“Kerr-Lonn-Ny! Tcho!” JT enters the Cerean athlete’s quarters, all cheerful and sunny. The people she finds there, though, look tired. Kerr-Lonn-Ny left the party early last night, and here Tcho is, wearing one of her shirts. Kerr-Lonn-Ny looks a little kerfluffled, and Tcho looks somewhat uncomfortable. Maybe they’re embarrassed, JT thinks. I bet they hooked up last night. Then she notices Tcho’s arm is actually in a sling, and the clothes draped over the back of a dining chair—a crew uniform jacket and a College of Corellia scarf—are soaked with blood. “Oh my gosh! Is everything okay?!”
Tcho nods. “How did your party—oh, sorry, your gala go?” he asks, sounding weary.
“It went well—Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Well, I’m fine enough for now, but we have a serious issue that we need your help with.” Tcho taps the leg of the coffee table with his foot to draw JT’s attention there. “We recovered a weapon—I think an experimental one—from the moff’s materials.” JT mmmms disapprovingly at the news. “It looks like it operates on some particular symbiote. It causes nerve damage if the symbiote occurs in large concentrations in someone’s system.”
“So it’s like a species-specific weapon, or what?” JT asks.
Tcho darts a glance over at Kerr-Lonn-Ny. If she wants to jump in with more information, she can, but he is not going to expose her secret. She seems not to be ready yet, though, as all she says is, “Something like that. I don’t know technology.” Kerr-Lonn-Ny stands and begins pacing.
Tcho respects her decision and continues, “I know the medical side of it. I could identify the agent it acts on. But as far as potential ideas on how to make some kind of defense against it, we thought you might have some, given that you’re an engineer.” JT asks if she can have a closer look, and Tcho readily agrees, though he warns her to be careful.
JT picks up the heavy weapon with two hands, holding it with great care. Her stomach sinks in recognition. Tcho’s description matches far too well with what happened to her Force-Sensitive friend Caldovan when he was shot in the spine by a Force disruptor. Tcho saw JT use her lightsaber; he must want her opinion on this as a Force Sensitive in addition to as an engineer. But he has not said so plainly, presumably to protect her secret from Kerr-Lonn-Ny. “Where did you say you found this?” JT asks with forced casualness. The weapon that left Cal paralyzed from the waist down was designed by a Falleen named Xzozist, the leader of a Black Sun cell.
“It was with the moff’s project. You know about the bindercuffs and the repulsor box trap. There were also things related to tunneling and underwater surveillance devices. It tracks with the Gungans being the target,” Tcho says. It tracks with Force users being the target, JT thinks. “Oh! And I found this,” Tcho adds, pulling out the report about who might be organizing the Gungans. JT gives it a quick skim. Shamanistic sage? That sounds about right. “See where it indicates the meetings were purely business?” Tcho throws in cheekily.
“Oh, that’s probably just a cover,” JT shoots back, glad of a little levity. “Do you know how improper it would be for two moffs to hook up? There’d be scandal everywhere. Of course they have to have a paper trail to cover it. That’s like Spying 101, Tcho.”
“Well, I never went to school for that,” he replies. “So, what can you make of this weapon? It seemed like it was a pretty short-range effect; it dissipated rather quickly.”
JT lets out a breath and then admits, “I’ve seen this kind of weapon before.”
“You have?!” That is not the insight Tcho was expecting.
“Yes. It was used against someone I know. Not a good time.”
“And what effects did you observe?” Tcho asks clinically.
“In this case, paralysis. Like, permanent paralysis. Can’t just be fixed by normal augmatics. There was something… special that had to be fixed.” JT is quiet for a moment. “In some ways, this is a terror weapon,” she reflects.
“Where did you encounter it?” Tcho asks, puzzled. JT has insisted that she is not in the habit of combatting the Empire directly.
“Black Sun. I knew someone who got mixed up with them.”
“Weapons developed by Black Sun are now on Imperial desks?” Tcho murmurs, alarmed at this new twist.
“It doesn’t really surprise me,” JT says grimly. “Did you get this from a rack of these? Were they all lined up?”
“That sergeant grabbed it off a table scattered with a bunch of stuff. It wasn’t like there was a display case full of them. There were a bunch of engineers working on a variety of things. I probably have some schematics…” Tcho fishes around in his satchel with his left hand. “Here’s this datapad I grabbed.”
“Slicing’s not my strong suit, but I do it from time to time,” JT says. “Embarrassed a friend once by hacking into his system,” she adds with a grin. She sets the Force disruptor down on the coffee table and plops down on the sofa near Tcho’s chair to have a look.
“This thing cost me my arm. What’s on it?”
There are schematics for multiple systems, not just the drilling apparatus and the Force disruptor. Many are design proposals, planning documents for things not yet constructed. Moff Dargon shared her R&D efforts to inspire Panaka’s own, including a few experimental tools that proved useful in her own sector. JT and Tcho scroll through the documents together for a while, and then Tcho asks, “So did you and your associates ever work on any kind of defenses against this kind of thing?”
“Yeah. Stay away!” JT replies.
“So no kind of energy shielding or anything?” Tcho presses hopefully.
“It’s really hard to make shielding that specific that isn’t extremely bulky,” JT tells him.
Tcho accepts JT’s professional opinion on that front. “Okay, well maybe there’s some sort of counteragent you can have in your blood since it’s targeting a symbiote there.”
“I think that would defeat—” JT clears her throat uncomfortably and starts over. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. This weapon is targeting the… what did you call it? The symbiotic thing, whatever that is. If you counteract that already, you’re going to lose whatever effect that symbiote provides.”
“I’m not suggesting that you irradiate yourself to wipe out that symbiote,” Tcho clarifies. “I’m suggesting something that will, I don’t know, add a protein layer…” The jargon continues for a while as Tcho proposes several medical approaches, such as decoy symbiotes that could bear the brunt of the energy blast, sparing the true ones. Or some other naturally-occurring but harmless bacteria that would preferentially absorb the energy.
JT lets Tcho voice his ideas for a bit but then interrupts him. “I really like your gusto on this, but if you get involved with this kind of technology, you’re putting a target on yourself,” she says seriously.
“If you’re not comfortable sharing your ideas with us, JT, that’s fine,” Tcho tells her earnestly. “Kerr-Lonn-Ny wasn’t comfortable with us just turning it over to the Rebels without some reassurances.” He glances up at the Cerean, but she still seems unwilling to talk.
“Turning it over to the Rebels…” JT murmurs, unsure of how she herself feels about that. The Rebels did a lot of medical research to help her friend Renn recover from Vira606, which was a threat to some of their other operatives as well. Dr. Shia Sunfell aboard the Nebulon B frigate Bail Organa could possibly be trusted with this. JT’s own friend Draac is part of the medical squad there now that Desert Rose Solutions has all gone its separate ways, but the former assassin is exactly the sort who would use this as a weapon. On the other hand, he also has friends who would benefit from a defense against it. People like DRS alums Cal and Chando, who are also working for the Rebellion these days.
“It’s part of my whole pile of things here for PD-101,” Tcho is saying when JT tunes back in to him.
“I think if you got it into the hands of Rebel medical personnel, then you might get what you’re looking for. If you put it in whatever the nearest Rebel dropbox is, then you’re never quite sure who’s going to get ahold of it,” JT says, having seen some of those locations herself.
“My dropbox is PD,” Tcho replies. “I don’t know where he takes things, and I don’t think he would tell me if I asked. I’m not really part of their organization. Are you suggesting that you have some sort of conduit to get this into the hands of people who would use it properly?”
“I have some contacts who have some contacts,” JT says vaguely.
“The Empire has this thing. Not protecting people from it isn’t going to make that problem go away,” Tcho insists.
“Well… On this datapad it looks like they have this one specific thing, the idea for it,” JT argues.
“Are you saying that you think this problem ends right here? And we should just destroy this?” JT frowns. She hates the idea of just destroying technology. “I hate the idea of this being out there and us ruining the only chance to do something about it,” Tcho continues, echoing her own thoughts. “Dargon could have other ones. Black Sun, you said, has it. This sounds like a medical problem that needs a solution.”
JT knows that Petey knows Renci. Her Cupcake is a soldier, but one that JT trusts. If Petey can get the disruptor to Renci with the instructions that it then go to a medic, JT has confidence it will end up in the right place. Under other circumstances, JT might handle this herself, but she has an appointment on Naboo immediately following this cruise. “Give it to Petey,” JT tells Tcho. “I will give him instructions on someone he should give it to.”
“You’re cool with that?” Tcho verifies.
“Yeah, this is a dangerous weapon.” A thought suddenly occurs to her, given the state of Tcho’s arm. “Oh my gosh, were either of you shot with this?”
To her surprise, Kerr-Lonn-Ny, who has been quietly observing up until now, speaks. “Yeah! It really stung!”
“But you only got the edge of the blast,” Tcho points out. “It could have been much worse.”
The Cerean is clearly mobile, having spent most of this conversation pacing, so JT relaxes a bit. “Good, good. And you’re safe. Maybe it wasn’t meant to attack you.”
Kerr-Lonn-Ny stops abruptly, her face giving away that JT has the wrong read on the situation. She does not like to take people into her confidence on this matter, but Tcho trusts JT, and JT did help Kerr-Lonn-Ny earlier in the voyage. And apparently JT has Rebel contacts too, even though she is not a Rebel herself. All the subterfuge going on here makes Kerr-Lonn-Ny uncomfortable; it will be easier to just get this out in the open. “Look, it’s a weapon that attacks Force-Sensitive people. I’m Force Sensitive,” she blurts out quickly, figuratively ripping off the bandage. She sits down heavily on the couch next to JT.
Believing Tcho already knows the same about her, JT reaches out and takes Kerr-Lonn-Ny’s hand in a comforting gesture. “Yeah, I know what it’s like. Me too.”
“Wow, you also?” Tcho looks at her, surprised.
“Yeah. I thought you already knew, Tcho. I pulled out a lightsaber.” That was the way Renci found out, too.
“What’s a lightsaber?” Tcho asks.
JT gives him a look, but his question is sincere. “Have you ever seen a fusion cutter? It’s like that, but imagine a blade instead of just a small torch,” JT says, foregoing a more technical explanation.
“Oh, that’s what you used to cut through the hull.”
“Yes! What, do you think anything else could cut through the hull?”
Tcho shrugs. “I thought it was a fusion cutter of some kind. You’re always talking about how awesome your hydrospanner is…”
“My hydrospanner is amazing.” JT drops her voice and adds, “It’s also a lightsaber.”
Tcho looks from JT to Kerr-Lonn-Ny, both of whom look rung-out from everything concerning this disruptor weapon. “Okay, well, both of you, I’m not telling anybody this.”
“No,” JT agrees, “because it would put you at more risk than you already are.”
Tcho looks at her, puzzled. “I am not a Force-y person.”
“The thing is, once you know someone who is, it’s trouble. I apologize to you, Tcho. That’s the kind of thing that increases the risk to your own life. If someone is looking for a Force user and they think they can get that information from you, that makes you a target, too. It’s not just a secret because I’m protecting myself, it’s a secret to protect other people, too.” JT pulls out an emergency milkshake and takes a long draw from the straw to comfort herself. When Tcho told her to come here, she did not expect things to take such a grim turn.
“So, both of you, are you comfortable with me including my medical notes with the device that gets delivered to JT’s contact?” Tcho asks.
“Sure. Whatever gets it to the right hands,” Kerr-Lonn-Ny agrees. “The more medical jargon the better.”
Tcho laughs. “I’ll see what I can do,” he says with a smile. He sets a datapad on his lap and starts awkwardly typing on it one-handed.
“Yeah, that’s great. And there’s a lot of intel on this one,” JT says of the datapad in her hands. “I’ll talk to Petey directly about all this.” Tcho was specifically instructed by PD-101 to not involve JT, so he will deliver the stolen items himself. With that all settled, JT expresses concern about her friends again. “So you two are okay then? That doesn’t look like a blaster shot this time, so that’s an improvement, right?”
Tcho gives a weak chuckle. “A blaster shot is a little more straightforward. It’s going to take a while for this flesh to repair. I caught it in an enormous drill bit.”
“The moff had mining equipment?”
“It’s probably for tunneling. Naboo is riddled with underground caverns and such, all full of water.”
“Huh! I’ll have to bring a rebreather,” JT says. “Although they probably have those there.” Can jetpacks work underwater? she wonders. Might have to make some adjustments.
“So it’s off to Naboo for you, then, JT?” Tcho asks.
“That’s the plan. I got the moff to agree to go on a tour of some serene places. There’s a chance we can get him to see—and maybe even regain—what he’s lost.”
“Good luck with that,” Tcho tells her sincerely.
“Thank you. Where are you headed next, Tcho?”
“I have no idea,” he admits.
“I think you need a vacation,” JT tells him with a mischievous smile.
Tcho laughs. “Don’t recommend that horrible Ryloth retreat to me again.”
“How about…” JT flips through some business cards. “Blue Spring Lodge. Frozen world, lots of snow. Also hot springs, great for getting back into shape.” And they were uncannily restorative, JT recalls.
“That actually sounds great,” Tcho says, accepting the card. It includes a discount code, since Blue Spring Lodge is a sister spa to the wellness center in New Meen on Ryloth.
“Uh, don’t eat the mushrooms if you find any. Not a good time,” JT warns. “Oh, and bring someone with you. Don’t just go alone and sulk.”
Tcho looks to Kerr-Lonn-Ny. “You seem rather stressed for having just completed a vacation.”
She lets out a sigh. “It was a little bit more than I bargained for. The cruise was a bad idea for trying to destress. If I want to destress, I should really just run an ultra-marathon.”
Tcho holds up the business card between two fingers. “Or you could go skiing…”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve done skiing,” she says, still sounding unconvinced.
Tcho smirks. “Then I might have a chance to beat you.”
“Oh, try me!” Kerr-Lonn-Ny shoots back, leaning over and snatching the card from his hand.
JT smiles, pleased at how everything has turned out.
Fin