The Purpose of Vacations
With a sigh, Jallira pushed her chair away from her lab bench and slumped a little, elbows resting on her knees, forehead resting on the heels of her hands. Serves me right, she thought as she took a moment to focus away some of the fatigue, for giving in to the repeated insistence that I need a vacation. Not that Acquinis Prime hadn't been fun. Rilus had had a chance to do some fishing and the time in isolated surroundings where she didn't have to work so hard to maintain her empathy shields had been a pleasant change for Jallira. She'd run tests on seashells and crafted little windchimes out of some of them as souvenirs for friends and family ... and there had been other recreational endeavours which would never get discussed in most company (there was such a thing as propriety, after all, and while forthrightness about one's sexual escapades suited Lieutenant Sortek, there were so many reasons that Jallira did not indulge in the same degree of oversharing). On her return, however, Jallira found out the other distinct problem with going away for a few days - coming back to an inbox full of action items. The fact that the two primary ones involved autopsies on one level or another just made it less pleasant. First there were the organ harvest victims on Coruscant. She would have to speak to Master Sortek to see what headway he'd made in getting her access to the bodies; while miraluka sight had its advantages on a number of levels, it also got problematic in cases like Jallira's where she couldn't register holoimages. The reports told her some of the story, but she'd need a 'look' at the victims in order to make any kind of judgement on whether the organs harvested had ritual significance or were just going to the transplantation black market. Which not only meant a morgue (all those corpses, along with whatever empathic echo-print was left on the abandoned flesh of those who had rejoined the Force) ... but also meant Coruscant. Taris was bad enough, and the wound the planet took at the hands of Malak was centuries old. Coruscant, while not as comprehensive, was not only fresher, but it was also personal. Still, it was a mission that she needed to undertake, and she would not let issues like that stop her from doing her duty. Not that she didn't have enough to occupy her time until the arrangements could be made for that particular trip. There was Serana, a former Sith acolyte and the unfortunate victim of a great deal of experimentation. She and others like her had been made into weapons, far more literally and effectively than Garr managed with Jallira. The poor souls were designed, by Sith alchemy and on a cellular level, to absorb Force energy to the point of burnout and, on a violent or traumatic death, produce a wave of empathic feedback that would be crippling or fatal to anyone in the vicinity who could not defend themselves. Undoing the changes in the cells would be difficult if not impossible - but if there was a way, Jallira was determined to find it. Still, that would take time, and so on top of that, she was undertaking simultaneous research into containment and progression-slowing measures. Jallira picked up her mug of caff - it was cold, but she was used to that owing to over a year of ignoring a mug for hours and then swigging down its contents for the caffeine and never minding the taste - and took a hefty swig. Like with most things, she mused, it was far easier to destroy something than it was to create it. She'd had the relaxation that was the apparent purpose of 'time off', but the benefits had been remarkably short-lived. On that basis, she didn't really see the point in vacations; it seemed a fair amount of effort expended for little overall gain. Then she shook her head with a rueful little smile. "I don't suppose," she murmured aloud to herself, "that my logical arguments against vacations will hold any weight with friends, family and superiors, though..." Still, at least she'd had a vacation. That would probably keep people from grumbling about how much she needed one for a few months, at least. Force willing, there'd be less in the way of obviously impending doom on the horizon the next time. Maybe vacations had more point to them when they were longer than two days.
...But she doubted it.