The Way of the Mystics
by Tilt
(continued from Part 4)
Kee didn't say anything when Theri let herself relax into the Force to land the little shuttle in the Temple's hangar. With all that had happened to them in the last three days, he could well understand that Coruscant's endless streams of ship traffic would be too much to deal with on her frazzled nerves.
The shuttle settled onto it's landing gear with loud hisses from the hydraulics. Ben and Kee began shutting down the navigation and weapons systems as Theri shut down the engines. "Hey, look!" Ben said suddenly, nodding at the the two figures now standing just outside the yellow and black striped lines, obviously waiting for them. "Torin's supposed to be in Tactics class right now. What's he doing here?"
They grabbed up their cloaks and packs and rushed toward the rampway, Ben bouncing down first, eager to see his friend. Torin grinned as Ben came down the ramp, waved his friend a few yards away to talk to him. Master Windu nodded to Kee. "We're needed up in the Operations center. We were only waiting for you to come back with Ben. The situation on Teravin has gone from bad to worse. Terrorist attacks, bad ones. And it has Federation written all over it."
Behind them, Ben suddenly dropped his backpack and cloak and grabbed Torin in a hug. "Confirmed?! You confirmed without me here? You did it? Really?"
Torin nodded, laughing, and Master Windu looked over at them and smiled a little wistfully. Kee quirked one eyebrow up at his old partner. "You went ahead and confirmed Torin for this?"
Windu sighed heavily. "He was ready. You said it yourself. I guess we're both going to be empty-nesters together, old man. But you know he'd be perfect for this, with his interest in urban warfare. We've got reports the terrorists are using mechanoids. He's needed on this mission."
"We've still got Theri to run around the cubes," Kee said, smiling down at her. She grinned up at him and hefted the backpack full of water-beryls over her shoulder.
"But we had plans! We were going to--" Ben started, but Torin gave him a warning look. "Ah well, there's always later. So how did you do? Who did they get you to fight?"
"Master Koon, believe it or not," Torin said with a lopsided grin. "Shosin was half-terrified he'd slice me down the middle or something. But I did it! I still can't believe it, but I did it!"
"Ben, Torin, we have work to do, you two have to go through the briefing," Kee said, lifting his pack and Theri's onto the repulsor-lift baggage droid as it trundled up to them. R2-D2 came rolling up behind it, whistling and beeping a blue streak at them in greeting. Theri tried to hide her grin. Even Kee didn't know she could understand R2 perfectly now.
"Beloved," Kee said, turning toward her, "We've all got to get up to Operations. Go on up to the apartment. Stay there if you want, or go on to classes or down to Qualara to practice, or go meditate. But I want you to try not to reach for my mind until I call you. Don't link with me, or at least try your best not to. I'm going to be very busy, and some of the stuff we'll be talking about is secret and has to remain that way. Understand?"
Theri looked up at him for a moment, scowled, and nodded. [I think I'm going to spend the day meditating. I've had enough craziness the last few days.]
Kee nodded, kissed her swiftly, and turned to go.
Theri stood outside Master Yoda's door and reached tentatively into the rooms beyond with her mind, just to see if the old one was there. And the door opened in front of her in invitation as she felt the Force move around her.
[Felt you return, I did.]
She walked forward into the watery gloom and it felt like every muscle unknotted at once. Whatever else happened to her, whatever else she did, this place was safe. She could think whatever she wanted here, she could be herself here, without having to worry what anyone else would think of it. In here, at least, she could be a Mystic and not have to pretend to be a Jedi.
She pushed the bead curtain aside and saw a familiar blue glowing figure sitting on her usual pillow in front of Yoda. Inda grinned up at her, raking his hair back with one hand.
[Have you been telling on me?] Theri Sent to him.
[Bragging on you, more like,] he returned as she sank down onto another pillow beside him and tugged off her boots to fold her legs up in the lotus position. He rolled his eyes at this. [I never could manage to do that trick.]
Theri snorted a laugh and turned to Yoda. "I see now why you said Inda would want me to know of him. He'd been hanging around me ever since my Master Therasslen died. And he told you to show me the hologram, so my mind could focus on him so he could talk to me directly. Right?"
"Through you, Qui-Gon as well," Yoda said serenely, leaning back into his pillows.
Theri nodded and looked away. [Did you see what happened in the shuttle? With my brother-cousin Dalryn?] she Sent to Inda tentatively.
[Yes. I told you I'd be listening in,] he Sent back. [And afterwards, with your man Kee. You are one screwed up kid right now, and we need to go over all this and sort it out. Your mind is shakier than a vat full of half-melted gelfoam.]
Theri nodded again. "I guess Master Inda's told you everything, huh Master Yoda?"
Yoda shrugged, his ears falling as he closed his eyes for a moment. "Many things. Trapped in cave with Maul. Teaching Maul. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan fighting. Brother trying to sell you to Maul. And nearly falling into Dark." Yoda opened his eyes again and pinned her with a steely look. "Begin at beginning, leave nothing out!"
Theri sighed and sent her mind back to the water-beryl caves, the darkness and the dampness of the water dripping down from the ceiling, the yellow glow of the hoverlight, the feel of the rock under her hands as she climbed down the fall of granite. The first sight of the little cave full of water-beryls. [I guess it began when I jumped off that ledge down to the floor...]
She told them everything. She could hardly have left anything out or held anything back. They were both telepaths and would hear if she lied or tried to hide something. But it was her feelings, her intuitions, they were interested in, not truly the facts of what happened. The actual events were like triggers setting off insights and connections in her mind. With Inda and Yoda, she had time to recognize now the symbolic meanings of what had happened, the significance of things she'd only half-realized during the events themselves. There were layers and layers of meaning to every event, every circumstance. The will of the Force was apparent in every moment, if one stopped to look for it. And in the cave with Maul, Theri had felt the Force moving her and moving around her like a hurricane wind.
[Your man told you something about quests, didn't he? Seekings?] Inda Sent.
"Yes. But I didn't get it at the time. I was just going to get my lightsaber crystals. It wasn't a quest."
[Not for you, no. For Maul,] Inda Sent back. [Only he didn't know it and still doesn't.]
Theri blinked up at him in confusion and he shrugged with one shoulder. "So what is he looking for?"
"Knowledge." Yoda said serenely.
[Ultimately, yes. Knowledge,] Inda agreed. [Or rather, the Force is moving him to find it, not that he's looking for it himself yet. But the Force arranged that whole thing in the cave in order for him to meet you on relatively peaceful terms and for us to tell him all we did. He thinks Sidious wants you so they can squish Jedi. True, as far as it goes. But Maul is deeper than that. He just doesn't know it yet. You know the symbolic meaning of being eaten by some big fish? Or the symbolic meanings associated with water and watery stuff?]
"Getting eaten by a fish means something about going into the Dark, going into the subconscious mind, the underworld, things like that. Water has to do with the subconscious too. The parts of a quest where you go into the dangerous bits," Theri answered.
Inda nodded. [Yup. And in those underworld passages, that's where you get the deep knowledge. The same things applies to caves, the whole idea is about going downwards into some place underneath or inside, inside a fish or a cave or whatever. And then you have to come back out and use whatever you've learned, assimilate it into your mind and use it. So you were the one teaching. Maul chases after you because he thinks he can get some sort of use out of you. He thinks it's material, squishing Jedi and getting money and all that. But the Force has other ideas. He's going to learn whether he wants to or not.]
Theri didn't envy Maul. "But I wonder how he'll use that knowledge. Will he just stay Dark or start toward the Light?"
Yoda shrugged. "It matters not. Dark, Light, all same path. All roads lead to the Force."
Theri grinned faintly. If Kee had heard this, he'd have had a conniption fit. Inda quirked an eyebrow at her, hearing this thought. "How is all this related to the Mystic questing? What kind of underworld did I go into when I went into the Force?"
Inda grinned. [The nebula was symbolic for the Dark of your own mind, that fear you had of going down through the core of your own self to get to the Force. Plus it was just a damned convenient way to do the questing. The Dark is both the devouring void and the womb before birth. The process doesn't end with death. So you were in either the star before it was created or the ruins of a star. Death and decay are what bring life. Think about it. When a tree dies and rots, what comes out of the rotting log? New seedlings grow from the decay. Because the decay, the rot, feeds the seedlings. It's the same with the mind and soul. Everytime you think you can't do something, everytime you go through the fear, no matter what it is, you come out with knowledge. You come out knowing more about yourself. In a sense, you're reborn. And that knowledge makes you grow spiritually. You felt that the morning after the cave-in. I could hear it. You stood there in the forest near that rock of yours and thought about it. You hadn't felt that way before, had you?]
Theri shook her head. "No. Is that what I'm trying to get to? Feeling the Force in the processes of life all around me? Not just in my head?"
Inda nodded. [Yeah, kid. That's it. What good's going into the Force and disappearing? Can't tell anyone else that way, can you? The ideal is to be able to do both at once, live your life here so you can teach, but be constantly in the Force as well. Bit of a balancing act, yeah, but there's no greater way to live, no more way to live a life that's half as real or alive. You've been doing all right so far, you've sort of been going back and forth between the Force and mundane life, but it takes time to get the trick down.]
Theri closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing, blanking her mind and reaching for the Force. The endless spiral turning in her soul, from Light to Dark to Light again, and the true Force within and beyond the two. That core of every atom, every black hole, every star, every sentient mind. "We can never be blocked away from the Force, can we?" she asked suddenly. "Mystics, I mean. I can block Demons and Jedi, but they can't block me."
[No. Not the way we do things, no. Our link with it is through every subatomic particle in our physical bodies, not just through the midi-chlorians,] Inda explained. [It's also why you can go into the Force the way we do. We have a much higher bandwidth to the Force, you might say.] Inda grinned again slightly. [It's also why we stress the psi-powers. You have to have good shields and a disciplined mind, or you'd be overwhelmed by all the stuff the Force would show you. Your old Master trained your subconscious to filter out the great majority of the input, so you'd stay sane. Otherwise you'd be Seeing past and future and present all jumbled up into one, and you'd go bug-nuts in a matter of minutes.] He stopped and looked down, his face going somber. [I had a student that managed to go into the Force before he was fully trained and ready for it. He died on the Moonstorm . We had to burn his mind out because he couldn't block out all the Force was allowing him to See. That's when we thought ot the questings, to keep that from happening again.]
"But how am I doing that? Filtering stuff out? I don't remember my old Master teaching me anything that would do something like that," Theri said, puzzled.
[The extrasensory perception exercises, the image sending, the way to focus your telepathy to one person only. There was a game we used to play where we'd Send complex images to each other and try to hold that image steady while the others would try to distract the Sender. These all have to do with focussing the mind, sensing the signals your subconcious sends you, that kind of thing. The subconscious learns through repetition, and your conscious mind repeating the games and exercises teaches it to focus. Also the physiological controls teach you to focus the mind. Did Therasslen teach you to slow down your heartbeat? Or control your own brainwaves?] Inda looked up at her inquiringly, gesturing at her head.
"Yes. I got good enough at it that I could almost put myself into a coma. I was getting a full night's sleep in three hours, every night for months. And I started being able to control my dreams too, but things happened and I never got back to it," Theri said, surprised. "Should I start doing those exercises again?"
Yoda chuckled, his ears lifting. "Warn Qui-Gon first! Will think you are dead!"
Theri flopped back over onto the pillows. "What a time for Ben to be sent away on assignment! He could build me a biofeedback monitor!"
[You don't need one!] Inda said, waggling a finger at her in admonishment. [Can't you feel it when you're changing your brainwaves? It's plain as day!]
[For you, yes, oh Great Master Inda!] Theri Sent back with laughter in her mindvoice. [I'm just your many-times-removed successor who isn't even fully trained yet! I just need it for a few days to get back the feel of what I'm doing!]
[Fleshling! Things are so clear when you're a ghost!] he Sent, grinning broadly. Theri groaned at the pun.
Yoda laughed at them both and they were all quiet for a minute.
"Master Inda, I--I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can teach others to do what we do. I don't --I can't take that kind of responsibility!" Theri said in a very small voice. "I'm not you, I can't be a leader and a great teacher."
Inda looked down for a moment, the blue flickering form wavering as if in a slight breeze. He looked solemn, almost defeated. Remembering other times and places, other people. Then he looked back up at Theri. [I was never any 'great leader', kiddo. A teacher, maybe. A dreamer, yes. A problem, yes. I wouldn't change my mind and I wouldn't shut up and I wouldn't back down. A lot of that was just ego and pride. But the ideas, the thoughts I had, wouldn't let me go. I couldn't get away from them. I couldn't make them go away. I couldn't ignore them. So I let them in and did what I felt I had to do. I trusted in the Force.] He shrugged helplessly. [I knew from the moment my first student, Jyp, came to me and asked me to teach him my Way, that there was no going back. He begged me to teach him. I didn't want to. But the Force brought him to me, and I couldn't say no. I used to feel like I was being driven around like a droid on remote control, that the Force was using me. Then I realized, yes, it *was* using me. And that was all I'd ever wanted, to be the vessel for the Force. So I let it happen. And here you are, five hundred years later, and it has all come down to you. I don't blame you for not knowing if you can do it. I didn't think I could either. But think of it this way. Don't say to yourself, 'I'm going to be this great Mystic teacher.' Think of it like this. 'I'm going to live in the Force, and whatever I can teach to people along the way, I'll teach.' Don't worry about students, or being responsible for students, or having to make history or any of that. The students will come to you. They'll make their own decisions. You can't be a leader? Fine. Be a guide. Let the Force do the rest.]
"Why, Chancellor, how good of you to answer my call so quickly," Palpatine of Naboo said as the Chancellor of the Republic walked into the double glass doors of his office.
"Senator Palpatine, this request of yours is most irregular. The Sith are strictly under the jurisdiction of the Jedi," Valorum said as Palpatine rose from behind his desk to come forward to greet the Chancellor.
Senator Palpatine of Naboo was a man of late middle age, gray haired yet still of good health and quite active. He had been Senator to the Galactic Senate for his home planet of Naboo for almost twenty years, and the govenor of a wealthy province before that. He was a career politician, and probably the best of that dubious breed. Of all those myriad members of the Galactic Senate, Palpatine of Naboo worried the Chancellor the most. What could be merely eagerness to serve his people and his Republic could hide insatiable ambition and greed. The easy-going exterior could hide the heart of a demon and the galaxy at large would never know, thanks to the skilled manipulative ways of a born politician.
"Ah, Chancellor, yes, I realize the Sith are indeed a matter exclusive to the Jedi, but I feel in this case I must request his extradition to my homeworld," Palpatine continued smoothly. "There have been several warrants for his arrest on Naboo for many years now. He has been tried in absentia and found guilty of murder, poisoning and many other vile crimes. One of those murders was that of the Jedi Knight Jerardi, almost ten years ago now, who was a citizen of Naboo. Thus I felt I must make the request for his transfer to face our justice for these crimes."
As he spoke, Palpatine casually gestured with one hand, just out of the Chancellor's line of sight. Valorum's direct blue eyes grew clouded for a moment, then cleared and focussed again on Palpatine as the Senator stopped speaking. He walked over to look out of the office windows at Coruscant's endless skyline, the ships flying past, the floating docking platforms nearby, and the mushroom-shaped Senate building just to the north. He seemed to be thinking, and Palpatine waited patiently.
Finally Valorum turned back toward Palpatine. "I cannot authorize extradition of this Sith. It is strictly a Jedi matter, and I have no jurisdiction. They are best equipped to deal with these madmen, and I am not going to interfere."
Palpatine smiled slightly and walked over to his desk, picking up a textreader from the desk. "Here are the charges we have against him on Naboo. Surely, whatever this Sith Lord was brought in for cannot be as grave as these. I suggest that we could make an example of him." Palpatine extended the textreader toward Valorum, who took it reluctantly. As the Chancellor was distracted by reaching for the textreader, Palpatine again waved his hand surreptitiously just out of Valorum's sight.
Valorum blinked several times and looked up from the scrolling text. "Yes. That might be possible. I will see what I can do. But the Jedi are not easily persuaded."
Palpatine smiled frostily. "I am sure they will listen to you. You are, after all, their commander in chief."
Valorum nodded absently and put the textreader back on the desk. "I will see to this at once. Good day, Senator."
Palpatine watched him go and then picked up the textreader and looked down at it. There was nothing on the little screen but the status line. He gave another frosty smile and punched the comlink button for his secretary. "Have my ship made ready for departure. I have business on Korolis."
The silence of the empty apartment was comforting. Ben and Kee were both still up in Operations. Theri didn't mind. She had too much to think about, and she wanted to be alone.
R2-D2 let out a long whistle as she came in, rocking from side to side in excited greeting. She grinned at him. "Yes, R2, I'm glad to be home too. Do you have any messages for me?"
R2 let out a stream of beeps and whistles, and across the room the comscreen came to life at the little droid's infrared command. The screen blurred for a moment and then resolved to the picture of a hoverboard arena and the figures racing around it, swiping at each other with stun-staves.
"Silly droid! That's for Ben! I'm not into that bloodbath stuff!" she giggled, slapping R2's domed head lightly. R2 whistled and beeped at her, and the comscreen blanked again. "Kee and Ben probably need you. Will they let you into Operations?"
R2 beeped affirmatively.
"Then go on. Probably more interesting than sitting around here," she smiled, opening the door for the little droid to trundle out toward the lifts, humming to himself happily.
She picked up her packs and Kee's and lugged them into the bedroon, began taking out dirty uniforms and tossing them into the laundry chutes for the droids to wash. Each residential level of the Temple had at least two all-purpose droids that did the majority of the household chores for the Jedi living there. They kept the tiny kitchen supplied with food and drinks and did the laundry and cleaning. She supposed some people, her family certainly, would consider this an extravagant luxury, or would say the Jedi were pampered and wouldn't know an honest day's work if it hit them in the face. At this moment, with her mind feeling a thousand years old, she'd laugh in their faces for this. If they saw Kee's lightsaber scars they'd sing a different tune.
She'd been at Master Yoda's for several hours, and it was now late afternoon. This eastern side of the Temple was shadowed now, Coruscant Alpha's light slanting across the walls of the buildings she could see from the windows of the bedroon. She sighed, tossed the empty backpacks into the closet and sat on the bed staring out the windows, trying not to think of anything. It all whirled around in her head anyway. Thretketh. Her parents. Dalryn. Maul. Kee. Ben. Inda. Yoda. Dodiya. The water-beryls. The Mystic teachings. Being sold as a slave. Ben's leaving. Inda's arrival (if one could call it that). The Dark. The battle of wills with Kee. Learning to fly the shuttle. Soritsu-ji. The will of the Force. Her classes here at the Temple. Her old Master. Wanting to be with Kee when there was so much going on keeping them apart. Having to be strong and independent when she just wanted to bury herself in Kee's arms and let him make her decisions for her. Wanting to be strong and independent because she couldn't allow him to make her decisions for her. Wanting everything to be sweetness and light and rainbows and giggles. Wanting to be wrapped around him in bed every moment of every day, when she usually came home from classes about ready to pass out from exhaustion.
She heard the door of the apartment open out in the main room. "Theri?" Ben's voice called.
Theri went out into the main room, saw the door of his room half-open, and went to see what he was doing.
Ben's room was small, almost like a starship cabin with the shelves built into the walls and odd-shaped cabinets and drawers. His huge worktable had all kinds of lights and magnifiers and waldos hanging over it, tools arrayed on the walls around it, the viewscreen half-buried by masses of wire and cabling and the machined shells of remotes. The shelves held ordered ranks of textreaders and chunks of rough crystals for lightsabers. Holoprints of starships and mechanoids papered the walls along with printouts of schematics and technical readouts. A zero-gee web hung across the ceiling and was populated by a half-dozen tiny crawler droids he'd built as a sort of pet. A holoprint map of Tatooine hung over the bed. The deep-silled window was recessed from the main wall of the Temple and was in shadow much of the time, but it still had a good view of the endless skyline.
Ben was searching through his closet as she pushed the door open and looked in to see what he was doing. He looked up at her with a smile and she slipped inside and sank down onto the edge of his bed. He started tossing clothing from the closet onto the bed beside her. His field combat uniforms. She bit her lip and fought down the urge to protest. What could she say? He was a Jedi. He was needed elsewhere.
But I need him too, she thought.
[I know. You're going to miss me,] Ben Sent softly. [I'm going to miss you too. Terribly.]
She jumped up and into his arms, and he held her so tight she almost couldn't breathe. She didn't care. [Are you scared?] she Sent as he buried his hands in her hair and kissed her for a long moment.
[No. Not scared exactly. Just...out of sorts. I'm to be the commander on this mission. Half of me thinks, 'I don't know what the hell I'm doing.' The other half says, 'I've been trained for this, this is the work I'm meant for, and now it's time to get started.' But I don't want to leave you and Master Kee.]
[We can't go back,] she Sent, pulling away a little to look into his eyes. [We can't keep ourselves from growing up. We can't stop time. But I'll be waiting right here for you, and so will Kee. Whenever you come home, we'll be here for you.]
[Promise me something?] he Sent, leaning his forehead on hers and running his hands through her hair.
[Anything, love.]
[Promise me that even if you do grow up, you'll still love me the way you do?] he Sent wistfully.
[Always,] she Sent in a whisper. [Always.]
Full night had fallen when those slated for the Teravin mission gathered in the hangar in front of the small Jedi scout ship they were to take up to the Justice , the flagship of the Jedi battlefleet.
Shosin-ka bustled about the little scout ship doing her pre-flight checks, trilling to herself happily while her Master, Plo Koon, stood impassively at a nearby comscreen watching the CorCom satellite data. The Justice was expected to exit hyperspace at any moment. Plo Koon was a Vaikerian, thickly muscled with prominent claws on his fingers and twisting lines of tribal initiation scars running down both arms. He had permanently embedded dark lenses encasing his eyes and had a breathing mask permanently attached to the bone structure of his face. He wore a dark blue, almost black Jedi uniform and a huge, wickedly barbed knife occupied a large sheath strapped to his leg next to his lightsaber. He came from a dark world who's sun was tiny and cold, and his species was adapted for the planet's methane-hydrocarbon atmosphere. Thus he had to have the breathing mask to survive on human-standard worlds like Coruscant. But he was a Jedi Master of long standing and the finest fighter pilot among the Jedi, and Shosin-ka would gladly have gone through a wall of fire for him. Shosin and her Master were to fly the scout ship up to the Justice , then Shosin would fly the drop ship carrying the Jedi down to the planet. Many of the Masters who had students ready to go out on their own had volunteered their students for this mission. And some, like Shosin-ka and Serala, were not yet confirmed but this mission would be a test of their skills and judgment. It was rumored that once Shosin-ka was confirmed and went off the the War College, Plo Koon would be given command of the Justice .
Ben stood with his backpack over one shoulder, dressed now in the gray, black and white urban camoflage combat uniform, watching others of his new team arrive with their teachers. He was calm now, touching the Force, centered. He'd been preparing for this moment all his life, the moment when he would be truly a Jedi Knight. It felt strange. But he just watched that feeling of strangeness with unruffled calm now. He knew not to question the will of the Force. Beside him, Master Kee watched his student out of the corner of his eye, sadness and pride warring in his mind. Theri stood holding Kee's hand silently.
Jedi Knight Torin Ghanbari stopped beside them, grinning broadly at his friend, and slid his backpack off his shoulder to the floor. He unzipped the top pocket of his pack and pulled out an old battered camoflage-pattern hat and jammed it on his head. Ben took one look and cracked up laughing, then snatched the hat off Torin's head. "Absolutely not! No! No silly hats!"
Torin laughed and took the hat back, stuffed it back in his pack. Beside him, Master Windu rolled his eyes with a long-suffering sigh and a grin.
Another young Jedi Knight joined them then, a Baradan by the name of Jagoe. Ben and Torin knew him somewhat, he'd been in several classes with them over the years and had been confirmed only a few weeks. He was a sort of humanoid reptiloid with stiff scaly bronze skin, with three hard ridges of armor-like scales running across his head and down his back, and his four-fingered hands had short claws. He specialized in scouting and reconnaisance and was of equal skill with the lightsaber as Ben. He didn't wear the field combat uniform that Ben and Torin did, but his normal Jedi uniform of rusty red and brown, claiming he could sneak around far better in colors that matched his own coloring than in those loud black-white-gray outfits.
Serala smiled at Ben as she walked up to the little group. She looked nervous. Adara walked behind her, her eyes red from crying, but determined to see her sister off.
Finally came Uloa, a small alien from Orafai. She was about three feet tall, covered in long, soft blue-green fur. Her eyes were completely white with no pupils or irises, and she'd been blind since birth. But no one had realized she was blind until she was almost seven years old. She'd used the Force since birth to allow her to see and sense everything around her, and the Orafai were well-acquainted with telepathy as they were a predatory aquatic species and used such to coordinate their hunting. Her face was round, furry, and her mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. She wore a blue-gray Jedi uniform and scampered beside Mistress Yaddle as the old one hobbled up to the little group. Surprisingly, Uloa was quite good with her miniature lightsaber and quick to take advantage of her opponents when they thought she was an easy target or harmless. She was not yet confirmed, but like Serala was going on this mission as a test of her abilities. She was also an electronics specialist and shared Torin's interest in mechanoids.
Ben turned to his Master and they looked at each other for a long moment. There were too many things to say and neither one of them could think what to say first. Finally Ben swallowed, looked down, and choked out, "Twelve years, Master. And now I don't want to go."
Kee and Theri both grabbed him in a fierce hug and they leaned their heads together all three for a moment, touching thoughts and minds one last time. Then Kee pulled away to look into Ben's eyes again and nodded. [You're ready for this. You're one of the best we've ever trained. I've taught you all I can. But now it's time to go. You'll always be my son in everything but blood. And I will always be proud of you. Be careful, take no risks you don't have to. And let the Force guide you.]
Ben nodded, turned to Theri and kissed her, clutched her desperately against him.
[Please watch out for yourself,] she Sent, tears starting to fall down her cheeks. [Don't fall asleep with your back to the door.]
Ben tried to smile at this but couldn't. He kissed her one last time, [Take care of each other.]
Kee and Theri nodded, and he pulled himself away from them, swung his backpack up onto his shoulder, and ran up the ramp of the scout ship as quickly as he could so he wouldn't look back.
A few yards away, Torin looked up at his Master and tried to grin. "Bet you're glad to get rid of me after all these years."
Windu snorted a laugh. "Not hardly! Who knows what kind of trouble you'll get into now?"
Torin shrugged, looked down, and nodded.
Windu took him by the shoulders, and Torin looked up again. "Remember not everything is a joke. Remember sometimes you have to let go. Remember to watch your temper. And remember to come home."
Torin looked down again, swallowing against the lump in his throat. He nodded, hugged Windu hard for a moment, then followed Ben up into the scout ship with one last long look around the Temple's hangar and another at his Master.
The others, Jagoe, Uloa, and Serala followed him up the ramp and Shosin-ka trilled at her Master and he gestured her up into the ship, then turned to Kee and Windu and the other Masters gathered there. [We will bring them home safe. Fear not.] And the Vaikerian stalked up into the ship as the rampway pulled up into the underside of the hull.
Kee and Theri and Windu moved out to the black and yellow striped lines, watching the scout ship rise on repulsorlift thrusters as the landing gear retracted. Theri slipped her arm around Kee's waist and he put an arm around her shoulders. Windu sighed heavily beside them, his dark-skinned face somber.
[We never really thought this day would come, did we?] Windu Sent to Kee.
Kee shook his head. [I know I didn't.]
Inside the scout ship, Torin and Ben looked out the tiny window beside their blast chairs at their teachers. [We really did it, didn't we?] Torin Sent to his friend. [We're really Jedi Knights now.]
Ben took a deep breath. [Yeah,] he answered forlornly. [Now it's our turn.]
Kee was silent all the way back to the apartment, both mind and voice, his eyes distant and sad, letting Theri lead him by the hand back to the home they would now share only with each other. She pulled him inside, locked the door behind them, pulled off his cloak and pushed him down into one of the chairs in the main room. She took their cloaks and hung them up, then came back and sat down next to him, taking his hand in both of hers. He put his arm around her absently, still staring off into space.
[He couldn't stay a little boy forever, y'know,] Theri Sent tentatively.
Kee turned at that to give her a very startled look. [He said almost the exact same thing about you, the day we left to go to Thretketh.]
She grinned a little. [Great minds think alike, I guess.]
Kee was silent again for a moment. Then, [What are we going to do without him? He's been with me twelve years, beloved.]
Theri leaned against him for a moment. [We're going to go on living. Ben would kick you if he knew you were moping like this! He will come back to us. He hasn't moved out, all his junk is still spread out all over his worktable in there and it would take hours to get all those holoprints off the walls! Not to mention catching his crawler-droids. He'll come home to us. Besides, look on the bright side.]
Kee looked down at her at this. [What bright side?]
Theri grinned mischievously, squirmed up sit on his lap facing him, and gave him a long passionate kiss. [Just think. We can make as much noise as we like now.]
Kee laughed and started nibbling on her neck, and they were soon too involved to think very much at all.
"You disappoint me, Lord Maul," the hologram image of Darth Sidious said in an icy implacable voice. "Why have you not captured the Mystic girl yet?"
Maul felt like growling at the image of his master, but he managed not to. "Jinn and Kenobi. I can only try to take her when they are not at the Great Temple, and they rarely leave it. When they do, Jinn or the boy are with her constantly."
"Then explain your failure at the girl's homeworld. You had her in your hands and she escaped. Explain!"
This time Maul did growl out the words. "The girl exploded the powercels in my lightsaber and in the detonators of the ion grenades. By then, we were trapped together in the cave. We fought. She fights with that martial art she learned on Zharvan. Mindful of your standing orders, I did not fight to kill or maim, only to capture. She took advantage of this. The Mystic whore is not stupid, Master. She is already a formidable fighter, even without a lightsaber. And there is something different about her now. She is not the same as she was on Tatooine. She--spoke to me, in the cave. For several hours."
"Be wary of the girl! Her words are her best weapons!" Sidious snapped at his apprentice. "Next time--if there is a next time--find a way to silence her first. We need her alive, not neccessarily able to chatter her Mystic nonsense to anyone who will listen."
Maul nodded once. "What of her mindpowers?"
Sidious waved a hand dismissively. "The girl is Thretkethan. Distract her with sex and she turns into an animal. Animals can be controlled."
Maul nodded again, keeping his thoughts to himself.
Sidious continued after a moment's long piercing glare at his student. "For now, desist in your attempts to acquire the girl. Let them get complacent in their Temple. You are needed on Korolis."
Maul nodded. "Yes, Master. Korolis." And the hologram faded out.
He waited a moment, then relaxed and allowed his eyes to dart around the confines of his sanctum here on Syharath. It was a bare room for the most part, a room at the very top of a massive black basalt tower in the heart of his fortress overlooking the wild ocean and the jagged mountains of the coast. Wide polarized windows of dark vitriglass gave full visibility in every direction. The only furnishings were a meditation bench and an altar of sorts that held trophies from past battles, the lightsabers taken from the dead hands of their former wielders. There were five Jedi lightsabers there now. If Maul had his wish, Jinn's and Kenobi's would soon be among them.
The feeling of curious eyes upon him, and he whirled. A small figure stood just inside the doorway, one of his children, a girl. He didn't even remember her name, or if she had a name. All his children were misshapen horrors, products of rape and his irradiated, mutated genetic structure. The girl was maybe four or five years old, skinny, the knobs on her head where her horns should be skewed from their proper places, the bones of her skull distorted, like her face had been stretched asymetrically by some crazed sculptor. One eye could not open, but she peered at him curiously with the other, chewing on one finger absently, curling one bare foot behind the other. He looked at her for a moment in disgusted contempt, then hissed loudly at her. She vanished back down the stairway seemingly at lightspeed.
Unbidden, the sense-memory of the Mystic girl's body trapped beneath him in the cave exploded into his mind. Grudgingly he had to admit Jinn was a fortunate bastard. At least his children would not be monsters.
The team of young Jedi stood together in the hangar of the Jedi flagship, the Justice, anxious to board the drop ship that would take them down to the surface of the planet Teravin. Shosin-ka stood to one side, dressed now in her pressure suit with her pilot's helmet in her hand, looking up at the sleek little drop ship nervously. Her purple hair was slicked back, she'd taken out the beads and feathers. She'd been going over every inch of the drop ship since she got on board the Justice . Everything had been checked and re-checked at least three times. There were no problems. But she had to be absolutely sure. Her friends' lives depended on it. And Master Koon would not be right beside her in the navigator's chair if she got in trouble.
[You are ready?] came her Master's quiet Sending, and she turned toward him as he came walking silently up to her.
She trilled a nervous whistle, letting the sound quaver in the air. [No. But I'll do it anyway. It's needed, isn't it? Those poor people below need Ben and the others.]
The impassive, half-metallic face could not smile, but Shosin felt his amused agreement. The clawed hands came up and rested softly on her cheeks briefly, and she closed her eyes. [Daughter-of-my-soul, that good heart of yours is why you're a Jedi. And therein is your strength and bravery.]
She nodded as his hands fell away from her face. Then he stepped back, reached down to the great barbed knife on his hip and unfastened the sheath from his belt. He took her hand and put the knife in it, folding her fingers around the sheath. She looked up at him in surprise. [Take Dreamfang? But Master--]
[For luck. Return to me so that you may give it back. You know it's name. It knows yours. The Force will be with you.]
Shosin looked down at the huge auralanium knife in her hand and slid the sheath's belt clip onto her belt beside the ring where her lightsaber hung. Then she straightened up, looked up at her Master, and nodded. She felt his pleased approval. She turned, calm now, and looked over at Ben and the others. "Everyone ready to go? Let's get aboard."
Plo Koon watched as the drop ship's engines began to hum as they began to charge up to full power, then walked over to the safe areas behind the force-shields that would lock out the rest of the hangar from the vacuum of space. The dozens of clamps holding the square of hull beneath the drop ship's landing gear began to disengage with loud clanks, then went totally silent as the vacuum stole the air from the shielded area. The floor dropped away beneath the drop ship, and it nosed over into a vertical dive. Master Koon switched his attention to the screens beside him showing the exterior view of the drop bay, and grunted in satisfaction as he saw the drop ship's ion engines burst into blue fire barely past the shadow of the flagship.
Then the screen beside it flipped to a sensor view, and the half-dozen blue triangles arrowing from behind the little planet in arrowhead formation, and Master Koon growled out a curse and hit the comlink button for the flagship's bridge.
[Daughter! Watch out behind you! Fighters!]
Shosin-ka gritted her teeth, hanging onto the controls of the drop ship as it plunged straight down through the atmosphere of Teravin, trying to watch several different sensors and dials at once. A straight vertical descent was the most dangerous kind. But Kaivanin could withstand much greater g-forces than even ordinary humans due to their avian ancestry, and she was not in any danger of passing out. Her passengers may not fare so well, but she would have no problems. The ship shook around her, rumbling with the passage through the atmosphere. The hull just in front of her was glowing red already with the heat of re-entry, as were the leading edges of the stubby wings. She watched the altimeter nervously, waiting for three thousand feet...[Fighters? Master? Fighters?]
A bolt of orange laserfire flashed to her left, and Shosin let out a startled sqawk. Then a shadow fell over the nose of her ship and a sleek silver arrowhead fell beside her, burning and twisting already as the engines flamed and rained wreckage down.
"What the hell's going on out there?" Ben yelled behind her, and she trilled nervously.
"Fighters!" Shosin yelled back over her shoulder. She spit out a Kaivanin curse and pulled the drop ship to the right in a roll and began to twist the ship in tumbles and swoops in evasive manuevers. Another bolt of laserfire flashed by the canopy, and the drop ship jumped a little as it was hit on one wing. "Ben! Torin! Get someone into the cannons!"
Torin tugged off his safety harness and pulled himself out of his blast chair, trying his best to struggle up toward the ladder leading to the laser cannons mounted on the upper hull of the drop ship. Jagoe also pulled himself up and out of his chair, straining against the g-forces of the descent and Shosin's wild manuevers, to take the cannon mounted on the underside of the ship. In a moment both were swarming up and down the ladder.
Shosin wrenched her attention back to the instruments, reached for the Force, waiting for that familiar whisper to tell her when....she pulled the controls toward her suddenly and the little ship pulled out of the dive with a stomach-churning lurch. She faintly heard the laser cannons firing, and a burst of fire to her left. The Force took her hands and she surrendered to it gladly, letting the calm whisper she'd always felt guiding her move her hands and eyes and mind. Fear evaporated, there was only the grace of flight, as if all was in slow motion. Nevermind that Ben and Uloa and Serala behind her were all being thrown about in their harnesses as the drop ship spun and rolled like a madened weasel as the Force guided Shosin-ka to evade the fighters diving on them from out of the sun.
[Shosin! I am here!] came the familiar mindvoice and the warrior's presence that had guarded and guided her for so many years. [Turn northward, I will keep these shrethkoratcha off your backside!]
The drop ship swung up out of the diving turn it was making and rolled upright again, and the ion engines burst into life again at full throttle. Shosin, eyes closed and totally relaxed in the Force, smiled a little at her Master's words.
More laser fire from the cannons, and another of the fighters on their tail exploded in flame above them. Torin's yell of triumph echoed faintly down the ladderwell. Then the drop ship lurched to the side again as another shot got through, and warning alerts began going off on the console in front of her. One of the engines had been hit and was losing power. She began barrel-rolling again, mindful that the others could not withstand the stresses she could, trying not to spin the ship so fast they would pass out. Nevertheless, a lucky shot from the raiders found one wing and a new set of warning lights went off. They were beginning to lose fuel now from that wing tank...
[Master. We are losing fuel and one engine is damaged,] Shosin Sent calmly.
[The city where you are to land is northeast of your current course,] Master Koon Sent in answer. [Can you make it there?]
Shosin opened her eyes, looked at the screens and the schematic of the beacon where she was to land. [I think we can. We shall not have much fuel left when we do land, whatever we do. Enough to get back to orbit, but little else.] She wove through the air in irregular zig-zags as the two remaining raiders accelerated toward her ship from below, skimming the treetops. Shosin pulled up and headed for the clouds above. The fighters followed, climbing easily in her ion wake. She let them get into the clouds behind her, came up to a hover, then flipped the ship end for end and fell into a dive on her own trail. Torin saw her move immediately and flipped the laser cannon around to fire in front of them now, and another of the raiders exploded in flames and falling wreckage. Jagoe fired behind them at the other raider but could only get a damage hit on that one.
[I had not intended you to go with Ben's team, but it appears there is no choice,] Master Koon Sent. The graceful crescent-shaped Jedi starfighter swept in close to fly above the drop ship now. Shosin pushed the power and accelerated away from the remaining fighters, and the Jedi starfighter kept pace above her. The starfighter rolled over lazily and Shosin looked up through her canopy to see her Master's ship flying upside down above her, the dark lenses and grated breathing mask peering down at her as she looked up at him. [It is unexpected and unfortunate, but it must be the will of the Force. I will chase these raiders away while you land. Be wary, my daughter, and do what Ben tells you. Worry not for the stars and skies while you are grounded. You will fly again.]
Shosin-ka nodded up at her Master and smiled a little. Then in perfect synchrony, the Jedi starfigher pulled upwards and she pushed the drop ship into a dive, and the raiders behind them found themselves chasing empty air for a moment before Master Koon looped around onto their tails and began pouring laser fire into their engines.
"I am never again going to eat falasa seaweed the night before a drop," Ben groaned from the bushes just before he threw up again.
Torin snorted a laugh and kept peering around at the huge trees around them warily for predators. "I thought that stuff was supposed to be safe for human consumption."
"They lied," Ben said in a growl.
The others were helping Shosin-ka spread the camoflage netting over the drop ship's hull and Uloa was climbing in the trees cutting down masses of feathery-leaved branches to spread over the top. It was almost dawn on Teravin now, and the quiet serenity of the forest was welcome after the night they'd just spent hiding in the trees, afraid to stay in the ship for fear it would be detected and destroyed during the night. A hundred meters away the little infrared beacon sat inert now. The sounds of waking animal life chittering and calling and the freshness of the dawn were the last bit of rest they'd see until well after nightfall again. It was at least twenty miles to the outskirts of the city.
Ben emerged from the bushes, looking very green around the edges. "Next time I listen to Master Kee."
Torin grinned and they began walking back toward the ship. "I've got the sensors on full scan. I think I can plug into the local newsnet too. One good thing about mechs, it's kinda hard to be quiet or stealthy. How the hell do you hide a fifty-ton mountain of metal and myomer behind a tree?"
Ben smiled at the old joke as they began hauling the branches Uloa was cutting down over to the ship.
[Beloved?]
Theri looked up from her Anthropology textreader and saw Kee walking toward her. She was sitting on the edge of the massive waterfall on the first floor of the Temple, waiting for him as he'd asked. He'd wanted her to meet him here instead of going to meditate, but he'd not said why. It didn't truly matter why, she reflected ruefully. Any extra moments they could steal together were more than welcome. She stuffed her textreader back into her pack and got to her feet as he wove through the benches and chairs scattered around the waterfall. He carried Ben's small backpack in one hand, the one that still held the water-beryls she'd collected from the fateful cave on Thretketh.
He held out his free arm to her and she came forward to kiss him, and they stood for a moment holding each other in the rush of negative ions from the waterfall. "Well, minx, how did your day go?" he asked, ruffling her hair. "I'm sorry you couldn't link with me today. Important stuff."
"I know. You didn't miss anything. Same as usual. Ratashi Qualara is having conniptions now that Seri is gone, he said he wished I was already Ratashi level so he could make me his assistant. And Master Yoda and I are going over that first Mystic teaching the translators just managed to get translated. More hair-splitting in Ethics class. The usual," she sighed, leaning against him. He laughed at her aggrieved tone about the Ethics class.
"Well, then. We've got something new to do now," he said, lifting the pack full of rocks onto the edge of the fountain. "Lightsaber crystals. We're going up to the workshops to get some of these facetted and to start working on your lightsaber. We need to facet several of the crystals so you'll have spares, and you'll have to either make or pick out something for the shell of the grip."
Theri looked up at him and he smiled faintly and took her hand to lead her down the hallway opposite the one leading to the meditation rooms. "I used to watch my Apa and Dodiya making parts for the boats in our garage at home. We had a laser metal lathe."
Kee nodded. "We have such here, but we have something better, really. A robotic metal extruder. We can design the shell on the computer and let the extruder build it from the molecules up with nanoassemblers. We can make it out of nearly any metal we want this way, because the nanos build it from the atomic structure we specify. Or you could make it out of any kind of plastic or even ceramic."
They came to a side corridor and turned down it to a small lift and Theri put her transponder to it as he punched the call button. She looked down, her eyes sad. "I wish Ben was here to help with this."
Kee nodded, put his arm around her shoulders. "Yeah. Me too. But I taught him to build his lightsaber, so I at least know what I'm doing," he said with a faint mischivous grin.
Theri laughed and they got in the lift.
A few moments later they were pushing through a set of double doors beyond which was noise and bright light and the hum of many machines. There were tools of every description lining the walls of the low-ceilinged room and bins of parts and metal stock. Several others were working at some of the machines, and Kee led her over to the left to a smaller room separated off from the main workshop where it was slightly quieter. The familiar shrill scream of a laser lathe made Theri wrinkle her nose a little at the sound. She'd forgotten how loud the damned things were.
Kee pulled her just inside the doorway and put an arm around her shoulders. [Now think for a minute, beloved. Blank your mind. See if anything pops up in your head.]
Theri looked up at him, puzzled. [You want me to ask the Force something?]
[No. Not exactly. Just see if there's anything in this room that calls to you,] he Sent back with a faint smile.
Theri shrugged, then understood. [Oh, you want me to Find something. That's okay, then.] And she straighened up, closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing until the sounds of the workshop around them faded to an ignorable buzz and the Force sang a little louder than the peripheral noise. Then the fleeting wisp of an answer, a direction. She opened her eyes and saw the bin across the room with cylinders of metal in it, walked straight to it and began digging through them.
The one that came to her hand as if magnetized there was black metal with deep curved grooves that her fingers fit in easily. It felt good in her hand. It felt right. Yes. This was a true Finding.
Kee came up beside her, took it from her hand and looked at it critically. [Yes, that'll work. Not too big to fit your hand when we put the rubber grip coating on it. And we won't have to use the nanoassemblers. Is this the one you want, dearheart?]
Theri nodded and he gave it back to her with a smile and a caress on the cheek. He went over to a machine nearby, a large scanner, and she followed him. He put the backpack full of water-beryls up on the table beside the scanner, pulled a nearby stool over in front of it. [Sit, love. Here's the tedious part. Going through the stones to find the good ones to facet. You need to scan them all.] He was punching in commands on the scanner's keyboard as he Sent to her as she sat down in front of it. [Just put them in one at a time. If it's a good one, the screen will show a green dot here. See, this one's good,] he Sent as the screen showed a large green dot as it scanned the chunk of beryl he had put into the scan field. [Not all of them will be good to use. Some will have molecular flaws or crystal structure warps or impurities. Fortunately, you brought back half the cave.]
Theri grinned at this. [Yeah, with Maul sitting there watching me like some kind of black statue. He asked me once if I was getting lightsaber crystals.]
Kee looked very uneasy about this and pulled over another stool to sit down next to her as she scanned the crystals. [Maul. I probably shouldn't tell you this, but Chancellor Valorum sent him to Naboo to face some outstanding charges on him there, and he's disappeared. So he's probably on the loose again.]
Theri snorted. [So what else is new? I sometimes wonder why we even try to catch him. He always has a way out.]
Kee nodded, watching her scanning the clear blue-green crystals and separating the useful ones from those that weren't. But there was always a use even for those crystals that couldn't be used for lightsabers. They would give the rest of the crystals to the Temple's treasury stores as they could still be used for trade or jewelry. The requirements for lightsaber crystals were far stricter than those for baubles.
Finally she gathered up the dozen or so perfect crystals and Kee pulled her over to another machine, a relatively small machine, newer than the others. It had a hatch on the front that latched shut very securely over a small cylindrical chamber. Beam emitters ringed the inside of the cylinder and a clamp that looked like the business end of a gyroscope floated in the center suspended in a magnetic field. Kee took one of the crystals from her hands and showed her how to fit it into the gyrosopic clamp, then latched the cylinder door shut. [We just got this machine a couple years ago. Ben loves it. Just stick the rock in, punch a few buttons, and a couple minutes later it spits out perfectly facetted lightsaber crystals. When I helped Ben make his lightsaber we had to facet with this old laser planer, and it took hours to make a few crystals. And there was always the danger you'd shatter one as you were working on it. This new machine is so much simpler it takes half the work out.] He punched the big green button on the top and the machine began to whirr. [Once we get all these done, we'll work on your shell.]
[Are we going to finish it tonight?] she Sent.
[Oh, no. Just the crystals and getting the shell roughly into shape. Then we'll go have dinner,] he Sent with a smile as he unlatched the cylinder. Within the magnetic field now floated five perfectly facetted blue-green jewels, three half-spheres and two lenticular shapes, while in the bottom of the cylinder was a layer of powdered water-beryl dust. Kee took the finished crystals from the magnetic field and held them out to show her. [We'll do the rest of the work at home, with Ben's tools. He'd want that, and he'll be happy we did it. He wanted to help you do this anyway.]
Theri nodded sadly. [I wanted him to help me too. Ah well.]
Kee leaned over and kissed her softly on the forehead. [He'll come home to find you have your lightsaber ready, and he'll be overjoyed that he can chase you around the cubes.] He pulled out a small leather bag from one of the pouches on his belt and put the newly facetted crystals into it, then took another rough water-beryl from her hands to fit it into the gyroscopic clamp.
In short order they had three dozen full sets of crystals, and Kee picked up the metal tube she'd picked out from the table. He stopped as he was turning toward the laser lathe in the corner, looked back at the pile of water-beryls that remained, the ones that could not be used for focussing crystals.
[What?] she Sent, slipping her arm around his waist and following his gaze to the water-beryls.
[An idea,] he Sent. He handed her the metal cylinder and went to pick up a chunk of the water-beryl, looking at it critically. He went over to the nanoassembler console, sat down, and turned the machine on. He called up the design program and took the lightpen and began drawing something on the flat gridded pad next to the console. Theri came over to watch curiously. A circle...then the familiar three-armed spiral of the Mystic symbol. He warped the image to fit inside a spherical shape in the exact center, suspended within the sphere. He sent the image to the facetter and picked up the chunk of water-beryl again, fitting it into the facetter's clamp and latching the cylinder shut.
[What's that for?] she Sent curiously as the facetter whirred again.
[For the pommel,] he Sent with a smile, ruffling her hair and caressing her cheek. [The end that doesn't have the blade sticking out of it, as Ben would say. Need to have it set in an endcap so that we can unscrew it to change powercels occassionally. Sometimes they do actually give out or corrode, and you need to be able to get in there to change it without having to take the whole saber apart. The other end unscrews too, where the blade comes out, so you can change crystals.] He unlatched the cylinder and took out the sphere of beryl and held it up for her to see. Inside it in the center was the Mystic spiral symbol, seemingly carved inside a glossy, polished sphere of blue-green transparency. [We can even put a tiny little diode inside the saber to shine through the pommel so you can see the symbol when the saber is turned on.]
Theri thought about it for a moment, considering. [No. That would be too much ego and pride, and I don't need that. Already have too much ego and pride. But using this as the pommel is fine. A good idea, sweetling.] She smiled up at him and reached up to pull his head down to kiss him gently. He grinned at her as she ran her hand through his hair.
[Ego? What ego?] he Sent innocently, eyes shining down at her in mischief.
[The ego you're trying your best to feed as a test,] she answered sweetly with a tug on the lock of hair she still held in her fingers. He smiled and kissed her hand in acknowledgement of her very accurate guess at his motives. [Don't want to end up like Maul with that double lightsaber that's more trick than useful. I swear, he's just a bundle of ego and hate. But I guess that's the Demons for you, that's their job description to the letter.]
Kee took the handle cylinder from her hands and took it over to the lathe to make the threaded grooves inside the ends for the pommel and guard. [I've been meaning to ask you about him, Maul that is,] Kee Sent tentatively. [You speak of him a lot, and when you do you're not angry or hateful or anything I'd expect. He *did* kill your old Master, and at one time you wanted to go after him. Yet now...you speak of him in an almost friendly way. Amused, even, sometimes.]
Theri shrugged, took the cylinder of metal from his hands and fitted it into the laser lathe's centering clamps. She knew what to do with a laser lathe, she'd watched her brother Dodiya often enough at home woking on parts for their father's boats. She turned on the power and the metal cylinder began to spin so fast it was a blur. Kee punched in the commands on the lathe's keypad and the robot arms carrying the carving laser moved to focus on the inside ends of the cylinder, cutting a spiraling groove into the metal. Theri winced at the screeching noise it made, grateful she'd only have to endure it for a few moments. [I--I don't exactly know what I feel about him, love. Yes, he did kill my Master. Yes, sometimes I'm still angry about that. But since I came back from the Force I've been able to see things much more...I dunno, balanced? Maul's a slimebag, yes. He's Sith. He's killed so many people he probably doesn't even remember half of them. But for every Sith there's a Jedi. I see it as a cycle now, a process. The Jedi and your Light are the growing, increasing half. The Sith are the Dark and the half that dies and decays. Neither side could really get along without the other. If there was just one, say just your Light, there'd not be enough room in the galaxy for everything to grow. If there was only Maul's Dark there'd never be anything growing. Just that Maul's such an egotistical slob it's easy to laugh at him. But Master Yoda and Inda and I were talking the other day, and they said some stuff that makes me think about Maul differently now.]
[Oh? How so?] Kee asked, watching bemusedly as she flipped the metal lightsaber shell blank around to carve out the threads on the other end.
[Inda was saying that Maul's finding me in the cave was no accident. Nothing is ever by accident. Sure, he had his own agenda, or rather Sidious' agenda. But the Force was moving him too, to be in the cave with me. So he could begin to learn. Inda says that whether he wants to or not, Maul's going to learn something about himself and about the Force. The Force is arranging it so he'll have no choice. And I'm the one who's teaching him. So I can't help but think he's sort of my student. Or am I totally off the flight path with that one?] She unlatched the lightsaber shell blank from the lathe and looked critically at the threadings on both ends now, nodding her satisfaction. Then she looked up at her lifemate with a bewildered expression on her face. [I'm not even sure I *can* teach, and here I am with a student like Maul. But then I think, it's not me teaching him, it's the Force. So I don't know quite what to think.]
Kee pulled her close for a moment, wrapping his arms around her, Sending his love and understanding. [That really is a strange situation, dearheart. I can't help but want to protect you from him, though. And neither can Ben.]
Theri sighed and nodded. [I know. It's going to be a very long, strange way with Maul. Ah well. If I'd wanted an easy life I should have become a droid mechanic or something.]
Kee quirked a grin at this and took the lightsaber shell from her hand to look at the threads too. Then he gave it back to her and nodded at the backpack on the table. [Well, that's all we need to do here. Let's get all this stuffed back in the pack and go find something to eat.]
She dumped everything into the pack, and Kee could sense her sudden shift of thoughts and the way she pulled those thoughts away from him. [What?] he asked, taking the pack from her hand and turning her toward him. She looked up into his eyes and he saw the familiar shadow there. [What now? Tell me. You're thinking something that worries you, I can see that shadow again in these wonderful green eyes.]
Theri smiled at the compliment for a moment. [Cute. Flatter me to get me to talk.]
[Of course. Works better than kicking you,] Kee Sent with a grin.
Theri nodded. [The hand of peace again, huh? My words come back to haunt me.]
Kee nodded and caressed her cheek. [You'll get that a lot when you're a teacher. Now. What? Tell me.]
Theri looked away but held his hand to her cheek for a moment, then took the pack from him and put it over her shoulder. [I will. Let's go somewhere else though. I'm hungry.]
Night on Coruscant was never really dark. The lights of the myriad buildings produced so much light pollution that you could read without being anywhere near a direct light source. So it was a sort of twilight gloom instead of truly dark, and going outside to look up at the stars had been impossible for several hundred years. The light pollution blocked out the fainter lights of the diamonds of the sky. But in the absence of this the bright nights had brought their own charms.
Kee led Theri out onto the terrace walkway that ran around the first floor of the Temple and they walked until they found a small nook sheltered by a fall of huge blooming white flowers. They sat down together on the plascrete wall there and Kee tore off a hunk of the loaf of bread they'd gotten from the lunchroom on the way down. [Here. Eat. And tell me.]
Theri nodded and started eating the chunk of bread. [Ben would get onto us for eating only bread like this, y'know. We had the same thing for lunch, only bread.]
Kee quirked an eyebrow at her as he began eating his chunk of bread too. [You're avoiding the question.]
Theri sighed and looked out at the thousands of lights of Coruscant, the moving traffic of ships and maglev trains. [I was thinking about...you and me when you stopped me from killing Dalryn when we were home on Thretketh. And about stuff Inda said to me. And Master Yoda too.]
Kee nodded, feeling her sudden flash of anger and uneasiness quickly suppressed. [So what have you been thinking?]
She sighed and kept eating mechanically for a moment, hesitating. [That I was wrong to get on to you the way I did about it. That there's a big conflict here with being Thretketh and being a Mystic or a Jedi. You know how Master Yoda and Inda are always telling me to go through my fears so I can grow. I'm beginning to wonder if that Thretkethan hatred of being a slave is something I have to do something about.]
Kee tore off another chunk of bread and thought for a moment, reached to touch the Force. The calmness washed over him like water, and he let it in gratefully. [Think about this: the entire universe had to exist the way it does to produce this moment right here right now. The entire universe had to exist this way to make you sitting here in front of me. But at the same time, it had to happen this way to produce me too. Explain that to me.]
She looked off into the night for a moment while he watched her face go blank in thought. [Well, we're not just ourselves without being connected to anything else. Everything's interconnected, there's nothing that didn't come from somewhere and something else. Even just things, objects, came from something else. People came from their parents and grandparents. We're sustained by food that was grown by other people, air that came from the planet's atmosphere, water from the planet's biosphere. Mentally everything we sense came from somewhere else. And all those things came from elsewhere. And on back. You can trace everything back to something else, or several something elses. So you can say that the universe had to exist to make me here now. And you too. And anything else you care to name. Even down to subatomic particles. It says in the Book of the Force, 'Even in the smallest point is the Force endless, eternal, and entire, since small and great are qualities which are contained in it.' ]
Kee nodded and gave her another piece of bread. [So nothing is independent, truly.]
Theri looked up at him wonderingly and he could sense her reluctance to admit this was true. [No. I guess not.]
[And everything that happened to your people, to the Clans, had to happen for them to live the way they are right now,] Kee continued serenely.
Theri gave him a very hard look. [That's ...true, I guess. But it's still not right.]
[From the larger view, there is no wrong or right. You taught me that,] he Sent. [From the true Force, all things are good and right and justified. But if all things are interdependent on each other, then that's either the ultimate slavery or the ultimate freedom. Take your pick. You're either the victim of the universe or the final product of it. You can let your circumstances rule your life or you can take what you're given and live knowing you're the one controlling your own destiny. Does the universe have a purpose? Or is it just existing here for no reason? The answer to that question is up to you.]
Theri was looking up at him, nibbling on the last of her dinner absently. [And what you do is up to you? If you decide you want to help others, the universe is basically good. If you turn Dark, the universe is basically bad?]
Kee smiled a little. [The double edged blade. Choice. It's up to you.]
Theri staightened up, feeling the spiral in her soul brighten as that feeling of connection moved through her. [The lightsabers. That's what you meant on the shuttle. That's what they symbolize. The choice of our actions.]
Kee's smile widened. [And the realization of the power to make that choice. The decision is literally in your hands, every moment that blade is turned on, every moment of your life.]
Theri blinked. [Oh, man, this is deep.]
[Heh. You got that right, kid,] Inda's mindvoice said suddenly in her head with a laugh.
[I wondered when you would stick your nose in,] she giggled to his presence. [This is right up your alley.]
Kee quirked one eyebrow at her, sensing her attention going elsewhere.
[Inda. My ghostly pest,] Theri Sent to him with a giggle.
[Hey! That's Master Ghostly Pest to you, girl!]
Theri ignored him, turning back to Kee. [So if I think about being a slave and all that...that's what the universe will be filled with. Because that's what I'm focussing on and here I am as the universe.]
Kee nodded. [What you focus on becomes your reality. Time goes on, life goes on. Everything changes, or else it falls away and dies. So why hold on to things that happened long ago? The only moment we live is now. This is the only moment we can change. And for us, how we see those changes is by our own choice of focus.]
Theri looked down at her hands, at the pack at her feet holding the parts of that symbol she'd soon be holding in her own hands. [And the responsibility for those choices too,] she Sent to him quietly.
Kee nodded and took her hand. [But you'll never ever face it alone. Even if Ben and I weren't here willing to share every moment of every day with you, there's this Temple full of Jedi and those out elsewhere on their assignments. We're a brotherhood because of that shared responsibility. We've all recognized that choice and made it for ourselves.]
They sat for a while in silence, looking up at the Temple's walls, the other Jedi that passed by in conversation or laughter. Kee put an arm around her and she leaned against him, thinking.
We can be slaves or gods by our own choice, she thought. But there is truly no independence and no dependence. Balance again.
[And what's beyond that balance?] Inda said in her mind.
[The will of the Force,] she answered. She felt his laugh of acknowledgement. [So we still have to say yes to everything?]
[In the Way, yes,] Inda answered. [But as a Jedi, no. So yes, you can fight against slavery and injustice and the Demons and all that. So long as you realize that there's really nothing to fight against because everything was meant to be this way.]
Theri nodded and leaned into Kee's arm around her, the strength of his mind and soul linked with hers. [And in the smaller world?]
Inda chuckled. [Girl, your man's falling all over himself for you. He'll do anything you say, you say jump and he'll say how high. And do you see him as a slave?]
[Of course not,] she Sent indignantly. [That's just being in love.]
[So love isn't slavery?] Inda continued doggedly.
The memory came flooding back now, Tatooine, when Kee had given her his soul. "One day you'll realize it isn't slavery to love someone," he'd said then. Slavery and freedom. What made one into the other was love.
The largest city on Teravin, Zeanankh, occupied both sides of the river that bisected a valley between two mountains and a ridgeline. On a galactic standard it was fairly small for a city as the population was mostly rural and agrarian. The people of Teravin were peaceful for the most part, tradesmen and artisans, although there were several wild tribes of nomads that lived off to the east on the great plains. There was little manufacturing and mining. What was of primary interest to the rest of the galaxy was the one source of a very potent medicinal plant that was the only known treatment for a crippling terminal neurological disease called Galagian's Syndrome. Over all the galaxy there were millions of people this disease had struck down in the prime of their lives. And there were some who would go to any length or expense to acquire a lifetime supply of the herbal treatment. Yet there was only so much to go around. Like economics everywhere, if there was supply there was demand. Not enough supply, the demand turned to violence.
And of course, anywhere there was trade there was the Trade Federation, greedily sticking in a paw as middlemen for transport of goods and taxation of the trade routes for those transporting those goods. If a lucrative source of goods began to dry up, they were not above bending the laws to ensure their racket remained intact. And as their influence spread throughout the galaxy, they crossed paths more and more with the Jedi. Most times these confrontations were open and didn't go much past some compaints in the Galactic Senate. But sometimes, like now, the Jedi felt they had to take a more tangible if covert course of action.
Torin and Serala crept up the deserted street together, lightsabers in hand but unactivated, peering ahead at the flickering shape of Jagoe as he skittered from one hiding place to another scouting ahead. In a moment he was out of sight around the corner ahead of them and they paused, flattening against the wall, and they both touched the Force to scan around them for other minds. Ben, Uloa, Jagoe, Shosin-ka. Torin felt some sort of animal minds below them, rats or whatever the Teravin equivalent was. And above--
Torin moved without stopping to think, his silver-white lightsaber blade flashed into existence to deflect the blaster bolt that lanced from the half-crumbled building across the street. Serala yelped and turned on her own yellow blade as two destroyer droids barreled from around the corner toward them. She rushed toward them, deflecting the bolts they fired at her as she ran forward. Torin broke away and followed her with a curse. [Damnit, Seri, you're not supposed to go running toward them, you're not all that good at deflecting yet!]
[Master Mundi always said to do the unexpected!] she Sent back, dodging away from the bolts to let him deflect them behind her. In a moment she was plunging her yellow blade into the head of the first droid and whirling to deflect the laser bolt the other fired at her before slicing downwards through it's body with a rasping sound from her lightsaber. [Ben! There's someone on top of that building!]
But Ben was already behind them, reaching up one hand to Lift the person away from the edge of the building roof. The huddled shape disappeared, skittering backwards several yards. They heard a crash as the person fell through a hole in the crumbled rooftop. Ben winced but ran forward into the building, turning on his lightsaber as he went. Uloa and Shosin-ka followed him into the building and Torin and Serala guarded the street outside. A moment later, Jagoe reappeared around the corner, his purple lightsaber flashing as he deflected several stun bolts in succession. [Resistance ahead. Feel that shaking? Mechanoids! Two of them! One of the big ones and a smaller one. And they're after some of the Teravans, people fleeing. And more droids!]
Ben and the others came back out of the ruins of the building, and Ben shook his head at Torin with a grimace. [Fell on a fallen beam from the roof, broke his neck.]
They all felt the shaking in the ground then, the regular deep thumping of missiles firing some few blocks ahead of them around the corner, and the faint sounds of screams. They looked at each other and simultaneously broke into a run. Uloa scampered along beside Ben easily. [Remember, 'Lo, you tell me if you can't keep up,] Ben Sent to her worriedly. [I'll carry you if you need me to.]
The rippling burble of Uloa's laugh reassured him. [I can *so* keep up with you, you giant sandslug!] she Sent back teasingly.
Jedi swiftness soon brought them to the last corner, and they saw actinic yellowish flashes of light flickering and could clearly hear screams. They flattened themselves against the nearest wall and crept to the corner. Torin and Serala, in the lead, peered together around the corner and Sent the image to the others.
There were perhaps six dozen people huddled against the walls of a building fifty yards away to their left, families clutching each other and those injured crying out in pain. The larger mechanoid was four stories tall, with long-range missile racks in it's torso and medium-range lasers mounted in torso and arms. The smaller mechanoid was three stories tall, looked much less massive but was astonishingly quick for its size. It had two medium lasers, one on each arm, and a rack of short-range missiles in the torso. Both mechs looked as if they'd been welded back together from spare parts and sheet-metal stock and the larger one seemed to have actuator problems in the left knee joint. The larger mech was firing it's lasers into the building in front of it while the smaller one lifted it's arms to point it's lasers at the people huddled screaming on the ground.
[Looks like a Dervish and a Wasp,] Ben Sent to his team. [Not terribly bad, but certainly not good. All right then. Jagoe, 'Lo, Seri, Torin, you try to get the people herded down the streets away from those things, the Wasp has them pinned down there. If you can get between and deflect the laser fire they can get away. With four of you, you can keep the thing busy while they get away. Shosin, you and I--]
At that moment, Torin gave a yell of warning and raced around the corner full tilt toward the people huddled on the ground in front of the Wasp's guns, his lightsaber blade flashing into existence as he ran headlong to put himself between the charging lasers and the defenseless people who were about to be blasted into charred cinders. The Wasp mech didn't see him approaching until he ran right between the lasers and the people an instant before the lasers fired. The silver-white lightsaber blade flashed inhumanly fast from one bolt to the other and both were deflected away harmlessly into the noontime sky. Ben and Jagoe were beside him then, and the people behind them were screaming as Uloa, Shosin and Serala tried to get them moving down the street. The larger mech, the Dervish, paused in it's demolition of the building and torso-turned toward the Wasp with a loud rasp of straining actuators, swinging around to bring it's own lasers to bear on the Jedi and the people they were trying to protect.
[Two damned mechs against defenseless people,] Torin Sent angrily to Ben.
[You hold on to your temper,] Ben warned him. [Remember what Master Windu told you!]
[Oh I'm remembering, don't worry. But he ain't here and I am, and those mechs are *not* going to get away with this! Not on my watch!] Torin's brown eyes flashed in a way Ben knew all too well. A moment later he was darting straight between the legs of the Wasp mech and running toward the larger mechanoid to leap straight up three stories onto the Dervish's back. He caught hold of the metal ladder rungs welded onto the mech's back and swarmed up the massive torso to the spherical head, found the hatchway. The silver-white lightsaber blade flashed once, and he was ripping open the hatchway. The pilot inside looked up stunned from his controls, the neuro-helmet obscuring his features.
"Out! Now!" Torin growled, his lightsaber blade a mere inches from the pilot's head. The humming silvery blade gestured and the pilot gulped at the stony expression on the Jedi's face and began hauling the neuro-helmet off.
[Don't throw him off the mech!] Serala Sent from below. [Ben says we need information!]
Torin grabbed the pilot and pulled him up out of the mech's cockpit by the harness. "You better be glad my boss needs you alive or you'd be a greasy spot on the street right now," he growled at the pilot. "Down the ladder. Now."
The Wasp mech was turned toward the Dervish now and was reaching up with it's four-fingered hands to try to swat Torin off the Dervish's head. The metal hand connected with the larger mech's head and the blow shook the mech so that Torin nearly fell off. He turned off his lightsaber and dropped into the cockpit, hauling the remains of the hatchway closed behind him.
He turned toward the controls, grabbed up the neuro-helmet and jammed it on, tugging the neural nets inside it down securely over his head as he was searching over the controls for the neural systems reset. He pulled the safety harness around him and clipped it closed, then settled back in the worn padding of the pilot's chair, took a deep breath, touched the Force to calm the sudden fear, and hit the neural reset.
A blinding, searing pain lanced through his head as the neural net adjusted to his brainwaves and recalibrated to his nervous system. It felt like something had taken his gray matter and wrung it out like a wet towel. Then it was past, and he opened his eyes carefully. He felt larger. Slower. Heavier. The burn of the fusion reactor in the mech's torso. The hum of power vibrating through every limb. The chatter of RF comm channels in his head like telepathic Sending. Status readouts for weapons, power, damage, radar, floated glowing in the lower half of his visual field. Out the Dervish's cockpit canopy he could see the Wasp's head and the huge hand still reaching up to hit the larger mech's head.
And suddenly he realized....this wasn't a simulator. This was the real thing. He was really inside a mech. He lifted a hand and outside the cockpit window he saw the blunt snout of the arm-mounted laser on the mech's corresponding limb hover slowly into view to swat at the Wasp. The impact as the limb connected with the other mech's torso reverberated through metal, myomer and Torin's arm. He reached forward to the controls and twisted the Dervish's torso around back front and started carefully lifting one foot after another to turn the mech completely around.
The simulators aren't very accurate, he realized. Moving a mech was a lot harder than he thought! One foot, one actuator at a time, having to slow down the thought processes to keep from overbalancing if he tried to move too fast. Compensating for the damaged actuator in the left knee. One eye on the heat exchanger guages, trying not to overheat anything. Keeping the arms extended slightly to keep balance. And dealing with the damned Wasp that was trying now to bring a laser to bear on the Dervish's head. How did these things ever manage to run like this? Much less fight? The Wasp's laser crystals began glowing, and a warning buzzer went off loudly in his ears. He reached up, the mech's arms raised outside, and pushed the Wasp with both hands. It staggered back a couple steps and nearly fell. [Seri!] he Sent, trying to balance his Sending with the neural demands of the mech's body. [I've got the Dervish, ask Ben what he wants me to do.]
A moment later he felt Serala's mind touch his, the calmness of the Force overlaying her mindvoice. [We've got the people moving down the street now. They're safe. Ben says can you take out the Wasp?]
Torin grunted, brought up the mech's arms and keyed for the lasers. Four great flashes of purest light erupted from the mech's torso and arms at the Wasp, and at this range it was impossible not to hit it. The smaller mech staggered again and started to turn to run. Torin didn't stop to think, just moved, swinging one arm at the smaller mech. The arm connected and the Wasp fell back against the building the Dervish had been demolishing. The Dervish's heat exchanger guages started going up into the red zones. He couldn't fire even one laser or he'd overheat. He shifted the mech's weight onto one leg carefully and kicked with the other at the Wasp's legs. And felt the sickening lurch as the Dervish began to overbalance and fall. He tried to get the mech to back up, to put the suspended leg behind itself...and the mech systems took it as a command to the jump jets. The Dervish blasted upwards on the rockets in it's feet and legs and began to tumble in the air because the thrust had been off-center. He panicked and hit the emergency cut-off for the jets on the console in front of him, and the Dervish crashed back down to the street. But fortunately, he landed on top of the Wasp which was still trying to get to it's feet. The Dervish's right foot came down squarely on the Wasp's torso, went completely through the battered armor plating and into the fusion plant. Searing heat and pain sliced through Torin's leg and brain, and he struggled for a moment to pull the mech's foot out before triggering the jump jets in that leg again to free it. The sudden thrust of the rockets overbalanced him again, and he went staggering over into the half-demolished building.
[Ben says it's like watching you trying to dance,] Serala Sent with a giggle in her mindvoice.
He would have growled back something ugly for her to tell Ben, but he was too involved in trying to get the damned Dervish upright again.
Slow down, he told himself. Breathe. Think. He sat back, realizing he'd been knotted up, and started concentrating on his breathing to calm himself down, started one of the meditation exercises his Master had drilled into him since he was eight years old. Relaxing every muscle, every limb. Blanking the mind. Letting the thoughts go through and out with no resistance or attachment. Reach for the Force. Let the Force do the work. Stay out of the way and the Force will allow you to do whatever you can imagine.
The Dervish steadied, rose smoothly from the half-prone position on the collapsed building, got it's feet back under it firmly, and began to turn around again toward the little group of Jedi.
Ben nodded, looking up at the huge massive metallic beast. "He's got it now. I can feel him using the Force."
Shosin trilled a whistle at Ben. "We need to get away from the Wasp. The radiation from the torso."
Ben looked over at the remains of the smaller mech, the thickened cooling liquid from the ruptured power plant inside it beginning to seep out from cracks and splits in the armor plating. "Yeah. Okay. Jagoe? What about the pilot?"
The Baradan hauled up the Dervish's former pilot in front of his leader. Ben gestured around him at the destruction with the point of his lightsaber blade. "Take your pick. Deal with your commanders or deal with me. From the looks of that mech of yours, I wouldn't expect they'd take too kindly to one mech destroyed and the other captured by the enemy. I expect your unit's kind of low on money and parts. And that means stressed-out commanders with a low tolerance for failure."
The pilot, a human, a Corellian by the look of him, gave the two mechs a brief glance and then shrugged silently. Ben snorted.
"All right then. Jagoe, you watch him. Seri, ask Torin if we can hitch a ride," Ben said, gesturing up at the mech which now stood quietly looking up and down the street slowly.
"Torin says we can ride on the ladder on the back or up on the shoulders if we're feeling dangerous," Serala said with a grin up at the Dervish's head. "He says there's not hardly enough room in the cockpit to swing a peko by the tail."
Ben quirked a grin briefly and turned off his lightsaber. "Tell him no jumping. If that mech jumps while I'm hanging onto the ladder I'll climb up there and run him through."
Serala laughed and looked back up at the mech's head briefly. A moment later the mech stomped one of it's feet slowly, and the ground shook beneath them. Ben rolled his eyes. [You can thank me later for letting you have that thing. What am I, some kind of fairy godfather giving you toys for being a good little Jedi?] Ben Sent up to the presence in the mech's head. The mech stomped it's foot again. "All right, everyone, climb on up. Looks like we've got transport."
Ben pulled his cloak around him against the cold of the night. Sure, it didn't go with city camoflage, but it was warm. A memory flashed through his mind, the wonderful bone-deep glaring light of Tatooine's double suns, the baking heat of the desert, sand in his boots. Homesickness. He always got it worst when he was cold and wet. He hated rain.
The forest was loud with the sounds of frogs and insects and other animals, black with night and fog and rain. The clammy cold chilled hands and faces very quickly. Jagoe, with his reptilian ancestry, was sleepy and slow in the cold, blinking blankly at Shosin as they huddled together in his cloak. Uloa was perhaps the best adapted to this environment at the moment, with her long fur. She sat on one of the fallen logs they'd hauled up to sit on, giggling with her peculiar burble as she tossed chips of bark into the fire to watch them spark and pop. Serala, beside her, took the small metal camp pot of boiling water from the edge of the fire and poured some carefully into the plastic pouch of dehydrated food she'd pulled out from her pack, sealed the pouch again to let it cook. She looked up at Ben consideringly, the question plain in her eyes.
[I'll go,] Ben Sent to her. He picked up his thermos and filled it with another cup of the hot soup they'd made earlier and sealed it, then took the pouch of food from Serala. He looked over at the Corellian pilot sitting on the other side of the fire and decided the others could handle him for the moment. He started off into the dark away from the warmth of the fire, pulling his hood over his head to try to keep off the drizzle. He touched the Force and let it guide him through the murk toward the familiar presence a few hundred yards away.
A few moments later he came to the house-sized rock and the mechanoid sitting silently on top of it. The Dervish was completely silent, the engines switched off. Ben looked up at the head and saw a faint light shining out of the viewports.
[I'm up here. On the leg,] came Torin's quiet mindvoice. Ben saw the small figure sitting on the mech's lap under the overhang of the torso, wrapped in the dark brown cloak. He climbed up the handholds on the mech's nearest leg and swung up onto the mech's lap, moving to join his friend in the inadequate shelter. Once he got there and leaned back against the torso he realized Torin's logic. There was one of the heat sinks for the power plant here, and it was warm. He handed Torin the food pouch and thermos. [Thanks. I hadn't realized I was hungry.]
[Because you've been up here thinking,] Ben finished for him. [In between monitoring the comm channels, I hope.]
[Right on both counts,] Torin Sent as he began scooping out the noodles and vegetable bits from the pouch with his fingers. [The mech units here are definitely mercenaries. Cheap ones. The Federation didn't go to very much trouble to screen the
hired help. These guys are the B-unit for Tiano's Falcons. The Falcons used to be pretty trick, but they got pounded on Vissak a few years ago and they haven't really got it back together yet. They took something like eighty percent damage on Vissak, wasn't a mech in any unit that didn't take some major damage. What I heard from Master Windu, the Falcons will take any job now, no questions asked so long as they get paid at least half in advance. They're so desperate for parts and money they don't give a damn any more about what they might be doing. But it sounds like none of them are happy to be here, playing bully for the Federation.]
Ben sat back against the warmth of the heat sink grating behind him and tucked his hands inside the sleeves of his cloak. [I wonder if they could be persuaded to leave. Let the Federation do it's own dirty work.]
Torin shrugged and opened the thermos. [To be honest, I don't think so. They sound like they need the money too badly. Old Thumper's only got one set of LRM missiles left in the racks. And from what I heard on the comm, they don't have any more expendable ordinance. They've already cannibalized the Wasp I pounded. Basically all they've got are particle cannons and lasers and maybe a few thousand rounds of slug-thrower shot. And I'd hate to be one of their techs, trying to patch mechs back together with spacer's tape and detonator wire.]
Ben nodded, his eyes following a line of welding on the torso plates above him. [Thumper?] he Sent with a grin.
Torin shrugged, drinking his soup.
Ben rolled his eyes, grateful Torin couldn't see him grinning. [You named it already?]
[Seemed appropriate,] Torin Sent shortly, almost defensively. [And she's not an 'it', she's a she.]
Ben laughed. [So was it like you always imagined?]
Torin sat back against the heat sink grating, finishing the last of his soup. He didn't answer for a moment, looking out at the fog-shrouded, rain-dripping forest around him. When his mindvoice came at last it was quiet with wonder. [It was better. Once I got things under control, it was--it was--just--incredible. Like it wasn't fifty-five tons of metal. It felt like my own body. I think I understand what Shosin says about flying now. And you about your lightsaber. I think--I think I felt that today. That connecting feeling. Like this is what I'm meant to do.]
Ben looked over at him but could only see the white blur of his friend's face in the darkness of his cloak hood. No wonder he forgot to eat, Ben thought.
They sat in silence for a few moments, listening to the dripping of the rain, the insects and animals calling in the forest, the slight hiss of pressure equalizing in the mech's internal hydraulics as the heat from the fusion plant caused the damping fluid to expand. Then Torin began Sending again quietly. [Ever since I was little at home on Ramos I wanted to fly a mech. They used to be in the parades, whole units of them marching through the Galleria Victoria, shaking the ground, loud enough to wake the dead. Like gods walking. Pretty wild stuff when you're only six. I've never seen anything, before or since, that could even come close to that. I've watched Master Windu and Master Kee fight six remotes at a time, I've seen Master Koon skip his fighter off the surface of a star, I've seen the entire Jedi battlefleet gathered over Droma. I've learned to do some pretty damned amazing stuff myself. But nothing--nothing--has ever compared to watching those mechs back home. And I don't guess anything ever will.]
Ben just looked over at him for a moment longer, then reached over and put a hand on Torin's shoulder in mute understanding. Then he scooted out from under the Dervish's torso and turned to climb down the leg. [I'll send Seri to keep you warm,] Ben Sent as he started back through the fog and damp toward the light and warmth of the fire.
"No, here, this arm should be a little higher. See, parallel to the floor," Theri instructed, lifting Adara's left arm up a little in the Soritsu-ji third front guard position. "Picky, I know, but you know Ratashi Qualara."
Adara grinned and nodded. Theri moved fluidly through the kata she was teaching the younger girl to the next move, and Adara watched intently. Theri moved through the entire exercise, then into the next kata for a moment before stopping and turning back to Adara again. "It's like dancing, like those ritual dances Shosin's people do. Don't think of it as just one move at a time. It should all flow together. And that only comes with practice."
"For me, maybe, not for you," Adara giggled.
"I do so have to practice, same as you," Theri protested. "Come on, now, let's get back to work before Ratashi gets on to us for wasting time."
Nearly every square of matting in the Soritsu-ji area was filled with students, and Ratashi Qualara had given in to neccessity and assigned several of the youngest students to Theri to train in the first sets of katas. It made Theri slightly uneasy still even after nearly a week. And it meant reshuffling her schedule around so that she was spending half her lunch time meditating and the two extra hours after classes at night were spent down in the Soritsu-ji area taking her own lessons with the Ratashi. There just weren't enough hours in the day.
She felt Kee's presence approaching and reached out to him gladly with her mind. He came through the door from the hallway smiling, Sending a caress that had definite overtones of worry in it. He was very worried lately that she was trying to do too much, and he could not always link with her during the day to check up on her. [We've got a message from Ben,] he Sent to her as he wove through the Soritsu-ji area toward her. [A holo. Can you wait til lunch to see it?]
[Ben! Is he all right?] she asked immediately. [If he's all right I can wait til lunch!]
Kee smiled and gave her a kiss as he came up to her. [He's fine. Looks a little skinny, but no broken bones. Says he caught a cold a few days back, but he's getting better now.]
Theri sighed in relief and gave him a hug as he ruffled her hair. [Thank the Force he's all right.]
Kee pushed her toward the mat again. [Better get back to work, now. I'll show you the holo at lunch.]
[Just...tell me, is his mission going all right? I don't want details, just--]
Kee nodded. [He still doesn't know when he'll be home, but things are going all right.]
Theri nodded, swallowing down her disappointment. Kee squeezed her hand. [It's been almost a month now.]
[He knows you miss him,] Kee Sent as he turned to go. [Now get back to work, I'll see you at lunch.]
R2-D2 stood waiting for them in the center of the main room of the apartment as Kee punched in the code at the door and Theri nearly bounced into the room. The little droid beeped a blue streak for a moment as she dropped her backpack next to the door.
[You're practically buzzing you're so eager to see this,] Kee Sent with a smile as he pulled her into a chair next to him to cuddle for a moment. Theri nodded.
"All right, R2, show us," Theri said. The little droid turned his domed head a little and began projecting a hologram in the air before him.
The line of light unfolded into the image of Ben Kenobi smiling at them happily, wearing his field combat uniform, sitting inside something that looked almost like a starfighter cockpit. His hair had gotten a little longer and flopped over his eyes now, and his face did look thinner that she remembered. "Master Kee, Theri, it's me. I'm all right! Don't worry about me, Theri! We're all doing fine, in fact. Well, I did catch a cold a few days ago, but it's going away now, the Teravans have all kinds of herbal medicines that work really well. Anyway, see this?" he said, gesturing up around him at the starfighter-like surroundings. "This is the inside of a mechanoid! A Dervish. Torin captured it and named it Thumper. We've been using it for transport and for scanning the comm channels and such, rescuing people. He's been in two fights in it already now. But we have to be careful only to pick on the smaller mechs, because we've no way to do repairs and nothing to repair it with anyway, even if we knew how. We're collecting our own cadre of out-of-work mech pilots too. And refugees. We're trying to organize the people we've been rescuing and helping to form a militia to go after the other mechs. There's only about a dozen mechs on the planet, and we've already captured this one and destroyed two others. So the Federation will have to deal with us soon. We're getting really hot-dog good at taking out destroyer droids too."
He stopped, grinned a little. "I know, Master, I'm giving away sensitive information. I'll shut up about the mission now. I *am* worried about some things. Torin, mostly. I'm worried he may not want to come home. And I don't know what to say to him. He says he's found what he wants to do with old Thumper here. Who am I to tell him no? He's gotten really, really good at flying this thing. He's even asked me if we could build it a lightsaber, run it off the fusion plant. I hope he was only joking about that. How would we make the crystals?" He laughed at this and Theri and Kee smiled. "I don't really know what I'm going to say to him, if he asks to stay here. He can't bring Thumper home with him. So I don't know what to tell him. How do you choose between two things that are both right? And I can't make his choices for him." His eyes went distant for a moment and he sighed. Then he straightened up again and grinned. "Don't quote me on this, but I hope I'll be home in about another month. Now, Theri, don't hold me to that! I have no definite timetable here, but at the rate we're going with getting the refugees organized we may be able to come home that early. But that is absolutely the earliest we'll be able to come home. More than likely, it'll be longer." He looked down for a moment, then back up at the holocam. "I miss you both horribly. Every time I have to make a decision I wonder what you'd do, Master. I look up at the stars at night and wonder what you're both doing. I wonder how you're doing with building your lightsaber, Theri. I can't wait to see you again. And I've got at least another month to go. Ah well." He waved a hand dismissively at this and Theri bit her lip against the lump in her throat. "I've got to get out of Thumper here before Torin starts getting suspicious. This mech's his baby and I think he's worried I'll try to run off with it. No way! I'll leave that to those that know what they're doing. Anyway, I love you both, I'll call you again soon, I can't wait to come home. Take care of each other. Bye!" And with one final faint smile, he reached forward to turn off the holocam. The hologram flickered and faded out.
Theri took a deep breath and sighed for a long moment. Kee hugged her silently and she leaned against him happily. [See, minx? He's fine.]
She smiled faintly and nodded. [He looks skinnier, yes. And he's growing out his hair!]
Kee laughed. [You really do have a thing for long-haired men, don't you?]
She shrugged a little. [Yes. I do. And you'd better be thankful.]
[Minx!] he Sent, laughing, tugging her up into his lap to tickle her unmercifully. She yelped and wriggled, laughing hysterically, trying to tickle him back, both of them tumbling over onto the floor together. R2 beeped and rolled away from them a little as tickling turned to kisses as they calmed down.
A few moments later, Kee pulled away reluctantly from Theri's arms and sat up slowly. [We don't get nearly enough time together now.]
Theri nodded, sat up beside him. [Yeah. Too much to do. You're up in Operations or Communications all the time, and I'm running around like a rabid peko.]
He smiled at this, put an arm around her. She snuggled for a moment as he kissed her hair. [Well. We need to eat. Can't live on air and each other's kisses, after all.]
[Speak for yourself,] she Sent mischievously. [I'd be perfectly happy that way.]
Kee laughed and she got to her feet, held out a hand to help him up. They straightened up their uniforms and Kee tied his hair back again as she'd pulled out the clutch-beads to play with it. [Later, minx. We always have nights together, after all.]
She nodded, swung her backpack up onto her shoulder. "R2? Save that message from Ben, would you?"
R2 whistled acknowledgement as he followed them out.
"I am sooooo bored," Adara said, flopping onto her back on the floor of the main room of Kee and Theri's apartment, shoving her History textreader away with one foot.
"Bored?" Theri said in disbelief. "When does anyone ever have time to be bored with the schedules we have?" She keyed in her answer to the Anthropology question she was working on and flipped back through the text for the answer to the next one.
Adara sat up again and pulled her knee up to rest her chin on it, looking over at her friend consideringly. "Y'know, I haven't been out to the mall since Seri and Shosin left. And that's been five weeks now."
"The mall? You a mall rat?" Theri asked, rolling over onto her back to hold her
textreader over her head to read the next question, twining one long lock of black hair around her hand.
"Well, sort of. I mean, we're Jedi, we've got no need for anything at the mall. Except maybe books and music and things like that. We're given everything we need to live here. But Seri and Shosin like to go out to window-shop and just have fun. And they usually take me with them. Father sends Seri and me money every quarter-day, and we usually spend it at the mall."
Theri snorted. "I can think of lots better things to spend money on. If I had any."
Adara grinned. "But there's always things to do there. Don't you ever want to do anything besides study and meditate?"
Theri rolled over again to look at her friend. "When my old Master and I were on Korolis, I spent a great deal of my time at the malls there. Malls mean security droids, drug dealers and LEOs. And I'm not big on any of those."
"LEOs?"
"Law Enforcement Officers," Theri said absently. "People I've always tried to stay away from. Besides, the whole mall scene is so superficial and pointless. Rampant materialism. Thank you, no."
Adara shook her head. "You don't go to the mall to buy things, you go to see what's happening, all the latest styles, the new music, the new colors."
Theri looked at her like her friend had suddenly grown horns. "What does that have to do with us? We're Jedi. We wear uniforms." She keyed in another answer on her Anthropology homework.
Adara sighed. "We're human too. I like that kind of thing."
Theri waggled a finger at her. "It's a distraction. What does Master Mundi say about all that, anyway?"
Adara smiled. "He doesn't say anything about it."
"Yeah, probably can't think of anything to say that you'd be likely to listen to," Theri said cynically.
Adara sat for a moment, trying to think of something to say to persuade her friend to go with her. She wasn't supposed to go to the mall alone, but usually she had her older sister Serala with her. And Theri was only a year younger than Seri... "You could...get something nice for Master Kee," Adara said quietly.
Theri stopped and gave her a startled look. Then her face cleared. "I don't have any money, 'Dara."
"I have the money. And Seri's too, since she's gone." Adara dug in her backpack for a moment, came up with a chipcard and held it up. "See? Father puts more money in our account ever quarter-day."
"That's your money, not mine," Theri said.
"We could at least go get something to eat," Adara said, nearly pleading. "They've got an entire level that's one big food court. Everything you could imagine to eat."
Theri sat up at this, nearly exasperated. "You're as bad as Kee for trying to tempt me to do things I shouldn't do. Hell, 'Dara, I usually don't eat anyhow."
Adara sensed she nearly had Theri convinced. "And I know you've never been out and about Coruscant, you stick to the Temple and never go anywhere! Don't you want to see the rest of Coruscant?"
"Heh. It all looks the same. Buildings everywhere."
Adara gave Theri a level look. "We're done with classes for the day. Master Kee's still up in Operations. Master Mundi's with him. We could take the maglev and be there and back before Master Kee gets home. The mall never closes, so don't try that excuse."
Theri looked over at her, shaking her head. "You're really determined to go, aren't you?"
Adara nodded. "I can't go alone. Usually Seri's here, but she's not now. My brother's birthday is in two weeks, and Seri told me to send him something from her too. She'd hoped she could be back by the time we had to send the presents off on the courier ship, but...she's not. And Master Mundi made me promise not to go alone to the mall."
Theri looked at her again for a long moment. Then she hit the off button on her textreader and tossed it into her backpack and zipped it closed. "Ah, what the hell, you're right, I've never set foot outside the Temple except for when we went home to Thretketh."
Adara swept up her own textreaders and shoved them into her backpack with a grateful grin at Theri. "You gonna call Master Kee?"
Theri reached out tentatively to touch Kee's thoughts, but felt such concentration in his mind that she pulled away immediately. She wanted so much to just touch his thoughts all the sudden, to feel him touch her mind. But he'd been so involved in work lately she hardly even heard his presence until he came home at night. Usually very late, too. "Kee's busy. Besides, you said we'd be back before they knew we were gone. Come on, bring your pack, we'll need something to carry your stuff home in."
They hopped up from the floor, swung their backpacks up onto their shoulders simultaneously, and headed for the lifts.
"This is ridiculous," Theri said faintly as they swung off the maglev train on the first floor of the largest mall on Coruscant. "How many stores did you say this madhouse has?"
"Uhm, more than a thousand, I think," Adara said happily, "But that's just stores, not the food court too."
Theri shook her head and they walked forward into the middle of the gigantic multileveled complex. The huge mall was more than a hundred miles from the Temple, but the maglev had made the trip in fifteen minutes as the mall had its own express train. The mall was circular, almost a mile in diameter, and twenty stories tall. The empy air in the middle was usually occupied by people on hoverboards or flying in gossamer planes or even sometimes aliens that could fly or float. Small holocam droids zipped around everywhere, part of the security droid force, looking for shoplifters. There were aliens everywhere, Baradans like Jagoe, Ishitibs, Korgans, Shwiliks, Rodians, various kinds of humans, and seemingly every kind of droid imaginable. Color and sound and light everywhere, even at this late hour. Time didn't seem to exist here save that it pertained to the duration of sales specials. The vast floor space under the great dome twenty floors above was given over to the food court, artists, musicians, street preachers. And, inevitably, thieves, drug dealers, prostitutes, assassins, hackers, mercenaries, and mall rats. It was anyone's guess as to which group was worst. Politicians found this place ideal for campaigning. There were sociologists who had spent entire careers studying the social dynamics of this place. There was one entire news organization devoted exclusively to covering the happenings at the mall. A sale at one of the major stores was headline news for days, covered with the same reckless abandon as other news organizations covered planetary disasters. A fifty percent off sale was treated like a civil war, with forty-eight point script proclaiming the end of the universe was near. It was rumored a new religion was coming into existence based on the convergences of sales and the stars over Coruscant. It was a microcosm of it's own, and for the most part the rest of Coruscant's population was happy to let it remain so. It was a nice place to visit, but only the truly desperate wanted to live there.
Adara pulled her friend along by the hand toward the lifts. "Come on, they've got the largest toy store on the planet here. Seri told me to get Rael some more of those hologame cartridges he collects. He's got over a hundred now."
There were stops along the way, of course, to look at clothes and books and to watch a four-armed alien juggler. Theri started getting nervous. She hadn't been out in this kind of environment alone in a long time, and the old habits were coming back with a vengeance. She was dutifully keeping her mind off Kee, knowing if she thought of him for more than a moment he might feel her thinking of him, and know she wasn't at the Temple. Well, he'd said not to link with him, hadn't he? Too many people here. She built another layer of shields around her mind and scanned a few times around her on every level of the mall as they made their way up toward the toy store, Adara chattering away beside her.
Eventually, though, after five levels of nothing more sinister than a few hackers giving her the once-over, she began to relax and get interested in what was going on around her. She was having more fun watching the people around her than in looking at clothes, though.
"Theri! Wake up, wouldya?" Adara said, poking her friend in the ribs when Theri stared for five minutes at a couple of mall rat kids zipping around the concourse outside on hoverboards, their green and orange hair flying behind them. "Geez, stop staring at people."
Theri turned to her again. "Sorry, I'm a Jedi, can't help it, we always stare off into space like idiots."
Adara giggled and pulled her down the walkway toward another store. "You're no fun, all this Mystic asceticism of yours. You'll go bug-nuts before you confirm at this rate."
"Nah, I just got no need for all this garbage. But you need a token adult, so here I am. Must be good for something besides Soritsu-ji, after all," Theri said with a grin.
"Ooh, look at that!" Adara said, pointing to a nearby window with a neon-green and black bodysuit. "Seri would like that!"
"Wrong colors for her, with that auburn hair you two have," Theri said automatically.
Adara looked up at her sideways. "Maybe. But it *would* look good on you, with your black hair."
Theri snorted. "No. Absolutely not. I don't need it, I don't want it, and I'm not trying it on. I'm happy with my uniforms."
"But is Master Kee happy seeing you in uniform all the time?" Adara said, grabbing her friend's hand again.
"I'm not in uniform with him all the time," Theri said with a quirk of one eyebrow. "As you well know. And I don't have any--"
"I'll get it for you! It would be worth it just to see the look on Master Kee's face!" Adara giggled, pulling her into the store.
"Kee put you up to this, didn't he?" Theri asked with a laugh. "Besides, we don't have time for this--"
Something scraped across her mind, that familiar feeling of fear and hate and darkness like the inside of a grave, wild power like the center of a neutron star. She stopped dead, straightened up, and glanced in the liquid mirror surface of the door of the store in front of her.
Behind them. A figure standing against the railing of the walkway. In solid black, arms crossed on the chest, hood over the head, leaning back casually on the railing. The head lifted and yellow-pupiled eyes met hers in the mirror for a moment. Then some people passed between, and he was gone.
[Maul!] she Sent into the crowd. But his presence was hidden again. He was near. But she couldn't pinpoint him.
Adara was looking up at her with a question in her eyes now. [What? Who did you feel?]
Theri took a deep breath, looked at her friend, and decided in an instant. [Nothing. Just thought I felt something. Gone now.]
But that presence like a dead spot on her mental radar hovered around the edge of her awareness. She started concentrating on her breathing to calm the sudden tension, let the spiral in her soul sweep through her for a moment with its juggernaut tide. She shielded her Sending from Adara so the younger girl wouldn't sense it. [You know you can't scare me, Maul, so what are you doing here?] she Sent into the crowd.
No answer. Of course. The dork.
"Come on, then," Adara said, pulling her inside the store. Theri nodded and let Adara pull her forward by the hand.
A few moments later, Adara was holding the black and neon-green bodysuit up to Theri's shoulder and surveying her critically. "Master Kee--he'd freak out! He'd drool all over the floor--" she gasped, giggling. "You've just got to try this on! And Ben! I wonder what Ben would say when he saw you in this!"
"Well, Kee *did* once say he wanted to see me in rose-colored shimmersilk," Theri said, taking the bodysuit from the younger girl's hand and looking at it. Skin-tight shiny black lycra with jagged slashes of neon-green and white, long sleeves. Reminded her of her old days on Korolis. She'd have worn something like this with her black boots and the green streak in her hair. She'd have painted the jagged black lines around her eyes and tied her hair up with a cable-garrote and stuck needle-spikes in the knots and kept her money tucked in her shoes because she had nowhere else to put it where it wouldn't be immediately obvious. She'd enjoyed catting around like that. She'd enjoyed the danger, living on the edge. And admit it, Kaitryn, she said to herself, you enjoyed the way men stared at you.
"Well? Gonna try it on?" Adara said. "You're staring off into space again. Geez, don't you meditate enough?"
Theri snorted. "Sure, I'm game."
Adara pushed her toward the dressing rooms. "Go!"
A few moments later she was turning in front of the mirror to check the fit of the lycra. "Well, I guess all those hours and hours of Soritsu-ji are paying off," she called to Adara outside the dressing room. "I can still wear lycra and get away with it."
Adara poked her head around the door and nodded. "Yeah! You look like Seri!"
Theri smiled faintly at that. "I miss her too, kiddo. And Ben. And Shosin. And no idea when they'll be back." She turned again, looked down at herself. "This brings back memories. I wasn't much older than you when I wore stuff like this when I was on Korolis." She looked up at herself in the mirror, tried to imagine how Kee would see her in this. Or Ben. "All right, the freak-out factor convinced me. I'll wear it a couple times and give it to Seri, though."
Adara giggled. "She'll like that. She could wear it to go dancing with Ben."
Theri grinned and reached for her uniform again. "Wonder if I should get a green streak put in my hair again. I miss that sometimes, actually."
Adara wrinkled her nose slightly. "Neon-green and white, that would look good. Come on, get dressed, we'll go have it done! I want a purple streak!"
Theri rolled her eyes and tugged her dark gray vest on over her tunic, fastened her belt on and sat down to put on her boots. "You just like to spend money, don't you?"
"Sure. Why not? Father doesn't ever ask me and Seri what we spend it on," Adara said, taking the bodysuit from the doorhook.
Theri thought about that as she followed behind the younger girl. Adara and Serala's family ruled over a good quarter of their planet Malakdere. Their family was fabulously wealthy. Yet all the time she'd spent with Serala and Adara suggested to her that if the two girls hadn't shown talent for the Force they'd have been treated as little more than bargaining chips, married off to the younger sons of the other provincial rulers on their world. But being Force-talented had given them worth they might not otherwise have had. Their father had used his daughters to gain the favor of the Jedi, and thus acquired a tacit advantage over the other provincial rulers. With the possibility of his two Jedi daughters one day returning home to lend their strength to their younger brother when he took over, Adara's father had managed to secure his position as the preeminent govenor of their world.
The thought brought up again how different things were on other worlds. Her own family could never gain anything through her being a Mystic or a Jedi. They'd been honored to have the Jedi at the clanhold, they'd rejoiced that Theri had found her way among them. But whatever Kaitryn gained was gained honestly, through the work of their own hands. And Kee didn't even have a family, he'd been raised at the Temple since he was three years old. He only knew Tatooine was his homeworld because Master Yoda had told him when he was small. And Ben had been taken from his family in similar fashion, he'd been identified as Force-talented as a baby but allowed to live with his family until he was seven. Kee had been an orphan, raised by a Jedi family until he was six years old when Master Yoda took him as his apprentice. So no one would gain anything politically from them being Jedi. But she had to assume Master Mundi knew all this about Serala and Adara and was dealing with it somehow. Jedi didn't take sides. So Master Mundi must be doing something about that somehow.
"Here, put it in your pack," Adara said, gesturing for Theri to open her backpack as they left the store. "Now. Hair. Level ten, I think."
Theri smiled faintly as they headed for the lifts. Well, what else would she be doing right now? Sitting at home waiting for Kee. Why not have a little fun?
As it turned out, chromalusion streaks were still in fashion, so she picked out the same color she'd had before, almost exactly the same neon color as the green patches on the bodysuit. In direct light the color was neon-green. In non-direct light, it turned silvery-metallic green. The steak was one two-inch wide lock of her hair on the left side, with thin half-inch streaks of silver on the edges of the green. If she wanted, she could braid the streaks together. She could do all sorts of neat hairdos with it. Adara had the same thing done in her hair in bright purple and gold.
"We look like we're wearing gang colors," Theri said as they left the shop, swinging their packs onto their shoulders. She tugged her green and silver hair into her hand to look at it. "Yours is neat too. Seri will probably kill me for letting you get it, but why not? Shosin puts all those beads and feathers in her hair--"
Again the scraping presence across her mind. She shivered and looked up and around. She thought she saw a black shape dart into a doorway a few stores down. [Damnit, Maul, cut it out!] she Sent angrily on a thin line to the fleeting Dark presence. [I know you're here, you don't have to go around playing hide-and-seek!]
Adara looked up at her worriedly, chewing on her lip nervously. [You felt it again, didn't you? What is it?]
Theri stopped scanning the crowd. [Are you feeling something too?]
Adara nodded, her blue-green eyes looking around them worriedly. [I keep feeling something...something...dead. Like a ghost is hiding behind people trying to get closer to me.]
Theri was instantly on the alert now. She could handle Maul if it was just herself, but she had Adara to consider too. She *was* supposed to be the token adult here. Presumably she was responsible for getting Adara back to the Temple in one piece. [Come on, let's get those hologame cartridges for your brother.] She put an arm around Adara's shoulders and turned her toward the lifts. They had to stay in the middle of crowds. If Maul could get them separated or alone, he'd jump them. Or maybe not. She couldn't tell. He was acting stranger than a mad bat tonight.
They made their way up to the seventeenth floor which was all one store, the largest toy store on Coruscant. There were children everywhere, chasing each other, playing, swinging on things, climbing inside some truly interesting giant tubular playtunnels. Alien and humanoid children giggled and raced around together under the indulgent watchful eyes of their parents or guardians. Theri and Adara took one look at the giant tube playtunnels and dove right in. The tunnels were big enough even for adult-sized Jedi trainees. They were soon mobbed by a half-dozen giggling Shwiliks, six-armed blue furry creatures fully the equal of humans in intelligence. Young Shwiliks enjoyed such climbing games as human children could manage and swung about on jungle-gyms and tree-climbers like rabid pendulums, making a sort of glooping sound that was their version of laughter. A young Rodian tried to disentangle several of the Shwiliks from the two Jedi trainees but all of them evaded the amphibious youngster and clung to the straps of Theri's pack. [I wonder if they're Force-sensitive,] Adara Sent to Theri at one point. [They seem to want to stick to us like hookmouth worms.]
The Shwiliks glooped louder as she Sent to Theri.
[Telepathically sensitive, I think,] Theri Sent back amidst the Shwiliks croaking around her in a frog chorus. The giant tube-tunnel rocked as the Shwiliks began swinging on Theri's arms and tugging at her as she Sent. One of the adult Shwiliks poked it's head inside the tube and blorped loudly, and the younger ones all dropped off Theri and swarmed toward their parent. Theri and Adara laughed and began climbing through the tunnel again. They came up into a low-gravity bubble and bounced around with a young red-gold Wookie who hooted and growled friendly greetings to them, his fur standing on end in the low static charge of the gravity bubble. Theri pulled Adara over to another tube and they headed out with a wave at the young Wookie.
[Geez, wonder what time it's getting to be?] Adara Sent as they emerged back into the toy store. [I'm getting tired. It must be really late now. How long have we been here?]
[Too long, I'd say. Kee must be home by now, but he hasn't called me,] Theri Sent back worriedly. [Come on, let's get those hologames for your brother and get home. We're going to get in trouble for being out here this late.]
They soon found the hologames and Adara spent a good twenty minutes trying to figure out which ones her brother Rael would like most, Theri scanning the crowds around them as covertly as she could, trying to suppress her own anxiety before Adara could pick it up. Finally Adara handed her the bag with the cartridges and she was stuffing them into Adara's pack for her and they turned to go. The dead spot in her sensing kept pace with them, following them just at the very edge of her awareness, never within actual sight.
They were both looking about nervously now and walking fast. Theri relaxed into the Force and felt Adara link with her, both of them touching the Force to calm the fear. [We're all right. We're in the middle of the crowd at the biggest mall on Coruscant. No one can hurt us,] Theri Sent to her firmly. Adara nodded and flipped her new purple streak back. Theri grinned and tossed her own hair back. [Just 'cause we don't have lightsabers yet doesn't mean we're helpless. I spent six years taking care of myself and my lightsaber is still a bunch of parts on Ben's worktable. You can learn any of the tricks I used. It's all a matter of how you see things.]
[Like how?] Adara asked as they got off the lift on the third level and ducked into a music store.
[Subliminals are easy to do and quick, and if you pick the right images you can scare the poodoo out of people,] Theri answered. [And projecting false images of yourself. And impulsion-loops. I used to make people think I was giving them drugs on Korolis when all I was doing was planting an impulsion-loop where everytime they thought they were taking the Dreamweaver they'd get a memory of their best trip. Not drugs at all, just the memory of the best trip they ever had. Only had to remember to put a time limit on that sort, or the junkies would have done nothing but run themselves ragged thinking they had an endless supply of Dreamweaver.]
Adara nodded. [You had a pretty rough life with your old Master, didn't you? Weren't you scared all the time?]
Theri shrugged, remembering. [There were good times. Good times come around and they go away. So do bad times. In the end, it all balances out. All the opposites balance out eventually. And there's always the Force beyond all the opposites. We just may not be able to see how stuff balances out, because we're just these limited finite human beings. Ben asked me once if I'd ever known the Force to be wrong about anything, no matter how small. I never have. So we just have to trust it to balance things out.] She grinned slightly. She could sense Maul behind her close by, the sudden intense attention of the yellow eyes on her. [That's why we can't go trying to pound on the Dark, in my Way. That's for the Force to arrange. Not us. If we're meant to do something, the Force arranges things so we end up doing it. All we have to do is learn to figure out what's the will of the Force and what's not. And learn to live by it, no matter how hard it seems.]
Adara nodded, but she was looking around nervously again. [I feel that dead thing close to us,] she Sent in a very small mindvoice.
[I know. Stay here for a minute, I'll deal with this,] Theri Sent only to her, shielding the Sending from the Dark presence she sensed behind her. She straightened up and said aloud, "I'm going to go look in the electronica for something, be back in a minute."
"Sure," Adara said, catching on immediately.
Theri moved away, looking around the music store at all the soundchips and optical disks of music, wove through the racks to the electronica section and began looking at chips and disks.
A hand on her back, on her hair, the familiar razor-edged Darkness of his mind. The rush of lust made her sway for a minute before she touched the Force and got it under control. It took a moment before she trusted her mindvoice not to quaver. [All right, now what? You obviously wanted to talk to me alone.]
Faint amusement as the hand on her hair fell to encircle her waist and the black and red face hovered over her shoulder. Pure animalistic need lanced through her, her insides went cold then numb. More amusement from Maul. [Stop it. You're doing that deliberately, aren't you? Stop it, Maul. Now.]
The gargoyle-like face over her shoulder actually smiled fleetingly, tilted slightly to look her in the eye for a moment. [Why should I? What are you afraid of?]
She snorted a nervous laugh. [Not you, that's for damned sure.]
[Then why are you nervous?] he answered.
[Geez, I dunno, maybe because you're following me around all over the mall and now you're standing here playing with my hair and you know very well I'm Thretkethan and you're deliberately giving me the creeps,] Theri snapped back at him. She would have moved away but the arm around her waist tightened and his hand latched onto her belt. [Maul. Let go of me. Now.]
He smiled faintly again and she felt his hand disappear for a moment before he reached up and put something small and cold in her hand. [That green streak in your hair...is it a reminder of old times? Or a sign of ownership?]
She turned to look at him, startled and suddenly angry. The yellow cat-pupiled eyes met hers again for a moment, the faint smile on his face a challenge.
[Do you really want me to risk giving you an embolism this time, Maul?] Theri Sent, threat in every syllable she spit into his mind. [I had you howling back home on Thretketh, I can do it again right here and now if you're really into the pain.]
The smile slid up to wolfish delight. [Good. You're still willing to fight about something. Now how does it go...? 'Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.'] The yellow eyes looked down into hers again. [So what are you afraid of? Me? Or your own feelings?] He took her hand and folded her fingers tightly around the thing he'd given her, smiled again wolfishly, and walked away into the crowd.
Theri stared after him for several seconds, half-stunned, feeling the lust still numbing her insides, trying to tear her eyes away from the cat-like grace of his movements and completely unable to. Then Adara was beside her again, latching onto her hand.
[That was a Sith Lord! You were talking to a Sith Lord!] Adara Sent, terrified, her mindvoice choked and shrill with her fear. [Is that what they feel like? Like death? Why didn't he kill you? Or me?]
Maul was lost in the crowd now, and Theri came back to herself. She looked down at her hand to see what he'd given her.
It was a lightsaber crystal, one of the lenticular ones, greenish-yellow in color. Probably one of Maul's spares. Facetted into the center were three interlocked circles, facetted in such a way that the symbol looked almost like a hologram. She turned the crystal and the symbol blazed orange when the light struck it. The crystal was set in a band of auralanium with a ring at the top, and a length of black leather cord was threaded through it and knotted to make a necklace. It was two centimeters in diameter. Theri glanced around swiftly at the crowds, then hurriedly jerked the cord over her head and tucked the crystal into her tunic where it rested cold as ice between her breasts.
[Come on, let's get out of here,] she Sent to Adara, taking the girl's hand. [This little joyride's gone on long enough. We're already gonna get fried for coming out here in the first place.]
Adara didn't argue. They linked and touched the Force and were dodging through the crowds in an instant. If they hadn't been three stories off the ground, Theri would have been tempted to jump over the concourse rail and land in the food court below. She could manage that trick, but Adara couldn't.
It felt far too much like all those times before on Korolis and Zharvan and the other worlds where she'd run too many times from too many people. Trying to look everywhere at once. Scanning all around her telepathically, alert for threats. Only now, she had someone else to look after. She was acutely aware that any mistakes she made would not impact on herself alone. And she didn't like the feeling. Her old Master, at least, had known how to disappear and all the other tricks he'd taught her.
They squeezed onto the last car of the maglev train just in time, and the doors sealed behind them just as Theri saw Maul slipping onto the train one car ahead of them. She felt his mind on hers the entire fifteen minutes back to the Temple. And she couldn't decide if it frightened her or fascinated her. And that was the most disturbing thing of all.
[Boy! Your girl's in trouble!]
Kee sat blinking for several seconds at the unexpected shock of Inda's bellowed mindcall, the sheer power in the Sending. All the Mystics, living or dead it seemed, had that feel of lightning behind their thoughts. He refocused his eyes on Windu again, the holomap floating over the table in front of them, the data scrolling by in glowing script beneath it, the blue star-shapes of Federation ships patrolling in orbit around Teravin.
[Damnit, boy, I said your woman's in trouble! You gonna sit there like a lump or are you gonna go get her out of it? That crazy Demon Maul's getting into her head and scaring her, and she needs you, boy! What do I gotta do, dance up and down in front of you naked with a marching band? Get your butt up, boy, go help her!]
Kee shook his head free of the Sending. [What are you talking about? Theri's at home--]
[No she isn't! But you've been so damned busy you didn't notice, did you?] Inda snarled in his head. [She and that little snippet from Malakdere have been at the Galleria for the last four hours, trying on clothes and having a grand old time, and you never even noticed she'd left the Temple! Damnit, boy, she'd be better off with the Demons, they'd at least keep track of her!]
Kee lunged up from his chair in one lightning move, snatched his cloak from the back of his chair, and was running for the door. [Mundi! Scan for Adara! Something's wrong with Theri and last I knew they were at my place studying!]
Ki-Adi Mundi was already beside him as he reached the door leading to the lifts. Mundi's long braids of white hair streamed out behind him as he whirled through the door beside his friend, the huge liquid blue eyes troubled and half-unfocused as he scanned for his younger apprentice. [I do not feel her in my rooms. Nor at yours. I do not feel her in the Temple at all.] The cybernetic arm whirred softly as Mundi reached to punch the lift call button.
[Beloved? Where are you?] Kee Sent, arrowing his thoughts down toward Level 35. But he didn't feel her there. Her mind felt far away, not just ten levels down. Miles away.
[I told you, boy, they went to the Galleria! They're in the express train on their way home now, and the Demon is in the car just ahead of them, and he's been following them around all night!] Inda's mindvoice was jagged with his anger, but Kee sensed the spirit wasn't entirely focussed on Kee himself as the object of his wrath. [The Demon was giving her the heebie-jeebies a few minutes ago, he was trying to use her Thretketh lust against her, getting her tangled up in her hormones and confusing the hell out of her. He's damned perceptive, I'll give him that. She can't tell now whether she wants to rape him or break his neck, and it don't help he's keeping a mindlock on her.]
He and Mundi raced from the lift, squeezing through the door before it had opened fully, running in the near-silence of late night past the meditation rooms and toward the waterfall on the Temple's first floor, using the Force to skitter around the jumble of chairs and benches around the waterfall. They reached the opposite hallway, flickered down it like wraiths past darkened classrooms and a line of droids trundling toward the service corridors.
[I do not remember the security codes for the grid on the walkway outside,] Mundi's mindvoice said suddenly as they skidded together around the corner and ran on toward the doorway leading to the walkway that surrounded the Temple.
Kee realized with sudden dawning horror that he didn't remember them either. He felt Theri's mind now, faintly, and what he felt was fear squashed down by an iron-willed control, the centered balance of the spiral of the Force held in lightning readiness. [Beloved! I'm here! Are you all right?]
[Maul's following us!] she Sent on a wave of fear. Then a jumbled mix of apology and shame followed on that. [I'm not ever leaving the Temple ever again! I promise!]
[We'll worry about that later! We've got to figure out how to get you back inside. Mundi and I can't remember how to turn the security grid off on the walkway! Mundi's calling the watch commander now.] Kee and Mundi now stood at the very edge of the door sensor's sensing field, looking out through the double glass doors into the half-gloom of the walkway. [When you get here, don't come rushing up the steps to the door! You'll get fried!]
[What kind of grid?] Theri asked, and he felt ideas taking shape in her mind.
[Remember the walkway is divided into hexagons? Some of them are electrified, some have lasers or stunners focussed on them by motion sensors, some have pressure-activated sensors with alarms. And there are motion detectors cris-crossing the walkway. The grid changes each night, it's random so it's never the same two nights in a row.]
He felt Theri's grudging admiration. [Hmph. Paranoid lot, aren't you? Well. Maul won't bother about 'Dara, it's me he's after. So I'll just have to show off a little, I guess. Is the door unlocked? Will I at least be able to get inside once I get through the grid?]
[You're going through the grid? While it's active?] Kee almost squeeked to her.
[You can't turn it off, I guess I'll have to,] she Sent. [You can't come out to help me and I can't get inside without going through the grid. And I've got to outrun Maul. This is not going to be easy.] He felt movement in her mind, heard her Sending to Adara to keep her pack for her, she'd need to move fast once the train stopped, explaining everything Kee had told her. And a wisp of concern for something she took from around her neck and stuffed into the outer pocket of her pack just before the maglev began to decelerate. [You might want to put up more shielding, love, this might be a little loud.]
The maglev station was underneath the Temple. Mundi and Kee both felt the almost subliminal shiver in the floor as the maglev train decelerated and the low rumbling harmonics of the magnetic fields against the charged rails thrummed through the Temple's marble and metal structure. Kee felt Theri clearing her mind, reaching for the spiral of the Force...and then nothing but pure movement, pure arrowing speed. He jerked his lightsaber from his belt and turned it on, while beside him Mundi went into guard position with his purple-blue lightsaber held ready.
Something leaped straight up over the wall of the walkway from below, a dim blur in the brownish twilight of night. Kee felt the Force lurch like someone had pulled the rug out from under his mind, and beside him Mundi grunted and shook his head a little. The dim shape flickered over the wall, a black shadow leaping after it as if the two were one shape. Then the gray shape came down on the walkway and leaped again to the side, tumbling and somersaulting and cartwheeling too fast to track, the Force swirled and tugged Kee and Mundi like the vertex of a whirlpool. The lasers and stunners began firing the moment the gray shape touched down the first time, and the black shape suddenly erupted into orange light as Maul's lightsaber activated to deflect the laser bolts and stun bolts. Theri dove and spun and jumped past Maul as he fought the security systems and finally tumbled up to the double glass doors, jerked one of the doors open and swung herself inside panting with exertion. Kee rushed past her with Mundi at his heels as the watch commander came running down the hallway behind them with his security controller in hand, punching in the code to turn off the security grid.
Alarms were shrilling now and lights blazing outside, and Maul was clearly visible in the sodium-arc glare of the floodlights. Kee and Mundi jumped at him together, green and purple-blue blades spinning and slicing at the Sith, Maul's double lightsaber blocking every slash with inhuman swiftness. And Maul was laughing at them.
['Dara! Come on! While they're fighting!] Theri Sent to the girl peeking over the railing of the walkway with huge, frightened eyes. Theri saw her close her eyes briefly then open them and race up the stairs to the walkway, dart around the lightsaber fight and dive for the door Theri held open for her. The watch commander pulled them both back into the hallway even as he was calling for reinforcements from the hangar.
Theri felt Maul submerging himself in the Dark and reached out to him, reaching for that connection, that symbiotic parasitic leeching so different from the balanced movement of the Jedi. She followed his touch to the Force, took hold of the point where Darth Maul and the Force joined, sharpened her thoughts into daggers and ripped across the connection, severing it brutally.
Outside on the walkway, Maul stumbled, staggered backwards, and collapsed howling in pain and denial, grabbing at his head with both hands.
Kee and Mundi stumbled to a halt in their fighting, stunned. Kee glanced up at the door as Theri came out, her face stony and expressionless. [You?] Kee Sent swiftly. She nodded slightly.
[Cut him off from the Force,] she answered shortly.
[Is that what you did on Thretketh?] Kee asked as several more Jedi on watch came running down the walkway from around the corner, converging on the Sith who was still huddled in a convulsing howling ball.
[No. That was different,] Theri Sent, and Kee sensed he would get no further information on that event. Adara rushed up and threw her arms around Master Mundi and Kee turned off his lightsaber and held out an arm for Theri. She sighed and leaned against him wearily as Security began to take Maul away.
Mundi looked over at Kee with the questions plain on his face. Kee nodded to his old friend and held up a hand, signing he would tell Mundi later. Mundi gave him one more long look then nodded.
Part 6
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