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Thread: At Least Resistance

  1. #21
    General Luka
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    The surprise and recognition hit him harder than the punch did. It was that familiarity - Siloo motherkriffing Jaska - that left him reeling. For a moment, the various aspects of his inner psyche warred with each other. Part of him understood, completely. Part of him was utterly enraged; how dare she be here? Part of him wanted to muster up every last scrap of Vansen Tyree that he had in him, and unleash a tirade of scowling and shouting that would regress the insubordinate piece of space trash in front of him to the quivering equivalent of a chastised three-year-old.

    The part of him that won out curled his hand into a fist, and clubbed her right back across the jaw.

    Jaden's hand snatched the blaster from his holster, a visual discouragement to stop Siloo from escalating her level of stupid. The glower on Jaden's features was pure Tyree though, and he'd been on the receiving end of it's inspiration often enough to know just how withering it was.

    "Feel better?" he challenged, the usual drawl of his voice drained until nothing but a growl remained.

  2. #22
    Siloo Jaska
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    Siloo tore off her flight helmet, letting it clatter to the ground as her rage-filled eyes locked on to Jaden's own eyes, then to the barrel of his gun, then back to the man himself. She took in deep breaths as the adrenaline burned in her veins. At the same time, a few dozen thundering boots could be heard as flight crews, ordnance techs, other pilots, and an assortment of other rubberneckers couldn't resist the outbreak of a fight.

    And he drew a gun to end it before it began. That nunashit.

    "It's a start!"

  3. #23
    General Luka
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    "No, Jaska, it's finished."

    Luka's voice wasn't aggressive, but rather firm. Definite. There was a little tiredness to his tone too, the same battle being fought all over again. Some said that was the definition of madness - repeating the same actions, but somehow expecting a different outcome. Maybe they were all mad, then; whether it called itself the Sith, the Empire, the First Order, or something else entirely, the Republic had been fighting the same tyranny over and over. But at least that fight had some moral incentive. This one? This brattish insolence thrown in his face?

    "I gave you every opportunity I could, Jaska. I gave you more chances than you deserved, and a hell of a lot more chances than you were ever thankful for. You're one heck of a pilot, there's no doubt of that, but back then you were a lousy soldier. And this hostility? This pinning the blame on me? It's the same immature dren all over again. You didn't leave me an option, kid. You broke too many rules and crossed too many lines for me to cover for your insolent ass any more. Any other commander wouldn't have had a fraction of the patience I wasted on you."

  4. #24
    Siloo Jaska
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    "Bullshit!" she spat back in his face.

    "That stick up your ass has been there so long you don't even feel it anymore! Actually, maybe that's not true. It must have hurt like hell for you to bend yourself out of shape and waddle over here to where the fight is. Leaving behind all those good little boys and girls with their cuffs and creases in that glorified floating Holiday Hotel. All that comfort. That's all it was good for, wasn't it? So everyone back home could feel good about the state of things."

    Siloo rubbed at her swollen jaw, and turned to scoop up her helmet on the ground.

    "Maybe I am a lousy soldier. I hate being comfortable, because up there...you get comfortable and you die."

    The Captain stormed past Luka, brushing her shoulder hard against his in passing.

    "Welcome to the real war, General. Good luck getting that stick out."

  5. #25
    Fidget
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    Affixed to his spherical chassis by a powerful array of electromagnets, Fidget's headpiece shifted a little as his ocular sensor realigned, a low warble escaping as he focused first on the retreating back of Siloo Jaska, and then on the General. He trundled a few feet, slowly circling around behind Luka, a tiny sensor array emerging from a hidden compartment behind one of his accessory panels. A triangular beam of translucent blue light swept up and down Luka's lower body.

    Scan complete, the sensor retracted, disappearing into his chassis with a gentle click. Fidget rolled backwards a few radians, a confused womp of 26th generation droidspeak warbled out through his vocabulator.

    Fidget = detecting no stick. Luka = should consult doctor?

  6. #26
    General Luka
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    Jaden let out a small sigh. "It's a figure of speech, Fidget."

    He stood there for a few moments, allowing enough time for Jaska to escape a reasonable distance, and for some of the gathered audience to grow tired and disperse. As per usual, Jaska's words were just shouting and noise, an infantile tantrum from a childish woman so incapable of adult interaction that she couldn't understand a damn thing that was going on. Yet, also as usual, she accidentally stumbled across something relevant, knocking it off the shelf unknowingly as she blundered and blustered past. Comfort wasn't the word for it; and if Jaska was so morally opposed to the idea of it, she sure as hell hadn't been before the New Republic military had kicked her out on her insubordinate ass. But in a neighbouring orbit there was complacency, and that was a little closer to the truth. Jaden didn't believe for a second that Jaska had evolved some sense of morality in the last few years - she was just a ball of anger, latching on to the most convenient fight. But she was right about one thing - Jaden had finally shown up where the war was; and it was about damn time.

    "Come on, little buddy," Jaden said quietly, casting his eyes around the various prefabs and earth-covered structures, trying to ascertain which one of them might be some sort of command post. "Lets go see if we can find someone who actually knows what the hell they're talking about."

  7. #27
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    "Alrreadjy makjing frrjiendss, jI ssee."

    The words came from a thinning wall of rubberneckers, who upon hearing them, quickly began to melt away back to their posts. General Meorrrei stood on the tarmac, a knowing smile on her face as she watched an old friend return home, so to speak. Out of her place in the sun, the former Chancellor of the Republic looked so different without her raiments and finery. In their place, she wore a simple officer's uniform and jacket, but without any pips or insignia. She seemed older. Vulnerable. But there was still the same sharpness to her eyes to make those who knew her question how diminished she truly was.

    "Welcome home."

  8. #28
    General Luka
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    Home.

    It was an interesting word for it. In some ways it held true. The structure and formality of the New Republic had never quite fit right; it was like wearing a brand new shirt, the creases from the packaging still crumpling the sleeves, constantly self-conscious over whether it looked right. By contrast, the Rebellion had been that comfortable old sweater; the one that felt right, the one you didn't give a damn how you looked when you were wearing it. But the Alliance of Free Planets and the New Republic far dwarfed the amount of time that he'd spent as a honest-to-Force rebel. Blazes; he'd probably been a Republic officer longer than he'd been an Alliance one, if you crunched the numbers on it.

    Then again, since when had home ever really been a place? Jaden had lived in so many places, and through so many phases of his life, that home for him had become a synonym for a sense of belonging. Home was as a scout trooper back on Naboo. Home was with Amos aboard the Astral Queen. Home was Rogue Squadron, or the Novgorod. Until now, home had been among the men and women aboard the auntless. Welcome home? Perhaps. But welcome to a new home; welcome to the new normal.

    "So that's what you look like underneath all those loose-fitting silks and dresses," Jaden deadpanned, nodding towards Taataani's attire. It seemed wrong somehow, to see her like this, all her airs and graces stripped away and replaced with something so plain, so practical, so martial. "I thought you'd be fatter."

    Yet it wasn't just the clothing that had changed. There was something about her eyes, and her poise that had changed. Taataani Meorrrei had always been dangerous, but she was a danger you never saw coming. She was a predator, and yet she always hid her fangs behind a smile, hid her claws beneath an open hand. Now though, she looked as determined and formidable out in the open as Jaden had always assumed she was behind closed doors. He saw, for the first time, the woman that Vansen Tyree must have come to know - in ways that were perhaps best left unimagined.

    "He'd be proud of you for this," Jaden admitted, his expression softening slightly. She'd pretend such things didn't matter to her; but life an emotions were a game of sabacc to her, always played close to the chest. A faint flicker of a smile tugged at the corner of Jaden's mouth. "And then he'd yell at the both of us for not doing this sooner, while he was still around to help."

  9. #29
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    A smile that began in Taataani's eyes slowly revealed itself. There were few people in the galaxy that Vansen Tyree had let get close to him. She had occupied the pole position for the twilight years of her late husband's life. In that rare proximity, she'd come to know Jaden Luka, a man who had nearly as much access to her loveable curmudgeon. A woman of intuition with few peers, Taataani recognized instantly those pieces of Vansen within General Luka. Some still lay dormant. Others had begun to unfold like a beautiful flower.

    "Vanssen djid alwajyss prreferr a sstrrajight fjight. And asss old asss jI am now, jI grrow tjirred of the rroundabout."

    An age-creased hand reached up to tenderly caress Jaden's face, the thumb lingering to trace down his cheek as she withdrew it.

    "jI turrned a legjion of frrjiendss jinto enemjiess, comjing herre. jI hope jyourr jourrnejy wass ssmootherr."

  10. #30
    General Luka
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    Jaden's eyebrow climbed as he tried to offer an indignant look, but too much familiarity and too much relief at where he found himself dulled the sharp edge that the expression should have had.

    "I lit the afterburners and torched the metaphorical flight deck on the way out," he countered, trying not to smile as he shrugged it off like it was nothing. "Smooth for the ladies," he added as an afterthought, "But not for lack of turbulence."

    The thought lingered for a moment as Taataani's words tumbled over in his mind. A legion of friends. He supposed that was the advantage of his military career, when compared to her political one. Friends were not a commodity that an old soldier like Jaden had in abundance. Everyone close was a subordinate, mandated by duty and responsibility to be kept at a distance. Serve in one place long enough, and maybe they leapfrogged all the way into family. The chain of command didn't leave room for friendship the way it had done back in his fighter jock days, though. There was no squadron of comrades to drink with and toast victory; no one to trust with your life unreservedly. Jaden had become the old man that made the pilots stop talking as soon as he entered the room. He'd become the commanding officer you invited to drink out of politeness, but that everyone knew was just going to head back to his cabin to drink alone.

    "I may not be a legion," Jaden offered quietly, an uncharacteristic softness and sincerity in his words, "But you've got one more friend on D'Qar today."

  11. #31
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    "Well, jI don't count them ljightljy." Taataani returned in gratitude, bowing her head slightly in a gracious nod. She reached her right hand under Jaden's left arm with an assertive embrace as she escorted him away from the tarmac.

    "jI don't envjy the decjissjion jyou made. The prrevajiljing thoughtss jin the Rrepubljic thjink of the Rressjisstance and the Fjirrsst Orrderr asss the ssame prroblem. Two bjickerrjing chjildrren underr the ssame rroof. Morre than a few ssee me asss a thrreat. An oussterred Chancellorr who abssconded jinto the Outerr Rrjim to bujild an arrmjy to one dajy turrn back on the Ssenate."

    Taataani added nothing further, keeping her eyes on her path for a few moments to allow Jaden to ruminate on that possibility.

  12. #32
    General Luka
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    "Clearly they don't know you very well, Taa."

    It was a somber situation, but Jaden couldn't help the sprinkling of humour that found it's way to his lips. Maybe it was a defense mechanism, his deflectors set double-front as he barrelled forward at full throttle into the face of grim reality. Or perhaps underneath all the trappings, the frown lines, and the grey hair, he was still just the same jackass he'd always been, constantly struggling to find the fortitude to take anything seriously.

    Though muted a little by his weary features, a lopsided grin crept onto his lips as he cast Taataani a sidelong glance. "The Galactic Senate is last season's fashion. Paramilitary brown is the new chique, and Taataani Meorrrei is not the sort of woman who delves back into a wardrobe that is painfully behind the times."

    His eyes strayed, skimming across the figures running back and forth between the landed fighters and the earth-covered hangars, drinking in the details of everything he saw. He'd expected it to feel like the Rebellion, to look like the Rebellion. Perhaps it did. Perhaps his old eyes saw things differently now. The veterans looked older and more weary than they ever had in the Alliance days, as aged as the Clone Wars relics had been back in the day, but somehow more tired, more addled by the repeated futility of sixty years of forlorn hope. The rest however, the vital and enthusiastic lifeblood that Jaden had once been part of during the glory days, all looked so young; so naive; so out of their depth.

    Part of it was an old man's perspective, Jaden was sure; but there was more to it than that. Behind the eyes of Rebel pilots and soldiers there was a steely determination. Imperial careers to make amends for. Bitter, personal Imperial atrocities to seek revenge for. Here, among many, the weariness accompanied wariness and fear. They were an army in hiding, uncertain of themselves, fighting an obvious evil and yet doing so at odds with the supposed protagonists of the galaxy. The Rebel Alliance had fought to restore the Republic, to bring back light and hope. Senators. Jedi. All fighting as one. But the Jedi were gone, and the Senate declined to endorse their cause. The Resistance were not the heroic underdogs that the Rebellion had been: they were outlaws, vigilantes, taking the law into their own hands to act because those who should act had chosen not to.

    Jaden couldn't help wondering how many of these Resistance rebels were here to channel their moral certainty, and how many were would-be heroes completely out of their depth; or even just thugs and washouts spoiling for a fight, but lacking the decency to do so on behalf of polite society.

    The smile subsided, a narrow line reshaping the arrangements of Jaden's lips. "What's the story with Jaska?" The question was presented cautiously, careful not to risk showing his hand or betraying his thoughts to Taataani. "Does she make a habit of clocking new recruits across the jaw, or was that a special welcome just for me?"

  13. #33
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    The General's gait slowed, and only now did she note the bit of swelling on Jaden's face from his introduction. Her eyebrows rose in time with her ears, a cryptic little smile on her matriarchal face.

    "jYou'd have to assk herr. Perrhapss morre carrefulljy the next tjime. Sshe'ss morre ssujited to ansswerrjing thosse quesstjionss wjith herr fjisstss than herr worrdss. jI majy be new to underrsstandjing the ssubtletjiess of that language, but jit sseemss that jyou two have a...hjisstorrjy?"

    Coming to a brief stop, the General craned her neck slightly to catch another glimpse of Captain Jaska as she continued walking away. That teasing little smile didn't leave her expression.

    "jI ljike herr. jI'm sso rrarreljy afforrded the companjy of an honesst crreaturre ljike that."

  14. #34
    General Luka
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    An awkward situation presented itself, and hung in the air between them. Taataani's fondness was not something easily come by, and in a situation like this - this war, this Resistance - she needed to feel that her soldiers could be depended on. She needed to feel she had a force that could win, a force that was the best it could be; and anything that Jaden said that might undermine her trust in Captain Jaska would be bad, no matter how shrewd or prudent it might be.

    And yet, this was Taataani. She had her ways of learning things. If you allowed her to get a whiff of anything, it was already as good as exposed. The last time he'd tried to hold something back from Taataani, particularly something that involved being clocked across the face by a woman, he'd woken the next morning to find a holomail from Taataani with a list of the best divorce attorneys in the Republic. She'd know, one way or another. Best for her to know on his terms.

    "I'm the reason she wasted out of the Republic military."

    He stated it as a matter of fact, but that didn't stop it from somehow sounding ominous to his ears.

    "She's a hell of a pilot, but she made for a lousy link in the chain of command. Very little tolerance for authority figures, especially the ones telling her she shouldn't do something."

    Jaden tossed a sidelong glance in Taataani's direction. "She doesn't like following rules that she doesn't agree with. Kinda reminds me of a certain disgraced former Chancellor I know - no wonder you like her."

  15. #35
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    The ribbing at her expense caused the General's ears to bob up slightly.

    "Sshe takess rrjisskss, and herr ssquadrron love herr, but jI've sseen the ssjignss jyou mentjion too. Sshe'ss a bjit of a Fjirraxan Ssharrk, jI thjink. A naturral at sswjimmjing and takjing a bjite out of ssomethjing. jIt'ss the sstajyjing jin one place parrt sshe hass trrouble on."

    At that, Taataani's smile ebbed.

    "jI won't have herr peculjiarrjitjy and herr hjisstorrjy wjith jyou to become an jimpedjiment. jI need the both of jyou. jIf jI have to sstep jin and ssettle the matterr, jI wjill."

  16. #36
    General Luka
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    Jaden had spent so much of the last thirty years or so around Cizerack - many of them related to Taataani, for that matter - that often it became difficult not to commandeer certain hints and flourishes from their accents. Jaden took a moment to remind himself of how he was supposed to sound before he offered a reply.

    "Any animosity is entirely one-sided," Jaden assured, as convincingly as he could manage. "I may be turning into the Admiral in my old age, but I'm not Jaden Tyree just yet. I had the patience of a saint with that girl; but in the end she broke too many rules and crossed too many lines for even someone like me to justify looking the other way. As long as those shark jaws are aimed at the enemy, she'll be a valuable asset to your cause, but -"

    He let out the faintest breath of laughter at the comparison that his mind had instinctively settled upon.

    "She's a struggling business. If the costs start outweighing the profits, don't let sentiment get in the way of cutting your losses. You're a war effort, not a charity."

  17. #37
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    "jYou catch on prrettjy qujick." the old lady offered with a weathered smirk, "and jit took jyou lesss than a dajy asss a parramjiljitarrjy man to ssee we do thjingss a...ljittle djifferrentljy than jyou'rre ussed to."

    The breeze picked up in the open, and General Meorrrei's back stiffened against it. Age-marked hands reached to quickly turn up her jacket's collar, shielding her neck against the chill.

    "Come jin, Generral. Eat, have caf wjith me. Tell me ssomethjing sscandalouss. We'll prretend we'rre ssomewherre ssunnjy."

    He'd likely have an inkling as to what she meant by that. Home. Her home, but one that had become Vansen's as well. A place that, in turn, Jaden Luka had been welcome at for years. The villa on the hill at Hai'raathee was one of so many of her mansions, but it was always the one with the most meaning. The one that felt like belonging, rather than an opulent species of perpetual holiday.

    He must have known what she'd paid to make this stand. She'd ruined political friendships and alliances, and alienated many people in the Republic on her way out. But now she organized a war effort on a far-flung world, and she did so with the full understanding that she put her life at risk to do it.

    The guards at the base's entrance saluted, which Taataani mimed poorly in return. She walked with Jaden through the wide corridors, taking her time to arrive at their destination.

    "Have jyou everr sseen me sso old beforre?"

  18. #38
    General Luka
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    Jaden took his time contemplating the answer to that, his mind still entangled in Taataani's earlier proclamation. Perhaps it had taken him a day to wrap his head around how General Meorrrei would run her war; but it was a day spent in hyperspace with nothing else to contemplate, and a day that followed weeks of deliberation and consideration within himself. He had considered what his place might be; what void the Resistance might have within it's leadership that he would be capable of filling.

    It all circled around to a simple, familiar realisation: there was nothing special about Jaden Luka; nothing especially remarkable. He had been a scout trooper, once, but not a particularly good one. He had been a fighter pilot for a time, and while skilled he had still only been one of a multitude among the Rogues and the Valkyries. By the time he had become a Captain, and a General, he had become an old relic; his rank was earned by longevity as much as anything else, an old Commander aboard an old ship out on the Republic frontier. He was no Jan Dodonna. He was no Gial Ackbar. He was no Reshmar, no Starborn, no Vansen Tyree. He was no war hero; just a soldier, trapped in a perpetual loop of doing his utmost to adapt to whatever situation he found himself in.

    A day to see that things were done differently? Absolutely. But how long would it take him to adapt into what the Resistance needed him to be? Was there even enough youth left in him for such a transformation to be possible any more?

    Taataani's question wrenched Jaden from his thoughts with all the force of an Interdictor's gravity wells. "Old?" he echoed, offering a subtle shake of his head. "Not the adjective I would use. But I have seen you this burdened before."

    His shoulders sagged a little as he allowed himself to delve into those memories. "At the funeral. The point when you stood and faced the prospect of a future without him. You looked as if the weight of the galaxy was on your shoulders, and yet there was so much determination in your eyes. You have made sorrow and loss into an enemy, and I think that's a war you have been waging for a lot longer than I realise."

    "Now, though?" A small hint of a smile graced his lips; more an expression of support than anything positive. "You're only carrying the weight of the Republic, and the First Order is a far less fearsome enemy. This is a blue milk run of a war by comparison. I'm only here so I can absorb some of the glory second-hand from your inevitable victory."

    That was a lie, of course. Jaden would have taken on a Death Star in an escape pod, if that was what it took to stand beside family.

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