Snippet #2490510

Temi Tobin stood on the bridge above the outdoor docking bay containing the diplomatic shuttle that she and the others were set to board, hands in her long coat pockets and her long brown hair sweeping down to the middle of her back. Half of her hand covered the lower part of her face in intense contemplation.

In the last five years she had been a part of the rebuilding of any sort of galactic order, after the invasion of the Yuuzhan Vong and their shameful destruction on so many worlds. She had just turned 23 when everything had fallen apart; she hadn't been in service for very long. She was delighted to discover that her parents had been off-world during the events on Coruscant. It had taken everyone a long time to decompress after the traumatic time. By now, most of the bureaucrats and aides who had survived and stayed on had nerves of steel and rock-hard shells.

Temi felt that she'd more than achieved the shell aspect, but still lacked the nerves of steel as she felt her stomach twist. Never since the first days of the collapse of the government had she felt like her life was in any danger. But with all the holovid reports and inter-agency memos that had been circulated about the suspiciously high number of assassinations of Jedi in recent weeks, she couldn't help but feel nervous. She and a small group were the advance party for a number of visits and potential negotiation talks with worlds on the Outer Rim. It was hard for the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances to tell if they would be welcomed or warded off by which worlds. It was hard to gather intelligence these days to get a sense of where everyone landed when it came to them.

She pulled out her datapad and made a note of the time as part of her detailed daily journal, kept not only for personal purposes but also to track her own movements at work in case anything she did was disputed. There was no telling what stories others might try to concoct as part of political games distracting everyone from their goals. She walked off and stood outside of the elevator to the docking bay; four Verpines greeted her when the door opened. They calmly walked past, green heads towering over her. She entered and waited for the door to open on the bottom floor. A gust of warm air greeted her as she walked out onto the platform, watching the busy scene of capital city traffic sparkling and braying from behind the shuttle. The warm night air felt good. She took a deep breath as she boarded the ship, greeting the others onboard quickly as she made her way to her bunk and placed her packed bag on her sleeping pallet. She removed her maps from her bag, peeled off her coat, and straightened her scarf. There wasn't any time to be wasted.

She immediately joined the others in the main cabin of the small ship and set straight about to a briefing and updating their plan. They had to execute these treaties perfectly. Some of them didn't even notice when the ship lifted off from its platform, rose slowly into space, and then zapped off into hyperspace toward the Outer Rim.