Survivor: A Star Wars Story

Chapter XVII

REINA TAUTASKI

"This was the worst possible day we could have done this plan." Reina gritted her teeth as she poured over the holo-table in the command tent. 

It was considerably more filled than the previous day, with clones attending to radar monitors and struggling to get communications running in the interference of the storm, not helped as the wind outside ripped open one of the tabs of the tent again, only to be dived upon by one of the nearby clones who quickly sealed it.

When Kenobi and his scout team had left that morning to set up a newer and smaller base, the storm that had begun to stir up yesterday afternoon was supposed to pass with only the tailwinds buffering the camp.  Naturally, in the eleventh hour, it had suddenly changed course and encircled the base camp, cutting them off from the scout team.  Reina had ordered most of the clones to stay put inside - it was obviously suicidal to go out in this sandstorm.  She herself had been transformed into a Sand Person, wrapped head to toe in beige linens, a pair of goggles slung around her neck.  She re-pinned her headscarf in annoyance, tucking away her disobedient Padawan braid.

Forced to raise her voice over the noise of earth scratching the tent and wind battering the tarpaulin, she turned to one of the men, Wrench, and asked, "Do we have anything at all yet?"

"No sir!" Was the barely audible reply.  "This storm is just causing too much interference.  We'll keep trying different frequencies, but until we can go outside and move the signal transceivers, it's unlikely we'll re-establish comms again."

Reina scowled and turned back to the holo-table, bringing up a map of the scout team's route, for no reason rather than to give her hands something to do.  As she stared at the map, she bit her bottom lip in frustration.  If there was one thing that she couldn't stand, it was being stuck, helpless to provide aid.  Pinching her nose, she exhaled slowly. 

"Wrench, if you can't do anything with that, come here for a second, please." she called over her shoulder. 

"Sir?" he asked as he joined her.

"Do we know what speed they were travelling at, in the last data ping we received from them?"

Wrench pulled up the information without hesitation from the logs.  "Right here.  Why?"

"Kenobi once said something about being able to calculate the movements of your enemy just by looking at preliminary data.  To be honest, I have no idea how to do something like that, but is there a way to estimate their position right now, if we use those measurements and compare them with the storm's speed and when it hit?" she was thankful for the desert wraps stealing away some of her expression from onlookers, because she could already feel embarrassment flushing her cheeks.

Wrench's eyes lit up.  "Yes, we can use the figures to triangulate the position that they're in..." He looked up and saw the lost expression on Reina's face.  "Uh, we can narrow their location down to a set area." Reina waved her hand at the table and stepped back in a "go on" gesture.  As he worked, Wrench spoke again after a short while.  "I apologise for my assumptions.  Most Jedi I've met seem to already have all the answers, so I'm not used to helping one." 

Reina tried not to take that comment to heart - she knew he meant it harmlessly, but it was still a sharp reminder of how much ground she had to cover.  "Well, that makes two of us.  I try, but academia doesn't come naturally to me, even if I wasn't already behind in literature studies and arithmetic.  In fact, I can't think of much I would rather do less than arithmetic - though I suppose I'm paying the price for that now." Her expression soured.  Wrench stifled a cough that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.  "What?" 

"Ah, nothing sir.  It's just... I never thought I'd hear a Padawan say such a normal thing as she doesn't like maths.  It's a little jarring."  As he ran figures across the screen with little more than a second glance, he straightened to talk to her.  "I'm one of the younger clones you see - I only entered active duty fourteen months ago.  So all the Jedi I've met until now have been fairly... ah, stoic.  When I got moved to General Kenobi's legion, it was a bit strange to see a general that wasn't..." He trailed off, apparently lost for a word.