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Just a quick note, holocron.
Master Zhar pulled me out of the Library five hours ago, and told me to pack at once and make my way to the local spaceport. He was very short on details. Threw everything I could think of into a bag and legged it. Alek caught up with me as I was running down the stairs. If he keeps up those bannister-sliding antics of his, he's going to need a new pair of trousers very soon. Shuttle was waiting when we got there... jumped in together with Ferron, who like the rest of us, had absolutely no clue what we were doing.
Ferron's drawing has improved considerably, by the way. He did an impromptu sketch of everyone as they were seated in the transport, on the way up, and it was brilliant. It's a real pity that his Master doesn't much approve of art, but then again, Master Lamar doesn't approve of anything, so what's new?
Docked with a Republic army transport orbiting Dantooine, where we were directed to a breakout room for a briefing. Lots of people - some whom I know, others whom I've never seen before... we were all either senior Padawans or freshly-minted Knights. There was a Master present to conduct the briefing, but I didn't know where he was from until he started talking. Coruscant...! He gave us the most cursory briefing I've ever heard.
Basically, we're being sent on fact-finding missions, to various places in the Outer Rim. What about? Pirates, apparently. Pirate raids with a high body count. There was some speculation from the rear of the room that it wasn't so much pirates as unknown, sentient aggressors from the Unknown Regions, which was quickly put down. Alek asked if it might not just be a bad case of civil unrest, or gang warfare taken to the streets? Then someone ventured to suggest that the pirates might actually be Mandalorians: everyone laughed it off, because the Mandies were roundly defeated in the last great war, and nobody thinks they'll be coming back anytime soon.
Well, whatever or whoever it is, we - as Jedi - should always be willing to lend a helping hand where one is needed. And right now, the Republic is in no position to act decisively. We're still recovering from the economic, social and political effects of the last huge conflict. Sure, some systems bounced right back, but for every system that has pulled itself up, there's got to be at least five others that are still struggling. And most of them are in the Outer Rim, where reliable hyperspace lanes are few and far between, and the folk are rough, trigger-happy, and not always the best trading partners. Sending uniforms into the Outer Rim to sniff around would make lots of folk very unhappy with Coruscant... and that's the last thing the Senate needs.
...
Erm. I... think someone really needs to use the 'fresher now. I've been in here too long! More later.
=== RECORDING ENDED ===
=== RECORDING COMMENCED ===
Time for another update.
Some developments since I last spoke. There are eight Knights on board this vessel, and about twenty-five or so Padawans. In accordance with instructions from Coruscant, we were collectively divided into eight units: three to four Padawans to a Knight. My unit has four Padawans including myself - Alek, Ferron and a Human girl from Coruscant who introduced herself as 'F'. Apparently her name has been the source of much amusement amongst the Padawans there, and she does not wish to repeat the experience. F it is, then! She seems the steady, quiet sort.
...given that Alek is sure to practice his smooth talk on F, would it be very wrong of me to engage in a little wager with Ferron over how long it'll take for her to cave, or slap him? Just a small amount... five credits, maybe...?
Anyway - as I was saying, each unit has been assigned to a world known to have seen recent pirate activity. Ours is Jebble. What would pirates want with Jebble? It's all ice!
We will make planetfall in approximately a day and a half.
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=== RECORDING COMMENCED ===
Weirder and weirder.
Jebble is practically uninhabited, except for the mines, which are mostly operated by Lhosan Industries. I can't see what there might be here that would interest a proper pirate. There aren't any villagers to kidnap for ransom or sale on the slave market, there's no spice, no exceptionally dangerous beasts for the 'exotic' pet-lovers... in fact, I don't think Jebble has any wildlife at all. Why would pirates bother coming to a place where there's literally nothing to steal?
Still, after hearing what our contact here had to say, I am starting to believe it's not so much 'pirates' that we're looking at, but barbarian marauders, or worse. Maybe there was something in the speculation that we're being attacked by some aggressive people from the Unknown Regions after all.
...I don't think it's the Sith, though our Knight seems to be convinced that the Sith - or the Dark Side - is behind everything suspicious in the galaxy. She's an odd one, this woman.
Our contact is the chief engineer of the largest mine on Jebble. He informed us that the entire planet is given over to various mining operations. Lhosan Industries is, by far, the largest player, with more than six thousand mines scattered across the planet. Each of these mines is supposed to communicate daily with headquarters on Taris, reporting on things like yield, manpower, logistics... the usual. In turn, headquarters monitors the output and needs of each mine and its workers, and reacts accordingly. Some months ago, five mines stopped communications with headquarters entirely. Attempts to re-establish contact proved futile, and so headquarters directed that security personnel from the larger mines be sent to investigate. Two investigation teams were sent out, and both met with disaster.
The first expedition practically dropped off the radar nine days into their mission. Not a man save two of the original party of nineteen returned - one of them horribly disfigured, and the other, barely alive. Both men were too traumatised to talk, and died soon after their return.
Approximately two weeks later, a second expedition set out. Again, contact was lost just over a week following their departure. A month went by with absolutely no news - and then the workers from a mine in Sector Fourteen found a large crate outside their camp one morning. It contained the heads, hands and feet of every member of the second expedition. Needless to say, no further attempts at investigation were made after that!
That two expeditions of fully-equipped, trained and armed security personnel have met with such grisly fates is disturbing. The fact that fourteen more mines since have, one after the other, mysteriously ceased reporting to headquarters or communicating with the central administration on Jebble, is even more so. The cumulative effect of these unexplained occurrences on the morale of those stationed here is palpable.
Ferron put it very neatly when he said that there is a generalised state of ill-concealed panic amongst the staff and workers here. Everyone, even those working and living the closest to central admin - and who are theoretically the best-protected - are nervy and anxious. You don't need the Force to know that everyone is terribly afraid of the something - or more likely, someone - out there, moving with murderous purpose, waiting, stalking...
This doesn't make sense. I mean, pirates - don't make sense. It doesn't! Pirates are known for their quick attacks - they raid, pillage - but it's not in their interests to... well, encroach - would that be the correct way of describing this?
...I mean, one mine after another...! Pirates just want booty. They don't care where it comes from, so long as they get it, and if I were a pirate, I'd leave people and places mostly intact, so that I could drop by again sometime in the future for more. You know? And... a crate full of body parts...! If you ask me, that sounds more like a form of... communication, some primitive declaration of hostilities. Not exactly 'piratical', wouldn't you say?
No, no. Someone is going to a lot of trouble, I think, to make a point.
The question is, why? And what point exactly? To what purpose? Why now? Why here? Why in this fashion?
I think these are very pertinent issues that have to be addressed if we're ever going to get to the bottom of this. Tomorrow I shall make it the first order of my day to air my thoughts at breakfast. I wonder if the admin here will allow us to access the logs of the affected mines remotely?
Frack. I have a horrible, horrible feeling about this.
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=== RECORDING COMMENCED ===
We accessed the logs from the central computer system today, and made several interesting discoveries:
1 - Business as usual at each of the five original mines until about two standard hours before they went permanently offline,
2 - Main generator failures recorded at each mine, but does not seem to have been much of a concern,
3 - Considerable deterioration in the quality of received communications with central admin and headquarters following the abovementioned failure, i.e. 'patchy', garbled or completely unintelligible; and
4 - Secondary generators taken offline immediately before communications ceased.
While our Knight was busy reporting to Coruscant, F, Alek and I went through the last hour of recorded communications from the mines again, because Ferron swore that he'd heard "something different" in the recordings made shortly before the secondary generators went offline.
I couldn't hear anything different - it was all static, and snatches of garbled conversation. F couldn't make out anything of interest either: neither could Alek. But Ferron was convinced that he'd heard something. He even replayed the specific portions where he said there had been something odd, but none of us could hear the difference. We all thought he was imagining things, until our Knight came back. She listened to what Ferron had to say, and immediately instructed us to have the recordings in question thoroughly analysed.
Holocron, remind me never again to doubt the ears of a Cathar. Ferron did hear something after all...! The analysis registered two new sounds appearing in the background during each of the final communications. When we looked at the frequencies it all made sense: both were just beyond the range of human hearing. No wonder only Ferron heard it!
You know, the discoveries we've made today make the theory of a pirate raiding party increasingly unlikely. They fit in better with what might be expected in a military offensive, and one that obviously - to me, at least - carries the hallmarks of meticulous planning. About ninety percent of the miners on Jebble are Human, or Near-Humans... who share the same hearing range. Most of the rough work is done by specialised mining droids, whose audioreceptors are tuned to normal Human and Near-Human vocal ranges. The minority ten percent of workers here who are neither Human nor Near-Human are largely stationed at the transport and shipping bays, where the constant movement of heavy transports, cargo and personnel makes for a very noisy working environment: these folk would, to a large extent, have become desensitised to noise in general.
What this means in practice is that there was virtually nobody at any of the mines who would have heard anything out of the ordinary. It's not difficult to see the implications. Jebble is one of the great resource worlds of Taris, which the Republic has been trying to woo for ages. If someone wanted to pick a fight with the Republic, but stop short for the time being of an all-out declaration of war, the best way to do it would be by targetting parties, or interests with which the Republic has allied itself. Taris falls squarely into this category.
I did some asking around, and learned that the other resource worlds of Taris have experienced similar mysterious silences of late. This lends credence to the hypothesis that it's not lousy space pirates that we should be looking at, but an actual invader: someone has really done their homework.
Someone is planning something, and is doing so very carefully, with a great deal of forethought. That doesn't say 'pirate' to me so much as 'invading army'. Pirates are opportunistic, and favour quick hit-and-runs. They rely on speed, not tactics, to make their inroads and getaways. Invading armies cannot afford that kind of reckless opportunism. Pirates don't usually conduct their operations by stealth: the vanguard of an infiltrating army does.
Frack, holocron. If I'm right, this could mean the Republic is being threatened yet again - and we're woefully unprepared for war.
...I'm starting to think, too, that maybe all the 'crazy talk' about Mandies isn't so crazy after all.
Frack.
=== RECORDING ENDED ===