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Post by tallboydave on Jul 16, 2007 14:14:02 GMT -4
John
I nodded slowly, and pulled Mara into my arms. I stroked her hair as I rested my chin on her shoulder. Together forever, right my love? I asked her, as my fingers brushed against one of her weak spots. I felt her shiver in my arms and lean into me.
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Post by butter on Jul 16, 2007 15:16:04 GMT -4
Mara melted into her husband's embrace, holding him close, resting her cheek against his shoulder. Yes, she thought to him warmly through their bond. She reached up and stroked his cheek with the back of her fingers.
After all we've been through already, I have a strong feeling that we will not be seperated so easily, she told him, smiling at him through the link.
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Post by tallboydave on Jul 17, 2007 15:16:04 GMT -4
John
I nodded slowly. Mara always knew how to sooth my fears. They had not gone away, not by a long shot, but here and now, as we stood in each others arms, they seemed distant and unimportant.
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Post by Force_Flow on Jul 18, 2007 12:17:42 GMT -4
Rylee was worried.
She wouldn't attempt to deny it. Of course she was worried. Jaden had given her the command of a small team of Jedi. They would listen to her and her only. Jaden seemed to know what she was doing all the time, but Rylee was still afraid. She couldn't afford to mess up, not now. One single mistake could get them all killed. It was enough to make her want to spit. As they entered the Hanger in which they would be leaving, Rylee tasted the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. Realizing she was biting her lip too hard, she started to grind her teeth soundlessly.
There was not much of a line in the ChancePalp Hanger, for which she was thankful for. Jaden leaned over and whispered, "See the checkpoint guard over there? No, don't look. He knows me. He works for the GA. He's watching out for us while we get aboard. He knows we can't afford to miss this ship."
"Okay," Rylee said, grateful that Jaden had shared that piece of information with her. It helped to calm her down, slightly. "Hey, Jaden, I was wondering... How do I know which way's the right choice? If I make the wrong one, you and everyone else could die."
"Good, you're learning," Jaden said. "A good leader is the one who doesn't want to be the leader. A good leader worries. A good leader lets others know that she's worried. But a good leader takes them through to the end. Do you understand?"
"I think so," Rylee said. "Where's Jaing and Ben? Which ship are they taking?"
"This one," Jaina answered. "But, thankfully, we'll all be in different seats."
Rylee swallowed. She wouldn't have minded if she sat next to Jaing. Besides Jaden, she felt she could trust him the most. He always knew what he was doing. Always.
As they neared the checkpoint guard, Rylee felt calmer.
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Post by butter on Jul 19, 2007 23:39:34 GMT -4
For a few moments, it felt like time simply stood still, as though there was nothing except Mara and John, and the love that they shared. It was only an illusion of course, but one that Mara was content to keep up with, for as long as they both could spare.
When this is over, she told him softly through the bond, we won't need to go on seperate, dangerous missions again, I'm sure of it.
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Post by tallboydave on Jul 20, 2007 17:15:33 GMT -4
John
I smiled and brushed my hand through her hair. When Mara said things like that, you could take it to the bank, so to speak. I kissed her cheek and sat down on the sofa with her in my arms.
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Post by hk47fan on Jul 22, 2007 15:25:15 GMT -4
Dr.Seyah
The shuttle was not elegant; it was just an oblong mass with thrusters at one end, a viewported bridge at the other, and plenty of room for passengers in between. But in the passenger compartment, the seats were well spaced and well padded. In the back of each one was a monitor allowing the passenger behing to watch Corellian news or entertainment holocasts, or to see what the holocams spaced around the shuttle's exteriors were viewing.
Dr. Seyah kept his monitor switched to the bow view. In it, he could watch, as he always did, Centerpoint Station first appear, then grow larger and larger and larger. Just now, there was nothing to see but starts; the shuttle hadn't performed it's final hyperspace jump to drop it into the vicinity of the station.
Seyah wore a plastic shirt. It was comfortable enough that it didn't always feel plastic, but plastic it was, and embedded with circuity. Just now it was orange, with violet purple flames crisscrossing it, a design suited to someone wandering around in a warm and sandy vacation, which was precisely what Dr. Seyah's documentation said he'd been doing for the last few weeks. The spray-on suntan he sported, covering the fact that he'd only become paler while training Jedi to destroy Centerpoint Station, supported his cover story.
But the thing about the shirt, sold to wealthy tourists, was that whenever it was poked with sufficient energy, it would make an audible boop noise and change both color and design.
The little human boy in the next seat, dark-skinned like his mother and perhaps three standard years of age, had discovered this when he'd kicked Dr.Seyah, minutes after they had taken off from Talus. He'd been persuaded by his apologetic mother not to kick Dr. Seyah anymore, but couldn't be restrained from reaching over and poking the scientist-spy, causing the shirt to make it's pleasing boop noise and change it's color scheme. And the little boy would chuckle, and look at the new colors, and about a minute later reach over to poke the shirt again.
Dr. Seyah barely noticed. Inside, he was sick. As long as he'd been assigned to Centerpoint Station, he'd known that the sheer power and destructiveness it represented might someday result in it being destroyed. It could destroy entire stars, and the only thing that ever kept it from being civilization's greatest weapon of terror was the wisdom of it's controllers...or it's destruction.
And wisdom was in increasingly short supply.
Boop. Now his shirt was pink, with frosty clouds on his shoulders and upper chest, recreational seaspeeders skimming across red waters at his waist.
He didn't want Centerpoint Station to be destroyed Like almost everyone who'd worked there, he was desperate to learn about the long-vanished species that had built it and used it to drag habitable planets to the Corellia system. It was a rare system that had two worlds lush enough to sustain life; Corell was orbited by five. If the station's secrets could be cracked, the intelligent species of the galaxy could re-create that feat, engineering the whole systems to please or accomodate the beings who would live there.
More importantly, in harnessing the very forces that held the universe together, the station promised an improved scientific understanding of how the universe itself worked. If Centerpoint was lost, that oppurtunity might be gone forever.
But perhaps it wouldn't come to that. Dr. Seyah had stressed to the Jedi again and again his belief that destroying the computer controls the Corellians were installing throughout the system would be sufficient to keep control out of Corellia's hands. With any luck, they'd listen. With any luck, they'd agree.
Boop. Now his shirt was a deep blue, with a stylized rancor rearing up on the front, arms outstreched. The little boy chuckled.
Dr. Seyah looked over at the boy's mother "Will you two be de-barking at the station?"
She nodded, sending into motion of her blue-frosted black hair, so fine that every little breeze from the shuttle's life-support system stirred it. "I'm a cartographer, a member of the station-mapping project. Loreza Plirr." She extended a hand across her boy.
Dr. Seyah shook it. Words bubbled up inside him. Don't get off at the station. In hours you could be superheated gas. Go back to Talus. Instead, he said "I'm Toval Seyah."
This was his job. This was the dark side to being a scientist and spy, something he'd never even tried to explain to the boy Jedi. He might just have to let a pretty young woman and her son die.
Blast it.
"And this is my son, Deevan."
"Hello, Deevan." Gravely, Seyah shook the little boy's hand.
Deevan chuckled.
On the monitor screen, the stars twisted and elongated. Of course they didn't in reality-but the visual effect of entering hyperspace. The ship left hyperspace almost as quickly, the duration of the greater-than-lightspeed portion of this flight mere seconds...and when the stars were returned to normal, in precisely the same positions as before, Centerpoint Station, occupied the center of the monitor screen.
The station wasn't pretty, wasn't even elegant like the Death Stars whose size it. exceeded. A gray-white blob with axial cylinders, protruding it at two opposed points, it was merely impressive in it's scale and in the potential damage it could do.
At this distance, of course, its scale was not apparent. What looked like a smooth surface would, as they got closer, be reveaked to be a rough, scaly exterior of towers, spires, antennae, parabolic dishes, conduits, traffic tubes, ports, spacescraper-sized battery arrays, shield generators, and other apparati, something like the surface of Coruscanti in it's busiest secotrs but without that world's feeble attempts at maintaining a consistently pleasing set of architectural standards.
Home, to Dr. Seyah, was an ugly spot in space.
He tugged at his shirt collar, and as he did so he squeezed a chip embedded there. The pressure activated the chip, causing it to transmit a single coded pulse on a single frequency. The transmission lasted a few thousandths of a second.
Boop. This time the shirt changed without the boy poking it. It was the shirt's acknowledgement that it had received a countertransmission. The boy chuckled anyway.
Dr. Seyah settled to watch the station grow larger on his monitor, and to compose himself for the struggle, and perhaps tragedy, that was to come.
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Post by Force_Flow on Jul 24, 2007 13:35:51 GMT -4
In the cargo hold of the shuttle, Jaing Redgrave opened his eyes. There wasn't much to see. The interior of the compartment was dimly lit by some sort of device to the left of his head, a computerized combination of life support and an air conditioner. The air it blew on his wasn't cool enough. The heavy envio-suit he wore kept him too warm. He'd been sweating as he slept, and the crate he had entered--Force, the crate he had entered--smelled like a female Rancor in heat.
He glanced over at the computer monitoring screen. Right next to his vitals, text indicated Seyah had just transmitted that they'd completed their finale hyperspace jump before arriving at Centerpoint Station. Jaing grimaced and somehow maneuvered his arm around the bulk of his spacesuit to switch the computer off, plunging the crate into total darkness.
Just another hour, Jaing. Wait another hour, and you'll be out.
By touch, he located the valve knob just inside the collar of his bulky suit. He turned it until it locked in the open position. Gas hissed out from the valve. Breathable atmosphere. Half an hour's worth was contained in the bottles he was carrying with him. He reached up with his right hand and found his helmet right next to his head, smushed between his hard head and the even harder durasteel case he was enclosed in. Pulling it over his head, it clicked as it latched on to his suit.
Then he tripped the other valve next to his waist, lifting the top of the cargo box away from him, revealing a dimly-lit cargo hold roof only a few meters above him. Awkward in his envio-suit, Jaing struggled to get into a sitting position, then clambered out of the box. His box was situated on top of a stack of cargo containers the size of Chewbacca. Five stacks over, Ben was also clambering out of another box. The boy was red in the face, and small beads a sweat were forming on his forehead.
Jaing refrained from cursing the envio-suits and their lack of mobility. Even if it was the most heavy piece of sithspawn he had even had the honor of wearing. Stop it. Focus. Breath in and out. Don't think. Do. He smiled wistfully at the voice of his mother. Even now, after all these years, her training still stuck with him, bringing a smile to his face. He hoped that he could leave that kind of mark in Ben's life after he died.
Don't think. Do.
Right, right. He had gotten carried away again. Clumsily climbing his way down, he was half-aware of Ben tripping, then falling, from the top of his box. He was about to use the Force to soften his fall, but Ben was already thinking along the same lines as he. Ben landed soundlessly on his feet. Jaing mimicked giving Ben a thumbs up. Ben seemed to pick up on the unsaid sarcasm, and turned away to help Calvin out of his own box.
And through the viewport, Jaing could see Centerpoint getting closer.
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Post by tallboydave on Jul 24, 2007 14:19:52 GMT -4
Sandra
I gasped loudly as my meditations were broken violently. "No...no... NO!" I shrieked, scuttling back against the wall. Vaguely, I was aware of Kala putting her arms around me and trying to calm me, but at the moment it wasn't helping.
"Fire.. death... pain.... fire.... death... pain...." I moaned.
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Post by Force_Flow on Aug 17, 2007 10:41:39 GMT -4
The conveyance, a ten-meter long airspeeder that seemed mostly windows and standing room, deposited Jaina, Zekk, Robert, and Thann Mithrac on the street outside of the Prime Minister’s official residence. It drifted away, carrying tourists, workers, and people on errands. Jaina took a deep breath and looked around, wary for signs of too much attention. There shouldn’t be any. After having made planetfall hours ago, she and her team had had time to check into a hotel, clean themselves up, sleep, and eliminate diguise elements that would cause them to stand out. Jaina now wore a crumbled traveler’s robe; her hair was back to its’ natural dark color; her false tattoo was gone. She was plain old Jaina Solo again. And just in that, she was more dangerous than ever. -- In Thraken Sal-Solo’s property, there had to be hundreds of security devices and traps that could take a bantha out. When Jaden reminded Rylee of this, her jaw got hard, her eyes even harder. Thracken’s house looked like a mansion, but Rylee knew better than to think Thracken wouldn’t guard his precious house. From their perch on the roof of the neighbor’s house, just about to give Thracken a friendly neighborhood welcome, Rylee lay on her stomach, the mag. lens up to her right eye, her left one shut. Open towards the Force, she felt rather than heard Jaden and Jacen discussing the plans behind her. Reaching out even more to the Force, Rylee’s vision seemed to magnify by twenty percent. Aiming Jaden’s Verpine at one of the windows on the third floor, she caught some movement. Squinting, she moved to the next window in line and caught movement again. It had to be Thracken. “I found him!” Rylee said. “Third floor, left side. Three meters away from the brasswine.” Jaden crossed over and took the Verpine from her. Squinting, she nodded. “Has to be him,” she said, “or a housekeeper. Let’s go find out.” OOC: What Rylee and Jaden just saw was a passing YVH battle droid on patrol. Reason for Editing: Added OOC
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