Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Commander?”

Bacara didn’t sigh. He didn’t let any hint of his exhausted frustration show, because his trooper had done nothing to deserve his ire. But hells, this was the last thing he needed.

“She won’t go?” he asked, as levelly as he could.

“Nossir. She asked for you by name.”

“Very well.” He put his bucket on and started toward the forward picket.

General Mundi had left abruptly two tendays ago. Yesterday, a partial transmission had managed to get through the communications blockade informing him that a new general had been assigned to the Marines, but all the specifics had been lost. Bacara knew nothing about the new general—not when they would be arriving, or how, or even what species they were. Not even their name.

It had been both a difficulty and a relief to coordinate multiple lines of defense without the authority and oversight of a Jedi. The locals they were trying to protect were less inclined to listen to him than they had been before, but Bacara could much more easily adjust his tactics to account for that now that he didn’t have to try and explain them to General Mundi. The administrative burden was greater without the Jedi, but while the last few battles had been difficult there had been fewer casualties than average, and tired as Bacara was he was content with that trade off. Being assigned a new general, however, worried him. Mundi at least had been a known obstacle, one that the Marines knew how to work around. What would the new general be like?

(He didn’t regret that Mundi was gone. He regretted that he didn’t regret it.)

But now he was being pulled away from essential work just because some old vagrant woman was demanding to see him. It felt like every other day one of the local village leaders wanted to talk to him about irrelevant or impossible demands, but this was the first time someone completely unknown to him had done it. It was easy to pick her out against the uniformity of the troopers armor as he approached. Shabby, loose, dust-colored clothes, bound tight at her wrists and ankles with rags. A shapeless mantle obscured most of her figure. She had a ratty old bulging pack resting at her feet and a larger bundle of rags and blankets slung crosswise on her back. The only color about her was her stark white hair, exposed by her thrown back hood and gleaming like new armor in the sunlight.

He gave in and sighed in the safety of his bucket. This was going to be a pain.

She turned toward him as he halted between the guards. Sharp blue eyes surrounded by fine wrinkles surveyed him, and he revised his assessment. This was going to be a colossal pain, and getting rid of her was probably going to take hours. “You asked to see me?”

“Yes, Marshal Commander,” she said, crisp Coruscanti accent a sudden surprise, and then she fierfeking bowed.

Kriff it all.

Apparently, this was their new Jedi.

Bacara settled to attention and nodded. “Sir. We didn’t expect you for some time.”

She smiled, just a twitch of her lips, sharp and wry. “I rather expect you didn’t. I didn’t see any reason to announce the changeover by using a GAR ship, so I contracted with a few old friends to smuggle me past the blockade, and we arrived a bit ahead of schedule.”

That was....different. Mundi had always been very intent on observing proper protocol, including using military transport for any military missions. Bacara just couldn’t tell if it was a good difference or not. “Regardless, we are at your disposal, sir.”

“If you would be willing to give me a briefing and bring me up to speed with the current situation, I would be most appreciative, Commander.”

“Sir.” He nodded and turned back to the command tent, trying to decide what to tell her, mentally cataloging all the things he could say and all the things he needed to talk around. At least it was a decently long walk, giving him time to think. The Jedi followed behind, not saying anything.

Once in the tent he busied himself with coaxing the holotable to life. The general set her pack and bundle of blankets down in a corner, and the bundle thunked harder than he thought it should. He wondered what she had hiding in there.

“I tried to read up on the situation on my way here but I fear my information is woefully out of date. What’s the current opposition like?” She came to stand beside him as the holotable finally flickered on. She was surprisingly tiny, he thought. He was taller than her by a full head. What were the Jedi doing, sending their elders out to the worst killing fields of the war?

He explained, slowly, highlighting sites of recent skirmishes and the movements of the droid battalions, as well as his own troop movements. The general listened without saying a word, occasionally nodding. When his recitation wound down, she was silent for a long moment. He waited, tense, unsure about what she might say.

He never got to find out. Alarms screamed through the camp and chatter burst over the comms. He automatically turned to start giving orders, then froze. They had a Jedi again. This wasn’t a battle he could lead. Agonizingly, he turned back to the new general.

“What are your orders?” he asked woodenly, already bracing for how much longer his Remembrances would be soon. This was going to go so, so poorly.

The general shot him the singularly most disgruntled look he’d ever gotten from a natborn. “Commander, I haven’t got a single solitary clue what in all the Correlian hells needs to be done for a battle like this. Until I do, I am a massive liability. I am unilaterally ceding all military decisions to you for the foreseeable future and placing myself under your command until I learn how to avoid getting everyone killed. Tell me what to do.”

He didn't have time to question her words. Right now, she’d given him the leeway he needed and he was going to use it as fully as possible. “What’s your skillset?”

She shucked her mantle and pulled out a lightsaber hilt from where it had been hidden, clipping it onto her belt. She smiled at him, something sharp and a little bit wild, as her hands flew through a check he recognized as counting concealed knife hilts, the motion completely automatic. “Causing chaos. Put me where you need the most damage done.”

“Southwest quadrant, with Captain Pollux. Go.”

She nodded and was gone in a blur.

He keyed on his comm. “Captain Pollux, the new general just arrived and is headed to assist your battlegroup. She is under your command for the duration of the battle.” Bacara ignored the Captain’s high pitched yelp of disbelief and turned his focus to snapping out orders.

Krestor and the rest of the commanders pelted into the command tent seconds later. "The general is fighting?" Krestor demanded in a breath between giving his own orders. Bacara nodded and pointed to the holotable, where a blinking marker had just appeared, indicating that she'd made contact with the battlegroup and been added to the comm net.

"She gave me command."

Krestor hissed in shock and seared a look at Bacara that for once he understood perfectly. He fully expected that there would be some kind of terrible fallout from that after the battle was over, but for now he had a battle to win.

Reports began flooding in as the droids approached. The three chokepoints in the canyons were holding, but there were tanks coming up on the plains on the south side of the camp and after the last battle Bacara wasn't sure that the remaining cannons could hold them off. They could pull back but it would leave them vulnerable—

A thunderous boom rolled over the tent and half the enemy tank markers on the holotable winked out. Bacara swung to look out the entryway at the billowing clouds of smoke rising into the southern sky just as cheers and laughter flooded the comms.

"Oya, General!"

He slapped his comm. "Captain Pollux, report!"

"General just threw a tank, sir!"

...what.

————

They were two hours into the cleanup of a bewilderingly successful engagement when Bacara finally saw the general again. He'd been fairly sure she was still in one piece, given the steady string of explosions and cheering that had punctuated the fighting, but it was still something like a relief to lay eyes on her. She marched up to him at the head of a pack of troopers, sooty, disheveled, and looking incredibly pleased with herself.

“All troops from the southwest quadrant present and accounted for, Commander,” she said cheerfully. “What are your orders? We’re at your disposal.”

Bacara nearly had to sit down.

————

The rest of the day was equally as surprising. Bacara had kept expecting the general to take command back at any moment, but she hadn't. She hadn't asserted authority over anyone, actually. Instead she had willingly attached herself to the cleanup squads and spent her time in doing the menial scutwork involved with clearing battlefields.

It was only after the last meal shift that she came to find him in the command tent. He was alone, just finishing up the after action reports, having sent the rest of the commanders off to eat. "I don't suppose you've eaten yet," the general said, holding out a ration pack.

Bacara blinked down at it. "No." He took it automatically, then his brain disengaged from reports enough for him to add, "Thank you."

The general nodded, not seeming to need more of a response than that, and busied herself collecting her packs, abandoned in a corner since that morning. She looked even more like a vagrant now than she had then, with her soot stained clothes and strands of hair escaping her bun. It certainly didn't fit his image of a Jedi. But she had fought fiercely today, and he was grateful for that, regardless of how confusing he found everything else about her.

Things were quiet while he quickly ate, until Rothax stuck his head into the tent."General, we have your tent set up."

"Thank you, Sergeant, I'll be with you in a moment." She nodded at Rothax and he ducked back out of the tent flap.

Then she turned to him. “Commander, I have one question and one request, if I may?”

Here it comes, he thought. He put down his empty ration wrapper and braced himself. “Yessir.”

“I am not...unaccustomed to fighting, but all of my experience tends toward subterfuge and sabotage rather than the tactics of open warfare. My skills in that area are not so much inadequate as they are nonexistent. You are, by every measure, my superior in that area of expertise. Will you teach me how to fight a war?”

Bacara was not one to say words heedlessly, but in this case he simply had no words to say. Mundi had never, not once, said anything that indicated he thought his knowledge of warfare or anything associated with it might be lacking. To have a Jedi outright say she knew less than Bacara, praise his skills, and then ask him to teach her, was nearly outside the realm of comprehension. He struggled to even begin to grasp the right words in any language.

But she didn’t seem to mind. She simply waited, eyes steady on his face, quiet and patient.

“I can try,” he finally managed. It likely wasn’t the right answer, but it was the only one he could honestly give.

“Thank you,” she said, bowing her head in a brief, formal motion. “I would be in your debt.”

He shook his head before he could think about it. “Nayc entye,” he said, the words rolling easily from his tongue because of how often he heard them from Neyo. “No debt.”

“My apologies,” she murmured. “No debt. But you have my gratitude, regardless.”

He absolutely did not know what to say to that. “You had a request?”

“Yes.” She faced him squarely, spine straight and shoulders level. “My name is Jocasta Nu. I would be honored if you would use it.”

He didn't— he was barely able to understand the intricacies of being asked to use a trooper's name. He was wildly unequipped to understand how to appropriately use a Jedi's name, much less one whom he had met less than a day ago, no matter how different she was than the previous Jedi.

Once more, he gave her the only answer he felt he could. "I can try."

Unexpectedly, her expression softened. "That is all I can ask for, Commander. Especially after a day like this. I know my arrival was surprising and certainly complicated matters for you, but you rose to the occasion and handled it with admirable poise and grace. You've done very well." She bowed, then slipped away on silent feet while he was still trying to process her words.

He stared at the tent flap for a long, long time before he went to his bunk.

Chapter Text

The next morning Bacara woke up feeling…he wasn’t sure. Unsettled, maybe. Yesterday had been surprising in too many ways, even if most of them had been...not terrible. He didn’t have time to sit and brood about his feelings, though. There were too many things that required his attention.

He quickly armored up, thinking about all the things he would need to do today. There were the usual things that needed doing between engagements, and all the accompanying paperwork—but the most urgent thing was familiarizing General Nu with the current situation. He needed to bring her up to speed as quickly as possible so that she could complete her duties as the commanding officer.

He wasn’t looking forward to it, but it had to be done. Despite her words yesterday, he couldn’t imagine that she had meant to give him command for longer than yesterday’s battle. She hadn’t said anything about retaking command from him, but she probably just forgot to do so. Davin had told him that Jedi were flighty. Capricious. That they couldn’t be trusted to hold to a course—it didn’t matter what they agreed to, they would always change their minds.

Or maybe it was a test. Maybe General Nu was testing him by waiting to see how long he would wait before giving command back to her. She was likely waiting to see what he would do with that authority, and judge him for it. That wouldn’t surprise him. Every interaction with Mundi had always felt like it was a test that Bacara didn’t understand the parameters of, one he ended up failing.

Frustration roiled in his belly, but he shoved it down. All he could do about the situation was endure and make the best of what he could. He would learn what the new general wanted from him, and he would do all he could to keep his men safe, just like he always did. He finished belting on his kama and paused for a moment to compose himself. No matter what the general might think of his actions, he needed to be calm. Needed to be in command of himself, even if that was all he was able to command.

When he felt that he had his emotions under control, Bacara left his tent. The General’s tent had been set up not far from his own; it took only a few strides to cross the space between them and rap on the tent frame. It was only a moment after that that General Nu emerged.

She was wearing armor. In the past, General Mundi had ignored any suggestions that he wear armor. Bacara had assumed that it had something to do with being a Jedi, but—he had to revise that assumption now.

It wasn't trooper armor, but it was clearly armor all the same. A dusky brown and cream surcoat with a hood and bell-shaped sleeves reached down to her knees, split front and back like a kama for ease of movement, and Bacara could see the edges of what must be breastplate, backplate, and shoulder guards pressing into the fabric from underneath. Armored boots swept up into knee guards; plated gauntlets came to her elbow. Her wide leather belt supported double-layered tassets, and connected to two wide bandoliers that crossed over her chest, one of which held an impressive number of throwing knives. Bacara could see knife hilts peeking out of her boots and bracers as well. Apparently the concealed knives she had been sporting yesterday were not a one time thing.

With her hair in a tightly braided crown around her head and her lightsaber hanging from her belt, General Nu looked nothing like the old vagrant he had taken her for when she first appeared.

"Good morning, Commander," she said as she stepped forward and hooked a sleek helmet with a curiously blank white faceplate to her belt.

“General Nu,” he nodded.

She tipped her head in acknowledgement and glanced around. “What’s on the agenda for today, then?”

“Getting you integrated into the command structure, familiarizing you with the camp, and inspecting the troops, sir.”

She looked back at him for a long, silent moment. "...inspecting them for what?"

…Inspecting them for what? Why didn’t she know that? Hadn’t she been trained for this? For a long moment, Bacara simply couldn’t fathom it.

Somehow, General Nu seemed to divine what he was thinking from his incredulous silence. She gave him a look that on a tat he would have called sardonic. “Going forward, why don’t we just assume I have absolutely no idea how an army is supposed to work, shall we? It will cut down on the potential misunderstandings.”

“Did you not get a briefing?” He tried to keep his tone even but he knew his question came out a little too disbelieving.

“I wouldn’t stoop so low as to call the pile of garbage I was given a briefing. It was a collection of poorly researched, contradictory, and illogical drivel, and if I could find the bureaucrat who wrote it I would force them to attend a remedial writing class immediately. I’ve no idea what information sources the Senate War Committee is using for their communiques but it’s clear that they are terrible. What useful information I did glean from that nonsense was proved woefully out of date by your briefing yesterday, anyway.” She paused and took a breath, clearly reining herself in. “Apologies. The point is, the supposed ‘briefing’ I received focused only on the combat situation, and not at all on anything else, including my duties as a general. I am flying blind, and I’m sorry, but I have to ask you to teach me in that respect as well.”

Shit.

The realization that the General was—somehow—shinier than the youngest tat settled like a stone in his gut. She’d managed to acquit herself well on the battlefield yesterday, but now Bacara had to wonder if it had been sheer luck. Even her armor was new, now that he thought about it. He hadn’t noticed at first glance because it wasn’t plastoid white, but there were no scuffs or mends or any wear at all on her gear.

“...right.” They would adapt. They had to. In the meantime— “Inspection is to…make sure that everything in the camp is as it should be. And that everyone is ready to move when they have to.”

“Very well. Lead on, Commander.”

As Bacara led the way over to the command tent, he rapidly revised his agenda for the day. If General Nu didn’t even know the basics of how an army worked, there was going to have to be a lot of remedial training done before he could get to anything that he had previously planned. For a moment, he nearly panicked at the thought of how much would have to be done, and how to go about it. How was it even going to work?

Just…treat her like a new trooper. Standard assessments. If he could do that, he could get some kind of baseline for what she did and didn’t know. That would at least be a place to start. He desperately hoped that yesterday’s battle had hurt the Separatists badly enough that he would have the time necessary to bring General Nu up to speed.

Well. At least the Seps were now missing most of their tanks.

————

Bacara looked down at the datapad on his camp desk. He’d had General Nu take the written test that was part of the graduating exam for all troopers, and now he had the results. The test assumed a certain level of knowledge about military matters, so he wasn’t sure it would even be worth the time to have the general take it, but at least it was a starting point, and it was as useful to know what she didn’t know as what she did.

According to these results, she didn’t know anything about military protocol. She had a terrible score when it came to how the GAR was organized and who reported to whom. She scored surprisingly high on weapons identification, middling on squad tactics and low on larger group tactics, and very low on GAR mechanical vehicle knowledge and maintenance. It wasn’t a very encouraging result.

However. Her sample report was detailed and concise, even if it wasn’t in the usual format for such things, and she had nearly a perfect score for the logistics unit.

He wondered, for the first time, what General Nu had done before coming out here behind the blockade. His knowledge of what the Jedi did when they weren’t being generals was incomplete at best. He assumed that they had to have some sort of roles outside of the military they now led, but he had no idea what they might be. Maybe General Nu had been an administrator of some kind? She certainly seemed to have a knack for organization. Maybe, if he was allowed to retain the command she had ceded to him, he could append her to Sgt Rothax and the Logistics Division.

He mulled it over. On the one hand, having someone who could throw tanks around on the front lines was useful. On the other, he still didn’t know if that was a fluke or not. Captain Pollux’s report had been long on admiration but a bit short on actual details of how she accomplished that feat. It was possible that it was something she couldn’t repeat, and he was hesitant to trust the safety of his men to something to a ‘maybe’.

He needed more information. He briefly wished that Neyo was here. Bacara wouldn’t even have to ask, Neyo would do all the reconnaissance because of his own need to know, and Bacara could find out from him. But Neyo wasn’t here, and Bacara would have to do it alone, much as he disliked it. This was all new territory, and he wasn’t made to be a Scout.

He glanced up at General Nu. When she had finished the test, she had asked if there was any manual that laid out a general's duties. At his denial she had asked for the general GAR regulations manual, and though he had been surprised and somewhat doubtful of how much she would understand it, he had supplied her with one. She had been reading it closely as he pondered the test results.

There was a stillness to her that reminded him somewhat of General Mundi, but where Mundi had always struck him as an object at rest, General Nu seemed to be more like a coiled spring—motionless, but with energy leashed and waiting to be used. There was a hint of sharpness to her that Mundi had lacked. Bacara wondered if that was a good thing or not.

The tent flap opened. Corporal Decamp entered the tent with an armful of datapads, then caught sight of the general and stopped dead. “General, sir!” he said, and saluted.

General Nu looked up from her reading at the trooper, then Bacara. “How am I supposed to respond to that?”

“You return the salute,” Bacara said, fighting back bafflement. How did the Jedi function without knowing such basic things?

General Nu nodded and sketched a rough salute at Decamp, not seeming to notice the Cpl’s incredulous look. That little tidbit would be all over the camp by nightfall, Bacara thought with resignation. Nothing ran faster than gossip, not even hyperspace.

Decamp spent a second longer staring at the general, then pulled himself together and turned to Bacara. “I’ve got the reports you requested for the meeting, sir,” he said. “Commander Krestor said that he would bring his to you shortly, he just needed to finish updating it with the most recent intel.”

“Thank you,” Bacara said as he took the datapads. “Dismissed.” Decamp nodded and quickly left the tent, probably eager to tell someone what had just happened.

General Nu gave Bacara an inquisitive look. “There will be a coordination meeting for the commanders in half an hour,” he explained. That was standard for the day after a battle.

“Ah. Will I be attending?”

It was Bacara’s turn to fix the general with an incredulous look. “You’re the general.”

“Which doesn’t answer my question, but I suppose I will take that as a ‘yes’,” she said, meeting his look with a sardonic one of her own. “I did tell you I have no idea how any of this works.” His stomach twisted at that unwelcome reminder. Something of his discomfort must have shown on his face, because General Nu’s expression softened a degree. “I’ll try not to disgrace myself too thoroughly during the meeting, don’t worry, Commander.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, retreating into formality for lack of any other ideas. General Nu looked at him for a moment longer before turning back to her reading. He looked down at the stack of reports he needed to look through and thought, a little sourly, that she wasn’t the only one who had no idea how any of this was supposed to work.

Chapter Text

After the commander’s meeting, in which the general said nothing aside from introducing herself but watched everything with keen attention, Bacara waited until the tent had cleared before moving to the next item of business for the day. He wasn’t sure how she would respond to the directive. She hadn’t balked at anything he had asked her to do yet—which was honestly unsettling coming from his superior officer. He wondered just when that wall would be hit, and what the fallout would be.

“I need to assess your weapons proficiency, General,” he said. He paused, waiting for her reaction, but she only nodded agreeably, leaving him blinking.

“Follow me,” he said after a moment, and led the way to the training tent. The commanders inside snapped to attention as he entered, and he acknowledged it and waved them back to ease. He’d asked only two of the senior commanders to be present for this; if it went poorly, he didn’t want to have word of General Nu’s weaknesses spread around the ranks to lower morale. Krestor was there, to be a second set of eyes and thoughts about the general's capabilities. He'd asked Keller to do the same and to step in if medical attention was needed.

“We’ll begin with hand to hand.”

Again, he expected some resistance, but got none. Instead, General Nu tipped her head in acknowledgement. “Might I warm up a bit first?”

Bacara nodded, relieved that she had that much training, at least. She unhooked her helmet from her belt and set it aside before she began to stretch—slow, careful movements that seemed more to test her range of motion in her armor than do anything for her muscles. He did a few stretches himself. No sense in doing this poorly on his part.

After a few minutes General Nu stood up and shook her arms out, flexing her hands in her gauntlets. “I’m ready when you are, Commander.”

He rolled his neck one last time and stepped into the center of the floor, reminding himself to moderate his strikes. She was wearing armor, but that likely didn’t compensate all the way for baseline Human bones. “Try to hit me," he ordered, and settled into a ready stance.

"Very well," she said, straight-faced, but there was a glimmer of something he couldn’t quite identify in her eyes.

A second later, Bacara found himself slammed into the mats and regretting his most recent life choices.

He hadn’t even seen her move.

Bacara rolled to his feet, sucking in a breath and ignoring Krestor’s choked exclamation. General Nu watched him, politely expectant. “Again?” she said, as if she hadn’t just thrown him to the ground so hard his teeth rattled.

He took his stance much more warily this time. “Again.”

This time, he saw her start to move, and only years of ingrained muscle memory allowed him to avoid going flying. He blocked on pure instinct, grunting from the impact. She slipped out of reach before he could try to return the hit, darted right back in to strike at his hip, his arm, his side.

General Nu was fast, faster than a baseline Human had any right being—and she hit like an avalanche. Bacara hadn’t had to fight so hard in a spar since before he left Kamino. He was barely holding his own.

Until he made a mistake. His foot came down just wrong, jarring his bad knee, and the bolt of pain made him fumble for one crucial second. The General pounced on the opening before he could correct it. She grabbed and yanked, throwing him over her hip and following him down to kneel on his back and twist his arms into a hold like durasteel.

“Too slow,” The Trainer said, cool and clinical, hands crushing down on the fine bones in 1138's wrists. His cheekbone ached where it pressed into the mats, in counterpoint to the aching of his lungs as he struggled to breathe through the weight of the Trainer's knee grinding into his spine. "Unacceptable. Too many openings left. An enemy will exploit those. I expect better."

1138 forced bitter words out of his burning throat. "I yield."

The instant release of his arms startled him. The Trainer never let go that quickly, always made a point of making sure of the enemy—

General Nu sat down next to him on the mats with a thump. "That was marvelous," she said, half breathless, half laughing. "I've not had to put someone down that hard in years." She tucked some hair that had come loose from her braids behind her ears. "Thank you, Commander."

Keller, on his feet and moving swiftly towards them, actually paused mid-stride to shoot the general a disbelieving look. "You're thanking him?"

General Nu chuckled. "Of course. No one ever tries to hit me anymore. I've missed it."

Keller's eyes narrowed. "I think I need to check you for a concussion."

The look General Nu gave Bacara before patiently submitting herself to the medic’s brusque examination was all wry commiseration, but it only added to the confused whirlwind in his head. Bacara tried to ignore it as he pulled his limbs underneath himself, preparing to stand—

"Hold, Commander," Keller barked. "I need to check your knee. I saw it give."

General Nu's gaze snapped to Bacara, and he felt himself gathering to speak a denial, to demur that he was in functional condition—

"See to that first, Commander Keller."

The authority in her voice nearly flattened Bacara back to the mat. There was command there, absolute and unwavering, and the sudden realization of how much she had been holding back when deferring to him shook Bacara to his core. He froze, sure that this was it, the charade was over, the wall had been hit—

"He shouldn't remain in pain."

"Yessir." Keller immediately swiveled to kneel next to Bacara's legs. Bacara sank down under the pressure of Keller's hands, mind completely blank with shock.

He followed Keller’s directions mechanically, hardly even feeling it as the medic eased the pieces of armor off his leg. He couldn’t remember a single time when the Trainer had ever taken him to get medical care simply to ease his pain. To be returned to functionality, yes. But not because he was in pain.

But—that was what General Nu was doing. He just…didn't understand why.

But then the memory of the multiple times that she had admitted her lack of knowledge and deferred to him and asked for help bubbled to the front of his mind. The way she had treated him with consistent respect. The moments she had praised him; the moments she had thanked him.

The moment after the battle yesterday, when she had proudly told him that every one of his men that she had fought with was still alive.

It dawned on him, with a shock of something almost like fear, that if it was possible to find someone who was the complete opposite of Cort Davin, General Nu might be it.

Since she had arrived yesterday, she had turned every expectation he had about Jedi or anyone in authority over him on its head, and then shot it for good measure. It had left him feeling completely off balance, in free fall, and unable to comprehend that someone who was technically his commanding officer might be regarding him not as an inferior, but reaching out to him as an equal. But that was exactly what she was doing, wasn't it?

It was baffling. It was so completely opposite to everything he had been conditioned to expect. It seemed unreal. But it was real; he had the proof of it right in front of him. So…he could take what was being offered, as strange as it was, or he could remain in freefall.

He’d never much liked freefall.

“General,” he said, interrupting the quiet conversation she was having with Krestor.

“Yes, Commander?”

If she was going to treat him as an equal he could return the courtesy, and that started with not making any more assumptions. It wasn’t like any of his assumptions had been correct, anyway. “What is your skill with a blaster?”

She considered a moment. “I’m not sure what criteria you prefer to judge on, but higher than the galactic average, I would say.”

“Do you have a preferred kind?”

“I do have a preference for rifles,” she said. Bacara wasn’t sure how that could work, given that blaster rifles were probably taller than she was, but he wasn’t going to bring it up.

Keller paused his work on Bacara’s leg to fix Bacara with a gimlet stare. “Do not even think about going to get a rifle yourself.”

Bacara pretended like he hadn’t been considering exactly that, and looked over at Krestor. “Commander Krestor, take the general to requisition a rifle. And,” he added, when a glance at Keller showed that the CMO was not in the least mollified, “perhaps you could have her demonstrate her marksmanship on the training range.” It wasn’t a formal range, just some droid scrap that had been set out at intervals on a clear stretch of ground at the edge of camp, but it served its purpose well enough. And, Bacara thought, if General Nu was half as good with a rifle as she was at hand to hand, it would make a very good showing for his men—and hopefully counteract any rumors that might be circulating about her lack of knowledge.

“Of course, Commander.” Krestor saluted and turned to General Nu. “If you’ll follow me, sir.”

“Certainly.” General Nu rose to her feet with easy grace. “Lead the way.”

As they left the tent, Keller went back to his work. After a long moment, he said quietly, almost to himself, “The general’s not like I expected.”

“No,” Bacara replied, ruefully considering the depth of that understatement, “she is not.”

————

Once Keller had assured himself that Bacara’s knee was not going to explode when he put weight on it, he allowed Bacara to put his armor back on and leave the tent to follow the noise of a crowd to the training range. The crowd wasn’t large at the moment but he could see that it was slowly growing as the men came to see what the noise was, or were summoned by their friends. As he approached troopers snapped to attention, a gesture that rippled through the crowd. He waved them to ease but took advantage of the stillness to ease himself to the front of the group so he could have a good view of the general.

He’d been right; the blaster rifle was taller than her. Not that it seemed to impede her in any way. She handled the rifle with ease, hitting the bits of scrap that passed as targets with such precision as to draw admiring murmurs from the men. She paused her shooting when Krestor caught sight of Bacara and braced to attention—and then mimicked his actions.

Bacara nodded automatically in acknowledgement and waved at them to carry on with what they were doing. His lungs felt too tight.

It was one thing for General Nu to acquiesce to his requests in private. It was something else entirely for her to so clearly acknowledge his superior authority in front of the entire camp.

The murmurs changed tone, something else mixing with the admiration. Confusion, perhaps. Disbelief. Raging, burning curiosity.

Bacara could admit that he might be projecting.

But he stood still, ignoring the growing noise at his back, and watched as the general hit ever more distant targets under Krestor’s direction. His helmet comm chirped the alert for an incoming channel link. When he accepted, Krestor said, “I don’t know what model of Jedi General Nu is, but it seems like she could be a hell of a sniper, Commander.”

Bacara agreed, given that she had just hit one of the farther targets on the range. “Yes.”

There was a pause while they both watched the general look over the rifle with a slight frown, make a minor adjustment, and then shoot again. This time, she nailed the farthest droid carcass dead center three times in rapid succession.

“...what model did they send us?” Krestor asked.

The bafflement in his voice was oddly soothing, and Bacara found himself almost smiling as he replied. “I don’t know.”

Chapter Text

When the general finished shooting, Krestor said something to her and then led the way over to where Bacara was standing. Bacara nodded acknowledgement as they approached. “You shoot well,” he said. The words were awkward in his mouth, but they were honest. The general’s marksmanship was at least equal to that of his Marines.

“Thank you, Commander,” she said, faintly satisfied. “I’m a bit rusty, but I believe that will clear up quickly with more practice.”

Krestor froze, disbelief clear in his posture. Bacara couldn’t blame him. If that was a rusty performance, he would be interested to see what the general considered to be an acceptable one. Very interested.

“What else do I need to be assessed on?” General Nu continued, seemingly oblivious to their reactions. Bacara wrenched his mind away from contemplating how well she shot to focus on her question. Originally he had been planning on testing all her basic weapon proficiencies, but…that seemed a little silly in light of her last two displays. Still—

“How good are you with knives?” Bacara asked.

“Much better than I am with a blaster,” General Nu said with confidence.

“I think I do not need to test that, then,” Bacara said slowly, trying to imagine what that looked like. He thought he was in the right about not needing to test her skill, but now he was also curious about it. Perhaps she would be willing to give a demonstration later?

“If you think that’s best,” General Nu agreed peaceably—though there was something in her tone that Bacara thought might be amusement.

“What about lightsabers, sir?” Krestor asked. The troopers who had been loitering around the shooting range, clearly trying to pretend that they weren’t eavesdropping, perked up. There was a fascination with lightsabers that never seemed to fade, no matter how many times they saw a Jedi with one. Bacara felt a twinge of misgiving at the attention the men were paying to the general, but he shoved it away. The point of being out in the open was to show her to the men, after all.

General Nu reached down and unclipped her lightsaber from her belt. It seemed so innocuous, just a slender silver tube with a bit of gold detailing. She regarded it thoughtfully for a moment before igniting it. The humming blade was the same sharp blue as her eyes. “I can deflect and redirect blaster bolts and other energy sources, and I can cut through almost any material, given enough time. In most respects lightsabers function much like a vibrosword, so any application you can think of for that is something I could also undertake.” That was good. There were a lot of things that Bacara could think to do with a vibrosword, especially one that could cut through walls. But then General Nu continued. “I can also win in a fight against Dooku over seventy percent of the time.”

What.

The general glanced at him, smile knife-sharp. “Granted, it’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to do so, but I have a lifetime of data with which to back up my conclusion.”

A thousand questions crowded into his mind. Was that why she had replaced General Mundi? Did GAR Intelligence suspect that Dooku would attack the Marines in person, and had they sent General Nu to capture him? If so, why hadn’t she said so? Why hadn’t Bacara gotten a briefing about it? Was that another vital piece of information that hadn’t gotten past the comm blockade?

But he couldn’t ask any of his questions out in the open like this—that was the height of bad op-sec. Bacara mentally shoved them aside and focused back on the conversation happening right now.

“A lifetime, sir?” Krestor asked the general, curious and intent. Bacara wasn’t sure this was the right time to ask that question either, but he also wanted to know the answer, so he let it pass without comment.

General Nu deactivated her lightsaber and clipped the hilt back on her belt. “We were crechemates. I have always known him,” she said. Her voice was calm, but…there was something angry—and mournful—in the set of her mouth.

Bacara hadn’t ever spared a thought for Count Dooku’s childhood, nor imagined that the man might have had childhood friends. But General Nu was clearly well acquainted with Dooku, if not a friend, and—she seemed hurt by that.

Bacara found that he didn’t want her to hurt.

He couldn’t ask someone to relieve her pain, not like she had asked Keller to deal with his, but at least he could move the focus off of it.

“General, we need to inspect the camp now,” he said, knowing it was too abrupt but not caring at the moment.

“Of course, Commander,” was all she said about the sudden change of subject, but he thought she seemed a little less sad when she said it.

Bacara started walking in the direction of the supply tents, so that they could return the rifle the general was still carrying slung over her shoulder to Sgt Rothax, and she fell in beside him with ease. He noticed with some private amusement that there were a goodly number of troopers not-quite running to their berths and duty stations, obviously spooked by overhearing ‘inspection’. At least stopping by the quartermasters would give the men time to set their things in order. He assumed that the rest of the crowd who had not run off to tidy things up were either confident that they could pass the inspection without a final check, or felt that it was more important to spread the gossip about the general as soon as possible. He would bet on the latter, honestly. There was quite a bit of news to share.

He ducked into the quartermaster’s tent and the general followed. Rothax was behind his worktable, as always. If he had been in the crowd watching the general shoot, there was no sign. Rothax sketched a quick salute when they entered the tent. Bacara returned it, and noticed that General Nu did the same, nothing in her movements betraying that she had learned to do it just this morning. She was a quick study.

General Nu pulled the rifle off her shoulder and handed it to Rothax. “Thank you, Sergeant, it performed well.”

“Did you not want to keep it, Sir?” he asked. Bacara could just see how Rothax’s pale eyes flitted between the two of them behind his customary goggles.

General Nu looked at Bacara as if to solicit his input. He inclined his head but didn't actually say anything, curious about how she would respond. She looked back at Rothax. “Not at this time, Sergeant. I feel I need to be better acquainted with my role here before I commit to a specific weapon.”

Well, Bacara couldn’t argue with that. “The general also needs a comm,” he said. That had been on his mind since the battle yesterday. She obviously had some kind of civilian comm, but she needed one encrypted to the GAR frequencies. It would make things go more smoothly the next time he needed to order her to a specific section of a battlefield. “Does your helmet have comm capabilities, General?” A wrist comm was well and good, but a helmet comm was better in the heat of battle.

“Not currently, but I believe it has space for one,” she said, unhooking the helmet from her belt and handing it to Rothax. Bacara tucked away a gust of quiet amusement at Rothax’s poorly hidden enthusiasm at having new armor to examine.

And General Nu…softened.

No, that wasn’t quite right. She was still as durasteel-spined as she had been since he met her—all of a day ago, though it felt like longer—but something about her eased a fraction as she watched Rothax examine the helmet in minute detail.

Bacara wondered why.

There were a lot of things to wonder about with this new general, it seemed.

As Rothax got to work on installing the comm, Bacara turned a few of those things over in his mind. Why had she been assigned to the Marines? Was it because of something General Mundi had reported to the War Council? Was it because of what she had said about being able to fight Dooku?

He had no answers. And if General Nu had answers, she hadn’t deigned to offer them up yet—and he was reluctant to ask. He feared that the answers might upset the fragile confidence he had managed to scrape together. Surely, surely those questions could wait another day.

“Try that, Sir,” Rothax said, handing the helmet to General Nu. She put it on, and Bacara was once again struck by how different it was from the helmets he was used to. No T-visor, no filter compartments, just a smooth white ovoid with rectangular eye slits. It turned the general into something a little bit uncanny—something a little too otherworldly for comfort.

“It fits well,” the general said, voice still clear despite the lack of any visible mouth aperture. “How do I test if it works?”

As Rothax talked her through activating the comm, Bacara realized that there was yet another thing she would have to learn to function as a general. She needed to know not just the physical motions that controlled a comm, but which comm channels were used for which purpose, as well as the protocols—written and unwritten—for each of them. Bacara could tell her about the official protocols, but the unofficial ones—he would probably need to enlist Krestor for that.

For a moment Bacara felt overwhelmed all over again by the magnitude of the task ahead of him. War he could deal with. Teaching a general how to do her job was much more daunting.

But—

She was trying to learn as fast as she could. He could see that now, as he thought about the past day, and as he watched her follow Rothax’s instructions with careful attention. She had come to this situation unprepared and ignorant of many things, but she was clearly trying to fix that by whatever means necessary. She was still a mystery, and he felt that he didn’t understand her at all, but he could start to recognize her efforts now and respect her determination.

————

After Rothax had finished instructing the general and given her a wrist comm to use when she wasn’t wearing her helmet, Bacara led her out of the tent to begin the long delayed inspection. She was quiet as they walked. He wondered what she was thinking. But that wasn’t something he could ask about, and he really did need to address more pressing matters at this time. He cleared his throat and she looked up at him. “You said that you didn’t know what an inspection was for. What…would you like to know about it?”

She snorted softly. “Everything,” she said lightly, and smiled a little. He somehow got the impression it was a private joke. “But to begin with, what are we supposed to be looking for during an inspection?”

For a moment, it felt like her question was a trap; it was too like the questions that The Trainer had asked, which seemed harmless on the surface but always had hidden barbs, coated in failure and disappointment. Bacara shoved the feeling away. He deliberately called to mind he shouldn’t remain in pain until the sick feeling in his gut dropped to an ignorable level. General Nu wasn’t like Davin. She could not be more unlike Davin. This wasn’t a trap.

He took a deliberately even breath. “The first thing to look for is that the troopers are prepared in the event of a battle, “ he said slowly, thinking each word through. “Armor must be in good condition, weapons also. There should be no unnecessary mess to slow them down when a fast response is needed. Their spaces should be orderly.” It was unexpectedly challenging to try and explain something that he had known so long it was instinct—and that he had never had to explain in Standard before.

General Nu nodded and asked, “What are the indicators of armor in poor condition?”

Bacara answered that, explaining how to notice forming cracks or potential weak spots, and what pieces were most likely to break due to being under the most stress. That led to a question about what sorts of stresses the armor was likely to be under, and how durable the plastoid was, and how it was repaired when it did break. It seemed like General Nu was serious in her desire to know everything and had taken his inquiry about what she wanted to know as permission to ask every question possible, Bacara thought with some bemusement.

He…didn’t mind it. She was attentive to his answers and patient with his slow words. And his answers never triggered a punishment or a cool correction or a reprimand, only more interested questions.

No, she was nothing like Davin.

By the time they had finished the inspection—by far the slowest inspection Bacara had ever conducted—he was starting to get hoarse from all the talking he had done. He coughed when a breeze lifted a cloud of dust into their faces. General Nu grimaced and waved a hand in front of her face. “Does your armor come with a canteen?”

“No,” he began, assuming that was another question related to the inspection, but had to stop when he coughed again.

“Here,” she said, holding out a canteen that she had pulled out from somewhere on her person. He blinked at it. “It’s just water, Commander, I promise,” she said with visible amusement.

Just water. Maybe to her, but—

It was more than that. It was a kindness, freely offered, by someone who had no obligation to be kind. Especially to him, who had treated her with coldness and distrust and made so many wrong assumptions.

She was still treating him with kindness despite all that, and gratitude and guilt mingled with the dust in his throat.

“Thank you, Sir,” he rasped as he took the canteen, and meant it about much more than the water.

Chapter Text

Bacara read the comm message with mingled relief and resignation. Apparently the loss of the majority of their tanks had convinced the Separatists that Dantooine wasn’t worth the effort, so they were pulling out and leaving. That meant the Marines got some breathing room, but orders had already come in reassigning them to Mygeeto.

“Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” General Nu asked, reading over his shoulder. For some reason it was taking an extended amount of time to get her a GAR communications account commensurate with her rank, so Bacara was still the only one getting official comms.

“It remains to be seen,” Bacara said. “But it is likely to be more bad than good.”

“Hm. If nothing else, it will be cold,” the general mused. “Mygeeto is entirely made of glaciers, crystal mines, and bankers.”

“And Separatists,” Bacara said, reading further in the briefing.

“Wonderful. I so love trying to take occupied territory.” Her sarcasm was evident even to Bacara. “Why are we even going there? Mygeeto was one of the earliest planets to secede from the Republic and join the CIS. Well, the Banking Clan was, which comes to the same thing. It can hardly be argued that we’re protecting Republic citizens or resources when they made their opinion of the Republic very clear already.”

Bacara shrugged. “There does not seem to be any explanation provided, just orders.” He had to suppress a smile at General Nu’s noise of utter disgust. He couldn’t voice his own critical thoughts about their superiors and their orders, but the general had no such constraints. It was rather cathartic; she clearly thought they were all idiots.

“Speaking of orders…” he said, turning to look at her and seizing on the opportunity to ask one of the questions that had been plaguing him, now that he finally had an opening and enough privacy to ensure good opsec, “why were you sent here to relieve General Mundi?”

She was silent for a long moment—long enough that Bacara started to wonder if he was even allowed to know. Was it that highly classified?

“I wish I could say that it was for a useful reason, but I suspect it was actually in retaliation for something I said,” she answered at last. “One of the admirals said something egregiously stupid in my presence and did not seem to take it well when I corrected him. The next day I was very specifically ordered to come here and serve as a general. To me, that speaks of a vindictive motive rather than anything strategic.”

Bacara couldn’t help his incredulous stare. “But—you said you could beat Dooku—”

“I very much doubt that the Senate War Committee or the Admiralty are aware of that fact, nor would they know what to make of it if they did know,” she said, the acid in her voice strong enough to etch durasteel. “No, Commander, I think the only criteria they had for my assignment here was ‘send her as far away as possible.’”

Shit. That explained...far too much about her lack of training. She wasn’t meant to lead the Marines or defend them against a new plot by Dooku, she was meant to die out here. There were plenty of places that she could have been sent to get her out of the way that were less dangerous; a medical station, Kamino, one of the scout battalions in Wild Space—anywhere that wasn’t this killing field, trapped behind the blockade. Someone had sent her to the most dangerous part of the galaxy with no information and no training because they wanted her gone. Permanently.

“They did not just want you far away. They sent you here because they think it will kill you,” he said bluntly. He wished he could think of a way to soften his words, but he was unwilling to hide the truth from her. She needed to know so they could take proper precautions to prevent it.

“They really ought to have done better research, then,” she said dryly, for all appearances unmoved by his statement.

Bacara felt a spark of indignation that she was treating a very real threat flippantly, but—considering the fact that she was nearly singlehandedly responsible for the Seps withdrawing from the planet…he couldn’t necessarily say that she was wrong. She may not have had any training in how to run an army or be a general, but she wasn’t defenseless.

General Nu somehow noticed his displeasure, and smiled slightly. “Trust me, Commander, I’ve dealt with much worse than a straightforward battlefield. Now, did our oh so exalted superiors say how we are getting to Mygeeto? I don’t imagine you have troop transports stashed somewhere.”

Bacara allowed his attention to be turned to logistics, although he wasn’t completely mollified. It was still dangerous out here, whatever her past experiences had been. “Winder Company will transport us. They should be arriving in three days.”

“Excellent. I look forward to meeting them.”

————

Jet heard the door to the conference room hiss open as he slowly rotated around in his spinny chair and contemplated the ceiling. He recognized the footsteps and voices that entered; Blackout, Pulse, and Leggy made three, which meant all the necessary Winders had arrived for the meeting.

“Spark told me that he heard she could shoot the head off a clanker at ten parsecs,” Blackout said laconically, clearly continuing a conversation begun elsewhere, which was equally clearly about the new Jedi general. The rumors had begun to fill the Winder ships from the moment the first Nova came aboard that morning, and by now every ship was nearly bursting at the seams with them.

Pulse snorted. “Oh sure, like that’s remotely possible.” He gave Jet’s chair a push on the way to his own seat and set Jet spinning again.

“I don’t know why you expected anything realistic out of a Nova,” Leggy said. “They’re all crazy.”

Not untrue, Jet mused. The Marines were all more than a little nuts. They took after their Commander that way.

“Spark also said that he heard that one straight from Commander Krestor—as he was talking to a bunch of shinies,” Blackout said. “So.”

Meaning Krestor was one hundred percent exaggerating for effect, and two hundred percent making things up entirely. Taking that into account, Jet gave it even odds as to whether the new general could operate a blaster at all.

Jet had met General Nu this morning, more or less. She had been in the command tent when Jet had holocalled Bacara to let him know that the Winder fleet had arrived at Dantooine to begin playing transgalactic taxi. Bacara had been The Marine Marshal Commander from boots to bucket, as formal as Jet had ever seen him, and while General Nu was a lot shorter than General Mundi, that’s really all Jet could say about her. She hadn’t said hardly anything, either for herself or in support or opposition of Bacara, and Jet’s overall impression was one of studied neutrality. Not much to go on there.

The one interesting nugget was that she had remained on the surface with Bacara. Bacara always chose to be the last one on the shuttle up to the transports, the better to mother nuna his troops, but General Mundi had never stayed with him, preferring instead to be in the first wave coming onto the ships. Jet wasn’t sure what that signified, but it seemed worth noting. It was at least more substantive than the rumors spreading like wildfire. He was looking forward to sifting the specks of truth out from among the elaborations of wild spacers’ tales, and fortunately, some of his curiosity should be satisfied by the impending meeting.

Every time Winder picked up another set of troopers to transport them to a new place, Jet and a handful of his minions would meet with the other group’s officers for a coordination session: hashing out who got stored where; what supplies Winder could send along with the visitors when they left; if there were any particular needs to fill; and of course, ‘trading intelligence’. Gossip, by any other name. The meeting was an informal thing, not mandated by any GAR regs, but oh so helpful for keeping things running smoothly. The meeting room was equally informal, and equally as helpful at providing comfort not mandated by the GAR: full of blankets and cushions for the office chairs, with a caff machine and chiller and a dozen other snacky bits and bobs, all products of Winder’s gleaning.

And as all of it was unmandated and unofficial, any Jedi attached to visiting troopers were not involved or invited. Jet had carefully never commented on how much of a relief that seemed to be to Bacara.

The door hissed open again. Jet looked down from his perusal of the ceiling to watch the clutch of Novas entering the room. Commander Keller, Commander Krestor, Sergeant Rothax, Lieutenant Atlas. Medical, Troop Command, Armorer, Logistics. Just missing Bacara to get this party started. Not that his absence was surprising; Jet had only gotten the alert that the last shuttle was lifting off the surface a few minutes ago, and Bacara would have been the very last person to get on the shuttle.

Leggy aimed a laser of a look at the Novas. “Tell us about the new general,” he demanded. The Winder Logistics officer had a passion for accuracy, and the wildness of the rumors was probably driving him insane.

Jet and his Winders all looked at the Novas, expectant. Atlas and Rothax looked back, nonplussed, but Keller and Krestor—

—well, the look they exchanged as they sat down was loaded with more meaning than an encrypted Top Secret comm.

Jet brought his slowly spinning chair to a halt and perked up. This was gonna be good.

“I heard someone say she threw a tank,” Pulse said, skepticism and amusement jockeying for supremacy in his voice. The CMO was a great proponent of sticking strictly to realistic possibilities—an admirable trait for a medic, really—and clearly didn’t believe that flight of fancy.

“Technically, she threw several tanks,” Krestor said, shaking his hair out of his face with an artful toss of his head. “Into several other tanks. The resulting explosions were...very impressive.”

“Karking how?” Leggy exclaimed.

“Well you see, when one tank loves another tank very much—”

Keller cuffed Krestor upside the head without even looking. “Jedi can move things with their minds. The general did...that.”

“I know Jedi can move little things with their minds or Force woowoo or whatever, but a tank?” Jet thought Leggy might start frothing at the mouth soon from the force of his incredulity.

Keller shrugged. “Captain Pollux watched her do it. Ask him.”

Leggy didn’t look any more convinced, but before he could start frothing Blackout asked if she really could shoot as well as everyone was saying, and Jet’s comm blinked with an alert. All Novas were on board, tallied and accounted for, so it was time to move out. Which meant Bacara was on board, and would soon be arriving for the meeting.

Jet got out of his chair and took up his position against the wall just to the side of the door. He had a tradition to observe.

(His men had, over the course of the war, made some silly observations about how people trying to befriend wild animals by ambushing them with hugs ended up losing limbs to said wild animals, but Jet paid them no mind. Bacara wasn’t a wild animal, and Jet could tell that deep down he really did want the hugs. And Jet still had all his limbs! So there!)

Jet tuned out the bickering troopers and listened carefully for footsteps in the hallway. He would have to time this just right….

The door opened.

Bacara stepped inside.

Jet pounced.

Bacara—

—sidestepped.

The person walking in behind Bacara did not.

Jet, unprepared for a second target, didn’t redirect his pursuit, and instinctively closed his arms around that person who was definitely not Bacara.

...who was, in fact, definitely General Nu.

She blinked up at him, startled. He blinked down at her, stunned.

For a excruciatingly long moment he couldn’t understand what was going on. This was General Nu. Here. At the nonregulation meeting in their nonregulation conference room. The meeting that Jedi never came to. But. She was here. She was here with Bacara. Bacara brought a Jedi.

Bacara brought a Jedi?

That was so strange to contemplate that it took much too long for Jet to realize that while Bacara may have brought the Jedi, Jet was the one who was STILL HUGGING HER.

His brain slammed back into gear, and he flinched back from the general as if she had slammed into him.

He opened his mouth. Couldn’t even make a noise, much less think of anything to say. Closed his mouth. Held up a hand, then fled back to his seat and silently prayed to every bit of the Force, including the bit for shooting assholes, that he could somehow disassemble into his component molecules and disappear right the kark now.

Bacara, the tube-begotten bastard, stepped forward into the frozen silence and took off his helmet before settling into a chair as if everything was perfectly normal. “Who has the first report?” he asked, looking around the table casual as anything. General Nu also stepped forward and took a seat. Jet couldn’t decide if it was good or bad that Bacara’s bulk mostly blocked her from his line of sight. On the one hand, he couldn’t see her well enough to get a read on her reaction to...what had just happened. On the other hand, he could shrivel up and die from embarrassment without having to look at her again.

Krestor took it upon himself to start reporting. Jet was grateful; he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to speak again. It took several long minutes for him to calm down enough to start comprehending what was being reported, and by whom, but sense did eventually begin to trickle back in, and with it came curiosity.

Why had Bacara brought a Jedi to a meeting where they had never been invited before? Why hadn’t he told anyone he was bringing the new general? Was it Bacara’s idea, or something that General Nu had insisted on?

And come to that, what was up with Bacara? He was not acting like Jet would have expected him to act in the presence of a Jedi, regardless of the setting. In fact, he was acting more relaxed than normal, and that was straight up weird. Jet had a mental scale for Bacara’s behavior that ranged from “normal human” to “The Marine”, and this was by far the most human he had seen Bacara act in...he had no idea. At least since Kamino.

Possibly ever.

Jet’s embarrassment slowly faded under the onslaught of unanswered questions. The other Novas weren’t as at ease as Bacara, but even they were less tense in the General’s presence than Jet would have expected them to be. He couldn’t tell if they were surprised by her inclusion in the meeting or not—any reaction to her entrance had been happening while he was making an idiot of himself.

General Nu’s behavior wasn’t yielding any clues either. She watched and listened attentively as the various officers spoke but said nothing herself, just sitting there very still and composed. If her presence in the room hadn’t been as loud as a shout, he probably would have forgotten she was there at all.

What in the name of Lady Luck was going on?

All he could say with certainty was that General Nu was very different from General Mundi. Bacara never would have brought Mundi to this meeting, and sure as space was black he had never been this relaxed around the Cerean. (Jet shuddered to think of how Mundi would have reacted to someone being so unprofessional as to accidentally hug him. He really would have had to space himself if that happened. Fortunately General Nu didn’t seem...like she cared that much? Maybe? Hopefully?)

By the end of the meeting, Jet had more or less recovered his composure—at least enough to avoid blushing like a supernova when the general looked at him. If he was lucky, he would be able to hide from her for the rest of the ship day and maybe she would forget about the hug by tomorrow.

Bacara stood and nodded to everyone and the general followed suit, so the rest of them scrambled to their feet as well. Jet expected the general to be the first to leave, as the highest ranked officer, but Bacara was the first to head for the door, with the general trailing behind him—another anomaly to chew over.

The door opened and Bacara stepped out, but the general paused. She looked back at Jet for a moment—he did not blush, thank stars and little fishes—then said, with unmistakable humor in her voice, “As the last hug was rather abrupt, Commander, would you like a better one?”

Jet couldn’t quite believe he had heard her right. Surely she didn’t just offer him a hug? But—she was standing there, arms a little open and an unexpected twinkle in her eye...and it would probably be more embarrassing to refuse and make a big deal out of it than to go for it, soooo…

What the hell.

Jet stepped forward and hugged the Jedi.

He’d meant it to be brief, just an acknowledgment of the joke and the olive branch she was offering, but—

—when her arms closed around him, suddenly it felt like home.

General Nu was nothing like Spar or Fenn—but somehow she hugged the same way they did. With the same warmth, the same firm hold. The same care, unspoken but felt all the same.

Homesickness thundered through him, tightening his throat and his arms. He tried to wrestle it down, pull it back, rein it in; he was clutching at the general far harder than he should, way past the bounds of a joke and not even in the same galaxy as professionalism, but he couldn’t help himself. For one moment he wasn’t Commander Jet, in charge of thousands of Winders and everything they stood for. He was just a boy, held close and safe against the vastness of the galaxy at war.

Finally, reluctantly, he let go of General Nu and stepped back. If she had any thoughts about his too long, too fervent hug, they didn’t show on her face. She just smiled at him, quick and kind, and then followed Bacara out the door.

Jet watched her go, feeling kind of like he’d tried to jump to hyperspace without a ship. If this was the kind of effect that General Nu had on Bacara...well. Jet suddenly understood a lot of things a whole lot better.

...he still had all the questions, though.