Welcome to the Ferrocrete Jungle

[That's So Wizard]

Nar Shaddaa. A place to get lost and a place to find things.

An urban sprawl was certainly not where Erim saw herself next; even being raised in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant she had rarely, if ever, gone out into the city planet's streets. The shuttle banked left as it started it's descent towards the rather rickety-looking landing platform. It was hard to know if that had been a result of the Archeri Incident or it had always been that way. Everything on Nar Shaddaa seemed to be continuously patching over problems, like fixing holes in a leaking boat.

The environment was soulless ferrocrete and rusted metal but it felt alive, pulsing with the Force. She imagined even the weakest Force Sensitive would be able to hear the beating heart of this planet. A wounded heart, but still beating strong. They hadn't even landed and already Erim was growing to respect this place. Filthy, grimy, war-torn, disease-ridden and stinking as it was... in many ways it reminded her of that forest planet she'd been stationed on in a way. Here, the trees were much larger and made of plasteel but their branches were no less dense.

Perhaps this is what it felt like to be a small fly in the jungle.

Their craft came in to land, a bunch of alien chattering coming from the cockpit. Without a word she stepped forth from the cargo hold she'd stowed away in, much to the alarm of the gathered attendants. Eventually a Nikto stepped forward, shouting something in his native tongue and then speaking in broken Basic. "What you doing here? This my ship!"

She lazily waved her hand towards his face as she passed. "I am supposed to be here." He repeated the phrase and returned to his business, much to the confusion of the onlooking crowd. One look at the newcomer however without the support of their captain and they swiftly returned to their duties, not wanting to anger whoever this stowaway was. She was supposed to be meeting Jedi Master Locke at one of the local cantina's. Best not to keep him waiting.

Her walk was filled with purpose and she kept her saber hidden beneath her supply back strapped to her tailbone. Not as easily retrievable as she'd like but in all honesty she was more skilled with her hands anyway. In an environment like this, they only drew attention and that was not something you wanted or needed on a planet of Bounty Hunters, no matter how devastated by war. If anything, it was perhaps more dangerous now to draw attention than ever. So many more desperate people. Refugees from the war, those made homeless or with no one to turn to after the Archeri Incident, then the ones who had always been at the bottom rung of the social ladder. In the wild, time and food are your two currencies. Here, it was money. Nothing else.

The cantina wasn't far from the landing pad. She was glad she had neglected to bring her furs despite the cold cargo hold; as it was she simply looked like some dock worker, her strong arms helped with such a disguise. Everything felt like a threat though. every person she passed, every side alley she looked into, every shadow all concealing a deadly weapon aimed at her head. That was a very, very familiar feeling, though generally she wasn't as worried about blasters and more about deadly, dangerous animals. Then again, maybe she'd encounter a wookiee.

She could hear the bass of the music even before she arrived, though luckily as the doors opened she wasn't hit in the face with a wall of sound. It seemed the Pazaak Den on the lower floors was the place with all the loud music, the upstairs simply had quiet jazz playing from a holo-recording of a famed Bith band. Their melody however was ruined by a thumping rhythm that seemed to shake the floor every few seconds. The vibration reminded her of a heartbeat though and combined with the overwhelming amount of Force energy present on this moon, it was like she was a part of some great, planet-sized organism. It was surreal, she'd never felt anything like it.

Pushing those thoughts aside however, she picked an appropriately dark corner, ordering a simple drink and leaning against the wall watching the door, waiting for Master Locke. She was early. Very early. However, she had little desire to be wandering the streets of this place, at least not yet.

[Rugs]

Work never stopped.

That was an eternal truth for a Jedi, but the old truism seemed especially valid these last few months in Hutt Space. The Battle of Nar Shadda had come and gone, scattering the broken Chorus in its wake. Months later, life on Nar Shaddaa had settled into some semblance of normal, though the battle’s scars — and those of the near month-long siege preceding it — were yet fresh.

Locke looked to the ruins of the Spire, crawling out of the depths of pit left behind after Cerbozz the Hutt’s sky palace crashed into the city below. It towered into the sky, a mountain of violet crystal with chunks blasted off where Republic and Imperial turbolaser fire from above blew it out of the sky and sent it plummeting back to the ground. It’d sat there ever since, tilted drunkenly to the side. A silent monument to the brief Chorus’ brief war, to the countless billions lost to their rampage.

But the Chorus was gone and life pressed on. Locke hit the throttle on his speeder urging it on through the light sky traffic. He didn’t want to be late.

The Hutt Cartels were an empty shell of their former glory, before the Chorus’ arrival. As such, Hutt Space was more of a disorganized mess now than usual, and that was saying something. Criminal enterprises of all sorts — including his friends in the Exchange — jockeyed for superiority, and he suspected it was only a matter of time until jockeying turned to open gang warfare.

And that was saying nothing of the nascent Force-users springing up across Hutt Space; those for whom the Force sensitivity granted by the Archeri Plague had not faded with the Chorus’ defeat and the infection’s passing.

No wonder, he told himself for the thousandth time, the Grandmaster wanted to increase the Jedi Order’s presence in Hutt Space.

All of that was without even considering the ill winds blowing through the Galaxy at large. News spread quickly of the Galactic Court’s ruling in the arbitration. They’d sided with the Republic, finding that it alone must be responsible for disciplining the officers responsible for the betrayal of the Empire that’d taken place in the very skies over Locke’s head.

It was the right ruling, though Locke could not help but worry at the response it might spark from the Empire. We haven’t gone back to war, he thought as he took a long, shallow banking turn downward into a ratty district beneath the limitless city’s upper levels. Not yet.

He pushed those thoughts away as the twilight of Nar Shadda’s long day turning to night gave way to a dizzying array of vivid, glowing signs and holoprojections as if the war-torn city around them were of no consequence. There would be plenty of time later to worry about the state of Hutt Space, and of the Galaxy, and of his plans for the future with Lidah.

Later. Not now.

Now, he was to meet with Knight Erim Wodkrre, in an out-of-the-way cantina. Locke had never met her, that he could recall, but he was always happy to see another Jedi in Hutt Space, whether passing through or for a mission. Knight Kathar Maiavel had been doing some exceptional work in the region, of late.

Locke eased his speeder into a small bay, paid the modest fee and made his way out into the streets. His attire was simple, as it often was in Hutt Space — he wore a spacer’s attire with a jacket of dull red leather. His blaster rested comfortably at his hip, and his lightsaber was tucked away in an interior jacket pocket.

His connection to the Force was dulled, but not entirely concealed. He preferred to keep a low profile when out and about, but for now, he allowed his presence to shine through enough that Erim detect him when he drew close, and so that his own senses weren’t so dulled that her presence escaped his notice.

The cantina was an entirely unremarkable place, though that suited the meeting’s purposes just fine. Locke sauntered in through the door and glanced around. He noticed Erim immediately, leaning against the wall in a dark corner, but took his time to wander to the bar and get a drink before making his way over to her.

“Erim,” he said simply as he approached, foregoing the use of any titles, as was both his way and wise, for Jedi in Hutt Space, “It’s good to see you. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting too long.”

[That's So Wizard]

Through the cacophonous noise in the Force, it was exceptionally hard to determine how close Master Locke was until he entered the cantina. All the static in her mind was so hard to filter, in truth she had never been great with the Force; a lack of discipline was what her Master had said. Perhaps he was right... and recent events hadn't exactly helped. How was any Jedi supposed to focus on anything here, it was like bees floating around her ears constantly.

The sound of the music in the cantina came back into sharp clarity again as she heard someone speak to her. Her face snapped in the direction of the words, fist clenching beneath the table as she prepared for some sort of confrontation. It only took a moment for her to relax however, now that Master Locke was speaking to her it was easy to discern him from the crowd; though certainly not by look. If she had seen him in passing he would simply look like any spacer on the edge of the law. That was probably the point, however.

She simply nodded at his confirmation of her name, taking a deep breath to relax herself a little more as she tried to put on a smile for any onlookers. Looking like you were unhappy to see your companion would raise eyebrows. They were a man and a woman, it would be easy enough to feign that this were some sort of romantic meeting, or even just business partners. Yet a smile was not an expression she was natural with, even if she was truly happy to see someone. Her usual dour expression was just her natural one, it didn't feel like anything else fit.

"You are right on time, friend. There is no need to worry." Her thick Atoan accent was unfortunately identifiable but non-verbal communication would just draw even more attention. Erim leaned back in her chair, taking a sip of her drink in an attempt to look casual and relaxed, even as her eyes scanned the surrounding cantina. She was starting to see how this place worked in practice. This was a jungle of a different sort. An industry here was like a dead animal in a forest and the people insects breaking it down piece by piece until there was nought left but bones. It was plain as day on their faces, all of them looking for the new corpse to strip clean. "Perhaps we should get down to business."

Her voice lowered, still retaining her unnatural smile but her tone became very serious. "Master Rhissai and I tracked a group of drug smugglers to the forest planet of Vandor. They were using it to smuggle spices deeper into the cores. Probably not with Hutt approval. We found a shipping manifest; many of their shipments were coming from here. The Refugee District." She paused for a moment, letting that hang with another sip of her drink. During the war she had passed through Hutt Space on the way to Sy Myrth... if she had known only a few years later that a large percentage of the population would be dead, she would have fought with them.

"They are probably pressing the refugees into service." That could complicate things, especially if it became a fight. She had no desire to hurt vulnerable people strong-armed into helping a gang. Yet, she found herself at a loss; she was used to hunting things on her own terms, in wild territories with animals and terrain that she could understand. Here she most certainly did not have a home field advantage. "You are far more experienced in these matters... where would you suggest we begin?"

[Rugs]

“Good to know,” Locke said jovially as he eased into the seat opposite Erim. He smiled at her earnestly— a greeting for a colleague, even if one he did not know— and drank from his glass. The beer here was cheap and tasted vaguely of piss, but there were worse options on the menu. You could only expect so much from places like this, he supposed. Force only knew the Chorus couldn’t have been good for supply chains, and quality booze was likely low among most folks’ concerns, these days.

“By all means,” he said with a nod as Erim suggested they move on to business. He leaned forward and listened, intently, as Erim spoke of what she’d uncovered with Rhissai, of all people.

“Ah, so you worked with Rhiss, did you?” Locked grinned broadly. He’d known the Jedi master for a long time, even back to the days when he was a young Jedi Knight. That felt like a different lifetime, when he — like her — joined the Republic’s war effort against the encroaching Sith while the Order as a whole continued to weigh its involvement. “Damn, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen her. Tell her I say hello, if you cross paths with her again.”

Where were they? Right, the drug smuggling operation. A gang using refugees to further their own ends.

Locke furrowed his brow, leaning back. It was a familiar story, in Hutt Space, now all the more so as gangs swarmed like vultures to take advantage of people who’d lost everything during the Crisis, or those who found themselves stuck on the Smuggler’s Moon — often through no fault of their own — with nowhere else to go.

“If I may trouble you for a bit more information...” Locke searched his mind. Yes, he’d heard tell of similar activities cropping up across Nar Shaddaa, but none that involved Vandor. That, of course, did not mean none existed. He could spend months sorting through the crime and chaos that ravaged Nar Shaddaa in just one of the moon’s long days, to say nothing of the weeks and months and years he’d spent on it.

He’d learned, early in his training as an Investigator, that to try to stop all the ill that plagued a place — or plagued the Galaxy, even — was about as useful as trying to stem the flow from a leaking dam with his fingertips. There would always be more, and even with awesome power a Jedi commanded, they could only do so much. They were to do good, of course, in the most efficient ways possible. But the battle against suffering, against the myriad injustices and wrongs that plagued places like Nar Shaddaa, was a long one and would stretch well past the end of Locke’s own life.

Still, to ignore an ill brought directly to him would nearly be as bad as being complicit in its execution; it simply wasn’t an option. Especially for a group reaching their grubby fingers Coreward.

Besides, just because the operation wasn’t immediately familiar to him didn’t mean it wouldn’t be to his friends in the Exchange. Having a network was, as ever, much more effective than working alone.

“These smugglers,” he said, keeping his voice low, “did you or Rhissai happen to catch any names? A group name, a leader? Anything at all.” Locke drank from his cup. “Take a walk down these streets and you’ll see that story, or ones like it, repeated dozens of times. The scale may differ, but the notes, the heart of it, it’s the same. But,” he said, tapping on the side of his glass thoughtfully, “if we can bring an end to one, especially one so wide-reaching, we’ll have done some good work.”

Locke’s gaze focused on Erim. He knew little of her, personally; only that she was known for her skill in nature. Nar Shaddaa was a different sort of wilderness, but just as wild at heart as any untamed frontier. “Anything else that you know may better direct our path. I have a few ideas in mind.”

[That's So Wizard]

A small twitch in her face. Master Locke was no doubt very good at what he did but a part of her wondered if being on the fringes of society had affected his attitude; he reminded her so much of a smuggler more so than a Jedi. Of course that was probably the point, yet she could not help but feel irked by his casual tone. It was probably necessary but it was still a little frustrating. People's lives were at stake and it sounded like he was dismissing them out of hand. He wasn't, obviously, or he wouldn't be here but such words brought back memories of Sy Myrth somehow.

They had thought that campaign a hopeless cause. They were wrong.

A small sigh escaped her lips before she could stop it as he asked her to say hello to Master Rhissai. "As you wish." She doubted she'd actually remember to do so; though she knew she would be working with Master Rhissai again. The two of them had such similar thoughts on the war and their skillsets complimented each other well. Master Locke seemed like a slick talker and was obviously a fine swordsman and strong in the Force but she hadn't yet seen how he worked in the field. She suspected his method of hunting was much slower, much less involved than hers; probably a good thing in a place with so many eyes and so many tongues.

"I did not hear a group name or her tell of a leader but the manifest had the ID numbers of every ship that landed for them. I am not sure how much help that will be, the outgoing destination only said 'The Refugee District' and-..." She turned to look out of the window of the cantina to the battle-scared metropolis below. Smog and pollution continued to bellow forth, obscuring the lower levels but it was clear there were holes, physically and metaphorically, where there had not been before. "...This entire moon feels like a refugee district right now."

Her eyes lingered on the window for a few moments more, her mind swimming with thoughts. Guilt, frustration, sadness, all feelings she had tried to suppress for so long on Sy Myrth all welling up within her chest. "Tell me of the Chorus, Locke. What did it do to these people?" If it wasn't obvious, her smile had long since faded, replaced with a soft hurt. To think she had been stationed only a few Hyperspace jumps away, eyes towards the Sith while people burned and died in agony behind her. If only she hadn't been so blind. If only she could have taken her gaze from the Sith for just a moment, just one, she could have helped.

As it was, she felt responsible in part for the deaths that had occurred on this moon and all throughout Hutt Space. Perhaps that was why she was so determined to do what she could here to fix her mistakes. Yet always the words of her Master echoed in her mind. 'Attachment doesn't just come in the form of love, hate or friendship; it can also be compassion. A Jedi's greatest strength can also be it's greatest weakness.' The desire to help; the desire to save lives, that was the entire purpose of the Jedi and yet to let it consume her was just as likely to lead to her spiral to the Dark Side.

She needed time... and perspective. Perhaps Master Locke had some for her.

[Rugs]

No names, no leader identity. Locke took it in stride, nodding as Erim spoke. While such information would doubtless expedite an investigation into the gang and their activities, the lack thereof didn’t mean an end to the work before it even began. In fact, ship IDs could prove just as useful.

Ship IDs could lie, of course; the ones Locke employed on his clandestine work across the Galaxy were often falsified to conceal any ties to the Republic or Jedi Order. Even were that the case, the Exchange boasted an astonishingly-talented slicer crew. They’d figure it out, if needed.

Whether such efforts would be needed--and the degree to which they’d be needed--remained to be determined. Hutt Space lay in disarray, with the Hutts themselves gutted and the Exchange focused on strengthening its position on Nar Shaddaa itself and Circumtore after the Chorus’ crisis. If ever there was a time for small fish in a big, polluted pond to grow reckless, it was now.

“Send me that manifest, and I can set my contacts to looking into those shipping manifests.” Locke leaned back easily in his seat, with an arm hanging loosely over its back. One of the chair’s legs didn’t quite match the others in length and it tilted slightly to the right as his weight shifted. “Hell, I may know some of the IDs myself, depending on which ships they’ve used. Whatever it takes, we’ll find them and put a stop to it.”

Erim’s gaze shifted and even dulled as his senses were by his partial use of Force concealment, Locke could feel something shifting with her presence. Guilt, a sort of lingering regret, agitated by the moon’s countless unhealed wounds.

“What did it do?” Locke repeated the question thoughtfully, more a verbal tic than any meaningful response to Erim’s question. “It did a lot of things.”

“There are the obvious burdens,” he started. “The infections, the suffering and death dragged across Hutt Space by a force none of us were ready to confront. The sieges — Nar Shaddaa was the grandest, but far from the first. There’s the disarray that came as they swept through Hutt Space and is now just a part of normal life.

“Can you imagine — families, torn apart. Friends, killed. Bosses, workers, lost or missing. A million little holes punched in society, and the one force that held all these fragile systems together has been eviscerated.” Locke’s tone and face had grown serious as he spoke. The Crisis was a grim thing, and he’d seen first hand the long road to recovery that remained for Hutt Space.

“Now all of these people, in this broken place, have to find a way to pick themselves up, to rebuild from the ashes. To say nothing of the gifts,” his tone said that he did not necessarily view them as such, “the Chorus has left behind.”

“Do you know what the Plague allowed in some of its victims?” Locke waited a moment, then continued, lowering his voice so none would overhear. “The ability to touch the Force, for some of those who could not do so before. Some of those who already could found their connections, their abilities, strengthened. As far as we know, that’s faded in most with the Chorus’ defeat and the Plague’s passing. Most.” He emphasized the word, grip tightening on his glass. “But not all.”

“So now we’ve got a crumbling ruin of what was a functional, if loosely held-together society, filled with thousands of people, if not more, who can suddenly touch the Force. It’s... a bit of a mess.”

Understatement of the year. Locke leaned back with a sigh and shook his head. “It’s not all as dire as it could be, though. People have banded together in surprising ways, trying to make life better where they can. And for as much as the Chorus went on and on about harmoney and unity, the Galaxy had just that, for a fleeting moment.”

And then the Republic set it all on fire. Locke was no fool; he knew as well as any that the alliance had been a temporary thing, created to turn back a mutual threat. It was destined to end, but it didn’t have to go the way it had.

“The thing I really fear, Erim, is what the Chorus has done to all of us.”

[That's So Wizard]

Erim's mood grew solemn, much more so than usual. If she had been here, would she have been affected to? Was she one of the lucky ones to have never met such a fate? Yet Master Locke's explaination certainly did give her a lot of perspective and she understood now why even though millions had died her, she could still feel so many souls around her in the Force. It wasn't the number, it was the potency. It was blinding. Like trying to focus on a single star in the distance while someone flashes a torch in your eyes. Every little person drowned out by these herculean presences, by comparison, in the Force.

Yet she felt that the sadness and suffering that pervaded this place had always been here, to varying degrees. It was now just much stronger and the wounds that much fresher. She knew now why Master Locke had spent so much time here; there were so many problems for a Jedi to fix, too many. Someone could spend their entire life fixing all the problems that occurred even in a single hour on this crowded moon. The problems on wilderness worlds were so much simpler in contrast.

"If this virus amplified the Force in so many... Children are going to grow up unable to control their powers, criminals are going to find ways to use it to their advantage... it is like a domino effect. When a food chain is disrupted in a jungle, species either adapt or die." She stopped for a moment, truly disturbed by what she'd heard. Erim had been so close. Close enough to help and yet neither the Jedi Council nor the Republic military had thought to recall her. Had her duty to sit there in the mud and rain and thunder of Sy Myrth and stare at the Sith lines been so important that they would let all of these people die? "It is not the dying that we have to worry about... but rather how the people here intend to try and adapt."

She leaned forward over the table, her voice low but intense, a determined gravel to it. "For as long as I am here, I intend to help these people however I can. I have to atone for my failures." A simple statement but to her it held so much meaning. In Atoan society, when you gave an oath of moment, it was binding unless it placed you, your family or your tribe in unreasonable danger. There was no such thing as unreasonable danger for a Jedi. Not in Erim's mind. She leaned back, taking another sip of her drink and then dipping her finger into one of the pouches on her belt, painting a thin line across the bridge of her nose with a white clay paint. The mark of mercy in Atoan culture.

With a few taps on her holo-com, she sent along the manifest with the ship IDs. Most of it to her was meaningless noise, she wasn't as versed in technology as she probably should be; machines tended not to have souls or emotions, though very rarely she could equate their actions to animalistic needs. She allowed Locke to search through it at his leisure, returning to staring out of the window and contemplating the weight of the information she'd just been given.

"I should return to the Temple when I am finished here... I-... have started seeing everything as a battlefield. As hard as it is to admit, Master Locke, I believe Sy Myrth has changed me and not for the better." As presumptuous as the question she was about to ask was, she felt she had to ask it. Master Locke wasn't like any Jedi master she'd met but he was still a Jedi Master... maybe he could help her. "You were fighting during the war too... have you ever felt the same since? Does it... get better?"

[Rugs]

Locke nodded as Erim spoke. She had the right of it, about the countless, unpredictable knock-on effects that would ripple out in the Crisis’ aftermath. “It’s hard to know the long-term implications of what’s happened out here,” he said after emptying the last of the middling beer down his throat. “We’ll have to be vigilant, not only for the effects in Hutt Space, but beyond.” It would be nice to think everything would stay confined to Hutt Space, which bore by far the worst of the Archeri’s wrath.

But escaping Hutt Space was as easy as boarding a ship bound for the Core or Imperial territory along the Outer Rim. As ripples from one side of a lake eventually reached the other, so too would the Crisis’ impact spread far and wide. It already had, in more ways than one.

Locke’s brow furrowed as his comm pinged from receiving Erim’s shipping manifest. He pulled it out of his pocket and gave the information a quick lookover. He recognized a few ship names — one was a freighter that regularly docked at a landing pad not too far from where they currently sat. Most of the others, he did not.

“Erim, I can’t say I know what all you’ve done or what you’ve been through,” he said, returning his comm to his pocket as he looked at the Jedi Knight sitting across from him, “but I can say this: we all have things we wish could have gone differently. We have our failures, our missteps, our mistakes that seem so obvious looking back. We have things we would change, if we could step back through time. But we can’t.

“Failure is a part of life, and we can — we must — learn from it, but to view what must be done through the lens of failure, of making up for past mistakes,” Locke tilted his head from side to side, thinking. “Sometimes it’s necessary, but it can be a dangerous way of thinking.”

Locke smiled, then reclined in his seat after realizing he’d leaned forward. Erim was a Jedi Knight, not a Padawan. She’d been through the Trials and likely faced many other tests of her own in her time out of the Temple. “Just some friendly advice,” he said sheepishly, “not that you’ve come all the way out here for me to lecture you. I promise, it’s not something I make a habit of.”

Still, he nodded again as she spoke of needing to return home, to the Temple, of seeing life as a battlefield. “It can be hard, can’t it? We fall into our routines, whatever they are, and start to see our lives that way. I’d wager my own view is different than most back in the Temple.” Other than his fellow Investigators, but most Investigators weren’t in the Jedi Temple for very long.

“It was... difficult, for a time.” Locke shifted in his seat, putting a hand to his bearded chin in thought. He’d fought — in open battle and behind the scenes — on countless worlds, from the far reaches out of the Outer Rim to the Core. From the temple on Rhen Var, when the Sith attacked and tore the sacred Jedi place from the Order’s hands to the partially-botched aristocrat extraction mission on Muunilisnt that’d ended with him in Darth Novus’ captivity.

He’d killed hundreds of men and women with his own hands, so many more through his orders. He’d watched his friends hurt and killed, day after day. He’d watched his Jedi brothers and sisters forsake the Order to join the Sith.

“After a while it consumes you, and then suddenly it’s over and you have to help the Galaxy pick up the pieces while you’re not even sure you have your own all the way together.” Locke’s expression turned morose, for a fleeting moment. “I was fortunate, in that I had my work to dive back into. Something to focus on, y’know? It can get better, yes. It did for me. But we all carry our scars from the war, and I’m no different. Learning to let go of what happened, to leave the past in the past — for me, that was the most important part. But it was the hardest part, by far.”

For a moment, Locke fell silent, studying Erim. Yes, if he felt through the Force he could feel something — a burden, a sorrow — that lingered about her. He wondered at the source. “You mentioned Sy Myrth,” he said. “What still haunts you about that place?”

[That's So Wizard]

Erim gave a rare genuine smile, paired with a slight chuckle. The mirth quickly faded from her face though, it never seemed to last very long anyway. "Part of me would appreciate such a lecture. Life was so much simpler when someone could sit down and tell me exactly where I was going wrong, in detail." Her gaze returned to the window, watching all of the speeders and ships go by, some docking, others simply cruising the air highways. If she hadn't joined the Jedi Order... how different would her life have been? Would she even be alive now to wonder at that question?

[ Nótthraezla ]

Failure. It was a word she'd had to grapple with on a near daily basis for around four years now. Was she a failure as a Jedi for following orders? Was she a failure as a soldier for letting so many of her men die? Was she failed by the Senate? Would she have been considered a traitor for continuing the war when they were so close to winning? And was she a failure for thinking that was perhaps a necessary evil? She brought one foot up onto the seat with her, resting her chin on her knee.

Routines and rituals had been her life on that damned planet. Waking up every morning, checking the perimeter, checking on the injured and the dying, trying to meditate and being unable to focus, then peering out on that makeshift watchtower until the sun went down, only to end the day with very little sleep and any sleep she did get was troubled with nightmares. Then the sun would rise and she'd begin it all again. Over and over and over. It was so ingrained into her now that breaking those routines on Vandor had made her feel so helpless, like she was going to be attacked at any moment and would be powerless to stop them.

What kind of Jedi was she?

What kind of Jedi jumped at shadows in the night?

She was silent for a long time. A long time. Staring out into the Nar Shaddaa streets, trembling slightly even having to think about that place again. She looked so stoic and strong, like a wild woman, capable of taking on any challenge. But Sy Myrth had shaken her to her very core.

"When we started that campaign... we were a full Battalion of 800 soldiers, with two others in tow. Elite, trained and ready. We smuggled ourselves through Hutt Space on cargo ships to get to Boonta and then on to Sy Myrth; the target was Centares. A lightning strike, fast and deliberate. Hit them hard, blow through them and take the fight to Centares where we'd have to hold until reinforcements came up the Perlemian Trade Route, takings worlds as they went." An impossible task. They knew that at the time, of course but no one said anything. A Jedi she may be but her loyalty to those troops was absolute, until the campaign was over she was one of them. The trips on those cargo vessels had been so... quiet.

"When most people see Sy Myrth they see a plains world, like Dantooine. Maybe some jungles around the equator, a lot of forests for wildlife, that sort of thing. They don't tell you about the rainy season, about the monsoons." She could still feel the rain sting her skin like needles, the hairs on her arms and legs raising just before a surge of thunder. "I was there in the vanguard during the first drop. It was chaos. We could barely see 30ft in front of us because of the rain and the mud bogged down our heavy weapons and transports. Morale shattered. Those were good men, strong hardy soldiers but no one should ever have to experience a hell like that."

She could still hear the sounds of men dying. Blown apart by the orbital cannons as they dropped, mowed down by the emplacements, hit by thermal snipers as they tried to save their friends. "We took 25% casualties on the first day. The majority of our commanding officers were dead or captured. I had to take command, being the highest ranking one there. I forced us to change tactics. With limited heavy weapons and explosives and low visibility we split into teams and started hitting them from the mists. They started calling us the 'Screaming Huns'." There was no way to know how long they had fought without resting; maybe just a few days, but it felt like months. Months of isolating enemy patrols, bleeding their garrisons dry, destroying their emplacements.

"They left us there, Locke. They left us there to die. I'm not even sure they went ahead with the attack along the Perlemian Trade Route... we received no supplies or reinforcements. For three fucking years. Not a damn thing." When she got back to Republic space they had claimed not to hear their distress beacons or calls for help and had assumed the 44th had been wiped out or captured. And being so deep in Sith space, no rescue had been possible. "By the end of the war there were only around 100 of us left, from all three battalions. But our tactics were finally paying off. We were winning, we were driving them back, away from their factories and into the city proper."

Why was she talking about this now? She hadn't even discussed this in so much detail with Master Rhissai, why was Master Locke so easy to talk to? Or maybe this had just been building for so long that she couldn't help but share it. How was someone supposed to keep this all bottled inside? "And then the message came through. The war was over. We were hours from pushing them out of their Citadel. Not weeks, not even days. Hours. For... for a fleeting moment I considered just... ignoring the order. Just... pressing on with the attack. But I didn't. Part of me still regrets that. After that we were told to sit tight; to wait for the Republic to be in a position to rescue us. So we sat there staring at the Sith troops slowly recovering their ground, rebuilding their emplacements, undoing everything we had spent three years to achieve. All of it."

She knew why they'd left them there now. Why they'd been left on the backburner. A much more pressing occurrence had happened, the Archeri Crisis. It never reached Sy Myrth and their communications had been spotty for quite a while, so reports of it were confused, out of order and out of context. "Had I known what was happening just a few hyperspace jumps from me, I'd have boarded the first ship and come to help, all of us would have. Instead we were just left to rot and fester there... with virtually no supplies." Finally she turned to look Locke in the eye, a lot of the light drained from her gaze and her expression gaunt and hopeless. "I have to atone for the men who died there. The ones I left drowning and dying in the mud. Every life I save now is a ghost I can put to rest in my head. To you, this drug smuggling ring is probably just another one in a long line of similar problems. To me, every life they destroy is a life I could have saved if I do not shut them down."

Her expression turned apologetic, rubbing her face with her hand and trying to bite back tears. "I am sorry, I-... I did not mean to share so much. It was selfish of me to place this burden onto you."

[Rugs]

For a long time, Errim vented her troubles and of the demons of the past that yet haunted her. Locke listened in stoic silence, his face steady and attention fully given over to the Jedi seated across from him. Sy Myrth. Locke had heard of the world, but only in passing. That wasn’t so strange, for a Galaxy of thousands upon thousands of inhabited worlds.

She told of an invasion gone wrong, of a hopeless counteroffensive launched in the days when the Republic still reeled to find its footing in the face of the combined Sith-Mandalorian onslaught. Fighting there for years... Locke’s brow furrowed slightly. Four years now since the war’s end now, and five since the Sith attacked Coruscant itself.

The Republic’s counteroffensive did finally come, but not until after it’d finally repelled that horrible Sith advance into the Core. That the ill-fated assault on Sy Myrth began as the Republic’s forces were forced further and further away from the Outer Rim surprised Locke but he hadn’t been in those planning rooms. Perhaps the hope had been to stop the bleeding and stem the tide — to take pressure from the front and force the Sith back.

Whatever the commanders who ordered that mission thought at the time, they’d erred greatly.

Locke waved off Errim’s apology when she finished speaking. “Don’t worry about it, Errim. We all carry our burdens and scars from the war. Some wounds cut deeper than others.” He looked down at his empty glass, hands cupped around its base as he thought.

“I am sorry,” he said, “to hear that you endured so much hardship and loss. You were damn close to accomplishing your task, against all odds, only to be stopped short. I can’t offer any excuse for why you were sent there, into that impossible operation, but know that help surely would have come if it could have. The Sith advances kept on during most of those years you were on Sy Myrth, all the way to Coruscant itself.” Locke’s gaze went distant. He could remember the battle vividly: a city on fire, starships falling from the sky as the fleets slugged it out overhead. “It wasn’t until after Coruscant that the counteroffensive began in earnest, and by then so much had been lost...” Countless billions dead, thousands of Jedi killed or worse, gone over to the Sith, a Republic exhausted by years of fighting and shaken to the core by an attack on its capital.

The Sith were just as weary, and the Republic’s attack met with quick gains, but could it have gone to the Outer Rim? They’d never know, now.

“But the struggle’s never really over,” he went on. “It’s for damn sure not over against the Sith, and not against the more ordinary challenges that face us here in Hutt Space. You’ve been through a hell of a lot, but trials have a way of making us stronger.”

“If you’re here to help, I’m damn happy to have you, Errim.”

[That's So Wizard]

To hear him say the struggle wasn't over. It filled her with more hope than he could ever know. A Jedi Master, one as revered and powerful as Master Locke believed that this peace would not last. It was not the Jedi way but... a large part of her was counting on that fact. So much felt unresolved, so much of that tension felt so fresh despite four full years going by. It was almost foolish to assume that this peace would continue any longer. Admirable perhaps, considering just how much Erim loathed to feel as she did... but ultimately foolish.

"I appreciate that. You have no idea how much I appreciate that. Do not worry, Master Locke... I am at least wise enough to know you do not have the answers I seek. My master always told me such answers must come from within me." Perhaps by finding another purpose, a reason to keep fighting, other than revenge and hate. A reason to do it more than simply the thrill of the hunt. To help others, to assist them in their growth. To teach the young cubs how to hunt. She would be the white wolf in the forest and they her pack. "...And perhaps I am already on the path to finding them."

She looked through the shipping manifest on her datapad again, scrolling through it to find any repeat ships. There were a lot of ships that appeared multiple times on the list but it was by no means balanced. Months could pass by without a particular ship appearing only for it to appear twice in a single week. "You have much more experience in these matters than I. Are there any ships on this list you recognize? Any that are suspicious?" If they could find one, they might at least be able to interrogate the pilot and give themselves a lead, right? Following a trail starts with a single snapped branch, a single footstep preserved in the icy mud.

Perhaps not so different from home, in a way and certainly no different to Coruscant. Like Coruscant, this place would slowly recover but perhaps the scarring would change it's visage. Maybe it would come out of the fire an entirely new phoenix. Every soul on this planet right now was shaping the wreckage of Nar Shaddaa into something new, whether they knew it or not. Every beat of a hammer on durasteel plate, every scrub of an ion sweeper in a starship engine, every blaster shot in a back alley...

Every Jedi sitting in a cantina pouring over shipping manifests...

"If we have a place to start, we have a place to go..." She finished her drink, her expression changing back to that stoic, almost cold look. The same look she had when hunting. Having never worked with Locke before, she didn't really know how he operated, but she had heard things. "The question is, are we actually making a plan or are we improvising?" She made to stand, the barest hint of a smirk on her face. "Because from what I hear you are an expert at that."