Darth Revan

Part 1: Soldier

Chapter 1: Beginnings and Endings

Akima Mahe was filthy. Every inch of her, from her soft-soled boots, dark pants and tight, energy reflective combat armor up to her face and short-cropped black hair was covered in a layer of black, cold mud. On top of that she'd added a layer of twigs, loose leaves, and dirt from the forest floor. Still, it was hardly necessary. After all the crawling she'd done her original layer had been rubbed off and replaced by a brand new skin of smeared greenish-brown.

At the moment she lay just off to the side of the crest of a low hill. The hill was only a meter or so high, a low mound more than anything, that sat on the edge of the thick Onderon woods, just as the trees were thinning out. Backed by the shade, the low open fields stood in contrast, a vast flat expanse perfect for an army camp. Which was both why the camp was there and why she was watching it. It was yet another drill, true, but they were here to participate in joint exercises as a good-will gesture to the Onderon military (and a not particularly subtle show of force) in the Republic's extremely long-winded attempt to get the planet to join the Republic. But all of that was far beyond her concern.

Today she wanted to try something new. Or, depending on how you looked at it, something very old. Her fellow scouts from the recon division attached to the system were using standard belt-mounted stealth field generators. They were complicated, uncommon devices even in this day and age. They worked by using expensive, ultra-high quality omni-directional scanners which detected oncoming light. It then generated a field around the user which refracted that light, literally bouncing it around the user, creating a pocket of invisibility. The field wasn't perfect, however. The generators could grant perfect invisibility, but nobody had yet figured out a way to see out of that little pocket of perfect darkness. As such the engineers had to tone the field down to allow in enough light for adequate scouting purposes. That lower strength, however, led to an odd, if subtle, distortion around the user. That distortion, plus the specially developed scanners designed to detect such fields (if not exactly where they were) made reconnaissance a dangerous game of cat and mouse. Akima had one, of course, but unlike her fellows' it was off.

Another patrol from the main army, the opposing force for the exercise, came marching along the edge of the trees. They were cautious, as they'd all been warned about the dangerous wildlife in the heavy forests (and worse in the jungles closer to the equator), which kept them a safe distance from the trees. Akima wasn't worried – she was lucky, lucky enough that she actually had a reputation for it in her unit. And she had a feeling this was a lucky spot. The animals wouldn't bother her.

Thus far the patrol was acting exactly as she'd hoped. Knowing that the odd distortion of the stealth field was almost impossible to see with the naked eye while the user remained still, the soldiers were relying almost entirely upon their instruments. For Akima, however, there was no stealth field to detect, and covered in cold mud she gave off no more heat than the rest of the forest. The patrol passed on and still no sign of action at the base camp. The next foot patrol, if they continued their current pattern, wouldn't come by for another twenty minutes. Which, considering the last five hours had seen her lying in the exact same place in the exact same position, left her quite bored. Yet there was nothing for it but to crawl on and try not to pay attention to the menagerie of insects crawling all over her body.

They were in their home, though it was more of a shack. It was raining, as it often was, and the leaky prefabricated roof once again proved inadequate to the task. Her father, a thin man approaching gaunt and slowly balding, staggered in through the door soaking wet and shivering, though not from the cold. Even as a 12 year old she recognized the blazing wrath of stimulants in his eyes. A crushing fear gripped her—she'd seen the other men in their small grimy factory town on the stims, but never, never her father. She'd cried, which had only brought her mother into the room. She couldn't remember the words, but she could never forget the screaming. Anger, screaming, crying, and thunder. Then the stims took over and her mother's screams changed from those of anger to pain.

The damp silence was shattered by shouting and the sound of blasters firing in the distance. By force of will she kept herself from moving even a centimeter while she took stock of the situation. The sun had lowered considerably in the bluish-green sky. Twilight was imminent, and real darkness would follow about an hour after that. The sound wasn't all that far away and echoed along the edge of the woods. Another scout being identified and chased off, if not captured. Perfect. They were filled with confidence in their equipment and sure this area was clean. Time to move. She did, however, leave a little something behind.

Her movement was not what a new recruit to the Reconnaissance Corp. might expect. She only moved a couple of inches at a time with long pauses between each smooth movement. The patrol might be out of sight, but the huge sensors at the center of camp were still watching. Still, they were toned down to avoid being triggered by the constant movement in the forest, which gave her some wiggle room. In its own way the motion was just as repetitive as lying there. There was no change of scenery to speak of, as her eyes were glued to the same empty view of the hundred meters to the camp filled with very low hills and billowing grass, blowing in the winds. It was beautiful, yes, but after five hours of staring . . .

She woke instantly. She was completely and irrationally positive that something terrible was happening. There was no explanation in the room around her; her toy speeder that had been her brothers before he died lay exactly where she had left it, carefully lined up with the edge of her rough-cut desk of native wood. The goats they raised for milk and meat were quiet in their pen outside her window. Her four ragged but clean outfits were hung up in their order in the closet. Everything was quiet but her fear, not of hurt so much as of what she didn't understand, was so oppressive she could barely breathe. Quietly she slipped out of bed and stole into the living room. She'd learned to move quietly, and to hide patiently, to avoid being caught by dad in one of his drug rages, which was why her mother didn't hear her enter. Mother had her back to her, slumped over something on the ground. "Mom," she had whispered, instinctively understanding the need for quiet, "what are you doing?" She was leaned over a suitcase packed full with all of her meager clothes, and jumped slightly at her words. "Oh Akima, I'm sorry," she whispered, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," again and again as she hugged her close. "Don't go away mom please!" she had whispered back as fiercely as she dared. "I'm sorry mommy, I'll do better, I'll be a better little girl, just don't leave me!"

"I . . . I can't! The laws . . ." she'd tried to explain, but the technicalities of what passed for the law Akima didn't understand. Her mother was leaving her, and it must be her fault. That was all she knew. Mother gave Akima one last hug, tears she could no longer restrain streaming down her face, highlighting the purple and yellow bruises. "I'm sorry Akima, I just can't anymore, and I can't take you with me. I love you, never forget that I love you. I'll come back for you as soon as I can, I swear it."

When she'd left, the little flap shutting behind her and her small, battered suitcase, she'd run to her father's bed and shook him. "Daddy, daddy she's gone! Mommy's gone!" He didn't move. His eyes, still filled with the stim that had driven him to greater lengths than ever the preceding night, stared unblinking at the ceiling, dead to the world for many hours to come.

She'd reached the outer perimeter. It was well and truly dark now, save for the low-level lights which ran along the grated bottom of the trench. It was a loose perimeter, to say the least, mostly just the long double layered trench which at a pinch the soldiers could stream into and use as a defensive position. Normally such a labor-intensive measure wouldn't be bothered with, but the camp was supposed to be here for some time. Very, very slowly she inched herself just high enough to glance down into the trench. As expected of a peacetime camp, the trenches were not manned. Still, there were lookout towers periodically posted and, if they followed standard Republic procedure, a periodic sweep through the trenches themselves. She settled down to wait for the next patrol to pass and mentally reviewed the outline of the base itself.

It was a standard base as close to the manual as possible, both because the Commanding Officer, General Dex Kelrian, was a stickler for ceremony, and because he wanted to put on a show for the local officers of the Onderon military. Which was also the reason they had an oversized Regiment of upwards of 5,000 soldiers and a Brigadier General commanding instead of a Colonel. All of which meant that, once inside of the outer patrols and the trench perimeter, she had to choose either the road to one of the main gates at the points of the compass or a minefield and a wall with barbed-wire fence. Possibly even an electrically charged one, though the chances of anything like that actually being deployed in the field were close to nill. Past the wall would be the two troop transports at each gate.

The Republic Troop Transport Mark II was an ungainly, six legged walker designed to hold a platoon of 50 and carry them into active combat zones; in terms of the camp layout, they were mostly to intimidate as they were more heavily armored than armed. Still, those two heavy guns were nothing to sneer at. They belonged to the two armored infantry Companies attached to their Regiment. Past those would be the bivouac area where the prefabricated semi-permanent "tents" housed the officers and the enlisted soldiers. For the sake of the practice exercise, however, Reconnaissance had requested and (after a week of waiting) been approved to set up camp well outside the main republic base in order to allow for a more fair analysis of their reconnaissance abilities. Though it almost seemed a waste of effort when they set up bases exactly the same way every time. And, in the very center, stood the parade ground where troops could be marshaled up, which was overlooked by the elevated Command Tent, the nerve center of the massive base. Ideally, she would find a way to get information from there, though it was generally considered far too great a risk to even try. Failing that some sort of visual, or better yet, an audio feed of the parade ground could be almost as telling.

At last she spotted the patrol haphazardly making its way through the trenches, weapons holstered at their sides and joking as they went. A few seconds later their laughter faded into the distance. A full minute later, Akima allowed herself to move. She smoothly slipped over the lip of the trench and dropped lightly to her feet. The trench, dug as it was through the roots of the nearly meter-high grasses of the plains, were only a 1.5 meters deep. That left normal soldiers fairly exposed—for her all she had to do was hunch down to be completely covered. She knelt and as quietly as she could wiped off the loose debris of twigs and leaves; a loose leaf in the middle of the base was a small risk, but a risk nonetheless. Especially if it appeared out of thin air as she passed by. There was nothing she could do about the mud. As clean as she could get, she activated her Stealth Field Generator and headed towards the nearest lookout, with its attached comm center.

In theory every trooper's comm could, with the right priority attached, be picked up by the Command Center, though every soldier new the first thing any enemy army would do would be to jam their transmissions. Hence every 50 or 100 meters (depending on the size of the base) was, at the base of the lookout tower with its sensors, a stronger comm unit designed to punch through jamming signals. That way communication with the front and Command Center would continue seamlessly. And, in permanent bases, honest-to-goodness wired communications were installed and buried. It was to one of these comm bases that she headed.

Here, she took her first real risk. Her own comm, its narrow band reaching from her ear to her mouth, was on a different frequency from the rest of the army for the exercise (for obvious reasons), and was actually designed differently as well. While all of them were lightweight and small, most coms were either hand held or positioned well away from the face of the soldier in question so as to prevent irritation. For Recon, comfort was not even considered.

The bugs would take care of that.

Instead they actually mounted it right over the mouth so that she could activate it with the tip of her tongue, avoiding all the movement of bringing a hand up to the face. She activated it (with her hand this time; it wasn't the most sanitary move) with a quick double click, which sent a signal to the small droid she'd left behind at the forest edge. It was her own invention, though not particularly complicated. In fact, all it did was start rustling about as noisily as it could through the bushes and pulsing out heat in an odd pattern. She waited, huddled by the door of the Com Center, until she heard murmuring inside. She made her move.

As she'd bet, General Kelrian's insistence on shine and perfect order had led Colonel Thrakken Ennada, in charge of the army for this drill, to dress everything up and have it in perfect, silent, working order. The door slipped aside without even a whisper. Even simply observing from Recon Base Camp Commander Kelrian had proved to be an asset after all.

The inside of the Comm Center was dark, with only the dull light of computer displays and power readings to detract from the full layout of the surrounding area, complete with superimposed sensor readings. Behind the small room's two consoles sat two human soldiers, though it was too dark to make out anything else about them. Yet another gesture to the humano-centric Onderon military.

Both were tapping away at their computers and whispering into their coms, covering any sound Akima's soft boots made on the ceramacrete floor. Within a bare few seconds she'd placed her small audio-visual bug, stole a comlink, and slipped back out into the trench. After a quick glance around, she scrambled out of the trench and into the low plain grasses on her belly. With her new comlink synched in over her left ear and her stealth field once again deactivated she crept onwards at the painfully slow pace she'd used to make it to the trench. Inch after inch. After inch. After inch. After . . .

Dad had been on the stims again, the worst bout he'd ever had. Akima had hidden from him for almost three solid days, only returning to sleep and feed Max and Shelia, the milk goats, and the others raised for slaughter. Now, huddled beneath her inadequate blanket, she shivered and tried to sleep. The sound of her door opening, however, jolted her back to wakefulness. It was dark enough to only make out his outline, but it was clear it had to be dad. She curled up as small as she could and shrunk back to the far corner of her bed. He saw, and seemed to sag a little bit. He stepped into the room with exaggerated slowness, as if trying to calm a wild animal. He didn't speak, just sat on the edge of her bed and put his head into his hands. They both sat there in silence, neither moving. After a few moments his shoulders started to spasm like mommy's used to when she was still here.

She'd never seen her father cry.

"Da..Daddy? Are you ok?" She crept towards him on the bed.

"No, Akima, I'm not ok. I've . . . I've done so badly. I've failed your mother. I've failed you. I'm sorry, Akima, so sorry. I've been . . . sick. Will you help me get better?"

And so it started. National labor laws stated that nobody could work until they were at the earliest two years below the age of majority, set at 20. The local labor lobby got the age of majority dropped to 16 so that The Company could duck under it. This let Akima take a job at her fathers work, lying to tell them she was fourteen, and started work out on the factory floor assembling droids to help pay off the drug debts he'd accrued. It was a good choice—the workings of the machines came naturally to her. Within days she was doing better and faster work than most of the other employees.

Within two months she was "promoted" to work with the more dangerous mass-produced fragmentation grenades and fragmentation mines. Her father was against it, but in the end with no other employers in town, what choice did they have? She proved just as able there as with the droids. And every night the two of them sat together on their lone couch and she held Dad in her arms while he shook with withdrawals.

The small sensor stalks of a sonic mine caught her attention and brought her back to the present. They were small, little more than twigs sticking out of the dirt, but she'd recognize them anywhere. Normally the army would employ the deadlier fragmentation mine, but for this deployment they had used the sonic mines in order to avoid accidentally killing their own scouts. They were painful, certainly, and would make you bleed from the nose and ears in addition to disorienting you, but ultimately were simply a development of the flash-bang grenade of days gone by. Still, their basic functions were almost identical to the mines she'd worked with. In order to avoid accidentally killing the holder, each mine's sensor stalk was designed to detect com frequencies as well as movement. The programmed "safe" frequency would disable the mine while within a certain range, allowing for allied soldiers to run right over a mine field so long as they didn't physically trigger the mine by stepping on it.

Still, the mines were far more effective en masse, and as such they weren't the most sophisticated of weapons. In fact, they were only capable of detecting safe frequencies within a fairly narrow range, and the Czerka mines the Republic favored were usually within an upper band . . . After a few moments of fiddling with her com a small green light illuminated the top of the sensor. Safe. Much easier than reaching through the emergency (and very narrow) deliberate hole in the sensor field to single-handedly attempt to deactivate the mine manually. Very dangerous. Standard practice for her fellow factory workers.

She crawled onwards, keeping entirely below the waving grass, and waded her way slowly towards the barbed-wire wall.

He lasted nine months before he cracked. She came home to find an empty injection capsule on the living room floor. It didn't take her long to find him. In his bedroom he was curled up against the wall, arms wrapped around himself, slowly leaning backwards and forwards. The doorway was gouged with shattered glass still dripping with the remains of at least half the container. Blood streamed freely down his arm where he'd torn the needle out of him; he didn't seem aware of it. He muttered something, staring blankly at the far wall while he rocked back and forth. Caught in a sick fascination, she moved closer. "I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't . . ." His bloodshot eyes stared right through her.

In that moment it was too much. She curled in on herself, sat on the floor, and buried her face in her hands to stifle the tears. She didn't know how long she sat there, helpless. Her memory of those moments was hazy and tear-stained, to say the least. But at some point, her vigil was interrupted by a noise. She looked up, shocked even out of her despair. Her father, her rock of strength, and yes, fear, was crawling along the floor, licking at the last drops of drug he'd hurled from himself. Completely flat on the floor, destroyed, he lay at her feet desperately searching for any final bit of moisture. And in that moment of horror, of revulsion, he seemed to remember her and looked up into her eyes.

Everything stood still.

Her mind, her thoughts, even her heart it seemed, froze solid. If it had been self-hatred, fear, anger, anything, she could have dealt with it. But it was far worse. It was . . . acceptance. He was empty, and he accepted it. The fight was gone. She couldn't take it, and fled in anguish into the night.

The stars were bright, a rare cloudless night. They twinkled down as they always did, completely unchanged. Unchangeable. She lowered her head and cried. Inside there was an animal cry, a momentary return to full awareness, and a single blaster shot. Then all was silence.

Notes: this is for RB23G, who expressed interest in the backstory for Revan I'd been working on. I apologize for the blocks of italics for segments in the past, but until you can change fonts like I originally had it written, I'm reduced to this. Let me know what you think. I have about 50 pages written so far, but unless there's interest I won't bother to upload it. And yes, there are tons of Jedi, lots of swashbuckling, and I even went out and bought a bunch of reference books to get the campaigns right, but that's all further along... if anyone out there is interested.