An Incident on Dantooine - Crash

Slowly, muzzily, I swam back up into consciousness. I had the feeling that something had just gone horribly awry, but other than a nasty, throbbing headache, I had no hints as to what it was. I forced my eyes open. The lashes were all gummed up and wanted to stick together.

For some reason the pane of darkened glass a few centimeters in front of my face made me flash back to that useless art appreciation class. The starburst and the pattern of cracks is certainly striking, but I think the artist should have left out the reddish paint. Abruptly my eyes were caught by the slow oozing, and I realized that it was blood. The throbbing sped up, and as I recognized it as my heartbeat it slowed again.

Ah. I became aware that I was hanging from a speeder's restraint harness. Vertigo made it hard to tell for certain, but from the straps and the direction that the blood was going, I judged that my head was facing down. And the speeder was upside down I licked my lips and looked at the blood.

It was at that sort of brownish sticky point, partially but not entirely dry and clotted, that generally happened less than a half hour after it had been spilled. I blinked repeatedly and brought one hand up to my face to try and clear the gunk out of my eyelashes. My arms felt as if they had almost been wrenched out of their sockets, but they worked.

The stuff on my eyelashes was yet more drying blood. I plucked as much away from my eyelashes as I could, then explored the rest of my face.

My forehead felt absurdly tender, which, I was pretty sure, meant it had hit something. Probably the windscreen. Evidently Master Nisi's speeder isn't impact-resistant, otherwise there wouldn't be this lovely spiderweb pattern on the transparisteel. Careless of her.

The transparisteel had given me a stinging split bisecting my right eyebrow. Not a cut, it seemed, but that was where all the blood had come from. I could feel the edges of the wound, all raggedy and tattered. I'm lucky that it clotted. I could have bled to death. It didn't hurt nearly as much as that terrible throb in my head, of course, but it was annoying and possibly infected.

Concussion. I must've hit the windscreen hard enough to give myself a concussion. A mild one, I hope. That's never happened before. Of course, I've never been at the yoke in a speeder accident before, either.

Very carefully, I undid the the safety restraints and lowered myself down to where windscreen met the roof. The transparisteel creaked warningly, but didn't break any further. Good thing, too. My arms ached terribly. So did my eyebrow. And of course my head...

I'm lucky, or else the Force was with me. I could have hit face-first and driven my nose up into my brain and died. I could have a much more severe head injury. I could have broken bones. I could have bled to death. That didn't make matters any better. I found some packs behind the seat and fished one of Laury's presents out. I didn't have to try and puzzle out her awful handwriting to know what it said.

'Revan, I know you'll need this. Tell me when you're low; I can always make more. Flush it, rinse it out, but don't rub, just let it dry. If you forget to use it or do it wrong and I have to treat you for necrosis or any form of gangrene, I will make you wish you had died. And if you die before I can get to you, you still won't be safe, because I'll just get Arin to help me. I'd love to tell you not to use it all in one place, but I know better.'

Aligning the syringe with the hole in my eyebrow, I hit the release and clenched my teeth to keep from crying out. For a moment, the pain of flushing the hole out totally eclipsed my head. I hate irrigating cuts, I thought, miserable. Sure, it flushed out the contagions, but it hurt, and it had started bleeding again! Aaagh! The bubbles!

The worst of the pain passed, as it always did, and the hole and all the skin that had come into contact with Laury's solution started to tingle. I licked my lips, tasting blood and Laury's slightly peroxidous foaming rinse. If only she made quick-fixes for concussions and wrenching, too...

Opening the door- a rock or something kept it from swinging open all the way, but I was able to get it partially open and ease out - I surveyed the landscape. Hillier and more mountainous than the land around the Temple, the landscape here was still recognizably Dantooine's northern hemisphere. I glimpsed some kind of iriaz in the distance, and several blba trees. Summer heat was just beginning to turn the lavender grass golden, and evening was casting shadows everywhere.

The lining of my mouth had dried into something resembling bedsheets. I pulled a container of water off my belt and raised it to my lips, wincing both at the feeling in my arms and the twinge over my eyebrow when I winced.

I had a sudden flash of very vivid sensation; gulping the water down, then crumpling and vomiting until long after everything had left my stomach. The flash faded; puzzled, I sipped instead, swallowing carefully, as Nemo had taught.

What was- was that precog?! Am I precognitive? It wasn't too much of a surprise; I'd had several instances of predicting what was about to happen an instant before it happened, and several of my teachers had told me that new talents tended to materialize without much warning. Hell of a time for it to show up. I think it's short-term only; I've never been able to predict something more than a couple of minutes in advance. If only it'd warned me about running off and doing this...

Why am I here again? To punish Kreia for being a bad teacher and leaving without telling me? To make a point that I want a new Master? She's so damn frustrating. I shook my head and regretted it as the headache increased. My heartbeat, which had stopped hurting without my realizing it, started twinging again. Ow. I'm a total idiot. What was I thinking? I worked at that pain-suppression technique that Nemo had taught, making the pain in my head and arms recede. It was still there, but a little more distant.

For the first time, I felt a dull ache in my abdomen. I had no idea what it was or what had caused it, but, deciding that it couldn't be anything major, I ignored it. Why did I come alone, anyway? Sure, most of the gang is off-world. But Malak is still here, and if his Master sets him a task that takes him more then ten minutes to finish, I would be very surprised. Why didn't I bring him? He'd have jumped for the chance to drive a speeder without an instructor, particularly a nice speeder like Master Nisi's.

I blew the breath out of my lungs, slowly. I'd have started to talk to him, and all of a sudden I wouldn't have been mad any more. I might still have had this stupid plan in mind, and I'd probably have told it to him, but we would have worked at it. Made it more sane. And he wouldn't have crashed the speeder.

I replayed the scenario in my head. I'd gathered supplies, including some foodstuffs and a moisture vaporator, and disabled the security function on Master Bala Nisi's enclosed airspeeder. I'd dug into its storage compartments and discarded the tracking beacon, not wanting anyone to find me with it. Then I had climbed in and set the autopilot to take me to a distant site, almost on the other side of Dantooine, one of many that was rumored to have a set of caves containing Force crystals used for lightsabers. I'd figured that someone might think to track me by my Force-signature, and the nearness of the caves would mask that. Besides, I might pick up a few extra stones. I'd already forged my primary crystal, but a few more for focusing and maybe color wouldn't go amiss.

And then, during the long flight to my coordinates, I had dozed off, waking when the autopilot chimed, signaling that I'd arrived and was over said coordinates. So instead of reprogramming the autopilot to take me down, I'd grabbed the yoke and tried it myself.

And as anyone who's ever tried to teach me knows, I can't fly. At all.

I assumed that the Force had guided my hands during those last moments when I was jerking the controls around, frantically trying to correct my course and totally unaware that I was pressing the yoke forwards and down. There wasn't any other explanation as to how I'd survived that crash still able to walk and tend myself. I couldn't remember the crash itself. No doubt this was due to the speeder's sudden stopping and my forehead still moving at whatever speed I'd been at.

So why didn't I take Malak, anyway? Yesterday he said he was going to talk to someone about getting a new Master. But he'd made similar plans before which hadn't worked out. I hadn't asked for elaboration, and he hadn't offered to explain. I knew how painful it could be to get your hopes up. I think he would have left off on his plan and come with me if he'd known. Maybe that's why I didn't tell him. I'm getting as bad as Kreia, running off for my own reasons and never telling anyone why or when. No doubt he'd noticed my absence by now.

I'll make it up to him. For now, though, there was the matter of swallowing my pride and calling for help. I didn't think I'd be able to flip the speeder over - as an airspeeder, its cabin was fully enclosed, and the thing was much more massive than a landspeeder - and get the autopilot to fly me home, and this site was hundreds of kilometers from the nearest legitimate settlement. Asking for a rescue was the only way to get back. I needed someone to look at my head and make sure I hadn't done anything permanent.

I slid back into the speeder's cabin and, standing on the ceiling and reaching up, switched the comm board on.

A faint, high whine started up, and something sputtered. Hastily, I switched it back off and the sounds ceased. Feeling my heart sink, I thumbed the maintenance panel open and surveyed the mass of chewed wires and circuitry. Vermin had been at it. I hoped that there were extra cables in a compartment somewhere, but I had a sneaking suspicion that if there were, they too would be ruined.

I was right. I was hoping to be wrong, but, as happened a lot, I was right.

Great. Well, I've taken wilderness survival classes, plenty of them, and I've done pretty well. I can live out here. It was true- but I'd never been without a comm to summon help if I got in over my head. I could handle most of Dantooine's predators, but what if there were grauls about? What if one of Dantooine's summer thunderstorms built up? Or a tornado? Or perhaps one of the mountains would avalanche-

Get a hold on yourself. Be rational. The mountains here weren't as huge and stony and steep as in certain other areas. They were more like vast hills; they were littered with rocky outcroppings, but there wasn't much loose stone. It wasn't winter; there was no snow here. An avalanche was not at all likely.

Mountain ranges break up airflow. These weren't "real" mountains, and a tornado, if it was close, would have no trouble traveling up or down the slopes, but the hilliness would reduce the chances of one forming here. Besides, this is Dantooine. Tornadoes are a rarity; the weather is just too mild for them to be common. Chances of even seeing a tornado were vanishingly small.

And thunderstorms? Or grauls? I wouldn't be able to do anything if either threat surfaced, nor did I have any way to safeguard myself. So I might as well stop worrying.

I set up camp.

I noticed it when I was squatting in the patch of chest-high grass I had delegated for a latrine. There was blood spattered and smeared on the inside of my underdrawers. I stared at it, blank for a moment. Safety restraints are designed to prevent injuries to abdominal organs. I'd need to be hit pretty bad to be bleeding there. Looks thicker than normal blood. It seems to be mixed with some kind of other tissue.

Another dull ache rolled through my abdomen, and I felt a very curious sensation, almost as if I had gotten a miniscule square of vine-silk smeared in petroleum jelly jammed down there, and it had just been teased out. I had never felt that particular sensation before, but Laury had. I'd picked it up last time she'd image-shared with me. She hadn't been willing to tell me just what it was, only that I'd know when I was older.

Urination only confirmed this; while the fluid had picked up some of the blood on the way out, it was not in itself bloody.

First the breaststrap, now this... So I've become a woman. And I get to bleed once a month, every month, for as few as thirty and possibly as many as fifty years. Doubtless before long the hormones will start to fog my brain and I'll become an emotional scatterwit. It's already begun, I'm sure; I'm fairly certain that I've never run away by myself before. Hooray. This is not worth having a slightly longer lifespan and a more efficiently-circulated brain.

Still, like it or not, I am female, and I don't really want to be a male, either. I can get an implant to minimize the effects of the estrogen. I can probably get another one for the bleeding and the cramps. This is temporary. Entirely temporary. Repeating that to myself, I hiked my underdrawers back up, rearranged my robe to my satisfaction, and walked back to my camp, noticing with acute displeasure the sensation of wetness. A length of wrapped bandage in my drawers helped somewhat, but the thought of having to change it regularly chased away any relief that I might have felt.

I lowered myself onto a convenient outcropping with a sigh. Unpleasant as that latest discovery was, it was at least a distraction. The concussion I'd given myself yesterday evening had evidently been quite mild; the only lasting effect it had was a headache, a little nausea, and a total lack of appetite, which weren't too important. Tending myself and setting up a camp could only take so much of my time. It didn't change the fact that I was stranded out here with no way to communicate or get back.

Well... not exactly. There was the Force. I could probably contact someone back at the Temple, if I reached out far enough. It was an awfully long ways away, and my talents definitely don't lie in the area of long-range information transmission. But it's either this, or just waiting around and hoping someone will get over here. Surprised I didn't think of it before.

I thought about eating something- my last meal had been yesterday, at midday, but even the notion of food was sickening. I knew, from the way the world spun around me, that I was starting to get lightheaded, and my blood sugar was starting to run low, as Laury might say. But even the blandest paste in my rations pack held no appeal. I settled for another long drink of water, this one with a packet of sour-tinged nutrient powder added.

In case it rained or something - the clouds were distant and fluffy, but there were no guarantees that they would stay that way - I crept under the overturned airspeeder, onto the pile of brush and leaves that had served as my bed last night, where I lay down and closed my eyes. This would do. I began to meditate.

When I had prepared myself as best I could, when I was deep enough in meditation that I was hardly even aware of my body, I extended my senses and searched for Force - Sensitives. The farther someone was from me, the more difficult it would be for me to "see" them, I knew, although it was always easier to "see" Force - Sensitives. But the sheer number of Jedi apprentices, instructors, support staff, and visiting Knights and Masters, all concentrated in the few square kilometers of Temple grounds, would make them much easier to find, I knew.

But it turned out that I didn't have to go that far. There was a moderately strong Force - Sensitive not ten kilometers away, surrounded by several with marginal Force abilities. A teacher training a very young class, maybe? All the way out here? There's something kind of suspicious about that. I reached out for it, "saw" it, "touched" it, "tasted" it. Whoever this was, he had thought patterns that were close enough to being human that I had no trouble with them.

I sensed nothing malignant, nothing that repulsed me or drew me in suspiciously. There was something... different... about whoever this was, as if he hadn't been trained properly, but I didn't find any wrongness. Strange that his presence in the Force had not changed when I "tasted" it; an exploratory probe in the Force is one of the first things a young apprentice is trained to recognize. This definitely wasn't someone that I knew or had ever met before. But then again, I can't meet everyone. And he could just be a visitor.

I pressed harder, trying to get noticed. It was like trying to catch the attention of a headblind; maybe he was subconsciously aware of me, but he didn't know it, and he didn't respond. If I was physically closer - if I had stronger telekinesis - I might have picked up a stone and hurled it at him to catch his attention.

Finally, finally, he picked up on me. Not knowing what else to do, and unable to transmit words, I cried out the concept of need. It wasn't as easy as it might sound. It's hard to form concepts; not quite an image or a sensation, and definitely not a word or a phrase. Sort of a summary, but not really. I'd studied them briefly, but sharing one over a distance with someone I'd never met was new to me.

Apparently it worked, though. The stranger's presence changed further, and he oriented towards me, emanating what I took to be reassurance.

Overextertion caught up with me, then, and my contact thinned to a wire, then snapped. I lay back in my body, feeling achy and immensely tired. My nose hadn't quite started bleeding the way it did when I really overextended myself, but the existing headache had resumed accompanying my heartbeat with a twinging throb.

Everything will be fine. I'll just rest for a moment, I told myself, and closed my eyes.