Bearer of Bad News

Ace woke up to the taste of blood. For a moment, the complete darkness that engulfed him disoriented his sense of which way was up, but an attempt to move quickly alerted him to the fact that he was sideways, still strapped into the seat of the speeder.

He groped along his helmet - this borrowed snow bucket was foreign to him - for a lamp. The small beam cast a bluish glow across the panels of dead controls in front of him. He unstrapped himself and stumbled into the lap of his squadmate. "Champ?" Ace asked, the memory of what had happened slowly coming back. "Are you hurt?" There was no response. Luckily, the HUD of this snow helmet wasn't too different than what he was used to. The display read out Champ's vital signs, not good, the clone was unconscious. Ace was just thankful that they were both alive. He didn't feel terribly injured, aside from the metallic taste of blood. It felt like he had a few rounds in a ring, which considering he was just in a speeder crash, was not too bad.

The cruiser had been hit bad, however. Ace remembered peice by peice. They were shot down by probe droids, en route to the… wreckage. The cruiser wreckage. He checked his HUD display for the time. It wasn't nightfall yet, but it was pitch black. The speeder must have been covered by snow. Ace flipped a switch to send a message back to base, but no light showed on the dashboard.

"Hurray." Ace muttered. He picked up the comlink anyway. "Shelter Base, this is Commander Ace in the blind. If you are receiving, we have been shot down near the cruiser site, Officer Champ is unconscious. I seem to have sustained minor injuries.. Be warned, there are probe droids on patrol. Also, if you could send someone to dig us out of this junk heap, it would really make my day. Ace out." He hung the comlink back on the dashboard, feeling like a fool for talking to himself. He had the strangest feeling he was being watched, which only made him embarrassed all the more.

Taking a deep breath, Ace surveyed his options. He hit the manual disengagement for the roof hatches. It didn't budge. He tried throwing his weight against it, to no avail. A mechanical problem, or piles of snow, the doors were not going to move. Ace glanced at the windshields, and considered breaking them open for a moment. Between his unconscious comrade, the freezing weather, and the possibility of more probe droids, breaking apart their only shelter would probably spell certain death. The speeder wreck was claustrophobic, but it was at least warm… for now.

Ace shifted himself and Champ into upright, sitting positions against the side of the speeder. "Might as well get comfortable, eh?" He suggested to Champ's limp suit. "We're going to be here for a while."

"Nothing sir. We've lost all communication with the squad." Twist said regretfully, checking his holonet readout one more time.

Gavyn paced behind the communication officer's chair, pulling at his beard anxiously. Ace's speeder had gone down. It explained the dramatic disturbance in the force, but Gavyn was still unsure whether or not he was still alive. He had tried reaching out to him through the Force, but he didn't sense any response. A sour, cynical voice told him that Ace was dead. It was only a matter of time before the war caught up to one of them, but Gavyn could not believe that day had come finally. He dared not believe. "There must be some data we can get. Last position or something?" Gavyn urged.

Tyro kept close to Gavyn, not that it seemed like the Jedi Master would let him out of his sight if he tried, but from how tense Gavyn was, something was definitely horribly wrong. The force continued to roll off him in sickly waves and Tyro found himself mirroring Gavyn's sharp tense movements without thinking.

Feeling nauseated, Tyro finally took a seat behind the pacing Jedi. He watched the man pace back and forth, his eyes silently following the steady, pendulum-like movement. Drawing his legs up to his stomach, some part of him reminded him that he was probably supposed to be the strong, unfeeling one in this case, but he just wasn't used to this force bond thing. Clearly another reason why his former master-he stopped himself there.

What Ace had to do with it, or why that would upset Gavyn so much was another mystery. Perhaps he was on important mission than Tyro knew about. Or perhaps it was simply that he was the commander Gavyn had worked with for the past...some amount of years. All that seemed more than fair and substantially upsetting, but this still seemed like a lot coming from the usually composed Jedi Master. Regardless, whatever Gavyn was feeling was horrifyingly real. Tyro knew it all too well.

On edge, Tyro chimed in the instant Gavyn spoke, eager to do anything that might put the man at ease. "When did you lose contact?" Tyro asked, quickly getting to his feet, striding forward to the communications screen.

"Over an hour ago," Twist repeated again. "At 14:34:18"

Tyro thought on that figure for a moment. Gavyn had rushed them inside a few minutes after that, he had vaguely looked up at the chrono upon re-entering the tent. While not hard data the force was a reliable source.

"And you've verified no communication. It's not just some fluke of the storm?"

Twist nodded tiredly, it was the question Gavyn had been asking for the last ten minutes, but Tyro needed to think it out loud, just to be sure, before he gave Gavyn the news.

"Then there is no way to know without finding the ship itself, it will have stored the rest of the data in its internal systems," Tyro started, trying to explain things simply for Gavyn. The Jedi seemed too frazzled to understand much else. "But judging by the coordinates and angular velocity at the last reading we had, multiplied by the time difference we noted of approximately three of four minutes, that gives us a potential radius of-"

Twist had already pulled up the map to the large screen, entering data quickly as Tyro talked. "Eighteen kilometers," the two finished together, the map highlighting a large circular area in flashing red.

"How long would that take a team to search?" Tyro asked tentatively, unsure of what exactly it took them and how their equipment was for the snow.

"At least ninety standard hours," came Twist's prompt reply. Tyro tensed, bracing himself for Gavyn's reaction.

It took a long time for Gavyn to process the information Twist gave him. Ninety hours. Twenty-four hours in a day. That was nearly four days! That couldn't possibly be right. He did the math over and over in his head, hoping desperately that he was missing something. If Ace was still alive, four days in the snow would kill him for sure. The image of Ace frozen to his crashed speeder seat floated through Gavyn's mind, and he struggled to push it from his thoughts. It was fear like that which made attachment forbidden to Jedi in the first place. If he was afraid of losing Ace, he would meet opposition with anger instead of wisdom. All of these Jedi lessons seemed so much easier before he found someone to pour his vulnerabilities and desires into.

"But we could find them faster, right?" Gavyn asked. "I mean, that is how long it would take to go over the entire area, not until we find them." He offered. Gavyn deeply appreciated Tyro's clarity of mind, and his ability to analyze and understand technology at that moment. The Jedi Master wasn't sure what Twist or Tyro were discussing, which only served to make him more nervous. He wished he knew exactly why they couldn't simply drive a speeder out and pick up Ace, but he had to trust their calculations.

Regardless, it didn't matter if it would take four hours or four days. Gavyn had to try. He motioned the two clones observing from the back of the room. "Go prep another speeder." Gavyn ordered. For a brief moment, they glanced at each other hesitantly, before nodding a "Yessir" in unison.

"Master," Tyro started hesitantly. Gavyn was making him nervous and he knew that was something a Jedi should not be. "What's going on?"

Gavyn should have known that he couldn't keep the same kind of privacy with Tyro as the clones. They were tuned into each other, and he could sense that his agitation was upsetting his Padawan. Gavyn felt terrible about not considering how his presentation was affecting him. Gavyn gave Tyro a pained expression, wanting to reassure him but terrified as well that Tyro would point out what Gavyn already knew. Everything was not okay.

Most of the unit seemed aware that Ace and Gavyn were more than just colleagues. More than friends even. But it was never spoken of out loud. The clones knew it would be bad news for the both of them if the Council or the GAR found out, and so they kept their gossip among themselves. Gavyn wasn't sure yet how Tyro would take the news, after all he had turned in his former Master for crossing the Jedi code. Gavyn didn't feel like he was doing anything wrong, he was trying to bring just a glimmer of light into this war, not cast darkness, but the Council would not see his relationship in the same way.

He had to prove to Tyro that he could keep his emotions under control, that he and Ace were a stronger team together, and they would not forsake their duties for their attachment. If I haven't already blown my chance, Gavyn worried.

"I'm sorry, Tyro." Gavyn apologized, forcing himself to look into his apprentice's eyes. He moved for the door, pausing to put a hand on Tyro's shoulder and continue quietly. "I will explain myself, I promise. For now, we must focus our efforts on this rescue operation."Or recovery operation. Who knows if he is still alive.

Tyro frowned. There it was again, Gavyn pushing what he said to the side. He had no doubt that yes, rescuing Ace and Champ was more important right now than them discussing this, but he wasn't sure why Gavyn couldn't just take a moment to talk to him. About anything. They hadn't talked about anything since Coruscant, and even then they had been interrupted. Gavyn couldn't even take the time to show him how to do anything with the force aside from when he had fallen out of that tree and even then it had only been out of necessity. "Of course you will." Tyro responded blankly.

Gavyn frowned, he didn't have time to have that conversation with Tyro right now. He didn't want to just drop information like that without a chance to explain himself, and how he was coping with it. And who knew what had happened to Ace. By now he could be dead, and any relationship he and Gavyn had would be an exclusively past-tense situation.

"Come on. Let's get to that speeder." He redirected.

They crossed through the landed ship, serving as their most permanent structure. When he arrived to the hangar bay, the speeder hood was thrown open and there were a handful of clones, running about busily. It wasn't ready to go, that was for sure. "What is going on?" He asked the nearest mechanic.

"Converting it for use in the cold, sir. We're almost finished, but it has a lot of automation that is configured for less aggressive climates." He offered to Gavyn's confused expression.

"We don't need any weapons on it!" Gavyn answered, clearly misunderstanding what kind of upgrades the clones were making. "Well, let me know when it is prepped." He said, taking a deep breath, and stepping back to the edge of the small hangar.

"Master, chill out. Nobody said anything about weapons." Tyro barely bit back the exasperation in his tone. For a man who worked with military stuff all the time he was clearly not listening or something. "They probably need to make sure the engine and fluids aren't going to freeze or something. Insulate it better, to keep the heat in. That kind of stuff."

Tyro looked up at his Master again, watching his distant look. "They're going as fast as they can, we're all worried about Champ and Ace."

Unsure if that would have the desired effect he tried again. Seeing Gavyn like this unsettled him. Tyro reached out, wrapping his gloved hands around Gavyn's, hoping that would get his attention. "And it might not be ninety hours, that's just an average. Numbers like that are good for administrative purposes and stuff, but they aren't fate. It's kinda like a force vision, you know?"

If the mechanic didn't say anything about weapons, Gavyn had no idea what he did mean. Tyro made some good points, however. He didn't want to find Ace only to have the speeder stall, and everyone freeze to death anyway. He nodded, pacified by the explanation.

Gavyn was thankful that Tyro was with him, even if he wished the boy didn't have to see him this way. He smiled warmly at his Padawan. He knew what Tyro said was true, and it broke his heart to hear the boy explain it. He shouldn't have to do that. It was Gavyn's responsibility to keep his emotions in check. To be the strong one. Tyro would never agree, but it was the truth. Gavyn's job was to be a pillar, both as a General and as a Jedi Master.

He put his arm around Tyro's shoulders. If there was nothing Gavyn could do to hurry up the rescue effort, the least he could do was stay out of their way, and make sure he didn't fall apart - for Tyro's sake.