Chapter Text
::Awaken.::
For all her failures and shortcomings as a Jedi, Meetra Surik had been a good soldier. She was just as comfortable issuing orders as following them, and her capabilities in warfare were quite advanced compared to most of her… “former colleagues”.
The Order had separated her from her twin brother at age five when she had been sent to Dantooine for her Initiate Apprenticeship, but when she had been selected at age twelve as Padawan by the Consular Vima Sunrider, she had decided to follow the same path as her brother, who merely days earlier had been invited to train as a Guardian under a Togrutan by the name of Sumalee Biss. It was an unconventional choice for a Dantooinian trainee at the time – the only other Guardian in the place was another Padawan, Alek Squinquargesiumus – but she liked to think that she and Alek had paved the way for the younger Jedi to choose that path if they too wished, as several more had let her know when they chose it after her.
For now, like the good soldier she was, she followed the orders of… someone. She got a sense of seniority from them, and she hadn’t seen another sentient in… how many days had it been?
The Harbinger’s captain, Ogilvy, had all but confined her to quarters with only the dark grey protocol droid for interaction. She supposed it had been for the best. On a Republic cruiser there may be sentients who would recognise her and remember what she and her brother had done, even if she had only been following the orders of the Revanchist like the good soldier she was at the time.
As she opened her eyes to her surroundings, she realised with sudden confusion that she was in an oxygenated kolto tank, and that the surrounding tanks held unmistakable corpses. She remembered from her days as a naval general the protocol dictating immediate removal of deceased sentients from tanks because there was always someone else desperately waiting in line. And if by some miracle there wasn’t, the risk of bacterial overgrowth spoiling the entire kolto batch was reason enough. So where are the staff who were meant to have taken care of this?
A wave of nausea hit her as she came to the further realisation that she had heavy drugs on board, and dry-retching in the thicksotropic gel sank to the bottom of the tank. In between heaves on the floor, she launched to the top of the tank to haul herself out and fell heavily to the ground with a wet thud, before beginning her crawl toward the door. She only made it halfway across the room before she was worn out, and lost consciousness.
There was no directive this time, whether from any other sentient or merely her own subconscious, but she woke again because she was freezing. All the moisture from the kolto had evaporated away, and she was still barely clothed, but as a bonus she was now sticky too. Why haven’t any medical staff found me yet…? For the same reason they haven’t removed any of the corpses… Which is…?
She centred herself the way she had been trained, went through the thoughts and efforts of connecting with the Force and drawing on it for strength the way she had for years and years and years until all she could draw on was the minor comfort of routine. When everything else had been taken from her, only old habits remained.
The available logs on the first terminal she found provided some of the missing picture. Only some, because static had interfered with every log to varying degrees. Apparently she arrived three days ago in a freighter she didn’t recognise. Soon after that everything in this mining station appeared to fail one after the other, culminating in an emergency evacuation of all staff to avoid being gassed to death yesterday. No wonder I was forced to get myself out of the tank. If there was anyone alive at all on the station, they were likely in the living quarters as directed by the emergency broadcast she’d heard in the log. Meetra was therefore disappointed, but not truly surprised, to discover the only door out of the medical facility was malfunctioning.
The hunt for a means of opening the door led her to the morgue. There were only two bodies, one appeared to be the old woman mentioned in the log as being deceased three days ago, the other was a man at the far end of the room whom she hoped had been dead for much less time, because barely holding her nausea at bay she wanted to avoid being set off by the stench of decomposing flesh. The second she found the plasma torch in a coat pocket she moved to hurry out of there.
‘Find what you are looking for amongst the dead?’
The old woman was apparently not dead as the medical officer had declared, but something about her was… familiar… ‘Your voice, I heard it as I floated in the kolto tank.’ No, she’s more familiar than that… but…
‘Yes, I had hoped as much. I slept here too long, and could not awaken. It may be that I reached out unconsciously, and your mind must have been a willing one. Or perhaps you have been trained for such things?’
‘Slept too long? You looked dead when I came in.’
‘Close to death, yes, closer than I’d like. You have the smell of the kolto tank about you… how do you feel?’
‘The kolto tank left me a little drained.’ At that point Meetra realised she made it halfway into a conversation without any introduction, and as if that weren’t already rude enough, had also told an elderly lady that she looked like she was dead. ‘Uh, my name’s Meetra. You are?’
Fortunately, the old woman seemed content to overlook her impertinence. ‘My name is Kreia, and I am your rescuer, as you are mine. Tell me, do you recall what happened?’
‘Last thing I remember I was on board a Republic ship, the Harbinger. What happened to it?’
‘Your ship was attacked. You were the only survivor… a result of your Jedi training, no doubt.’
Meetra considered this woman in front of her. Kreia had spoken directly into her thoughts – a technique she knew possible for Jedi – and yet if Kreia was a Jedi then she would be able to sense that Meetra no longer had any connection to the Force, and therefore very likely also knew exactly who she was and what she’d done. She kept it diplomatic. ‘I am no longer a member of the Jedi Order. Let’s deal with the now. What is this place?’
‘I do not know. I was removed from the events of the world as I slept. But we were attacked once, and I fear our attackers will not give up the hunt so easily. Even as I slept I felt much unrest here, now everything is terribly silent. I fear we will need to depart as suddenly as we arrived.’
‘Are you well enough to travel?’
‘I am not so young as to leap from death’s door as quickly as you.’
‘Then I’ll check on you later to make sure you’re alright.’
Outside the medical bay, two corpses of sentients appeared to have been mined to death as they attempted to cut their way in, not that it would have saved them from the gas. Meetra supposed then that her situation could have been worse than to be stuck in the mining facility with only an ancient Jedi, and the vibrocutter she picked off one of the corpses. Meetra was a soldier after all, she could make it work as an effective melee weapon if she had to.
The cause of the sentients’ deaths became readily apparent when a pair of mining droids attacked on sight. Their aim was perhaps a little better than she expected for a non-combat model, but still not good enough to hit a veteran. She found a mining laser that could function as a weak blaster, and added it to her meagre list of possessions.
The emergency hatch to the dormitory level was only a short distance from medbay, but something wasn’t quite right.
::…This is the exit… but it is sealed… Strange… in my visions, it was open…::
‘Kreia?’
There was only silence in response.
In the next room a man lay dead before a row of lockers, mined to death like those outside of medbay. Pulling up the holologs at the desk she identified the man on the floor as head of security. The logs painted a similar picture of cascade failures amongst the mining droids that suspiciously commenced soon after her arrival, as well as the additional security measures put in place in response. It all just seemed so… hopeless, listening to the words of a man who was already dead from a time when he struggled to live.
She had to push on, to figure out a way off this mining station for herself and Master Kriea. Someone her age would be a Master by now, surely?
::Be careful. There is much energy in the room beyond, yet it stems from nothing that lives.::
‘Kreia? Wh-?’
::…Can you not sense them? …Reach out… cast aside your sight, cast aside what you see, and instead, reach out with your perceptions… …Ah, you can feel them… The droids you cannot perceive, but the small oscillations of energy… that you can feel… echoing outwards…::
It was stupid. Meetra wasn’t a Jedi, not any longer, and not simply because she had been exiled for… reasons… but because something had happened to her and she was no longer in touch with the Force. There was no way she could do as Kreia was asking, no way that she could sense three droids in the next room.
Or maybe she could. She dashed in with her vibrocutter and took out a droid before they even had a chance to respond to her presence, expertly stepping passed the flailing limbs of the others to dismantle them as well. She felt alive. She felt…
::Ah… You hear it. It is faint. But it is there.::
::I feel like the sedatives are wearing off.::
::It is the Force you feel. It has not been so long as for you to forget.::
::It doesn’t feel like it did… it’s as if it’s coming from across a great distance.::
::Do not turn away from it. Listen. Feel it echoing within you. Come, I shall guide you down the familiar paths. You will need it if we are to survive this place.::
:: ... ::
Suddenly the world looked new. She drew the Force – barely present like a worn overused sheet rather than the heavy cloak it had been in her youth – around herself, and set off again. In the central control area were more droids. As she ran at each one to deactivate them, more would acquire her as a mining target.
Panting, she stopped beside a door covered in an electrical sheen to bar entry. Rather than be caught by surprise by the droids, she reached out with her senses. In addition to the three remaining droids on the administration level, behind the electrical field there was…
::Beyond this door someone yet lives. Be mindful, his thoughts are… difficult to read… But you have nothing to fear from this one. And he might yet prove useful.::
::H…? Hello? Is that… Jedi? …help us? …trapped …dormitories …Hello?::
::See me in person.::
Meetra immediately retraced her steps, obediently following the orders of the ancient Master.
‘Whoever that was, I did not sense hostility, but this is most unusual. What would a Force Sensitive or Adept be doing here?’ Kreia mused.
‘Perhaps they came to rescue you?’
‘I can assure you, they did not. You must be even more cautious as you figure out our escape route. Pieces are in play here moved by unseen hands. I will continue to gather my strength. Go now. Do not attempt to communicate with me telepathically until you have solved this mystery.’
As Meetra hunted down the final droids on the administration level, she felt even more sure about her assessment of Kreia. The woman had taken the cryptic nature of the Masters she knew, and dialled it up to maximum. The thing she felt less sure about as another blast narrowly missed her was the maintenance control officer’s assessment of the strength and accuracy of the mining droid’s lasers. Just one more missing piece of the puzzle to her circumstance.
Checking back on the security door, the electrical field had deactivated as expected. Time to do her first good deed as a Jedi once more, rescuing whoever was trapped inside.