The room filled with the smell of burnt plastisteel and cables. Wrinkling her nose in disgust at the scent, Raven collected the remaining functioning droid and left a note on the message board by the room indicating the state of the other two droids. She left the remaining one at the desk where a padawan took it and stored it away.
Raven wandered back to her rooms after having had to go back for her outer tunics and tabard. She felt good after her workout, something she hadn't done for a while. Getting ready to send her team out had completely consumed all her time, and before that, she hadn't really felt a great desire to go near a practice room.
Once in her rooms, she stripped out of her sweaty clothes and stepped into the refresher, enjoying the cool water across her overheated skin. Raven luxuriated in this for a while, also taking time to shampoo her hair hair, getting the salt out from it as well. Eventually, she stepped out and dried off, locating some clean tunics and leggings. It was as she was slinging her utility belt around her hips that she noticed the message light on her commlink flickering.
Walking over to it, she keyed in the code for it to play back. "Hey, Suul, this is the communications room. We've heard from three of the scouts. Two of them agree on numbers and locations, although the third does not. We're about half a standard hour from needing to contact the team. I need you to get down here to finalize the report we're to send them. Get down here as quick as you can."
Looping her damp hair away from her face, which was creased with concern, Raven made her way to the small room, resisting the urge to run. Mentally, she was berating herself for not paying closer attention to the time. As she pushed open the doors to the room, several heads swiveled around to regard her entrance, and the tension in the room was palpable.
"Welcome back, captain," a tech, the same one as before, said with a terse look. "Here are the reports from the three. Still haven't heard back from the other two. We're going to have to send the team in the data at the top of the hour. Tell us what to give them." As he spoke, he tossed her three datacards, which she caught easily, and leaned back in his chair.
Raven perched on a table edge, drawing her legs up to cross them beneath herself. She took the first datacard and put it in her pad. Taking a deep breath to center herself, much like she did before sparring, Raven cleared her mind and focused on the task at hand. Then, she read through the information, annotating notes on a flimsy she found one the table.
The information, as such things go, was straightforward. The scout had counted heads and positioned them within the building to the best of his ability. The second card contained the same kind of setup, with the exception of some personal differences in style between the two scouts. However, the number of people weren't the same, although close, and their positions suffered from the same discretions. The third card was completely different. The numbers varied within a score of people, their positions off by decameters.
Her mind racing, Raven gnawed on the end of the stylus. She moved away from the table, locating the blueprints of the building in question and flinging onto the table. Then, using the stylus, she marked down the positions and numbers from the three scouts. The two overlapped while the third didn't.
"No confirmation on any of this?" Raven asked the tech, already knowing the answer before he shook his head in a negative. With a sigh, she looked at the map again. Gritting her teeth and feeling a knot of uncertainty form in the pit of her stomach, she found a clean flimsy piece and carefully noted what she thought was the likeliest positions and numbers of the adversaries. 'You must just make the decision that you think is best, the one upon which you can't improve,' Raven thought to herself, quoting her master. Still, the words sounded hollow, lacking her fiery master's conviction. She read the information over three separate times, each time checking it against the map again. Then, the Jedi Knight pushed herself away from the table.
"Send them this," she said tightly, handing over the flimsy to the head technician. Then, Raven showed him her commlink. "I'll have this. I'll be in one of the practice rooms if you need me. Let me know if anything happens. Anything at all."
The tech nodded slowly, taking the flimsy from her, unnerved by the look in her eyes. Raven, meanwhile, took one last look at him and then the flimsy and left, unnaturally stiff and quiet.
***
By all rights, Raven should have long since been abed. She had had a total of about four hours of sleep in the last three days, going on four. However, her mind and conscience could not let her rest. The warrior within the Jedi Knight found it completely unacceptable that she should remain within the Temple out of harm's way while the two pairs were out doing her bidding in a dangerous situation. So instead of spending the night in her bed, she was in the main arena, fighting droids and her own thoughts.
By sunrise, Raven had completely decimated six droids, an unheard of number with their shielding systems and the fact they were designed to survive the activities implied in improving combat skills. Still, the Jedi Knight drove herself onward, despite the fact that she was stripped to her leggings and an undertunic, completely slicked with sweat and some burns. Her hair was soak from the sweat of her face and scalp with small tendrils curled by the salt framing her face. One of the droids had even managed to inflict blood, although she had only been bloodied once.
Beyond physical appearances, Raven was bone-weary. It was unheard of for a Jedi Knight to train continuously for more than three hours, but it had been about 2000 hours when she'd left the communications room, and the sun rose around 0645 in the mornings on Courscant. Still, she pushed herself onwards, determined to find the absolute limit of her strength and reserves. In any case, it was preferable to standing around with nothing at all to do. The waiting was brutal.
My master was always a wreck when his teams were at work. He would fret about them having trouble because of some oversight of his.
Nathaniel's voice sprang unbidden into her mind, the memory of his gentle rebuke and soft tone, the friend that she had thought he was. But the betrayal was there, tainting the memory that had been untouched. With an explosive grunt, Raven jumped from the ground and swung herself around, kicking out one leg to savagely bring down a droid. Her foot and the droid connected solidly, and it skittered away in a shower of sparks. The move ended with her landing on one foot, the momentum carrying her just far enough around to reflect bolts back onto the last remaining droids, deactivating, although not damaging, them both.
Raven dropped her lightsaber hilt, not carrying to notice that it deactivated when it hit the floor of the arena, bouncing slightly before coming to rest a short distance from her feet. Her legs were shaking beneath her, showing their displeasure for the last eleven hours. Her muscles burned as well, her shoulders and back, but she ignored it stoically. Idly, the Jedi Knight speculated on whether any other Knight had done such a strenuous routine merely for the doing of it, but she dismissed the thought as being unimportant. Instead, she eased herself down to sit and do some stretches to warm down.
She was interrupted about three quarters of the way through the warm down by her commlink. Raven swallowed slowly and counted to ten before answering the link. Then, the Jedi Knight listened in stoic silence as the tech, in a shaky voice, explained that an ambush had taken place. The information had been unreliable on all three cases, that the teams had been caught unaware. However, the children were safe. Demian Emil was dead, killed by a blaster bolt to the chest, and his master had been seriously wounded in an attempt to defend him, although the extent of Robas's injuries was as yet unknown. He was unconscious and being brought to the Temple by Aine and Gre-Kier. But the senator's children were safe.
Very slowly Raven stood up, after making some kind of intelligent response to the tech and clicking off her commlink. She was in shock, to say the least. Demian Emil, dead at her hand. Inadvertent as it was, the statement was true. The Knight couldn't imagine how Robas felt either; a Master's first duty was to his padawan.
A half-formed thought occurred to Raven as she began to leave the arena, instinctively going to quickly clean up so that she could meet the transport bringing Robas back. A lot of the act of being a Jedi was the unspoken; the promise to defend those who could not do it themselves, the honor, the duty, the dedication. Raven had an overwhelming sense of failing in all those regards. The Knight turned around, looking at her lightsaber lying in the middle of the floor where she had dropped it. She took a deep breath, feeling uncomfortable with the image of it in the empty arena. But more than that, she felt dead, as though something vital to herself had been taken away.
