Chapter 9 – Touched
Sam's eyes snapped open, and she found herself looking directly at the lanky form of Dentralla. Having jolted awake suddenly, as she always did when someone entered her room; she was momentarily surprised to notice that it was without the usual panic and paranoia that she usually felt. Her surprise turned to understanding when she realised that she was already in contact with the Force, that she had been even while she was asleep, which told her that it was Dentralla and not a stranger that had come into the room.
"What is it?" she asked, fully awake and ready. She'd been having strange dreams the last couple of nights, of something she recognised but couldn't place. But now she knew what…she'd been plagued by images of the 'Gate activating, of going through the 'Gate and of the Chevrons encoding and locking. She nodded at Dentralla's gruff explanation that they had received a message calling for help from a distant planet, and they were about to have a meeting about it.
"Right. I'll be there in a few minutes." She told Dentralla, swinging her legs over the side of the bunk and stretching luxuriously. "Trust Luke to choose this week to get married." She grumbled as she dressed. Glancing at her chrono, she realised that it was midday local time. Must've been more tired than I realised, she thought, reflecting briefly on her argument with Corran and her experience in the forest.
Realising Corran and Mirax would have left already, she dressed swiftly and made her way to the Grand Audience Chamber, where the celebrations at the end of the battle of Yavin when the first Death Star had been destroyed, had taken place.
As she arrived, she pushed all thoughts of what had happened out of her mind and reigned in her still raw and roiling emotions. She would deal with it, but now was not the time.
Kam Solusar stood up on the raised dais at the end of the chamber with the few Jedi who would be remaining arrayed opposite him, looking up at him with respect. Kam and Tionne would be the last to leave the Academy later that day, leaving it in the capable hands of some of the older, more responsible recruits, though many would be attending the Jedi portion of the ceremony, if not the entire thing.
Nodding her apologies for her tardiness, Sam received a quick nod from Kam, and she stood towards the back of the group and listened to what Kam was telling them.
"A short while ago we – or more accurately the New Republic – received a distress call from a planet on the edges of known space. Now, the message was garbled, but we were able to determine a few things. Where it was, but more importantly that it seems to be some kind of virus that they could not stop as it rapidly took many of the inhabitants. The planet is known to its natives as Brocacnor and it is a relatively low-tech planet, with almost no species other than human. I will be sending a team of two - Tekli and Sam Carter, if they agree?"
"Yes, Master Solusar," came Tekli's immediate, soft reply.
"It'll have to be three then," Sam told him, smirking.
"Why?"
"You think this furry lump is going to let me out of her sight!" She gestured towards Dentralla, who glowered in reply but remained silent.
"Alright then, three," Kam replied with a grin. "Kyle Katarn will be in command of the Temple in our absence. Kyle, Sam, Dentralla, Tekli…the rest of you are dismissed." Kam waved the others goodbye and walked down the few steps to talk to the remaining four. "Kyle, are you okay with being left in command?"
"Sure, be glad to, a nice change of pace from milk runs and babysitting," he replied with a grin.
"Good, now Sam, Tekli, Dentralla, we don't have much information, only a little from some old pre-Imperial records, but this should be fairly straightforward, and you're more than up to the task. You have an hour to get ready. Sam, you'll be piloting one of the Mon Cal shuttles. We don't think that you'll need the weaponry and defences, and you are to avoid it as much as you can, but with your track record…" he joked. Sam remained silent, but rolled her eyes. It's not my fault trouble follows me like bees to honey. "Tekli, you'll have one of the standard emergency field med units, so if you think that you will need anything more, collect it and load it on the shuttle." Tekli bobbed her head in acknowledgement, her huge ears flapping slightly with the movement.
"May the Force be with you," came the crackled reply over the comm unit.
"You too, Kam. Send Luke and Mara our regards." Sam signed off of the comms and resumed her preparations for hyperspace. Although flying x-wings was her passion, she had taken the time to learn to fly a few other, useful things too and had apparently shown an innate skill for it. She'd decided that it was just experience, and years of being in the Air Force.
"All set?" she called back to her passengers as Dentralla finished flicking a few switches and reclaimed her seat as Sam's co-pilot. Receiving affirmations from them both, she pulled the lever, sending the organic looking Mon Cal shuttle into hyperspace. "Okay, it's a three day journey to Brocacnor; I'm going to go and read through the data and meditate." Sam informed them before walking out of the cockpit and heading to one of the ship's quarters. Settling herself on her bunk, she crossed her legs under her and leaned back against the bulkhead. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and started her meditation.
Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hatred; Hatred leads to the Dark side
She remembered the words that had been amongst the first things that Corran had said to her when he began training her.
Is that what it is? I'm afraid of becoming a shell, without emotion, like a Goa'uld host? she thought after a while. They want me to abandon my feelings, to become unemotional, and it's too like the Goa'uld for me to handle. But I don't need to be unemotional; I just need to control the emotions that lead to the Dark side…but what if I can't? What if what I did to the Colonel, Daniel and Teal'c hadn't been real…NO! It was the Dark side screwing with my mind.
She continued this train of thought for a long time, going round in circles until she finally came to a decision, and made a peace of sorts with it.
"I can't forsake them, without them, I am not Me, I'd be someone else…Tok'ra or Goa'uld…but I have to control them." She said it out aloud without realising it, eyes snapping open all of a sudden. She still hadn't dealt with it fully, nor with what had happened in the forest, but the blaring of the proximity alarm had woken her from her trance. Glancing at her chrono, she realised that she had sat there for the entire journey, but she felt wonderfully rested for it, and had an add kind of peace within her that hadn't been there before.
Jumping up she jogged into the cockpit and took her seat in front of the controls, immediately silencing the grating alarm.
She glanced at Dentralla once when the Wookie made a comment, redirecting her gaze back at the controls as her hands flew over them.
"I wasn't asleep. I was meditating on whether it would be of the Dark side to space a giant fur-ball with a bad sense of humour." Dentralla harrumphed, knowing that Sam wasn't serious, but that she hid behind sarcasm and humour when she was uncomfortable. Dentralla didn't know it, but it was a tendency Sam had picked up off of Jack, after so many shared experiences that they didn't want to talk about.
Hitting the button for the intercom, she warned Tekli that they were about to revert to real space.
Pulling the lever back to its original position, she watched the stars stretch into long lines and then shorten to the star field of an unfamiliar system.
"Okay, no unfriendlies…which planet are we heading for 'Tralla?" The Wookie pulled up a chart on one of the screens and growled her reply, gesturing out of the view port at the same time. "The second one in?" Dentralla nodded and Sam changed their vector to head towards the large Blue-Green planet, pausing only to put her black, non-slip pilot gloves on, having learned the hard way that sweaty palms was not a good thing when you're flying.
"Brocacnor Control to…Peacemaker, please change vector and do not attempt to land. We are in the middle of an epidemic and are trying to keep everyone away to stop the spread of it. Repeat; change vector and do not attempt to land." The unsure voice of a comm officer came over the unit, crackling slightly with static.
"At least it has not yet reached spaceport control yet, there is still some hope that it has not spread any further." Tekli commented as she appeared from the aft of the ship and strapped herself in.
"No, it has. That was just a kid, he was unsure and he didn't have the experience that comm officers are usually required to have. I'd say that all the regular officers had been taken out, and he's all that they could find," Sam replied, frowning at the console for a moment before putting on the headset and hitting the send button.
"Brocacnor Control, this is the Peacemaker. We're requesting an approach vector. We're Jedi. We're here in response to a distress call we received. We've come to help."
"I…uh…you can't…you'll catch it too…" The kid on the other end of the line stuttered and stumbled over his words, obviously panicking, and torn between following the orders he was given and the desire for some kind of help for his people.
"Hey, don't worry…I've got a healer with me, she's gonna come down there and try and make everyone better. If she can't, then we're not going to be leaving any time soon either."
"Bu-"
"Ah! Just give me a vector, and the co-ordinates of the nearest clear space near you, we'll land and meet you and get to work on a cure." Dentralla was 'urfing quietly in the background. The only time she had even seen Sam this soft spoken and gentle was with Valin, or the Solo kids, and even then, it had been when they were upset, unsure, or injured.
"Okay…I'm sending it now." Sam shot Dentralla a dirty glare as she received the co-ordinates and moved the ship down through the clouds and landed it in a large courtyard amidst stone buildings. Grabbing a few basic supplies, they made their way down the ramp and into the sunlit yard. Tekli had been about to ask what direction they were to head in when a small figure came jogging out of one of the far doors.
"Are, are you the Jedi?" he asked uncertainly.
"Yeah, I'm Sam, this is Tekli, and this is Dentralla," Sam introduced them, repressing a smile at the awed look on the boy's face when he looked up at Dentralla.
"I'm Ferdin," he replied. "I'll take you to the Research Facility? They were looking at it, trying to figure out what it was, but the scientists were some of the first to fall to it." The boy could only have been about 14 or 15, and he seemed very jumpy as they were walking along. Every so often he would jump at a sound and Sam quickly came to the conclusion that something had given him a reason to be jumpy and unclipped her Lightsaber, holding it ready just in case. Corran had told her on numerous occasions that she was paranoid and she'd retorted quickly that she was alive because of that paranoia.
A twenty minute walk later and they had arrived at the facility without mishap. Tekli immediately launched into the records, determined to find a cure as soon as possible whilst Sam and Dentralla decided to do a sweep of the building, check to see if it was safe. That left Ferdin – who had left an automated message for any other ships that may enter the system, although it would be unlikely – with Tekli, to show her around and make sure she could find everything.
Dentralla, carrying her traditional Wookie Bowcaster, was surprised by the efficiency and experience that Sam showed as they carried out a check on the building. Using her blaster, she held it in two hands - standard military posture – and aimed it at the floor as she walked along, bringing it up and sighting along it as she turned a corner, or entered a room, the same way that she had so many years ago when off-world, or even on-world.
They had nearly finished their sweep when they came to what she guessed were iso-rooms, close by the lab where they had left Tekli. As they approached, they could hear howling, screams, banging and grunting…an odd cacophony of sounds that were eerily familiar to Sam.
Walking down the corridor, she peered into a few of the rooms, and what she found made her jaw drop, and her eyes widen until she looked like they were going to pop out of her head.
A few minutes later, she had regained her composure, and her face was set with a determined, steely look that would have sent full-bird Colonels running for cover.
"I know what this is," she told the befuddled Wookie, who growled a question in reply. "I've had it before," she answered before turning and running out of the corridor, sprinting towards the Lab, where she found Tekli stood on a stool, large ears twitching as she peered into a microscope designed for humans.
"I know what it is," she told Tekli, who looked up at her in surprise. "We found some people; in the Iso-rooms…you know the symptoms?"
"Yes, I've been going through the notes," Tekli replied.
"It's a histamine-alyitic; it feeds on histamine," Sam told her, trying to dredge up all of her memories of the Touched Virus they thought they had wiped out so long ago.
"Are you certain?"
"Fairly, but you might want to do some tests. Administering an anti-histamine cures it, but I don't know doses or the effects on different species or anything." Tekli nodded thoughtfully, muttering under her breath as she went about testing Sam's theory.
Still glowering, Sam turned to Ferdin.
"Ferdin, can you get me access to all the notes on where the first cases were found, shipping information and spaceport records?"
"I, I, I don't know…some of it, maybe, but spaceport records are confidential, you need a high ranking security code to get into them."
"Damn. Well, can you get me to a console where I can hack into it?"
"I guess…"
"Thank you." Sam forced a smile for the kid, trying to encourage him. "'Tralla, will you stay with Tekli while I-" she was cut off by the Wookies howled protest that she owed Sam a life-debt, not Tekli. "'Tralla, this is important, I have two Lightsabers and a blaster, I'm only going a little way away, and I'll be back in no time. I need you to stay with Tekli, because she's going to need your help later. I have my comm on me, so I can check in or call for help." Dentralla tried to protest again, but Sam cut her off. "Dentralla, this is important. Please?" The hairy biped finally gave in, though she grumbled about it immensely.
"This way," Ferdin announced, walking back out of the corridor they had entered through.
"So Ferdin, how did you manage to end up in charge here?"
"My father was in charge of the Space port and my brother was the day-time comm officer. They've been training me when I wasn't in school over the last few years, so that I can work in the space port when I'm older."
"That must've been nice." Ferdin shook his head.
"No, I want to be a fighter pilot, like the people in Rogue Squadron." He paused a minute before continuing shyly. "If you're a Jedi, then do you know Luke Skywalker and Corran Horn? They were two of the best pilots in Rogue Squadron." Sam couldn't help but smile at this, bitter though she felt towards Corran at the moment.
"I do, yes. In fact Corran Horn is my Master."
"He is? Wow!" Ferdin was grinning like a Cheshire cat now, but the smile soon faded in the face of the people who had been affected by the Virus. As they walked through the eerily quiet town, heading towards the Spaceport control, they came across the occasional body of a man, or woman, laying where they had been killed by another, in a fit of anger or a fight over food.
Sam could see Ferdin actively trying not to look at it, and to keep the contents of his stomach where they belonged, but he couldn't manage it and Sam rubbed his back to soothe him, holding his hair out of the way while he divulged what was left after his first walk through the city to meet them. It suddenly struck her that she no longer reacted with anything more than pity when she saw a body strewn in the street, when she would, many years ago have felt anger at someone for killing them, revulsion or sorrow, she would have felt something.
Nar Shadaa had solved that. It was a regular occurrence on the Smugglers' Moon to see some denizen of the street fallen where he lay, probably because he'd pissed someone off, or failed to pay up on time. She'd wonder briefly when she saw them whether they'd been one of the ones that hadn't deserved to die, or of the ones who had stolen, kidnapped, murdered, raped or betrayed at some point. On Nar Shadaa, most of them had, although that was purely because the 'bad guys' outnumbered the 'good guys' about a million to one.
Walking on in silence, Sam mused on her thoughts for a while, not helping her already ireful and angry mood. When they arrived at the building, Ferdin lead her to a small room with several consoles and data retrieval points.
"You any good at data retrieval?" she asked the boy who stood hovering beside her.
He shrugged. "I guess…"
"Well then, do you want to pull up all of the data on when the virus first appeared, where it was…everything you can, whether you think its useful or not, no matter how tenuous the link, alright?" He nodded and Sam added, "including security holos," as an afterthought. Turning to her own console, she immediately set about hacking into the spaceport records, looking for details of which ships had docked, where they had come from and where they were going.
As she did this, she thought about the implications that the Touched Virus being in this galaxy meant. If she could trace it back – not least to stop its spread – then she may have a link to the Stargate and, if she could get one of the devices they had used to take her from her galaxy, she may be able to get home. Even if she couldn't get one of the devices, she could at least stop them from taking more people as slaves.
She knew that the…less savoury characters of the galaxy wouldn't hesitate to exploit the gate as Shivral Telk had, and she shuddered to think what would happen if one of the Jedi fell to the dark side and got hold of it.
Finally slicing into the back door of the network, she set about pulling all information since the virus had first been, and the few days beforehand. Saving all the information onto her data pad, she neatly covered her tracks, erasing all trace that she had been there at all. As soon as Ferdin was done as well, she saved the information to the data pad and started on their way back, once again trying not to pay too much attention the occasional bodies that littered the way.
Sam was still unsure as to what she was going to do with the information, or how she was going to deal with it, but she knew she would have plenty of time to think about it before they would be finished on the planet.
Arriving back at the Lab where she had left Tekli, she found the Chadra Fan with the first of the test subjects, just administering a dose to the young man.
"Did it work?" Sam asked her, receiving a non-committal shrug from Tekli, who was concentrating almost wholly on the man in front of her.
"I think it will; this is the first test," She told her vaguely.
"Okay. I'll help wherever I can. If you need me, just come get me." Sam told her quietly, knowing that they were talking weeks before a sufficient number of the population were cured for them to be able to leave it in the hands of the natives and before they would be able to go home.
