The Wolf Pack

Chapter 74

Kriari had not forgotten, for a single moment, what it was like to work with Art and Soap. Both of them were soldiers, one born and bred and the other one forged. Even when they were no longer part of a military, they both behaved with the kind of discipline only years of training, conditioning, and genetics could instill. They were not flying in a Venetor, they were not accompanied by a crew or any of its regulations, but they still flew the ship like they were at war.

Kriari did not find this odd. In fact it was strangely comforting to still have the structure of living on board a military aircraft. Even if she was now in her current situation due to her rapidly deteriorating mental health, caused by the disparity between what she had been taught she should be, what she expected herself to be and what she actually was.

Kriari was taught to be a peacekeeper, she was expected to be one, she was not. She expected herself to be good, she was not. She was just a child, just a speck of existence in the infinite galaxy around them. A speck of existence with the ability to kill, and take and make disappear at the wave of a lightsaber. A speck of existence with the ability and power to damage the fabric of reality beyond repair.

The child who was given too much power.

A child with a weapon at the mercy of their own whim.

And here she was.

The product of privilege, the product of classism, the product of imperialism, serving the very system she was taught to be against, and even worse: profiting from it.

Murdering for it.

No wonder she had tried to kill herself.

Bur Art had been right. She had been selfish, she had been taking the easy way out. She didn't get to opt out because she felt guilty. Yes, she had nearly turned to the Dark Side, but she didn't get to have natborn savior complex. She didn't get to live in privilege, acknowledge it and choose to die rather than endure the guilt.

No.

She had the moral obligation to help fix it.

Not that that's what they were doing at the moment, no. They were simply fulfilling a promise they had made to Soap what seemed ages ago.

Now she was under the watchful eye of a physically disabled friend with PTSD, and a demolitions expert from an unknown world with military experience, an awfully short fuse and a mission. Oh and the accent, don't forget the accent. What better team to bring down an empire? Or in this case, restore a traumatized war veteran back into relative health.

Although she didn't really think Soap was much of an anti-imperialist, from what he had told Art and her, he was more of an enforcer, just like any soldier before and after him, but it was good to have him around nonetheless. Soap was a good man, with a good heart, and Kriari would not judge him for his chosen occupation, whether he realized he was actively perpetuating cycles of violence or not. He truly did believe he was doing the right thing.

It had taken a while, but Kriari had managed to get solid hours of sleep on a regular basis. She was eating more consistently too and her energy reserves were getting better. She still felt bone tired every waking second, and thoughts of the war effort and guilt for not being present plagued her whenever she was conscious. But she was getting better, slowly, but steadily.

She was putting on weight, and with it, muscle, which she had never had the chance to do on war rations, constant battle and near to no sleep. Her growth spurt had been stumped in her early teenage years due to the stress on her body and mind, so for the first time in two years she was looking almost normal as opposed to concerningly thin.

She was training a lot too, both with Art and Soap, which was always fun because the Sergeant was not against dirty tricks if it would get him a win, so sparring with him was always interesting. She had gotten exceptionally good at shooting blasters too.

But Kriari had not touched her lightsaber since the incident, and she didn't think she would for a long while. She kept practicing with a practice metal hilt with the same weight her lightsaber had, if only not to fall behind on her forms. The motions were familiar, and deeply soothing, but her own lightsaber was still aboard the 104th's cruise. She asked her Master to give it to Wolffe, and hopefully he had.

Wolffe. She was convinced no one had told him what really happened, otherwise she was convinced he would have found her by now if only to beat her blue and bloody like Art had done. She felt guilty, ashamed and terribly sorry she wasn't there to explain to him she hadn't abandoned him, that she would be back eventually.

Still the guilt ate at her heart with every inhale she took. She wasn't there to help him, to support him, to be his companion in everything and anything he had to face. She missed him terribly, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Their work took most of her time and concentration too. They were looking for Soap's old team who had been abducted with him when he first got taken from his home world by Trandoshian traffickers. We had been following the barely there cargo manifesto trail that they had left behind, but we always seemed to be two steps behind somehow.

They were now in a very heavily occupied sector of Ryloth, the insurgents had recently pulled off a successful breach of one of the biggest separatist strongholds and were now celebrating their win. Although hesitant, the locals welcomed them when they said they were after an abducted human that had been a Separatist prisoner for a while now. They had never figured out why the separatists wanted a random human male to imprison, but if there was even the slightest chance that it could be someone Soap knew, they would be following that lead.

It turned out that this prisoner had been the mastermind behind the mass prisoner escape and subsequent breach to the stronghold.

"A war veteran, or that's what he implied, though he never gave any star system we knew of when we asked where he hailed from."Admitted Cham Syndulla.

The war leader had been in and out of alliance with the Republic throughout the Clone Wars due to the waning support to his enslaved people and occupied home planet. But when asked for aid in retrieving a possible abducted friend, he did not hesitate to help, at least not when he found out it was the same man who had got Ryloth a win against the Separatist occupation.

"Do you know the name of this man?"asked Soap as they followed general Syndulla through the cave system.

"He claims his name is confidential and insists we call him by his rank of Captain. He said he would not be giving out his name to people who were not certain allies. It apparently has got him in trouble before."

The situation was quite strange, in a galaxy as vast as this one, a single name should not have made a difference for a mere Captain of an unknown planet, but Soap only smiled at that.

"Then let us meet this man, I have a feeling he might be who we're looking for."