#kaelira

[ym523]

Full video: X | Reddit | Bluesky

[ym523]

Full video: X | Reddit | Bluesky

[themedicwhomeeps]

On Nostalgia

I think there was, somewhere along the line, the thought that possibly being absent from the Marran meant being exempted from some of the more esoteric Dark Side problems. While there is certainly less of it - no eldritch horrors or dark god-princes or anything of that nature - we do still trip across it from time to time. Unfortunately, particularly from the perspective of our large contingent of non-Force-users, it’s enough to cause significant damage, at least on a psychological level.

Trying to get close to Rosfren to hopefully convince him to back off, we played at taking a job to curry some favour. The job was to seek out whatever relics we could find from a site on Darvannis which was once the lair of a Dread Master. ...I honestly should have known. Then again, I suppose I did. I took as many precautions as I could to keep the others out of any direct line of interference. The problem was, I knew they’d never be comfortable with letting me go on my own, even if I am largely immune to that sort of nerfery. I had to bring the others with me at least part of the way. I did at least try to keep them out of the temple proper, once we got there. They weren’t happy about that either so I hate to think what they would have said if I’d suggested just going by myself, even with the guardianship of the Mandalorian clan Aranar and I befriended when we made a supply drop there.

I did not count on the relics in that temple - enhancements for and extensions of the Phobis devices that made the Dread Masters such a threat, in the main; far less powerful but still problematic on a number of levels - being able to affect the others while they were still outside, but they did. That only got worse when ... well, I wasn’t entirely clear on what happened exactly but largely what I got was “spiders with acidic blood and Mandalorians with explosives”. Either way, the others were forced to fall back into the temple ... and that was where all the nonsense really got horrible.

X’antho got it worst, from a psychological perspective. I could feel his sanity start tilting. Aranar ... I’ve never felt such a combination of sadness, resignation and rage before. Kaelira was just angry ... and sick. Very very sick. She apparently got dosed with the ‘acidic blood’. (Side note: I need to remind Rilus of the difference between ‘acidic’ and ‘venomous’. I mean, all right, it was moderately low on the pH scale but all the same...)

Rilus was ... interesting. I mean, he was ... I suppose the best term is ‘creeped out’, but there was more than that. I’m not entirely sure what it was doing to him, but he had probably the least trying time of all of them, one way or another. The worst he got was the isolation, the misdirection ... and, oddly, some sense of other people’s emotional states. I’m not entirely sure why experiencing the world at least in part the way I do would be considered something to ... erm, ‘creep him out’, but I suspect it was something to do with the fact that he’s never been entirely comfortable with ‘that Forcey stuff’, as he puts it. Honestly, while I regret the discomfort that must have caused him ... I can’t help but think it would be interesting to ask, when things have died down, what he makes of my day-to-day input.

I think the worst part for me was not being able to help them. I could sense their emotional states, yes, but I couldn’t pinpoint them to a location. Also, I was busy. I found the artefact storage room easily enough but every time I managed to cleanse and destroy an artefact, another two started to ... well, wake up. They were feeding off the emotional imbalance of the others. It was a bit of a quandary, I have to admit - I wanted to help them, and needed to help them if I was going to actually keep ahead of the artefacts’ nerfery ... but if I left to find them, more would be waking up and increasing the head-nerfing and it would be even harder to actually help them. So I was stuck more or less burning myself out to at least keep a sort of status quo, hoping that someone would get free.

Turned out that Rilus did. I don’t know if I’ve formed some kind of connection to him over the years or if it was just that I was putting out so much cleansing energy that even being in my vicinity broke through the hallucinations and Dark Side influence. It might have been both for all I know. All I know for sure is that Rilus managed to get through on comms, found my medkit and dosed himself with that Flames serum I came up with all those years ago. I keep some handy just in case, as it’s proved to be very multipurpose. Rilus administered it to the others and we finished the job of destroying the artefacts.

...Yes, I know we were tasked to retrieve them for Rosfren. I don’t nerfing care. I didn’t care when we got the assignment beyond being grateful that I’d been pointed to some Dark Side artefacts to take out of working order, and I don’t care now. He’ll just have to learn to deal with disappointment.

In any case, once I finally recovered from the level of burnout that had me not even knowing which end of an injector vial was up, I set to work on an antivenin for Kaelira. Rilus managed to keep her stable with a standard antivenin, but she did need something a little more tailored. It was sort of nice to get back to biochemistry again; it’s been awhile. We have a meeting with Lord Rosfren soon, and we’ll be trying to get him to back off. I’m hoping this can be resolved peacefully and that we can set him and his considerable resources against the Zakuul, rather than against us ... but I’m not counting on it. I am still taking the bahat-mint tea in unreasonable quantities against the headache that comes from quite that level of ... *ahem* ... ‘I WANT HIS FACE’ ... hitting me in the head from all angles.

After that, though ... I intend to try to find something a little more ... sensible than the standard combat stim. Combat stims work to a point, but I think I can do better. I just need to do some significant research and get the right materials together. Yes, the right materials are probably a little scarce and hard to get hold of right now ... but that’s why we have smugglers. That and the fact that they’re lovely people. Which reminds me; I have some snacks to bring over to X’antho.

[themedicwhomeeps]

On Casualties

It was ... a bit of a hard day for people the other day.

We were trying to track down this Lord Rosfren who Mae and the others encountered at that Jedi temple last month. Investigation led to a not-very-pleasant cantina in the middle of virtual nowhere, mostly populated by the less pleasant sort of mercenary. ...Yes, I know how that sounds, but Alti and Mychae and even X’antho to a point qualify as mercenaries, the former two have worked as bounty hunters in the past and it does no good to be judgemental of an entire profession. There are some mercenaries who stay on the right side of the line - for example, Mychae not being very pleased when we promised the unpleasant devaronian bartender some of her contraband ‘Meltdown Special’ grenades.

Then there were those nerfs.

It turned out that some of the mercenaries had taken younglings from a settlement they’d robbed and razed. Those younglings had been traded to the bartender to settle their bar tab. One of the younglings is mildly Force-sensitive. Most of the five were quite young, with one seventeen-year-old twi’lek as sort of a guardian. The sort of work it seems she was put to... In any case, we had to do something about that, obviously. So we went back with intent to get the information we came for, free the younglings and get out.

...Unfortunately, there was a minor problem. Neither X’antho, Kaelira nor Rilus actually wore face-covering headgear on our first trip. And the place was full of bounty hunters who didn’t care who they were working for as long as credits were involved. They apparently followed the Zakuul bounty boards. Apparently there were enough mercenary groups wanting a share of the bounty that they started something that was less a cantina brawl and more a tiny war. The emotional backlash from that was still strong on the cantina when we got there, and I was rendered largely blind from it. Still, it seems that two groups came out triumphant - a group of eight humans, and one largely comprised of houk and wookie.

In retrospect, the way we handled it wasn’t ... ideal. Mae insisted on staying in the cantina, where the bartender had set the young twi’lek - Estie, I’m told her name was - to mind the bar. A Gamorrean bouncer was set to watch her. Unfortunately, the group of six stayed out in the cantina, and the rest of us ... well, Rilus, X’antho, Kaelira and I went to talk to the bartender, and the group of eight followed. It was bad conditions. I could sense a certain amount of frustration from Kaelira and X’antho both - I think X’antho had a thought to use a flashbang grenade, and Kaelira’s path would have been suppressive fire, but in such a small space ... it wasn’t viable. Rilus threatened the bartender ... but I don’t think the bartender was really in charge. Not enough to call off the mercenaries, anyway. I mostly dealt with the situation by throwing the lot of them at the walls.

Mae ... tried to attack the Gamorrean holding Estie. Apparently disregarding the six armed beings at her back. On the other hand, as I told Kaelira later, if she hadn’t, the Gamorrean might well have taken Estie hostage for Mae’s good behaviour and she’d have been no better off because someone might have killed Estie - and Mae - once Mae was disarmed. Instead, the six mercenaries opened fire. Mae did very well and dodged or deflected everything. The Gamorrean did not do nearly so well. ...Neither did Estie. She died in the crossfire.

When I felt that happen, there ... wasn’t really a great deal I could do. Rilus had the bartender, but Mae was still in trouble and the other four younglings ... I was in touch with the Force-sensitive one, and got them to take an alternate route out through the ventilation shafts. I needed X’antho to rendezvous with them and get his ship ready for take-off ... without getting angry or sidetracked by Estie’s death. I ... was a little abrupt about giving orders to him in that regard, but I did apologise later, and explained - he thought it was because I was still rattled from the empathic backlash. Which I suppose proves he doesn’t know me as well as all that yet. In any case, I sent Kaelira out to help Mae with the remaining mercenaries after we restrained the eight that came after us.

I’m ... not sure if I’m proud of what we did next or not. I had Srina place an anonymous call to Zakuul authorities, providing proof that the bartender was selling contraband weapons to resistance fighters. Then we took everything of value in the cantina - Rilus took a terrible lot of credits and some very pricey medications that I’ve been having trouble synthesising with the materials on hand. Rilus also ... well ... he told the bartender to give him the code for the safe or he’d shoot the bartender’s kneecap. This is not a side of Rilus I am used to seeing.

Mae’s upset, but handling things as well as can be expected. I keep reminding her that it’s a learning experience, telling her that it should improve her rather than define her. I suppose it’s a more explanatory way of saying it than Nyomi would - she’d just tell Mae not to dwell. I don’t find negatives helpful because the brain doesn’t process ‘no’ and ‘not’. She’s taking the ‘learn from this’ to heart and the last couple of days we’ve largely been working on Soresu. I think she’s beginning to understand that sometimes the best way to protect someone is to be the shield between that someone and harm, rather than just eliminating the most immediate threat. I’m obviously sad that it had to be this way, that it ended so poorly ... that Estie’s life had to end so soon ... but if there’s any good to come from the situation as a whole, we have to at least try to look at it. Otherwise, despair sets in and that’s just ... a poor way to cope.

We do have that meeting, though. We need to speak to the intermediary first, to make sure it’s genuine. She’s a twi’lek cantina dancer of some standing, or so we’re told - Amber Gloss is her stage name, apparently. X’antho and Srina will be trying to get information on her. Mychae will be trying to hire her for that cantina she runs on Nar Shaddaa. We don’t want another meeting in a kill-box of a bar. One casualty is quite enough.

.....*giggle* I ... should probably go. X’antho seems to be trying to lead the new younglings around on Muffin and Muffin is far more interested in chewing on his ponytail. I’m sure I’ll get him to see reason and let X’antho lead him if I promise those tauntaun treats I came up with last year...

[themedicwhomeeps]

On Construction

When we first landed at Port Knowhere, I’m not sure what Mae and I expected it to turn into. Maybe something like this small refuge and supply drop that Kaelira told us about, that we’ll be investigating in a few days. I think the last thing that we expected was for it to be the core settlement of a community spread in little unconsidered spots throughout a sector or two. But there it is.

First, Fort Motley. Rilus and I got the medbay sorted out, and Edvar managed to keep Alti’s ... erm, science-ing ... from getting out of hand. I’m not sure what she wanted to do with Fort Motley’s droids, but given the emotional resonance coming off her when she looked at them, I honestly don’t want to know. Instead, Edvar set her to making a hydroponics bay that mimics the light levels of Alpheridies in various climates, so we can grow things from our species homeworld. He’s curious to try more of those recipes that Tomuraan and Raiyden gave me some time ago, and it’s not as though we can afford to trade for such relative luxuries.

Then the temple. For reasons I’ll go into in a moment, Mae took Srina, Kaelira and X’antho to a Jedi temple abandoned during the Zakuul occupation. It turned out that a Sith lord had been making attempts to pillage the place and Mae declared the entire temple under our protection. I think she’s made an enemy; then again, this Lord Rosfren is a pureblood and it likely offends his sensibilities to see a pureblood Jedi, no matter what the reasons. There’s a report in the offing, but Srina apparently wants to check a few of her sources before producing it. Given the lengths to which we’ve gone to be difficult to find, I imagine we have time. In any case, between the Republic soldiers who have been watching the temple in the absence of Jedi, and Ahri’s own efforts in trying to get Jedi who actually want to rebuild the Order at least in part together to occupy the temple properly, we seem to have adopted the temple, military settlement and soldiers all.

But that’s Mae. She’ll adopt nearly anyone.

So ... now we come to the reason that Mae put together a team to poke around an abandoned Jedi temple not far from Alpheridies. It turns out ... well, we were talking about holocrons a few years ago and I explained that actually putting one together would be a bit tricky; there are meditative rituals and special materials and it’s even more complicated for a miraluka, as to get a proper gatekeeper construct who can address the person accessing the holocron, there needs to be some capacity for limited Force-sight. Those things were rare but accessible before the occupation; after the occupation, they were nearly impossible to find and it wasn’t a priority anyway.

Mae ... tends to make things a priority according to what she feels at any given moment. And in this case, she decided that my having what I needed to make a holocron took priority. So she sent Ahri on preliminary scouting runs for the things I’d need, and then set up the retrieval mission for when Rilus and I were otherwise occupied. I think she’d have brought Rilus along except for the fact that a non-Force-sensitive with a secret and/or surprise doesn’t keep that secret and/or surprise a mystery for very long around a miraluka empath, so they arranged it while we were otherwise engaged with Fort Motley’s medical facilities.

I ... was more than a little overwhelmed, and I still am. X’antho outright said that he didn’t care what it was he was even doing when Mae asked him; that all he needed to hear was that it was doing something nice for me. Srina got shot when they encountered Lord Rosfren. ...I have to admit that I am desperately proud of Mae. Rosfren taunted her, and I felt her anger ... but she didn’t attack. Aurrin always used to say that Mae ‘acts with the speed of emotion’. When I sensed what she did, and heard about it later, I wished he could have seen her...

Speaking of Aurrin, he always accused me of obfuscating, and I’m doing it again. What I am avoiding saying is that I had a significant moment of doubt that I had anything to say worth storing in a holocron, to be preserved for the ages. That doubt still assails me from time to time. But ... then again... Jokes about the recipes and cooking lore aside, I guess I do have some things that should be preserved in more than bits and pieces in a computer database. All the medical lore I’ve compiled over the years, including the extensive research on the rakghoul plague and various cures for some truly horrible diseases. Jedi philosophy - more important than ever when even Grandmaster Shan has reportedly abandoned the teachings of the Order. The ways to build a settlement. A fair bit of history. ...And yes, the cookery things too.

But most of all ... the stories, I suppose. I said once that if I had the lifespan of a Garhoon, I would engage with everyone I could, so that the galaxy could remember them when they were gone. To be their immortality. I suppose a construct of me in a holocron can literally be their immortality. I want them to know that there was a pureblood who struggled against prejudice and her own low self-esteem to finally find her place in the galaxy, a human who built the impossible out of love of her freedom. I want the galaxy to hear of two Jedi of various species who found that love and duty can coexist. I want the galaxy to know about the soldier who fought as hard to make a home for people as she did to destroy those people’s enemies, and the zabrak who flew the length of the galaxy and never wanted a nest until he found one that loved him back ... and the doctor who dropped everything to find the woman he loved.

A holocron is a piece of immortality. No one ever said it had to be mine alone. There are so many people who made me what I am today, and will continue to do so. Their presence may not be seen or heard, exactly, but the stories will be there, and their essence will be felt in any representation of me, as much as my own. Those with me now, and those I’ve lost... The Force provides its own immortality when we return to it, in the end, but for those of a less ... Jedi bent, I suppose ... they say that a person only truly dies when their name is no longer spoken.

...Now they never will.

[themedicwhomeeps]

From the Journal of Edvar Sohl

I don’t know what it is about my little sister. It’s like ... she has that Jedi thing about attachments, but attachments find her anyway and she ends up with the most loyal friends-family in the galaxy and I end up with a smuggler-type who’d take a blaster bolt for her turning up at my metaphorical door saying “Hey, your little sister’s still alive after an impossible situation, so you know, and Things Happened”.

The last time, it was, “Your sister survived the Sacking of Coruscant and now she’s a Jedi Knight and joined some ultra-heroic subsect that keeps its own paramilitary unit” coming from this cyborg PI. This time, this Zabrak guy turns up going, “Your sister survived the assault on Kuat - well, the assault on Rylan III because she wasn’t at Kuat, but same difference - after becoming a Jedi Master and is now running her own little resistance group and refugee settlement and setting up a second settlement and oh yeah she’s married now”.

Y’know, I think everyone expected me to be more surprised than I was. But, see, last time? My brave and gregarious little sister meeping and hiding behind people? That surprised me. But I remember the little girl who lectured someone twice her size for pushing me down in a playground, who hugged a wild kath hound, who could always talk me into her little adventures as a toddler. Her leading a group? My only reaction was ‘about kriffing time’. It’s good to see her closer to whole.

So these people have been good for her, not just good to her. Though they’ve been that too. Her sisters - I don’t know what that makes me to them, but they’ve got that plotting feel about them that makes me think someone’s going to throw adoption papers at me - welcomed me with open arms. Literally. Ever been hugged by three people at once, all of them apparently determined to squeeze your brains out your ears? I actually needed bruise salve and Lira tells me that I’m lucky Al-- Altay-- kriff it; ALTI - didn’t launch herself at me with a jetpack. They all started talking at once after that and it finally came out that they’d split into teams to set me up my own quarters on this desert settlement they call Port Knowhere and the new one they’re looking for new settlers for that doesn’t have a name yet. “So you’ll always have a home to go to with us”, they said. I guess I wouldn’t mind adoption papers if someone flings them at my head. Don’t think there are better sisters, except the one blood-related to me.

One better sibling (except the one blood-related to me), though. Rilus Harridin. No longer a corporal, still a doctor, now my brother-in-law. Lira told me that when she went missing after the Zakuul attacked Rylan III, Rilus never gave up on her. Alti I understand - she’s the type who gets an idea into her head and never lets go. But this guy ... not a smuggler or a bounty hunter or a pirate, but fell in with this excitable lunatic for a whole year, looking for his ‘doll’. Never gave up. Never got disheartened. Put up with the weirdness and helped with conflict resolution and translated ‘excitable Alti’ to Basic. It paid off, obviously, and now I have a brother-in-law. Guess I don’t have to tell him that I have a blaster and have learned how to use it.

...I probably should anyway. Brother’s job, and all.

Then there’s these others. The Zabrak, X’antho ... this guy is made of wonder. Literally. All I get from him is “Wow; how’d I get this lucky?” and this growing sense of wanting to do nice things for people. It’s like my sister threw a switch in him somehow, nudged him into his place in the galaxy, where he’s happy and feeling like he’s doing what he’s been put here to do, and I think he knows it. Plus watching a Zabrak, even if he wasn’t ever the stereotypical Zabrak, leading little kids around on the back of a tauntaun is probably one of the cutest things I’ve ever witnessed.

Kaelira Lakara and Jai-din Sortek are more reserved, but Kaelira, at least, is noticeably happy I’m around for what I mean to Lira rather than my way with plants. Then again, I try to keep clear of Sortek, mostly because he’s one of the former Marran I never really sussed out. Kaelira, though ... the stories I’ve heard. Saved my sister’s sanity. Unleashed assault cannon nightmare retribution on a droid that gut-shot my sister. For that alone, I like her. She reminds me of a younger, less disapproving version of that Jedi Master Lira always talked about - the one with the cybernetic arm who hauled me out of the Rokhans’ burning farmhouse that one time. Not exactly given to obvious gestures of affection, but mess with the people she’s sworn to protect and she will mess with your face.

The weird thing is my sister’s influence on them, in the small things. Almost all of them use ‘nerf’ as a swear word. Even the former Republic military and the smuggler. The only ones who don’t are Rilus, Sortek and the Chiss, that I’ve met so far. Even the Mandalorian. Aranar’aliit. He found out I could grow red gourds out here, given seeds enough, and he went Alti levels of excitable. I can about forgive him for starting a cult with my sister as its deity figure. Plus it’s funny to hear this stream of Mando’a swearing interspersed with ‘nerf’ when he drops a supply crate on his foot.

So I’m going to spend a few weeks here, making some tweaks to their irrigation systems - they’ve been doing pretty well, but there’s room for improvement. After that, I’ll probably spend most of my time on this other settlement, the jungle one. It’s going to be the source of most of their produce, after all. I’ll come back often when I bring and collect supplies, and to visit, but ... my sister has her own life. I'm glad to be a part of it, and I’ll keep being part of it, but ... I don’t have to be right on top of her all the time. She’s got her own life. I can let her live it. But I can be part of it, and I’ve got this bunch of well-meaning lunatics to thank for it.

...Plus I have a couple of weeks to hear all the stories. And tell them. Really looking forward to the reactions to the one about her deciding to tour Dantooine on nerfback when she was four...

[themedicwhomeeps]

On Escapes

In the crate, Jallira paused a moment to get her breath and take stock. Ignoring the twinges in a right knee she suspected was sprained and the various bruises left by suppressive fire, she used one of the few advantages she had - the fact that being locked in a crate was not much of an impediment to seeing what was going on around her, given her species.

The others had not been quite so questionably ‘lucky’ as she had been when everything went to nerf. Instead of having a glimmer of something calling them in the Force that ended with them having a preparatory moment in a packing crate, they had ended up sprawled on the floor and summarily subdued. They had set out to be the distraction for the team doing what they thought was the really dangerous mission, and stumbled onto something they hadn’t remotely expected. It was difficult to tell whether their distraction gambit had even worked; it was almost entirely droids out there, but what little she could hear from outside the packing crate didn’t suggest that they were calling for backup from the Enforcers. The intercept was a little too clean for that kind of necessity.

They were captives. Srina and Ahri were waiting for a distraction that wasn’t coming. And one of those droids had mentioned vivisection.

All right, she thought. None of that is very helpful. Now find something that is.

After reaching out through the Force for a moment, she found what she was looking for.

The droid set the packing crate down and undid the latches, preparing to move the captive into more secure circumstances. It didn’t have time to open the lid, however; the lid ripped off the crate of its own accord and smashed the droid’s face in. That done, Jallira didn’t even bother trying to clamber out of the crate; instead, she cut it open, her lightsaber seeing use for perhaps the first time in her life.

She took two running steps away from the gutted crate ... and then turned back, rummaging through the packing material that had cushioned her fall for the items that had called to her through the Force. The holocron was small, but warm in its emotional resonance. The crystal was cool and somehow sharp, in its resonance if not in its contours. Neither were much, but they had called, and she wasn’t going to just leave them there for Zakuul to paw at. Part of being Jedi was preserving the lore. Holocrons more than qualified.

Unfortunately, the moment it took to locate and pocket the two items gave time for another one of the strangely heavily armed cargo hauler droids to turn up in the doorway, opening fire. She deflected everything, much as Jai-din had done on the top of a medical transport some weeks before, and then hit it with her lightsaber, weighted with all the added power the Force could give her. The droid hit the opposite wall in pieces, but Jallira was left panting and leaning in the doorway, having pushed things a bit too far. Unfortunately, she hadn’t had much choice. She was alone, small, not very physically strong and host to half a dozen health issues. In those circumstances, the only way to get through a fight was to end it as quickly as possible.

She wouldn’t survive ten minutes on her own if it came to stand-up fights every time. Still ignoring the sprained knee and the bruises, she moved further down the corridor, hoping to the Force there would be no more droids until she reached her destination.

She almost made it. The little chute stained around the edges with organic materials was too small for most humanoids to fit through. This was the one place where her size was an advantage. She could sense it - the chunks of waste meat and smears of blood, the incoherent dispirited rage beyond it ... and then she heard the sound of servos behind her. Deflection wasn’t an option; all she could do was run, and hope she hit the chute before the droids hit her.

As it happened, the two things happened simultaneously, and she took two blaster bolts - one graze to the right hip, one full-on bolt to the left shoulder - that knocked her into the chute. She slid down it and landed badly in what sounded like some kind of metal trough ... and the acklay with whom she now shared the space peered at her, grumbling in an inquisitive, hungry sort of way.

Jallira reacted the only way she knew how. “...oh you poor thing; they’ve been starving you, haven’t they. I think I have some meat pasties in here somewhere. X’antho won’t mind...” With that, she rummaged in her medkit and then offered the bewildered-looking predator a perilously small meat pasty, putting her hand in close proximity to its teeth with no apparent concern.

After a moment, the acklay carefully, gently ate the pasty, avoiding the hand entirely. Then it gave Jallira a friendly nudge.

“...I think I’ll call you Sparkles.”

Jallira had no answer for the question of why animals liked her so very much. Her old foster, Sedryn, could have explained it to her ... and in a roundabout way, he had. When he’d first encountered the tiny, shy, retiring, terrified meeping mess of a miraluka, Sedryn - an empath himself - had sidled over to her as non-threateningly as he knew how and told her, gently enough, “You’re thinking too loud”. Jallira literally wore her emotions on her sleeve - she didn’t just receive on an empathic level but transmitted to an extent as well. It wasn’t intentional and certainly wasn’t meant to influence others to any undue extent; in fact, it wasn’t conscious at all. Some sentients didn’t trust it and others took it as a sign of weakness, but everyone mistook it for reading facial expressions that a species without eyes couldn’t manage.

Animals, however, went with their instincts, and these days Jallira’s empathic resonance was less about distress and ‘leave me alone’. These days, it was pure compassion, an unspoken ‘I want to help you if I can’. All Sparkles the acklay and the myriad other animals being held in the Zakuulan test subject menagerie knew was that here was someone who was on their side. That made her part of the pack.

The fact that she had food didn’t hurt, either.

Once she and Sparkles had disabled what of the interior beast pens they could, letting out an assortment of nexu, ferrazid hounds, mynocks, khor’slugs, gundarks and other, stranger things, Jallira addressed them all. She knew they couldn’t speak or understand Basic, really, but words helped focus intent.

“I ... can’t promise that you’ll all get out of here. I wish I could. I don’t know how this is going to go. I just ... know you deserve better than to die a piece at a time. No one should be locked up, starved and used as an experiment ... or a weapon. I’ll try, if I can, to get you an escape route. Just ... if nothing else, you deserve a fighting chance. Will you take it? ...Would you please help me?”

The rumbling, squawking roar that followed from a dozen different species was as close to ‘yes’ as they could come. Jallira sighed, shook her head and said, “Well, I imagine you’ll find something to eat anyway, one way or another. Just ... not my friends, alright?” With that, she started cutting a hole in the nearest wall, occasionally clambering on top of Sparkles to get sufficient height. This makeshift door, she sensed, would lead to where her friends were being held.

She gave the creatures a chance to disperse, and the alarms to start sounding in earnest, before heading to the nearest familiar resonance pattern. She hadn’t got far before a friendly nudge between the shoulder blades nearly knocked her over. She didn’t turn; she didn’t have to in order to see Sparkles standing behind her.

“...All right, come on. Rilus will do that head-shake thing but Alti will adore you.”

Growling happily, the acklay followed the little miraluka down the corridor, slowing its pace as best it could to stay level with Jallira given her short legs and minor limp.

After that, it was all a haze of pain.

The destruction of the droid between her and the corridor to the beast pens had left Jallira running on nearly empty; even when Force-healing became less a convenience and more a life-or-death necessity, it wasn’t an option. She had a hard enough time trying to dampen her empathy sense, which always ran riot when she didn’t have it in her to keep her walls up. X’antho’s guilt over not having distracted the droid that had eventually taken Jallira down with a scattergun blast to the gut. Alti’s mind outracing its own panic in a recursive loop of mental and emotional noise. Kaelira was easier, but bouts of frustration, anger and vengeful satisfaction blared out of a comfortable hum of military discipline every now and then. Rilus was probably the worst of them; anger, fear, panic ... though the determination holding it all together comforted Jallira more than she was literally capable of saying at that point.

After helping take down the Enforcers at the comm station, Jallira didn’t have it in her to say anything at all, or even stay conscious. All she could do was hold on as best she could, using the tethers of her friends’ emotions and the Force-bond with Mae to stay as connected to the physical as she could. She had no fear of death; she was too Jedi for that, and had faced the possibility too many times. She held on not out of fear, but out of determination. She still had things to do ... and it went against her very nature to hurt her friends that way.

I did what I could, was the last thing she remembered thinking. I gave them the last thing I could - a chance. That’s all they need to get out. It was a comfort, anyway. If it had to be her last thought, it wasn’t a bad one to go out on, in her opinion.

[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.