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| - Throughout the rest of the trip, the two Republic officers spent their idle hours discussing the differences between serving in the Fleet and being a ground-pounder. Laera had always been rather hopeless at flying; the best she had ever managed to do was to keep up some pretext of being willing to obey landspeeder traffic laws. Carth, it turned out, was a crack shot with blaster pistols, and the two vowed to pit their skills against one another at the first opportunity. The Marine officer admitted to herself that, perhaps, she might have been able to become good friends with this starry-eyed flyboy. That assumed, of course, that he could wrap his mind around her having been dead. However, life in the military tended toward the unpredictable; it was possible that, after this leave, she would never see or hear of him again. Pilots and Marines tended not to intermingle much. To his credit, Carth adapted to Laera's situation easily enough. He figured that as far as he was concerned, she had simply been roused from a sixteen-month coma brought on by battle wounds, saying as much as the two engaged in yet another round of dejarik and drinking. “There's one thing I'm curious about, though. I've heard that people who've recovered from comas sometimes remember having experienced...well, dreams, I guess. Do you know if you had anything like that?” “Are you asking me if I saw the afterlife?” Laera teased. Carth grinned at that, shaking his head. “In answer to your question,” she continued, her voice settling down as she set aside her glass, “yes, I saw something. Whether it was a dream like you say, or some glimpse of a great beyond, I have no idea. Seeing as how these...visions...resembled my old life, it could be both. Or it could have been the Force at work, for all I know. In any case, I'm here now, so it all seems kind of irrelevant. Like scuttlebutting the mission before it's been planned, you know?” “Yeah, I know. Doesn't stop a pilot from thinking about it, though.” “Or a Marine.” “That, too.” Carth took a long pull off his bottle of Corellian ale, draining it and dropping the container to the table with a dull thud. Silence reigned in the cabin for several long minutes, during which the abandoned dejarik board winked offline. Laera drained her own glass of Iridonian stout, setting it aside a bit more gently than the pilot had. She cricked her neck, cracked her knuckles, and luxuriated in her seat, her eyes glazing as she fell into a minor stupor. Eventually, her vision clouded over completely. “...Laera...Laera, are you all right? Captain?” The gentle hand of Carth Onasi pulled Laera from her stupor. She looked around the cabin, vaguely wondering how long she'd been out. The navigational computer's rhythmic tweeting told her that they must have arrived at Dantooine, and that the pilot was checking on her before making planetfall. Dimly, she remembered the alcohol-induced dream, the creeping shadow that had consumed the fleet she had left behind some sixty hours prior. Sitting up, she shook her head violently to throw the cobwebs from her mind. “I thought,” she said, her voice slurred slightly, “that I ordered you not to call me by rank, flyboy?” “My apologies, Cap—Laera. You kind of drifted off, and when the navicomp started going off and you didn't stir, I thought something might be up. You look a little pale, by the way.” “It's nothing,” Laera said, dismissing the idea with a wave of her hand as she regained her feet. Wobbling a little, she caught her breath, letting it out in a sigh as she fought for equilibrium. “Too much of that Iridonian stuff, probably. What's our status?” “We're orbiting Dantooine now. Garang Spaceport control just confirmed our approach vector, we can land whenever you're ready.” “Take us in, then, Carth,” Laera replied, sitting back down. “And when we hit groundside, fire up the hypercomm. I want to talk to Fleet, make sure they know we got here.” “As ordered,” Carth replied, and returned to the cockpit. — — — The packet transport touched down in one of the landing pits closest to the center of the spaceport, where military vessels were usually granted preferred access. Laera was impressed with the pilot's ability to make the transition from floating on repulsorlifts to standing on the ship's landing skids without so much as a twinge. Now back to her own right mind, she stood up and punched in the button sequence to lower the small courier's boarding ramp, which prompted a deluge of hissing as the ship went through the outgassing process. Extracting her duffel from the small cargo hold, she slung it over her back just as Carth appeared beside her. She grabbed his as well, tossing it to him as she headed for the ramp. Laera was immediately struck by how beautiful the air of Dantooine smelled, even through the usual odors of a busy spaceport assaulting her nasal passages. Living a soldier's life in space, constantly on the move from world to world, she had long since learned how to filter them out. The two officers made their way through customs, thanking the sleepy-looking young Bothan female at the counter for her assistance before leaving the terminal and entering the city proper. Garang itself was not very old; most of the buildings still retained most of the sheen of slightly-used duracrete that marked recent construction. Traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular, was light, with most folks preferring to walk. Humans predominated, but a few other species were in evidence, including Bothans, Gran, and the occasional Twi'lek, bundled up against the “cold” of Dantooine's otherwise mild temperatures. This tableau reminded the Marine of her own hometown, a newly-settled population center situated some two hundred fifty kilometers from the planet's capital and original settlement. With ill-disguised longing, Laera led Carth on a brisk march through the city center as she took in the beauty of the place. For the first time in many years, she felt as though she'd come home, truly home, as opposed to returning to a familiar posting after a grueling stint out in the field. Carth seemed to pick up on this, remarking that Dantooine's small city and grassy landscape reminded him of his own homeworld of Telos IV. After lunching at a local Bothan-owned café, the two spent the afternoon taking a rented landspeeder out into the grasslands and farm country beyond the city limits. As the sun began to set, Laera remembered that she'd wanted to contact Fleet and appraise them of their status. With Carth's expertise, the two made it back as the first of the planet's two moons began to rise. Checking her chronometer, which she always kept at ship's time as well as setting it to local, Laera knew that she would reach the alpha watch. “This is odd,” Carth said as he brought the hypercomm unit online and attempted to interface with the HoloNet. “What is it?” Laera asked, joining the pilot as he leaned over the communications console. “The comm is working, we're getting a return from the local HoloNet relay terminal, but I can't raise the Leviathan.” “Try the Corusca,” Laera suggested, shaking her head. Like most senior Marine officers, she was well-versed in fleet operations and basic warship protocols, and knew when things weren't as they should be. “The Leviathan's comm officer isn't as vigilant as he should be.” “Checking...” Carth tapped another series of buttons, his face turning in a scowl. “No response. Not even static, it's like they've gone off the grid. I can't even raise the Readyrun, and they've got the most powerful comm in the fleet.” Before Laera could think of what to say, a tapping noise came from the hull near the boarding ramp. “Keep trying, maybe the comm buoys are down in that sector,” she suggested. “See if you can raise Fleet Command on Coruscant, if that doesn't work.” “As ordered,” Carth replied. Laera turned away to investigate the source of the tapping, strapping on a gunbelt as she arrived at the entryway. Resting a sure hand on the blaster at her thigh, she hit the controls, and the ramp lowered swift and silent. The landing pit itself was empty as far as she could see; night had fallen, but the myriad of glowpanels around the pit bathed the area in sterile white light. “Is someone there?” Laera called as she descended the ramp. “You need not fear,” said a voice to her left. Laera whipped around to regard the source, and found herself looking at an older man, his hair balding at the crown, his Jedi robes flowing in the mild breeze so that the tip of his lightsaber's hilt was visible. “I'm not afraid,” Laera said, relaxing a little. “It's just that I'm not used to visitors who don't want to blast me knocking on a hull. Most folks just use the comlink.” The stranger smiled cryptically. “Sometimes, the extraordinary must supplant the ordinary.” “If you say so,” Laera replied with a shrug. “Captain Laera Reyolé, Republic Marines, at your service. Up in the ship is Lieutenant Commander Carth Onasi, Republic Navy. Is there something we can do for you, Master Jedi?” The Jedi, Laera was pleased to see, had lost his smile. “Jedi Master Vrook Lamar, and I have urgent need to see your hypercomm unit. The Order has reason to believe that something terrible has happened, and we must confirm the full extent of this calamity as soon as possible. If what we suspect is true, the entire galaxy may be in grave danger.” — — — Far, far away, well beyond the fringes of the Outer Rim, a fleet of warships appeared to materialize out of vacuous space. The storm-racked surface of Malachor V served as backdrop to the scene as, on the bridge of the flagship, two ex-Jedi paced back and forth. "She has arrived," came Revan's even voice from behind his mask. "As you intended, Master," Malak acknowledged with a nod. "The project is complete, then?" "It is," Revan replied. "The Dantooine Masters will soon learn, and then they will train her. She will become one of them, and then we will have our spy." "What of the pilot, Lieutenant Commander Onasi?" Malak inquired. "Admiral Karath assures me that he will not be a problem, but I have other ideas. He is a strong individual, after all." Revan crossed his arms. "He will prove to be vital to my plans." Fin
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