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Saga Meditative Solitude--Intelligence officer behind enemy lines--Dear Diary, updated 2/27

Discussion in 'Fan Fiction- Before, Saga, and Beyond' started by DarthIshtar, Jan 4, 2012.

  1. DarthIshtar

    DarthIshtar Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001
    Title: Meditative Solitude
    Author: Darthishtar
    Timeframe: 1 year before the fall of the Republic
    Characters: OCs, mentions of canon characters
    Author's note: This character was originally introduced in my Wife of Deceit series as the First Lady's former college roommate. I noticed in Book 3 that we don't know much of what she did during the Clone Wars, so I decided to put her into this plot bunny. THe title comes from what Corellia called its semi-formal withdrawal from the Republic during the Clone Wars.

    ENTRY 1

    Mother always joked that it would take an act of congress for me to start keeping a log and she wasn't far from the truth. I'm used to making reports for RepIntel, but my instructors always told me that it would help me gather my thoughts if I kept something separate on extended missions. If nothing else, I could use this as the basis for my debriefing, when they would ask for more information than I had been able to send over a secure connection.

    My orders are straightforward: Proceed to the contact point at Bilbringi. Catch the next transport to wherever they send me within Separatist territory. Set up shop. Report on whatever seems relevant to Republic security and the war effort. Hopefully get out with my life.

    On any given mission, there are a few unstated prohibitions. I doubt that anyone would forbid me to call my best friend when I moved to a new planet under normal circumstances, but if I called Amne, there's a chance her husband the Chancellor would pick up instead. I'm also pretty sure that they would yank me from the project if I actually settled down, but I'm expected to hold down a job while I'm there. It would be suspicious for a newcomer to live off unspecified resources and with the CIS at war, they will be automatically suspicious of any newcomers.

    I'm six hours out from Bilbringi and not sure I like what I'm getting myself into, but I'm under orders. My ability to like those orders is irrelevant to the mission.
     
    Jedi Knight Fett likes this.
  2. earlybird-obi-wan

    earlybird-obi-wan Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 21, 2006
    Nice title and beginning
     
  3. DarthIshtar

    DarthIshtar Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001
    Entry 2

    My instructor at the Academy once said that Intelligence is like Boloball--a game of hurry up and wait, repeated a thousand times. I hurried up and now I have been waiting at Bilbringi for a total of sixteen hours.

    My briefing files didn't tell me much more than the original assignment did. I know that my cover story name is Corellian--Delani would be proud--but that doesn't narrow the Galaxy down much. She would proudly say that you can't keep a Corellian down. I would say you can't keep a Corellian away.

    Entry 3

    Since it would look suspicious for me to just hang around my tourist quarters all day, I have limited license to go exploring. I let a nice mechanic buy me a really weak drink at the tapcafe on my level. Because I'm an Intelligence agent, I accidentally spilled a drop on my hand and ran it through an analysis before drinking it. It was Dantooinian brandy and very watered down, but there weren't any illicit substances. I was glad it was watered down because tourist or not, I shouldn't be under the influence.

    My commlink has been on me at all times, but I doubt that I'll get a cheery call to say my ride's here. More likely, they'll let themselves into my room, complain that I took too long coming home from wherever I was and act like we've been cousins for years.

    I scheduled a tour of the station for tomorrow and am bringing my holocam so I can send lots of mindless holos to my friends back home. I think I'll send one to my boss and say "Wish you were here." I'm sure the boredom will pass once I actually meet the rest of my team.
     
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  4. DarthIshtar

    DarthIshtar Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001
    Entry 4

    I was grabbing lunch on Level 39 today when a human female approached, threw her arms around me and introduced me to a young man as her university roommate. After a few sentences of conversation, I gathered that these two were my contacts and invited them back to 'our' quarters to unpack.

    Their names are Yrin and Ana, they have a lift slot in six hours and apparently they're Jedi. They're both Knights, which is a new thing for me. In all my--relatively frequent--dealings with the Jedi, I've only run into Masters and Padawans. Knights seemed to be like interns, the Jedi who were temporarily assigned to that rank before they got their real jobs.

    I didn't tell either of them that, of course, but for all I know they picked up on my thoughts. They seem no stranger than the other five that I've run across over the years, but then again, I've only known them for two hours. Currently, they're making their last report this side of Separatist territory.

    I suppose I should get around to doing that myself.
     
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  5. earlybird-obi-wan

    earlybird-obi-wan Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 21, 2006
    WOW each day an entry?

    And nice ones=D=
     
  6. RK_Striker_JK_5

    RK_Striker_JK_5 Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Jul 2, 2003
    I shall try to follow this with all that I can... or something like that. Looks great so far!
     
  7. DarthIshtar

    DarthIshtar Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001
    Entry 5

    Day 5 of my assignment, Day 1 of travel time. Only the pilot knows exactly where we're going for operational security, but I'm used to that. My third mission with Intelligence required me to travel sixteen light years, wait for three hours for my next ride and then catch the shuttle that ended up taking me to Eastport on Coruscant. Every mission has its set parameters, but it requires a blank datacard in many other aspects.

    Today, Yrin, Ana and I spent most of the time settling into our roles. Ana isn't happy about having to impersonate a Corellian, but she did some very unflattering and only slightly inaccurate impersonations of one. Yrin glowered at her for a while and then explained to me that he is perhaps the only native Corellian she knows in the Jedi Order. That explains a lot.

    There's not a set timeframe for this kind of mission. I'm hoping that it won't be for the duration of the war, since there's no telling how long that will last, but it might just be that kind of deep cover assignment. For all I know, I'll show up in six years with a new haircut and having forgotten my own dialect, having missed out on everything from my brother's wedding to the day Chancellor Palpatine gets voted out of office.

    Speaking of Palpatine, we spent an enjoyable twenty minutes 'Separatistizing" ourselves, reviewing our reasons for being outside the Republic and even swapping a few jokes on the Chancellor's behalf. I drew the line at taking cracks at his wife, since Amne wouldn't forgive me for those even if I did them under deep cover, but the next time she has a bad day on my watch, I'll tell her the one about Palpatine, Yoda and the Wookiee.

    In addition to learning the appropriate mannerisms for our cover stories, we spent some time inventing the backgrounds of our roles. Yrin and Ana are supposed to be romantic partners while I'm his business partner in exports. They apparently have most of a business framework set up for us when we arrive onworld. But we didn't know things like allergies (Yrin is allergic to corephem and any painkiller made from that substance, medical histories (I had to tell them about my sleep apnea) and things like how Ana got the scar on her shoulder (she ran into Yrin's lightsaber during a sparring match two years ago). We're keeping most details of 'extended family' a government secret, since there's the chance that Republic Intelligence or the Jedi will send us reinforcements that we'll have to call Aunt Kiu or our second cousin Zhulied.
     
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  8. earlybird-obi-wan

    earlybird-obi-wan Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 21, 2006
    Love the thoughts about Palpatine and being in deep cover.

    Nice update
     
  9. DarthIshtar

    DarthIshtar Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001
    Day 6

    Day 2 of travel and I'm assured that we'll be getting there tomorrow.

    Today, after some desultory revision of our cover stories and what we'd covered yesterday, we spent a good deal of time checking the job listings on the world where we're to be posted. It would be handy not to have to work, but it would also look ridiculous. Plus, there's the 'danger' that if we claim to be in a specific profession, people will expect to use our services. I learned that once when claiming to be a smuggler. When I got approached by one of my targets to smuggle out six hundred kilos of spice, I nearly blew my cover because I didn't know how to talk intelligently about the trade.

    So, yes, we're supposed to be in exports, but so far we have nothing to export. And it would be unusual for newcomers to have an immediate success in a very local trade. I have applid for various things, from a shipping consultant to an administrative assistant. Ana has the fake credentials to be a teacher. Yrin is hoping to keep up the appearance of being an exporter so he can spend most of his time working with the non-isolationist businessmen.

    After dinner, we forgot that we were on a mission for a while and discussed the sort of thigns that you don't need to know for a cover story. Yrin and Ana heard all about what it was like to come from Raltiir to Coruscant for university, how long I've been with RI and all about having your college roommate become the First Lady. I found out that Yrin and Ana got Knighted within about ten minutes of each other, that she had two Masters in total and that he has had contact with his biological family on Corellia. She is obsessed with a singer named Patches--an inside joke, apparently--and he once sleepwalked to the Council chambers, where Master Yoda found him the next morning, curled up against the door with his thumb in his mouth.
     
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  10. earlybird-obi-wan

    earlybird-obi-wan Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 21, 2006
    Love the little details about the companions and the jobs.
     
  11. RK_Striker_JK_5

    RK_Striker_JK_5 Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Jul 2, 2003
    Aye, very nice details there. :) Nice little diary entries.
     
  12. DarthIshtar

    DarthIshtar Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001
    Day 7

    We arrived just after noon local time and I had enough energy to get through customs. I dazedly took in the view from the speeder and recognized enough to know that there will be a minor language barrier. A few of the signs are in Basic, but the people here are trying their best to distance themselves from the Republic and that includes linguistically.

    Since we're going in blind, we're also going in deaf. We should have known that we'd be branded as offworlders the moment we tried to order caf in Basic, but this is one of the least-prepared places I've ever been assigned to.

    At least the chrono was in standard numerals. I set it for 1800 and didn't remember anything after that. Now I'm on watch while Ana takes her turn. In the meantime, I set up my local comm code and comm-mail. And I found a handy phrasecard in the datacard library that we all share. The apartment came furnished and with a few other things that were left behind by other tenants. Mostly there are datapacks and trash, but someone left behind quite a lot of lingerie and another person donated a stuffed bantha to the mess. I have to wonder what made them leave in such a hurry, especially considering the lingerie.
     
  13. earlybird-obi-wan

    earlybird-obi-wan Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 21, 2006
    Yes what happened there[face_whistling]

    Nice to see this updated
     
  14. RK_Striker_JK_5

    RK_Striker_JK_5 Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Jul 2, 2003
    Interesting spot they found themselves in, lol. Nice bit about the language, too.
     
  15. DarthIshtar

    DarthIshtar Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001
    Entry 8

    The good news is that theoretically, we could camp out here on the Republic's credit line for four weeks without running short on...well, credits. The bad news is how much attention that would draw to ourselves. This is a relatively isolationist world. That much is clear from the fact that they expect Basic speakers to pick up the language instead of accommodating them as worlds like Alderaan do. We could draw undue attention to ourselves just by having an off-world banking account, which we do.

    We decided to close our account with a note to the managers of the bank in case Republic Intelligence or the Jedi Order have a conniption fit. Setting up an account here was a little more complicated, since we had to have a credit check run and the account manager gave us sharp looks when she discovered that we hadn't grown up here. She spoke passable Basic, which was a relief.

    I have downloaded the language files to my personal datapad and fall asleep tonight listening to a bland computer voice conjugate 'zsiaru,' which means "I want." In a week or so, we will try getting through an entire day in the language. At this rate, we will have a lot of conversations about where the marketplace is and how many blumfruits we want. But it's a start. I could strangle the prep team for not having warned us.

    At least my qualifications list me as a programmer. The language of computers is nearly universal and I can learn how to work around the terms that I don't have to translate.
     
  16. RK_Striker_JK_5

    RK_Striker_JK_5 Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Jul 2, 2003
    Hmm, you'd have some good experience in learning a new language, methinks. :)