Dusty Salvo/Chapter 1

Coruscant Coruscant Sector Core Worlds 24 BBY

Shakvail waited quietly in one of the small conference rooms beneath the council chamber. The Bureau of Ships and Services had requested a threat analysis on Ferra Sector shipping, and she worked diligently at it. A dry process, this mostly entailed consulting and parsing information in already available news services; her recent experience in that sector illuminated the matter only tangentially. Dull though the assignment was it remained necessary. She applied her characteristic Jedi focus to this task as she did everything else. Her schooling had taught that reports and bureaucratic verbiage held power and influence over lives just as profound as lightsaber slashes, perhaps moreso. It was a lesson her recent efforts had forcibly hammered home.

Lasered-in on her assignment and looking forward to the reward of completing this mundane and uninteresting, essential as it was, report swiftly; she did not immediately notice her solitude was interrupted. Only when Mace Windu coughed behind her did she suddenly become aware of his presence.

“Master Windu!” Shakvail turned quickly. Smoothly rising from her chair she executed a soft bow in a series of movements so rapid they were robbed of any intended grace. “I’m sorry; I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Always the busy scholar it seems,” the Jedi master raised an eyebrow ever-so-slightly. It gave the slightest comedic cast to his bald pate and stern, stony features.

“Well, I have been away from Coruscant for some time, and it is important that I take the time to keep apace of new developments in my research fields, but there are so many other duties so…” aware that she was rambling, she deliberately exerted her will and forced her mouth closed. After taking a half-second to bring her self-possession back to the present, she reset the conversation. “I am sorry. You had business with me, master?”

“Yes,” he answered, though they both knew exactly what this was about, and where the conversation was to journey.

Shakvail made a focused effort to hold back any retorts, suppress her skepticism, and listen with an open mind. The council was an assembly of the wisest and most experienced Jedi in the galaxy. Their voice held weight for a reason, and it was not something to even contemplate opposing without strong evidence.

She said nothing. It was best to let Master Windu have the first word.

He waited for a moment, looking over her. The motion of his eyes revealed he was considering his words carefully. “The council has no objection, in principle, with your proposal to travel to Denon,” he began. “Despite this, we are concerned at the timing behind this request, and your personal enthusiasm. To be frank, we worry that you have become personally attached to this project to an excessive degree.”

There it was, out in the open; more or less what Shakvail had expected.

“Attached?” she crouched behind the word, hoping to tease out some elaboration, some details, from the tight-lipped, expressionless mask of a face the Jedi Master had adopted.

“Your abiding interest in your origins is well known,” Windu continued, speaking levelly, neither gently nor harshly. “As an interest, that is fine, and natural. I can’t imagine you not caring about that, but there is always the worry that it would turn to obsession. Your report from Nylath speaks of a vision there; we are concerned. Are you chasing a phantasm based on the extremely slim hope it will lead you to the mystery of the Safols?” It was not truly a question, rather it was a statement of cautious possibility, a prompt for one schooled in Jedi philosophy and the ways of the Force to parse and ponder.

Shakvail’s mouth hardened into a firm line. “I experienced something more than that.” She was slightly annoyed, in spite of herself. Of course she had considered that question, and found a satisfactory answer, before even bringing the matter forward. “This isn’t about Safols, though you’re right, I do hope to find some answers,” she supposed that admission should shame her, but it did not, it hadn’t for years. She could not be a Jedi, could not live at all, without that desire.

“It’s far bigger,” the Jedi Knight continued. “There is a great mystery there, the origin of humans in the galaxy, of the foundation of the hyper-diverse Near-human clade. This is far beyond my private circumstances.”

“So you say,” Windu admitted tersely. Though his body language was absolutely controlled, offering nothing, she could fell his acceptance of her points echo in the Force. “And Master Nu acknowledges that Denon presents a gap in research depth. The Council of First Knowledge agrees that a Jedi undertaking a long-term study of the planet would be highly advisable.”

“But…” Shakvail couldn’t help voicing this interruption; the objection hung thick in the air, an overwhelming cloud of discontent.

“But these are troubled times,” Mace Windu’s eyebrows knit and his expression shifted from the woman before him. He seemed to be staring out the distant window on the far wall, searching there for something unseen. “You have been far out in the Outer Rim for much of these past two years. Have you absorbed what is happening?”

“The farther you go from the Core, the louder the Separatists become,” Shakvail answered. “And Nylath was far away indeed.” She shared much of Master Windu’s trepidation. How it had become this bad seemed unfathomable. Another unspoken question lingered, a fog over the whole temple: what madness had possessed Dooku?

“So you understand an archeological project is no longer especially high on the priority list.”

“All the more reason to let me go to Denon,” she countered. All angles had been examined during the trip back from distant Nylath.

The nature of this statement was absolute and unchallengeable. Windu did not flail by doing so. Instead he finally offered the true objection of the council, their core doubt. “Yes, but if you go, will you be able to focus on the business of the council there; the needs of the present, rather than the mysteries of the past?”

“I am a Jedi,” it was the only answer Shakvail could offer. The Force would reveal its value.

Mace Windu looked deep into her eyes. Few humans could hold up to her blue-black spheres for long, but he did so effortlessly. “And why, of all the Jedi we might send, should it be you?”

At last, Shakvail could answer with her own feelings. “Because I want to go, I embrace and welcome this duty. I will seek to learn Denon, to know its heart in the physical and the Force. That is the only way to find what I seek, and the best way to aid its people. Another Jedi will seek only to fix the problems on the surface, let me go; I promise to give my all to uproot them entirely.”

At this, Mace Windu’s lips quirked upward in the slightest, tantalizing hint of a smile. “It would be foolish to discount such enthusiasm, but always remember to keep it tempered; do not let it grow blinding.”

“Of course master,” Shakvail took pains not to mention the decision carried beneath those words. Approval had been given. Her heart warmed at the prospect. It was enough.

“The council will see to finding a local liaison for your operations when you arrive,” Windu’s face shifted seamlessly, taking on a visage of cunning satisfaction. “And transmit a list of trouble spots you are to give investigative priority. You will secure transport and the necessary gear.”

“Yes, Master Windu,” the Jedi nodded briefly. “I will also conclude my follow-up assignments from Nylath. Assuming no major difficulties arise, I should be able to depart in a week.”

The Jedi Master acknowledged this with a quick bob of the head, and then unexpectedly stretched out a hand. Shakvail took it curiously, only to have Mace Windu shake hers a single time before letting go. “It’s awful busy around here now, so I doubt we will have a chance to speak again. May the Force be with you Shakvail.”

“Thank you Master,” she bowed. “May the Force be with you, and the entire Republic, in this difficult hour.”

“Indeed,” Windu muttered, under his breath and barely perceptible, before he turned and left, striding with his ever-present purpose. The abrupt leavtaking left Shakvail troubled and filled with growing doubts. A great master so clearly unsettled; it could only mean matters had become far worse than she thought.

So she paused, before turning back to her datapad, and considered one simple, and yet profound, question. What can I do now?

She closed her eyes, and drifted into the Force.

The answer came swiftly, supplied by a combination of insights, hard numbers, and the voice of experience.

“I can do everything in my power to ensure five hundred billion souls and the most important world in the Inner Rim, stay true to the Republic.”

It was a powerful message, and certain. She regretted only that the Force provided no insight into how she might accomplish this task; not yet at least.

‘Keep your mind open, your memory sharp, and do let your own voice distract you and opportunities will emerge,’ so her master had once told her, and she recalled the message now.

It was not a stirring endorsement, but as an anchor to her duty, it would serve.

Shakvail picked up her datapad with a quick sweep of her arm. There was much to do.