Ashin Varanin
Professional Enabler
[SIZE=11pt]SULLUST BASE[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]Volcanic wind screeched along the mountains with a payload of ash. If snow fell here, it was tainted, gritty, and transient. Five percent of a hidden complex protruded through scorched rock - a shield generator, assorted weapons, the aperture of a fighter bay. Ash flakes whirled around those GADF unfortunates who operated the defenses in masked and sealed gear. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]On any other world you’d have called today’s chill unseasonable. On Sullust, near noon and the equator, you might have to go with portentous. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]
[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]Five years undercover in the highest echelons of Naboo strategic intelligence as a trusted contractor for the GADF had left Ashin informed about this and that. Today, ‘this’ boiled down to the location of Sullust Base, a complex embedded in a nondescript mountain range. Its exact function these days was unknown to her. In the early years of the Alliance, it had been crucial. Perhaps it still was. Either way, not the kind of place to mess with. Sullust as a whole, the capital of the Alliance, boasted protection that few other worlds could match, including a FLEETCOM station if she remembered right. That, and perhaps the most notable, capable Jedi temple still extant. To get to Sullust safely from First Order space required time, plenty of it. A high-end stealth ship, Sekairo-class or equivalent; a hyperspace route that blended with civilian traffic but reverted far outsystem, to beat FTL monitoring and reversion sensors; a very careful approach; all manner of Force techniques to keep Jedi from picking her up in vision or specific premonition. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]She had time for none of that. Fortunately, what she had was anger. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]Very recently, she’d faced her nemesis Silara Varis at the Battle of Indellian, on the Ison Corridor. The GADF had jammed and sliced and shot up her civilian science vessel, S.S. Shambhala, which had only barely escaped to its home berth - New Habat University on Varunda Nine. Then, once she’d brought her crew and passengers home safely, she’d gone to check in with her de facto apprentice, [member="Irajah Ven"]. The doctor had been on Bespin, so far as she could determine: Cloud City. Ashin’s sources in the area were rusty but decent. Irajah Ven was unaccounted for and unreachable, and in a war zone that meant only a handful of things.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]Over the course of their visits, shared refreshments and so forth, Ashin had placed a drop of her blood in Irajah’s drink. Perhaps that cup of hot tea had burned a little more than normal. A Nightsister blood trail had its uses, and Ashin had marked friends and family like that for decades. When she focused on Irajah and that trail, she got a sense of direction on an interstellar scale. Minimal to moderate effort, basic triangulation, pointed her to somewhere...else. Not Sullust, so far as Ashin could detect, but then again she’d long ago traded sensitivity for power. Shouting rather than hearing a whisper, as Luke Skywalker was reputed to say. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]A visit to a proper nexus would certainly give Ashin more detail, but interstellar travel times weren’t compatible with the urgency of the situation. There was every reason to suppose that the incommunicado Doctor Ven had been taken prisoner during the battle. Released by now? Possible, but unlikely. Even someone as decidedly harmless as Irajah - unless you happened to be a Zambrano - would merit containment, processing, and evaluation. Baroness of the First Order, estate on Dosuun, Force adept...the Alliance had plenty of reasons to keep her. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]Thus far, they had no reason to let her go.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]
[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]Reality tore. Deformed. In orbital overwatch, crystal gravfield traps went mad with spacetime noise. On the slope outside Sullust Base, between huge cannons and blast doors, the mountainside shivered. A vertical ring of ash-cloud took form, like some ancient Grandmaster was blowing smoke rings. In the ring’s heart, small rocks rose from the scree-fields and bare stone. The wind howled in earnest now, first one way and then another. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]A middle-aged brunette in plain clothes, unarmed except for a simple lightsaber at her belt, hit the slope and fell to one knee. The distortion began to collapse behind her; the wind caught the ring and swept it to nothing; the stones rattled to a halt.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]
[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]She stood and adjusted her breath mask, looking around the mountainside. Cannons, generator, bunker doors: she’d hit her mark. Not too surprising, considering she’d been modestly familiar with the area, but she hadn’t used a true Force Storm for transportation in a lifetime. Maybe retirement hadn’t left her as rusty as she’d feared.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]Volcanic wind screeched along the mountains with a payload of ash. If snow fell here, it was tainted, gritty, and transient. Five percent of a hidden complex protruded through scorched rock - a shield generator, assorted weapons, the aperture of a fighter bay. Ash flakes whirled around those GADF unfortunates who operated the defenses in masked and sealed gear. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]On any other world you’d have called today’s chill unseasonable. On Sullust, near noon and the equator, you might have to go with portentous. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]

[SIZE=11pt]Five years undercover in the highest echelons of Naboo strategic intelligence as a trusted contractor for the GADF had left Ashin informed about this and that. Today, ‘this’ boiled down to the location of Sullust Base, a complex embedded in a nondescript mountain range. Its exact function these days was unknown to her. In the early years of the Alliance, it had been crucial. Perhaps it still was. Either way, not the kind of place to mess with. Sullust as a whole, the capital of the Alliance, boasted protection that few other worlds could match, including a FLEETCOM station if she remembered right. That, and perhaps the most notable, capable Jedi temple still extant. To get to Sullust safely from First Order space required time, plenty of it. A high-end stealth ship, Sekairo-class or equivalent; a hyperspace route that blended with civilian traffic but reverted far outsystem, to beat FTL monitoring and reversion sensors; a very careful approach; all manner of Force techniques to keep Jedi from picking her up in vision or specific premonition. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]She had time for none of that. Fortunately, what she had was anger. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]Very recently, she’d faced her nemesis Silara Varis at the Battle of Indellian, on the Ison Corridor. The GADF had jammed and sliced and shot up her civilian science vessel, S.S. Shambhala, which had only barely escaped to its home berth - New Habat University on Varunda Nine. Then, once she’d brought her crew and passengers home safely, she’d gone to check in with her de facto apprentice, [member="Irajah Ven"]. The doctor had been on Bespin, so far as she could determine: Cloud City. Ashin’s sources in the area were rusty but decent. Irajah Ven was unaccounted for and unreachable, and in a war zone that meant only a handful of things.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]Over the course of their visits, shared refreshments and so forth, Ashin had placed a drop of her blood in Irajah’s drink. Perhaps that cup of hot tea had burned a little more than normal. A Nightsister blood trail had its uses, and Ashin had marked friends and family like that for decades. When she focused on Irajah and that trail, she got a sense of direction on an interstellar scale. Minimal to moderate effort, basic triangulation, pointed her to somewhere...else. Not Sullust, so far as Ashin could detect, but then again she’d long ago traded sensitivity for power. Shouting rather than hearing a whisper, as Luke Skywalker was reputed to say. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]A visit to a proper nexus would certainly give Ashin more detail, but interstellar travel times weren’t compatible with the urgency of the situation. There was every reason to suppose that the incommunicado Doctor Ven had been taken prisoner during the battle. Released by now? Possible, but unlikely. Even someone as decidedly harmless as Irajah - unless you happened to be a Zambrano - would merit containment, processing, and evaluation. Baroness of the First Order, estate on Dosuun, Force adept...the Alliance had plenty of reasons to keep her. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]Thus far, they had no reason to let her go.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]

[SIZE=11pt]Reality tore. Deformed. In orbital overwatch, crystal gravfield traps went mad with spacetime noise. On the slope outside Sullust Base, between huge cannons and blast doors, the mountainside shivered. A vertical ring of ash-cloud took form, like some ancient Grandmaster was blowing smoke rings. In the ring’s heart, small rocks rose from the scree-fields and bare stone. The wind howled in earnest now, first one way and then another. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]A middle-aged brunette in plain clothes, unarmed except for a simple lightsaber at her belt, hit the slope and fell to one knee. The distortion began to collapse behind her; the wind caught the ring and swept it to nothing; the stones rattled to a halt.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]

[SIZE=11pt]She stood and adjusted her breath mask, looking around the mountainside. Cannons, generator, bunker doors: she’d hit her mark. Not too surprising, considering she’d been modestly familiar with the area, but she hadn’t used a true Force Storm for transportation in a lifetime. Maybe retirement hadn’t left her as rusty as she’d feared.[/SIZE]