He Who Is Without Sin

[Oisin Ocasta]

Closed for now; will be open to Rogues once I get the intro stuff done!

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"Hey! Listen!"

The volume that his voice managed to achieve - and the slightly unexpected and higher pitch than normal - surprised him almost as much as the poor woman seated opposite. Fortunately, it had the desired effect, halting the rather grating noises that were tumbling out of her mouth. "Listen, crazy lady," he tried again, at a slightly more restrained tone; it only just dawned on him that he was standing, pacing back and forth with emphatically gesticulating hands, though in truth he'd been so close to nodding off this past however long he'd been here that he could have been standing for hours without realising. "Or make not-crazy lady, I guess would be more apt. But whatever."

He shook his head, and a hand, to forestall any attempts by his mind to sidetrack him. "We seem to have a difference of opinion here. You seem to think that I have a problem. I seem to think that I don't have a problem. I'm sure you're very good at your... job?" He frowned, mind momentarily blank at what her occupation actually was; oh, right. Psychiatrist. Psychological profile. Make not-crazy lady. Right. "And I'm sure all these long, complicated words that keep tumbling out of you in that fancy Chandrilan accent are very profound and insightful. But I am fine. I have no problem; I do not have any issues with forming personal connections with people. I just happen to enjoy working alone in my little recon plane immensely less annoying than hanging around with a room full of fighter jocks."

He sighed, slumping down in his chair. This was a routine thing; they'd been evaluating him two or three times a year since Kobalos had died. Apparently, some profiler person somewhere had arbitrarily decided that because he'd lost X close friends and relatives in the destruction of Alderaan rather than the Rebellion standard Y, he was at a greater risk of an emotional and mental breakdown. When his only surviving friend had died at Endor, and he'd requested a nice, peaceful, lonely recon assignment? Woah, nelly. Time to sound general quarters, and get the emergency services standing by for when he crashed and burned, apparently.

As he'd explained to every head shrink he'd seen over the past few years, he was fine. Okay, so maybe he was a little quirky; a little weird; a little awkward with people. What they didn't seem to realise was that, if you'd asked any of his friends or family from back on Alderaan what he was like as a person, 'quirky', 'weird', and 'a little awkward with people' would have been their assessment of him too. Maybe with something about him being lazy, having wasted his obvious potential by not trying hard enough, and possibly his phobia of butterflies thrown in. But the first bits were the important part. Weird was normal. When he started acting normal? That would be weird.

Realising that he'd just run through that whole explanation silently in his head rather than aloud, he sighed, reluctant to go through it again. He settled for a much simpler approach. "I am fine," he assured; "And more importantly, I am good at my job. Really good. So how about we tick some boxes, sign on some lines, and we put this issue to bed? That way I can do what I'm paid to do."

A penetrating glare stared across the room at him, hanging on for more than a few extra moments beyond the okay, now this is awkward point. Eventually the eyes peeled away, the slightest sigh of resignation that Oisin had ever witnessed escaping her lungs. "Very well, Mister Ocasta." She twirled the stylus idly in her fingers as she cycled through the datapad to the relevant page. "I am clearing you for active duty, but with the provision that you participate in another interview of this nature in three months time."

"Three months?" The volume, and the outrage was back. So was the glare. He backed down, sighing as his shoulders slumped in resignation. "Fine," he muttered, eyeing her darkly. "You are one mean shrink."

In response, the psychologist offered the most painfully unconvincing and unreassuring smile in the history of the universe. A mix of panic and dread swam together, and prodded at Oisin's innards. Oh great, he thought bitterly. Three months time: something to look forward to.

[Oisin Ocasta]

Whoever had designed the fluorescent flame-orange jumpsuits that X-Wing pilots of the Rebel Alliance habitually wore was either a bastard, or an evil genius: Oisin couldn't be sure which at this point. Obviously, the hideously bright colour was a safety feature: something to help rescue planes spot a pilot that had gone EVA against the blackness of space. He didn't begrudge that, despite the fashion faux pas it led to. It was more the tailoring that annoyed him.

Yes, he understood that the Rebellion needed everything to be as generic and one-size fits all as possible: but did it really need to grip so tightly around his stomach, and hang so loose around his groin? Whoever was responsible for the design was clearly some kind of stick-thin member of some sort of equine species.

Whatever. Oisin had long ago learned to stow a little extra padding down there; an enticing surprise for any ladies whose eyes would no doubt be covertly checking him out across the flight deck, and a little extra crotch support for him during those long hours of trying to remain comfortable in the pilot couch on a recon mission.

Today wasn't recon of course, though he would be trekking out into space aboard his trusty Recon-X, complete with all those pokey, pointy things sticking out of the front. No: today was a milk run. Some more "special passengers" - he even made the punctuation marks with his fingers as he walked, accidentally dislodging the helmet tucked under one of his arms and having to fumble to catch it before anyone noticed - who wanted to hook up with their little space convoy. They couldn't just go having people showing up: announcing the position of The Wheel like that risked leaking information to all kinds of undesirable people; they'd already had the Empire crashing their space party once, and the Rebellion wasn't exactly hankering for a repeat.

That was where pilots like Oisin came in. New arrivals would head to a remote rendezvous, and the recon plane would jump out to meet them. In the meantime, The Wheel would jump to new coordinates - that the recon pilot knew - so that Imperial spies couldn't back-trace his vector. The new arrivals would then slave their nav computers to his astromech and, once the Recon-X's sensors reported that the vicinity was clear of Imperial pursuit, he'd lead them through a trio of short decoy jumps to mask their intended direction before dropping them at the new coordinates - usually in deep space, away from any obvious systems - where The Wheel was waiting.

Speaking of his astromech; as Oisin drew up alongside his plane, his eyes turned upwards to R2-R10, being lifted from the deck and into the back of his X-Wing by the magnetic loading arm. Arten was uttering a low, mournful whistle in droid speak, nervous as ever about heights. Oisin sighed and shook his head. He should probably wipe the droid: but the composite event in his programming had led to a personality that, much to his dismay, he'd grown kinda fond of.

"Damn it, Artie," he muttered. "We fly through space. How the hell are you scared of heights?" A staccato blast of tweets and warbles exploded from R10's simplistic vocabulator; something about there being no gravity in space, and his inner workings not reacting well to sudden impacts with solid surfaces. Oisin cocked his head to the side, considering the fact that he too wouldn't react too well to such an impact, and would likely be equally peturbed by being hefted airwards by such a dauntingly unsecure conveyance. "You have a good point there, buddy," he conceeded.

The appearance of a figure behind him interrupted the conversation before it could expand into anything more: a Lieutenant from the Valkyries, Oisin discovered from his flight suit decorations; and presumably the lucky son of a Sith who was overseeing the CAP for this jump. "Oisin Ocasta?" he asked, pronouncing his name: Oi, Sin.

Ocasta fought back a shudder. "Sure," he shot back, "If you wanna read my name like an uncultured moron." The blank look on the fellow LT's face only advertised his cluelessness, and added to Oisin's frustration. "It's pronounced You Sheen," he said slowly, a couple of hand gestures thrown in for good measure. "Like Eugene, except, you know." His voice trailed off, disappointed that he hadn't managed to sound more assertive. "Less sheeny."

The Lieutenant stared blankly for a beat, before dragging his eyes away and back to the datapad in his hands. "Lets go with Echo," he offered, deferring to the pilot's personal callsign.

"Echo is good," Oisin agreed.

Another pause ensued, while a somewhat hesitant Lieutenant gathered himself to continue his briefing. "I'm sure you know the drill already; it's the same procedure we've been operating for weeks. You're looking at a two-hour flight time to your rendezvous; the trail fighter the convoy will be leaving behind is on orders to remain for six hours; so if anything goes wrong, punch it back here, and not to the new coordinates." Without a word he offered the datapad to Echo along with a stylus.

Oisin nodded: pretty standard fare; routine, and all that. Which probably meant it'd go hideously wrong, if the fates still had the same sense of cliché irony that they normally did. "Copy that," he acknowledged, accepting the datapad, and signing off on the receipt of his orders. He returned it as wordlessly as it had been given.

"Good hunting, Echo," the Lieutenant added finally; a platitude to terminate the conversation in appropriate pilot fashion.

Oisin let out a one-note laugh. "If I have to do any 'hunting'," he countered, gesturing to the sensor equipment crammed into the spaces on his X-Wing where the torpedo launchers normally were, "Then we're all screwed."

[Inyos Aamoran]

It had been a long time since he'd been in a ship like this: twenty-five years in fact, if the ship's internal chronometer was to be believed. Inyos took the computer at it's word: on the sunless world of Ord Ithil, the years had blurred together into one unending day; and his mind was so addled by the ordeal that he could scarcely recall enough details to formulate any knowledge to the contrary.

Even if he did just accept every piece of information he was presented with, comprehending the timeline of it all was a complex affair. Many had taken to referring to dates in relative terms. Some spoke in terms of years since Palpatine had declared his New Order: that at least presented Inyos with a landmark he recognised; how could he forget the deaths and destruction of the entire Jedi Order?

Others meanwhile spoke in terms of years relative to the destruction of Alderaan, or to the Battle of Yavin: Inyos wasn't entirely sure what had transpired at what, if memory serves, was a relatively unsuspecting Outer Rim world, but he knew where Alderaan was, and the notion that someone had wiped an entire planet out of existence shook his already fragile grasp on reality a little looser. The what responsible was apparently a 'Death Star', though the who was a much murkier issue. Some said that the Empire was responsible: that Palpatine had built the Death Star as a weapon of terror, to frighten any rebellious worlds within his dominion into compliance. Others blamed a terrorist organisation that called itself the Alliance to Restore the Republic: either they'd built the station themselves, which Inyos thought unlikely, or they had commandeered a 'harmless' mining station that the Empire had constructed, and twisted it to more nefarious means.

Others meanwhile spoke in terms of years After Endor: a battle on another planet that was too remote and unimportant for Inyos to even have heard of it, but which had apparently been the sight of a galaxy-changing battle, and the destruction of another Death Star. The official story was that Palpatine himself had travelled to the world to thwart an attempt by the Rebellion to construct another planet-destroying super weapon; he had succeeded, but he and much of the Imperial leadership had been killed in the process. Others meanwhile credited Luke Skywalker - supposedly a Jedi Knight - with the destruction of this Death Star, as well as it's predecessor, saying that he and his Alliance of outlaws had given their lives to prevent Palpatine from completing his replacement iron fist terror station. The name at least sounded plausible: Inyos half wondered if this Luke Skywalker was a descendant of Anakin Skywalker, though how such a feat could be achieved was beyond him, given how Skywalker was one of the Jedi confirmed as dead after the Purge. It hardly mattered now, of course: whoever he was, Skywalker was dead.

Inyos fought the urge to sigh. What he needed was to settle down in the Jedi Archives, and spend a few days in quiet, contemplative learning. Unfortunately that was not an option; what he had instead was the cabin of a run-down old Theta-class shuttle, and a few hours of waiting in the featureless void of deep space.

Gentle musical tones cascaded from the speakers of the military surplus shuttle that Inyos had dubbed the Viridian Knight: an allusion to Mandan Hidatsa, the close friend and fellow Jedi who was as a brother to him, in all but blood. Inyos had always found music distracting; detrimental to his attempts to meditate and find peace. Mandan on the other hand had relished in it, believing the structures and compositions of classical music in particular to be a perfect analogue to the Living Force with which he was so attuned. It seemed fitting that Inyos listen to such instrumentals now: and besides, so many of his old opinions and old ways had been proven wrong or futile of late; perhaps Mandan's way had been the right one after all.

His eyes flickered, his meditation slightly disturbed. He was a brother to me, a voice muttered in his mind, fighting against the urges of Inyos' conscious to quell any unsolicited thought, And yet we killed him anyway. His mind taunted him with flashes of memory; stirred at the emotions of hate and rage that had, for a moment, wrestled Inyos free of the rigid control and order that he usually clung to so tightly. He had lost control; lost sight of the light; and in the darkness that consumed him, Mandan had been killed by his hand. He had drowned in that darkness for a time, and while he had since surfaced and been carried back to the shore, the ground beneath him was shaky: the harrowing experience had left Inyos forever changed.

The battle between Inyos' conscious mind and his inner self-loathing and despair was thankfully halted by a chime on his console: a synthesised warning of a ship appearing from Hyperspace. Inyos clambered to his feet, moving with a stiffness and slow pace that seemed dissonant with the relative youth that the dark side had preserved for him, and advanced to the cockpit. By the time he arrived, the comm circuits were already registering an incoming transmission. He halted the music, and keyed the relevant frequency into the cockpit's audio systems instead.

"- this is callsign Echo; identify, or you will be fired upon."

Inyos mused the message; wondered how many times it must have repeated for this Echo person to have resorted to a threat of attack. Inyos hoped several: were it otherwise, it would hardly bode well for his concerns that the Alliance to Restore the Republic and their rumoured secret convoy of surviving Jedi might not be an appropriate home after all. Pushing his bad feelings aside, he activated the controls that would broadcast his response:

"Message recieved, Echo. This is Inyos Aamoran aboard the Viridian Knight. I am transmitting my identification code; please stand by."

He hesitated for a moment, searching his memory for the relevant sequence, before punching in the appropriate alphanumerics. His eyes peered out through the cockpit canopy, trying to visually identify the craft that had him in its sights. There were echoes of a few craft he recognised - a little Z-95, and maybe a dash of ARC-170 with those engines and S-Foils - but for the most part, it was as unfamiliar to him as just about everything in the galaxy these days. He allowed a sigh to escape him.

A crackle of static heralded the reply from Echo. "Everything checks out all fine and dandy, Viridian Knight. Looks like I wont need to blast you out of the stars after all." Inyos hoped that was relief and not disappointment he could hear in the pilot's voice; though admittedly with all the vocal distortion, it was pretty tough to tell.

"We're going to be making a series of hyperspace jumps," Echo explained, advancing the conversation before Inyos had too much time to dwell. "Just to mask the location of our convoy. Things would go a lot more smoothly if you'd be willing to slave your nav computer to my astromech, so we can input the jump coordinates directly."

That sounded reasonable enough; and Inyos wasn't exactly a fan of piloting anyway, so an excuse to do otherwise was perfectly fine with him. "Understood, Echo," he transmitted back, activating the necessary subroutines within the shuttle's computer. "I'll take advantage of the time for a little meditation."

"Alrighty then, Mister Jedi: I'll wake you up when we get there."

Those words - that notion - struck a chord with Inyos; one that caused him to slump back a little in his seat. Please do, his mind whispered, eyes glazing out of focus as they stared out at the stars. Wake me up, and tell me this is all a horrible dream.