#jai-din

[themedicwhomeeps]

On Ancestry

Jallira backed away from the holocron with a sigh. It was the last one she had on matters pertaining to anything that could cause an entire settlement to walk into the jungle, probably to be devoured in one sense or another, and she was still no closer to what could cause that sort of thing. The problem was the residual feeling of foreboding all around the abandoned settlement; artefact or creature, the sense of ‘something wrong’ was not a part of any such power at work. Such a feeling left behind would simply drive away any being that might make a good meal for it, after all. None of it fit.

She wished for Jai-din Sortek’s expertise, but he was busy on other matters, it appeared, and felt it to be outside his area of expertise. Ahrianna hadn’t been there, and describing ‘a feeling of foreboding’ was too vague to help her in what research she could do. As for Maelana, she was no researcher and the only materials she had access to were the ones that Jallira had herself. Jallira was more or less on her own.

She did, however, have one more potential source of information. She just didn’t like to use it. Still, preference took a back seat when necessity drove, so after a moment spent gathering herself, she opened a tiny biometrically locked panel at the bottom of the desk where her small collection of holocrons sat.

Inside was an amulet about the size of Jallira’s hand, inscribed with clumsy runes. The last of the Covenant artefacts - or at least the last that she could access. Of the ones keyed to her bloodline, this was the only one she could truly use that still had any significant effect. The saber was ill suited to her in terms of its balance. The gauntlets were too large. The mask was destroyed. And all three were locked in the Marran’s archives, likely to be rendered powerless when she, last of her bloodline due to her own sterility, eventually died. But the amulet had been in her possession when it had been fully cleansed, and no one had ever asked for it back to be locked up with the rest. It had returned to her via Alti, who had been entirely indiscriminate about packing up everything that mattered to Jallira from the Nexus world.

She slipped the amulet’s chain over her head, sat down and meditated. It didn’t take long before the whispers and sighs of dozens of her ancestors filled her head. Once, back when it was a tainted remnant of her ancestors’ ties to the Sith, this amulet had controlled people’s minds. Now, it was a repository of knowledge. It wasn’t always accurate, because many of the dozens of Force-imprints locked away in the amulet had been insane when they died. But when it was, it was the best source of Sith lore anyone could ask for. No one guarded their secrets around a slave that badly beaten down.

This is what I felt, she told the amulet. Do you know what it means?

She had been meditating for an hour before she got anything useful. At first, Jallira just got noise - pain and misery, screaming and fear, self-loathing and despair. It was only the most recent of the imprints - her own mother - who knew anything but abuse ... and her mother was too recent an addition to the ‘collection’ to help. Still, true to her nature, Jallira did not give up; she’d known all those emotions from her own abusive training, and could endure them again if she had to. She would have the answers she needed. The settlement was too good a prospect not to fight for.

Eventually, a slightly unsure bit of empathic feedback cut through the mess. Warning. Echo. Everything dies.

When she was sure that there was nothing else, Jallira took off the amulet and returned it to its hiding place. Then she went back to meditating, this time on the riddle that had just been posed to her. The amulet never gave anything clearly; the impressions left by her ancestors were too vague for that. After half the day spent in meditation, she took a break for a sandwich and a cup of bahat-mint tea from her recently replenished supply, just to get herself back on an even keel. Old habits died hard, but they did eventually die, and Jallira recognised that success at this depended on her being at her best.

(Besides, she felt Mae nagging in her head. Still, she used to ignore it a lot more often than she did these days.)

Eventually, she got some idea of what she might actually want to research, and turned back to her collection of holocrons for something more concrete. Then, mindful of delegation and her own dwindling energy levels, she turned to her transcription machine instead. She could probably find out what sort of thing could do what her ancestors suggested had been done on her own, but right now what she needed most was a good night’s sleep.

“They’re rubbing off on me,” she sighed once she’d dictated her letter to the comms system. She wasn’t entirely chagrined by the whole thing, though. Doctors should take doses of their own medicine without too much complaint before they expected their patients to do the same.

[themedicwhomeeps]

On Wisdom

Things are getting gradually back to some semblance of normal after the incident on Zakuul. Honestly, it could have been worse. I wish I had been conscious when Master Sortek took his wound but at least he was mobile and nothing life-threatening was going on. Rilus looked after him and all was well, and no one else got seriously hurt.

...Well. Except for me. Still, Rilus did a wonderful job of the surgery given that replacing damaged intestines with cybernetics was not an option. Still, I am a little concerned about how many scars my internal organs have at the moment. Between the scattergun and the PX-133, my insides are nearly as scarred as Mychae’s outsides. I’m studying the best ways to minimise the impact that may have on my general vital functions, and it doesn’t seem to be overly problematic as it stands, but it’s a thing to keep watch over.

I think the worst of it was actually the week of enforced bedrest. I did a fair bit of healing meditation to minimise the time I would spend bedridden (and the surgical scars) but apparently one week was the absolute minimum. Having gone over the medical report, Rilus was right. That does not mean that it was easy.

I have to thank my colleagues for trying to make it easier on me. Mae brought distractions - apparently Srina loaded a couple of research papers I wanted to listen to onto a datapad for me, and she brought those, and she brought Yvrais in to tap-dance for me. Something about, “You can’t see her dance but you can see her being happy, so that’s okay”. Alti did her part by trying to keep Sparkles entertained. Sparkles apparently missed me and was bellowing (or, as Alti puts it, ‘singing the song of his people’) on and off for days. X’antho asked for stories, being particularly interested in my perspective of the Sacking, and brought a few of his own. It could have been a great deal worse, even if I did get excruciatingly bored. Still, I think I’ve gained enough wisdom to know that the harder I push, the greater the risk that I end up bedridden for even longer, unable to do anything. Or worse, in a kolto tank.

I’ve been back up and about for a week or so, and a lot of that has been spent going over various plant and soil samples brought by Mae, Aranar and Mychae when they went to investigate the potential secondary settlement on Sagrai. I may have to go along on the more in-depth scouting mission, if only to identify some of these. One’s a variant of something I use for antibiotic ointment. One’s a deadly neurotoxin. And there’s this fruit thing that--

*clik* Alti? There should be a delivery for you.

Ooh? Oooooooooh PIE!

Yes, Alti, pie. Please tell me how it is.

*munch* *indecent foodgasm noise* *NARMNARMNARM* Ohnerfingnerfbasketsthat’sgoooooood.

Thank you, Alti. *clik*

--is apparently very good in pie. But of course I can’t actually describe any of it to people and apparently the scouting party’s idea of getting samples is ‘pick something off a bush and bring it home’ without actually documenting anything like what the bush looked like. But I heard something about a cave and things that look like nexu but with more teeth and razorlike prehensile tongues so I suppose they can be forgiven for not taking the kind of time they should have to document their findings.

I think X’antho is planning something. He’s got that happy-nervous anticipatory feel to him. I think it’s meant to be a surprise, though, so I’m not going to pry. He’s got enough on his mind anyway, as he’s one of the main folk trying to figure out what the repercussions are to that stopover at the Zakuulan research facility. Master Sortek tried to offer advice to the more underworld-connected of us about how to obtain that information, which ... well, I imagine Master Sortek knows more about that world than I do, but I doubt he knows as much about it as the people who live and die by their wits in it, so I thought it best to just tell them to do their jobs as they saw fit. I like to think I’m wise enough to render unto smugglers the things that are smugglers’, so to speak. I got the idea that wisdom begins with knowing how much you don’t know, and acknowledging that others know more than you do, and learning from those people - not to mention trusting them to take care of matters in which they are far better versed. I’m honestly content to figure out what we want our end goals to be and let the people who actually know how to achieve them figure out the means. It seems only fair. People don’t tell me how to practice medicine.

...Well. Except that once. But at least it gave me practice in telling people whose opinion I respect that they do not know what they’re talking about.

[themedicwhomeeps]

On Leadership

I have become a lot more concerned about what I’m doing lately. Mostly I am concerned that I am doing something wrong and will get a great many people killed if I do or say the wrong thing.

It doesn’t help that I managed to alienate a set of allies. Then again, the sense of things with their group and the reaction I got when I questioned it ... my view on it is that if anyone with whom you’re allied would be willing to shoot you for any reason beyond outright treachery, they were never truly your allies to begin with. Maybe things will change, but ... for now, much like the last time we lost allies, five years ago ... we need to carry on with what we have.

It seems to be enough, at least to a degree. The Serendipity has helped immeasurably, though the discussions of what exactly to do with the vessel have been ... an education. Everyone has ideas of what to do and how to handle the situation, and they all have sufficient merit to be getting on with, but ... there’s only one Serendipity. We can’t use all of those ideas just on one ship. I am very much not used to my words carrying most of the weight in any given discussion, either. Still ... when the ideas start flying thick and fast, someone has to grab the reins and pull until everyone starts putting their considerable talents to one goal. ...I’m not used to being the one doing that.

That hasn’t stopped me, at least. Do, or do not - there is no ‘try’. Maybe I’ll make mistakes, maybe I’ll fail - but I’ll learn, and I’ll do better. There is no ‘try’ - there is doing it well, or doing it poorly, or somewhere in between, but there is doing it, or there is not doing it. So in the end, the Serendipity will be a sort of combination hospital ship and carrier, from which our haphazard fleet will strike at various targets from all angles, and then scatter to the four winds, to be picked up by the Serendipity later. We’ll be everywhere and nowhere all at once.

...Like that holovid says. I haven’t seen it for obvious reasons, but everyone else has given me a summary. Apparently someone was taking holovid of our excursion on Corellia, and it made the ‘grey market’. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised - it must have looked fairly impressive from an outside perspective. Between X’antho’s rallying cry and the dispatching of the skytroopers and Master Sortek deflecting blaster fire from the roof of a moving medical transport... As I understand it, my own contribution to that whole affair got a ‘wow’. Then again, the only people I’ve ever known to deflect that level of fire in my presence ... well, that was Ihlrath, and I’m not sure that was ‘deflection’ so much as ‘withstanding’. I think Nyomi did that once or twice as well. In any case, it’s not something I’ve witnessed anyone but the strongest do. I suppose that says something. Though I should consider bringing my helmet the next time I strap myself to a transport that is going to be making a dash through hostile territory. Concussions are not fun. Everything goes faintly wobbly.

In any case, the holovid. Srina’idash added a bit of personal flavour and sent it back out again. There’s a little resistance symbol, apparently - the Alderaanian symbol for healing, apparently leftover from days when they worshipped various intellectual aspects. Srina’idash has been considering seeding a few holovids around as well - some of our smugglers’ raids on Zakuul transports and the distribution of their cargoes to the needy in our own sectors, rescues, things like that. It’s an improvement over slicing the Holonet, anyway ... particularly nicer than slicing the Holonet for the kinds of terrorist manifestos that have been plaguing it lately. It’s nice to at least show that resistance doesn’t have to be slaughter.

That’s a lesson all sides need to learn. Five planets bombed to dust. Five. I felt them scream. I think we all did, the Jedi of Port Knowhere. Even Mae, even without overspill through the Force-bond ... and Sense is not her primary sphere by any means. There may be more. It may get worse. I don’t think anyone is going to back down. The Sith tend to be believers in collateral damage to the point of lunacy. Mandalorians ... win or lose, all they really want is a glorious fight. I accept that people are going to die in this, but ... there’s death and there’s meaningless slaughter. This is the latter.

We can’t stop it, but we can save who we can. Someone must have managed to get off those planets. Maybe there are still survivors - if there’s one thing the initial Zakuul invasion taught us, it’s that people can survive nearly anything. We’ll have to check, when things have settled a little.

If this keeps up, the Serendipity is going to end up full of refugees. Port Knowhere’s nearly at capacity as it is. We need to investigate that second potential settlement Master Sortek found us. There was mention about having to clear wildlife out. I wonder if the wildlife can be reasoned with. I’ve always been good with animals ... maybe I can at least try before we have to go slaughtering more manka cats.

[themedicwhomeeps]

On Warfare

The market fair went well. Even if I did have to make a speech. I had been hoping to avoid it but Master Sortek was right - a few words did need to be said, all things considered. I just hope they were the right ones. They seem to have gone over well, at least. I hope so, because fairly soon we’re going to need all the boosts to morale that we can get.

The nerfery on the Holonet isn’t getting any better, particularly. After discussion with Shay, we’ve decided to try to accelerate some plans we already had in place - mobile base of operations and a new settlement. Master Sortek is doing some preliminary work on both as we speak, as Mychae is currently locked in the workshop with Alti, building mining drones and torpedoes. X’antho, I imagine, is doing the same...

...I should be kinder. Or at least less dismissive. I just ... have very strong feelings about biological warfare. It’s messy, it’s indiscriminate, it’s too easy to turn back on its creator, it’s just plain wrong ... I will not be Book. More, I will not be what Garr always said I was - nothing more than a weapon. I will not turn something that is for healing and life into yet another instrument of death. I have seen too many good things be reduced to nothing but weapons. I won’t add to that list. I’ll forgive him, probably - I won’t be less likely to provide snacks either - but X’antho’s total lack of understanding of why his casual suggestion of tailoring a horrible disease to attack only Zakuul was so abhorrent to me just ... stings. I suppose my role is to make him understand, if he doesn’t at this point.

There’s a right and wrong way to fight a war, and too many people are fighting this one the wrong way. I know that people say “it’s what works”, but ... does it, in the long run? Demoralisation and fear will eventually leave people with nothing left to lose. People that desperate do some fairly horrible things. I get the impression that Zakuul treats its native people a great deal better than it does its conquered, though. I sometimes wonder what the reaction would be if they offered their vanquished comfort and the benefits of the Zakuulan people, instead of putting a boot to our collective throat. Still, I know it’ll keep happening...

...There has to be a way to get a message out. Not ... quite like the speech I gave the other day, but ... similar. I said to Shay not long ago that being the example is what being Jedi is about.

I ... think I have an idea. I’m not sure it’s the best idea, but it achieves several of our goals at once. Including taking attention away from Shay’s insurgency actions. I just want to ensure the safety of Port Knowhere as much as possible before we begin. Even if we start by taking refuge on a tertiary world while setting up a secondary base, even if we travel largely by stealth vessel ... ships are difficult to track once they’ve reached hyperspace, I know that much. Not impossible, but ... difficult. There’s nothing to be gained from impatience, but ... I’ll see what our intel acquisitions people have to say about potential targets.

I am a healer - a medic. I suppose it’s only fair that a healer and medic be the example of the concept of a ‘surgical strike’. People seem to have forgotten the meaning of the term. It’s time to remind them.

[themedicwhomeeps]

On Resource Management

Our ongoing attempts to find a mobile base of operations has hit ... typical adventure-based snag. Srina’idash located what turned out to be a prototype exploration and settlement vessel. Aside from having to recode its systems to read in Basic instead of Cheuhn, it apparently couldn’t be more perfect. Unfortunately, it was also in an area that was known for people disappearing. Not many, and not often, compared to the rest of the galaxy, but ... disappearing. Still, we had to investigate.

I didn’t go on the initial excursion - I must have inherited a little bit of prescience from my mother, because the nerfs did take ill, with a virus that jumped the species gap between banthas and nerfs. Banthas deal with it the way we would with a cold; nerfs do not deal with it nearly so well. So while they were on the orbital station at which the exploration vessel was docked, I was in the lab, trying to figure out a vaccine so we didn’t have to cull the whole herd. Well, if you can call six a herd. I saved the nerfs. They found a crystalline-structured nanobe that has molecular elements in it that are not of this galaxy. There’s an extragalactic life form on that orbital station, and probably on the exploration vessel too. It eats metal - any metal, on a molecular level. Which means the iron in blood and bone marrow, the calcium in bones themselves ... all of the basic elemental metals of the periodic table? This thing eats them, uses them to build upon its molecular structure. It’s a parasite, and currently my job is to ensure that we have ways of clearing them from the body before they do permanent damage. The non-carbon base of them makes biochemistry a challenge in the extreme, but at least I have experience with dealing with the impossible.

The counter to this is, at least, a little bit easier. There’s a strain of snowbloom that differs from the breed so much that I’ve had to name it ‘icebloom’ and classify it as a whole new species. The compound that gives the flower its aroma also binds to the part of the nanobe that binds to metal ... somehow. It shouldn’t be possible, but again, ‘conventionally possible’ essentially gets ignored in situations like this. It leaves metal corroded, but it at least leaves the metal and renders the nanobe inert. I don’t know what it does to elemental metals in the body, but given that iron in the blood and marrow is already an oxygen binder, oxidation is actually a good thing. It won’t kill anyone through an analog to sickle cell, at least. The bones ... there might be some osteoporosis, but...

In any case, Master Sortek asked if we could synthesise the compound that renders the nanobe inert. We can’t. We don’t have the equipment. I used to have access to the equipment at the Rest, but that was something Alti couldn’t move, and it’s too expensive and rare for us to gain through legitimate channels without drawing undue attention to ourselves. X’antho suggested a raid on the University of Coruscant, which is the only place I know of who has that sort of equipment. I don’t think that’s a good idea, given that Coruscant is under heavy watch by the Zakuul. We don’t have the resources we used to, and we may never have them. Plus molecular synthesis takes time, and often a trial-and-error process that can take months. There are iceblooms growing in quantity on Dogon IV, ready for the picking, and we could even get seeds, and whole plants. It’s going to have to do. Just ... I understand the rationale - no one really wants to go down to an ice planet if they don’t have to - but ... Master Sortek needs to understand that we’re not at the Rest anymore. The manpower, the resources, the equipment ... we’re lucky to have what we do.

We ... have to go back to the orbital station. This thing has an intelligence, but we don’t have enough of it - can’t have enough of it at Port Knowhere and guarantee containment - to get any real sense of how far that intelligence can go. It’s been likened to brain cells, and that may mean that the more of them there are, the more developed the intelligence. I have the best chance of getting an in-depth sense of ... whatever it has in terms of an intellect ... but of course, we have to balance that with the fact that it might be dangerous. I have a great deal of power in terms of the empathy, but I never managed to develop really fine control - if I try to block out what I receive, I end up blinding myself as well. Master Sortek will be a good anchor for me if one is required - he’s done it before - and Rilus will be there in case I need medical attention, but X’antho in particular is concerned. Very, very concerned. I don’t have any real sense of why; I could guess, but that wouldn’t be fair. If he ever wants to talk about it ... I hope he knows that I will listen.

I wondered aloud how many Force-users capable of Force-healing were left. Kaelira suggested that we more or less start an academy for those young Force-sensitives that are left; that we find them and train them. It’s a bit like Master Sortek talking about synthesising a complex molecular compound - we do not have the resources for this. I would love to help everyone that needs it. I wish we could. No wishing in the galaxy will change the fact that we are tiny, largely undefended, and just managing to keep ourselves and the refugees we have well and homed and fed. If we try to help everyone, we won’t have the resources to help anyone. We have to choose our battles. Finding and training Force-sensitives is not ours. Kaelira has no idea how time-consuming training a padawan is. I should have Mae talk to her about that. Mae knows, and could explain it to a soldier.

Right. I need to try to make what icebloom we have left after decontaminating lab and workshop space into some kind of vaccine. X’antho says that he’ll go get some more, but ... well, just now we work with what we have.

[themedicwhomeeps]

Determination

The dream was the same - the icy cavern, the sense of looking for something, darkness (and Darkness) ahead of her but the sense that it was changing, that it could change. That it could be redeemed, or at least destroyed, if she could find it... The coughing woke her up again. Once the worst of the fit had passed, Jallira sighed and sat up, rubbing her temples under the veil she wore. She stopped sharing a bed with Rilus two days ago; like any good battlefield surgeon, he could sleep through anything except the sound of medical distress, and given he was taking at least some of her medbay shifts, he needed the sleep. There'd been an argument about who got the couch, which Jallira won because of the two of them, she was the one small enough to stretch out full-length on a three-seater sofa. So she sat with her head in her hands, trying to reassemble her walls against the empathic resonance of the monastery around her and taking stock. Breathing hurt. Worse, breathing was difficult, and less and less effective every day. Solid food, already hard to digest because of the fungus in her stomach lining, was now impossible; she couldn't get a mouthful down through the build-up in her oesophagus without choking. She'd been managing for the last day or two with two intravenous infusions of sucrose and nutrients in the course of a day, but that was not going to keep her going for long. She had perhaps three more days before she was stuck in a bed in medbay, and after that... Xaishen and Raiyden are all but killing themselves working on this cure. Raiyden and Tomuraan both went into the minds of Sith looking for answers. Alasha came within an inch of psychometrically reading a corpse with all attendant risks if it meant a cure. There was guilt associated with those thoughts, but there was also a grim determination. Yes, she worried about them all - those who took the field and took woundings or worse for even a chance at information, those who worked themselves as ragged as she used to as a matter of course for the means to save her life, the others who worried themselves to unhealthy degrees over her condition. Still, beyond her own worry for them all in the face of her potential death, there was determination. Whatever her feelings about herself, however unsure she was that she was worth this effort, they thought so. That was an honour and blessing, and it was about time she accepted that, if nothing else. She couldn't promise to be better at taking praise, or to never question the esteem in which people held her, or that she would be anything less than surprised if people insisted that some Darth was working this hard just to gain her as an apprentice... ...but nerf it, the least she could do for those who had such faith in her was to make sure the risks and sacrifices they were making on her behalf were not in vain. She would give thanks for their efforts the only way she knew how; by not nerfing dying on them. Vision or nightmare, the constantly recurring dream could wait. Instead of dwelling on it, she got up, cooked a quick but hearty breakfast to be delivered to Xaishen's lab and Rilus' bedside, and then returned to the sofa. They were right about one thing, all of them; she needed to rest if she was going to get through this, and she might yet have a role to play in her own cure before it was all over. Besides, if she persisted in pushing herself too hard, Jai-din seemed quite keen to launch her into space, the thought of which filled her with dread and a determination to not let it happen. If that meant uncharacteristic resting, so be it.