Dorn: A Star Wars Story

22. Squadmate

I would be lying if I said that I wasn't a little angry at the whole Rishi mess. It was our first full scale failure. We walked away with nothing to show for it. Nobody seemed particularly upset considering the situation, and Director Dorne was more than accommodating with us and had already begun to coordinate with our combined resources within the First Order to track down where Venn had gone next.

I was sitting in my office and pouring over documents when my door opened and I found Nyra standing there in our usual black uniforms. She looked almost nervous as Peek turned to her and gonked out a cheery welcome, and I looked up and lowered the datapads I was holding to smile at her. "Come in, Captain. What brings you to the dungeons?" I asked with a chuckle and she seemed to relax. Out of all of the people Horran brought to the table, I liked Nyra the best, if I was being honest. She had a good head on her shoulders and thought a lot like I did, albeit slightly less risky. She helped balance out Horran and I, and it never did take me long to realize how she made it as his XO while only being a year younger than me.

"General... About Rishi... I'm sorry, sir. We should have been-"

"Call me "sir" again and I'll demote you."

That got a smile out of her, and I gestured for her to take a seat across from me in one of the chairs I had set up. "Alright then, Vengeant."

"Just call me 'Dorn', Captain. All of my friends do it, and as far as I'm concerned, we've all been together long enough to be on nickname basis in private."

"Fair enough, Dorn. Anyway, I mean it about Rishi. We should have been on top of it."

"Nothing we could have done. I don't think we were expecting the Wraiths."

"We have the finished reports from Balos and Peavey. They had confirmed engagements with Apalis. Apparently, they fly really, really well."

"Force sensitive?"

"Novaran doesn't seem to think so," Nyra leaned back in her chair as she spoke and I watched her run an exhausted hand over her face before she fully fell back with a sigh. "I'm getting worried that we might need to step it up a notch. This is getting out of hand."

"I agree," and I fully did. I rested back in my chair and closed my eyes with a sigh as I thought about what we'd be dealing with now that Venn had fighters that could match us. Not all of them, but even one Ace was enough to make this entire thing start getting slightly complicated.

And I was getting tired of it.

"What do you think?" I leaned forward in my chair and rested my elbows on the table as I watched Nyra sit back up again. "I need new eyes, Haleryck."

She paused for a moment before she leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, brow furrowing low over her eyes as she seemed to consider what to do. "Maybe we need to stop going to Venn," she looked up at me, her foot bouncing her leg as she thought. "We have some locations, right? And we have Old Spooky and Dusty there," she gestured to my desk with her chin, "so maybe we should use him."

To my surprise, the ghost had nothing to say about his rather interesting nickname.

"It clearly doesn't have any issues throwing us wherever Venn goes, so maybe we should use it to get ahead of him," she looked up at me and our eyes locked. I could tell that she wasn't entirely keen on using the Sith spirit, but we were starting to lose the advantage. "I don't like it, but a tool is a tool."

"And they're there to be used," I added as I reached into my desk drawer and revealed the small box with the crystal contained inside. Nyra looked down at it before she looked up at me and frowned.