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| - For Reeka Chorizzo, the third day of the war had thus far been like piloting a starship through the storms of a gas giant. The morning had gotten off to a splendid start when she had first risen, only to find that Laera, her longtime comrade, friend—and something more—had once again disappeared. She had very nearly lost her nerve right there and then, with thoughts of the previous afternoon having all been a dream threatening to consume her. Her old mentor's presence and understanding had kept her going, at least long enough for them to accost Laera outside of headquarters and deliver the appropriate warning. Of course, as soon as things had seemed to calm down, Laera had dropped yet another bombshell on them. Dragging nearly the entire military high command into intrigues that Reeka desperately hoped never to be part of again, the Human had brought back the tempest in full measure. And then she had seemed to disappear yet again, only to show up as her cover identity amongst a veritable avalanche of brass. And then she had, apparently through the use of the Force, convinced Admiral Dun'vei, Commandant of the Marines, to let the three of them pursue the perpetrators of this most dangerous security breach through the skyways of the galactic capital without backup. In her considered opinion, they were looking for a quark in a mole of deuterium. Laera's urging to let herself essentially hack into Reeka's brain had come within a micron of crossing the line. Close as the two had become over the years, and though she knew in her heart that the newly-minted Jedi was only pursuing this course for the right reasons and because there was no other choice, she had very nearly refused outright. Apparently there had been yet more to learn about Tuffass, because he had known what buttons to push, and indeed had seemed quite content to play along with this ludicrous endeavor. Even as she soared through the global cityscape with only a vague notion of where they were supposed to be going, Reeka had her lingering doubts. And then Laera shouted those three words. In spite of her misgivings, Reeka found herself relaxing in her seat and holding the controls in a lighter grip even as her gaze bore down on what looked like a mag-lev tram line. A sense of ease, of remembering the fun she had always had while piloting a speeder bike above and through all manner of terrain, stole over her, and she opened her mind to her comrade's will. In the handful of moments that followed, she saw something that to her dying day she would never be able to properly explain. Never, not even with all the grace in her tongue. Despite this, her newly reignited sense of enjoyment remained, even when Laera shouted for Tuffass to grab Reeka by the abdomen and hold on for dear life. The hunt was on, and the pleasure of seeing to its conclusion erupted within her as she bore down on that vision of the tram and what was causing it, urging her bike onward at full throttle. She felt the weight of the bike shift slightly, as though one of her passengers was slipping off the rear end, but she paid it no heed; Laera's presence was gently telling her that it was all part of the plan. They were nearing a spaceport now, and the tram was beginning to slow down. Reeka chopped the throttle back, then brought the bike around in a hard left spiral as she bled altitude and airspeed. She timed the pullout to coincide with its arrival at a sheltered platform flanking the port's terminal, which was crowded with beings of all species. After bringing her mount back into horizontal flight as she began to buzz the tram from behind, she felt the bike as it bucked forward slightly. The sensation was enough to draw her attention toward the rear, and her eyes widened with fear. Laera had jumped off. — — — The tram began to slow, the inertia caused by this action forcing Kimba and Palo forward in their seats slightly. They ignored the sensation, waiting until the thing had come to a complete stop before rising to their feet. They shrugged at one another as the doors opened, then began to pick their way through the crowd as they made to exit. The moment they crossed to the platform, however, an eruption of murmurs began to overtake the mass of beings around them. Then the whine of repulsorlifts and engines could be heard coming up from the rear of the tram. Which was the precise moment when everything went to Chaos. Several beings, a mixed bag of Humans and aliens, stepped back in alarm as a blood-red speeder bike charged close overhead, easily overtaking the tram and circling back around. Palo's gaze followed the retreating speeder as it maneuvered away, but then Kimba grabbed him by the arm and began pulling him forcefully in the direction of the spaceport terminal building and shouting in his ear. "Move your ass! Now!" The Wroonian was about to comply when a body landed catlike on the platform, gracefully rising from its crouched posture and pulling something silver and tube-shaped from its belt. The snap-hiss that followed and the appearance of a bright blue shaft of energy at the tube's business end caused the blood to drain from Palo's face, a sensation that he could well imagine his partner experiencing. Fear clutched at his heart, so that despite Kimba's continued urging, he found that his legs had mutinied against him. He could no more move his feet than he could lift a bulk freighter. "Going somewhere?" an outwardly pleasant-sounding female voice inquired from the walking set of Jedi robes as it advanced menacingly upon the duo. Kimba's grip slackened as she too seemed to become unable to move. Palo attempted to peer beneath the cowl in a vain quest to identify the species of their new antagonist and, thus, anything that might enable him to talk their way out of trouble. The Jedi, meanwhile, was gesturing to the throng of commuters, muttering something about conducting business for the Order and that they need not fear. Wanting nothing to do with the incident, and more importantly the lit lightsaber she held, they complied. Palo tried to take advantage of the Jedi's seemingly divided attention by reaching for his holdout blaster, only to be spitted with a hooded stare. "Don't bother," she said idly, though her voice had become chilly enough to freeze hydrogen. "I tracked you this far, do you think you could get away now?" Kimba had gone white as a sheet. "How...?" The Jedi continued to close the distance, her and Kimba's eyes locking. "Because once upon a time we knew each other, in another life. We trained as Marines together...Miranda Cenchu." Even the crowd seemed to hush at that revelation, though neither operative would have been fool enough to think any of them could hear the Jedi's whispered words of torment. Palo felt it as Kimba flinched from the words, or was it the still-advancing Jedi she was shying away from? It hardly mattered; they had been made, and there was no getting out of this. That was when the Jedi turned to regard him. "Oh, but there is," she said casually, her voice warming a few degrees. For all intents and purposes the three of them were alone, a full ten meters or more separating them from the crowd even as the commuters made to enter or exit the tram. "Just tell us what you know about that little device." "Wh-what device?" Kimba stammered, but even a blind and deaf bantha could detect the lie. "I don't know what you're talking about!" The hooded woman seemed unimpressed, making a tutting noise as, once more, the roar of speeder bike engines returned. This time the vehicle, thanks to the adroit maneuvering of its pilot, descended and sideslipped into a landing position upon the tramway platform even as the tram itself departed. From it jumped two beings, cast in semidarkness by the shadow of the shelter overhead. One was reasonably tall and bearing the confident posture of an officer, the other quite short and walking toward them with just the hint of a limp. As they approached, Palo could see who they were in greater detail: a Rodian, and a member of an insectoid species he did not recognize. Both were clad in uniforms identical to what he and Kimba had worn—and then disintegrated—mere hours earlier, the taller being carrying junior lieutenant's bars, while the smaller wore the stripes of some grade of sergeant. "Makeup," the diminutive insectoid spat, making the word into a curse. "Tuffass should have known he hadn't seen the last of your sorry hide." This was too much for Kimba, as her eyes rolled back into her skull and her legs collapsed out from under her body. — — — Nausea greeted her gradual ascent back to consciousness, a sickly sensation that she hadn't felt since boot camp all those many years ago. When she opened her eyes and cast them about, Miranda found that she had been placed on a repulsor gurney within what she could only assume to be some sort of ambulance. Or a security vehicle, judging by the restraints that held her wrists to the bed. Either way, the looks on the faces of the three beings who held her in their gaze only made the malaise worse. "Rise and shine, Makeup!" her old drill instructor chirped happily, his voice and bearing conveying the utter joy he felt at a job well done. "You're in deeeeep shit now." "You can say that again, Gunny," the Rodian she had once known as Squeak agreed. "It's been a long time, Miranda. How have you been?" "Oh, I bet she's been pretty busy these past few days," the third person replied for her, and Miranda felt her hackles rise at the sound of it. "To say nothing of the years before that." "You!" she snarled in response, tugging impotently at the plastoid zip-cuffs. "You...you...ruined everything!" "We Marines have a habit of doing that," Laera Reyolé replied sarcastically. "If you had had any heart, you would have realized this a long time ago. And maybe then you wouldn't have washed out so badly." "How do you—" "Admiral Dun'vei told us," Reeka chimed in. "When we informed him of you and your partner's capture, that is. It seems you and he have a history." "Your friend is being most cooperative, by the way," the Gand rumbled gravelly as he crossed his arms in satisfaction. "Tuffass had forgotten just how persuasive he could be." "We know you're working for the Sith," Laera murmured, leaning in close. "We also know that you've been onplanet for a while now. That means we can charge you as a terrorist. Isn't that right, Agent Grimm?" "Absolutely," a hard male voice came from further up the van. "RNCI has all the evidence it needs to see you put away for a very, very long time. Your pal, thanks to the information he has provided, is probably going to be granted a plea bargain and leniency." "Something about being safer in Republic custody than out running the spacelanes, costantly looking over his shoulder," Reeka added happily. "I hear that the Sith can be quite nasty toward those who fail them." "What do you want?" Miranda bit out, recognizing that her nerf was well and truly cooked. "Dates? Names? I can't give them to you, because I never got them. Palo, if that's his real name, knows far more than I ever did." "That's not what we want, actually," Laera answered warmly, and Miranda couldn't tell if this new incarnation of her old rival was being serious or intentionally pulling her leg. "Do you want me to explain?" Miranda twisted her face into the filthiest expression she could come up with, imagining what sorts of horrific things she would do to all three of them given the chance. First, she would drop Tuffass off a skyscraper into a congested traffic lane. Then she would beat the snot out of Chorizzo and dump her into an incinerator. Then...then she would simply feed Reyolé to a sarlacc... "I'll take that rather nasty thought as a 'yes'," Laera continued remorselessly. "In truth we want you, and your friend, to go free." "You lie!" Miranda blurted out before she could stop herself. "You Jedi scum, you love the idea of messing with people's heads. Why should I even listen to you?!" "Oh, Tuffass here would very much like to do to you what you just thought about doing to him," Laera replied, as though reading peoples' thoughts out loud to them was an everyday occurrence. "You will listen—and you will believe me—because you really don't have a choice in the matter." The van fell silent as Miranda contemplated her options. She had a feeling as to what was being offered: the Republic wanted to turn her, to make her and her partner into double agents, feeding their patron—apparently her hunch about him had been correct—information that, while false, would come across as authentic. It was abundantly clear that they had found the holotap in the commandant's office, and if her hunches continued to be accurate, they would want to keep it running to further perpetuate the illusion of her and Palo's successful completion of the mission. "Sithspit," she muttered disdainfully. "I guess you'll want to put a tracker on me and then send me out to some far-off dirtball." "Let's just say the details will be hammered out later," that hard voice from the other end of the van replied. "So are you in, or are you going to prison?" Miranda felt her innards go cold at the possibility of being quietly shunted aside, buried in a cell deep below the urban skyline where she would be regarded as among the worst kind of scum, never again tasting freedom or seeing the horizon of her homeworld. Hatred of her lot in life boiled up within her; she found herself resenting the entire universe for seemingly having gone out of its way to tread on her, to dash her hopes and dreams and relegate her to serving some nebulous entity she couldn't even identify by name. It wasn't fair, it wasn't right. Why should she have to keep continuing to pay, and pay heavily, for what amounted to a truckload of minor mistakes so long after they had been made? As she began to resign herself to the fact of her being an utter failure as a sentient, a warm presence began to enwrap her. Forgiveness and compassion seemed to seep into her, from a source she couldn't yet place, and images appeared in her mind's eye. She remembered running exercises alongside a very young version of the Jedi at her side, the girl favoring the young Miranda with a grin as she gave her all to keep up. Then she was presented with a memory of her graduation from boot camp, when despite their differences, Laera had hugged Miranda in heartfelt congratulations. A final recollection followed that: the time where she had gone to the rescue of her platoon sergeant during a skirmish with a band of pirates, despite the fact that she and the noncom had been at loggerheads for months previously. Suddenly, the world didn't seem so bleak after all. Perhaps there was a chance to achieve some sort of redemption; she had once served the Republic, and though it had been for selfish reasons, her enlistment had been entirely voluntary. And deep down, she remembered having felt pride in her accomplishments while serving on the line, alert and ready to tackle the Republic's enemies, whatever they might have been. And here, before her now, she was being offered a second chance to make something of herself rather than being cast to the solar winds. "Just tell me what to do," Miranda said finally, letting her head fall back onto the gurney as she whuffed out a deep sigh. "Do me one favor, though. Keep the Sith off my back." "I intend to," Laera replied, an encouraging smile dimpling her cheeks and a gleam in her lustrous sapphire eyes. "Welcome back to the light." "Maybe this time around, you can earn your name back," Tuffass put in. Despite everything, Miranda found herself smiling at the remark. — — — The rest of the day saw Reeka, Tuffass and Laera back at headquarters, offering testimony to a lone, anonymous Republic Intelligence officer while Miranda and her Wroonian partner were being interrogated separately in another facility. The three of them took it in turns to outline the chase and how it had concluded, with Laera explaining how she had known the female perpetrator and subsequently penetrated her disguise. "You do realize that according to the records, you're actually dead," the spook informed the Padawan in a sardonic undertone. "Just how am I supposed to put that in a report?" "You don't," Laera advised nonchalantly. "On the other hand, you could put in my entire story and then stamp the whole thing with the highest classification ratings you can muster." The Intelligence man nodded, the ghost of a smile crossing his lips. "Can do," he said with a wink. "Also, Chief Troi Dennig of the Coruscant Security Force is all but screaming for blood; it seems that the three of you ripped about fifty traffic regulations into tatters during your pursuit." "It was a military operation," Reeka replied as though the answer was obvious. "This Dennig character can kiss my efflux for all I care." "So the commandant has told us," the officer admitted. "Well, I can't pretend to understand everything that you all have told me, but Intelligence nevertheless thanks you for your assistance in this matter. You've definitely earned some favors with us." Laera looked from Tuffass to Reeka, then to the agent. "Well, there was one thing I was hoping you could arrange. It shouldn't take much effort." "Name it," the officer replied with a casual shrug. "Well," Laera began, suddenly self-conscious about the idea. "I'd like to...to call my parents, if they're still around." The agent simply smiled. — — — "Ceylon!" Daddi Reyolé yelled toward the garden where his wife was digging the weeds. "Hey, Ceylon, we're getting an incoming hypercomm!" "Be right there!" she called back, her voice muffled slightly by the flora she was tending. The back door opened and shut with a neat snap, then footsteps echoed down the hall as she approached. "It can't be Mr. Prentize, you've been retired for months now!" "I don't think it's him," Daddi said, a touch of apprehension in his voice. "It's a secured feed, full holo from Coruscant." "From...Coruscant?" Ceylon echoed disbelievingly as she joined her husband. "Why in the stars would anyone from out there want to talk to us?" "I guess we're going to find out," Daddi replied, his finger unsure as he made to push the ACCEPT button. The unit, which had been installed in the house years prior when Daddi had been promoted to field manager for all Agamar operations, hummed to life. An ethereal blue blob erupted lazily from the projector node, which eventually resolved itself into the busts of two individuals. Both Reyolés made small noises of shock as recognition blossomed within their minds; Reeka and Tuffass, who they had first met at Laera's funeral, were blinking back at them with looks of pride and gratitude. "Hello," the Rodian said brightly. "It's been a while, how are things going for you?" Daddi and Ceylon exchanged a glance, a myriad of possibilities flowing through their minds at lightspeed. Daddi shrugged uncertainly, but bravely offered an answer. "Well, I'm retired now. We've got a nice garden going, Ceylon has quite a green thumb." There was a short peal of laughter, and then a third face and upper torso joined the conversation. "Hi Mom! Hi Dad!" "Laera?!" Ceylon all but screamed as she clutched at her chest. "But...but you're dead!" "Yeah, sorry about that," their daughter said apologetically, though her good humor and radiant expression remained as strong and vibrant as Daddi had ever known it to be. "It was a...weird experience. But I'm back on my feet and soldiering on!" "She really is," the Gand put in proudly. "Tuffass is mightily impressed." "But, how is this possible?" Daddi inquired, to which Laera simply shrugged. "It's a long story, Dad," she replied after a beat. "And you really don't want to know the details." Husband and wife nodded sagely; long experience at having a daughter in the military had conditioned them to accept her word in that regard. If she figured that the less her parents knew, the better off they were, they would accept and honor such a request. "So," Daddi began as Ceylon looked from him to the three holoprojected images, "how are you keeping yourself busy? I notice you're not wearing a uniform." "Well, I am and I'm not," Laera replied. "I'm a captain now, but prior to returning to active duty I trained for a year as a Jedi." "A...Jedi?" Ceylon stammered. "But..." "It wasn't easy, Mom," their daughter explained. "Particularly given those trust issues I know you and Dad always had. I had them too, but my Master helped me to overcome them and open myself to the Force. Don't you remember, Dad, when you first took me to the spaceport?" In spite of the surprise brought on by his little girl's revelation, Daddi cast his mind back to when he had seen Laera off on her way to join the Republic Marines. He had said something about how the Force definitely existed, despite his aspirations regarding the Jedi, and how he had hoped it would be with her. Well, apparently it always had been, waiting to be discovered by the right person. And in his opinion, the Jedi had regained his respect for their role in beating back the Mandalorians—Vima Sunrider in particular had earned his trust for how she had honored their daughter. "I do, Lilly," he replied, a warm, tremulous smile crossing his visage and a tear forming in his eye. "I'm so proud of you." "We're both proud of you, dear," Ceylon added, a slight hitch in her voice. "If you ever want to come home again, we'll be here for you." The three holograms smiled in return, Laera bobbing her head gratefully. "Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen for a while," she explained, her words dampening the happy mood somewhat. "There's another war on as you know, and I'll be returning to the front soon. The three of us have a lot of work to get started on." "We understand," Daddi replied, that tear breaking loose and sliding down his cheek. "You'll write to us, won't you?" Ceylon inquired, at which their daughter nodded. "Definitely," Laera promised. "You haven't seen the last of me just yet." The holocomm session ended, and the three smiling and waving callers vanished into nothingness as the terminal shut down. "She always was a fighter," Daddi said, his voice thick with love and admiration. "We raised a fine woman." "But it's war again," Ceylon replied as she brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. "What if—" "She's a Jedi now," Daddi interrupted softly, drawing his wife close and offering a reassuring kiss. "Lilly wants us to carry on and live our lives, which means we have to let go and allow the Force to do as it wills." "I suppose so," Ceylon admitted glumly, closing her eyes as her husband enfolded her in a hug. "At least we have her back," Daddi offered. "For as long as it lasts." Fin
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