Star Wars - I, Jedi

by Michael A. Stackpole

  I touched her paranoia and let one of her own fantasies spin out for her. From the SSD's belly a slender, needlelike craft shot. I fed her images of the Sun Crusher and let her calculate the damage that could be caused by that indestructible fighter-sized craft accelerating to just below light-speed, then ramming her ship. It would blow through it from stem to stern in sec-onds, shattering the Invidious. The SSD would just pound the scraps until their molten metal fragments congealed into debris that would make for a spectacular light show when they burned into Susevfi's atmosphere.

  "Belay those orders," I heard her shout. "It's a trap, a Jedi trap. Evasive maneuvers, plot me a course out of here. Far away!"

  I retreated into myself and staggered back against the obser-vation deck railing.

  From below I heard Elegos. "The Invidious is coming about.

  Tavira is leaving the system."

  I turned around slowly, then tried to lean nonchalantly on the railing. "Problem solved."

  Mirax arched an eyebrow at me. "You think so, do you?"

  I looked down at my wife. "She's gone, isn't she'?"

  "Sure." Mirax smiled. "But my father's going to think she was running from him. He'll be insufferable. You'll never hear the end of how he saved my life, and just happened to include yours in the bargain."

  "I don't mind," I forced myself to say. "After all, a Jedi does not know pain."

  Things quieted down on Susevfi fairly quickly after the Invidious ran. We called Booster and through him got Jacob Nive. Jacob apologized for having brought Booster to us and having given him the data we'd left behind for Cracken, but Booster had been most insistent and had an Impstar Deuce to back things up. Nive contacted Colo-nel Gurtt, informed her of what was going on and offered to consider her and any ex-Invids who stopped their fighting to be members of the Survivors for purposes of the deal Luke and I had offered him. Colonel Gurtt, being the highest ranking Invid officer in the system, got the ground resistance to back off and Rogue Squadron set down in the palace grounds to hold back any misguided loyalists until Booster could shuttle down some of his security personnel and Nive could bring down some of the Survivor mudbugs to take care of ground ops.

  Rogue Squadron had been on a long patrol circuit when Cracken had reached them and pointed them toward Courkrus. Though they came from further away, they plotted a tight course that got them to Courkrus before Booster. He arrived and offered them a ride to Susevfi, so they shipped aboard. Colonels Celchu and Gurtt met on the ground for the first time and were able to work out terms under which the Survivors would be allowed to keep their ships. They quickly began to bring local politicians into the meetings and I had no doubt that within several weeks, Susevfi would petition the New Republic for entry as a full member, complete with a fighter force, and that the Survivors would find themselves a nice little home.

  In addition to that, Elegos indicated that Susevfi struck him as a much nicer world than Kerilt. The possibility of moving at least part of the Caamasi Remnant to it seemed quite likely. Somehow I thought Caamasi fellowship and guidance for the Survivors and the Invids would go a long way to making Susevfi strong and peaceful.

  The Jetlsaarai still presented us something of a problem, but here, too, the Caamasi touch provided a solution that could not have otherwise been possible. By the time I'd had my cut treated and things had been calmed down outside, the Jensaarai Nive had brought with him had been reunited with those Luke had defeated and the half dozen who had been stationed on a small base out in the ring to cover the Invidious. They had also been hiding the Pulsar Skate and had used it to return to Susevfi.

  The Saarai-kaar, when she regained consciousness, seemed truly surprised to be alive. The fact that her students had not been slain and had been allowed to retain custody of their ar-mor and lightsabers clearly confused her. As she sat up on the couch to which she had been carried in the Governor's private chambers, she looked at her students, then at Luke, Elegos and finally me.

  "Is this how you choose to mock me, Halcyon?" She waved a hand at her students. "You have them here to show me that you have won them over to your murderous ways?"

  Her orienting on me confused me, since Luke was clearly the Master here. I shook my head. "If my ways were the ways of a murderer, why would you be alive?"

  "You like to torture us before you slay us. You call yourselves Jedi, but your kind parted from the true Jedi ways a generation ago, and then some. And those who rose up in your place were no better." She lifted her chin, her blue eyes fiery and bright. "We are the true Jedi, the Jensaarai. You tried before to destroy us, but failed."

  I frowned. "I've never seen you before. I've never been here before, and I've certainly never tried to harm you or your peo-ple before."

  "Just like a Halcyon to deny the evil he has inherited."

  I looked to Luke. "I'm not tracking here."

  "Neither am I."

  Elegos rested hands on our shoulders. "Perhaps you would permit me."

  I shrugged. "Set a course and go."

  The Caamasi moved forward and dropped to one knee be-fore the Saarai-kaar. "The Jensaarai are your creation. You fashioned them and their teachings from what you yourself had learned when you trained." Elegos kept his voice low and re-spectful, probing, but gentle and reassuring. "You are the first Saarai-kaar, but you hold dearly to the memories of others, to honor them and their sacrifice."

  She blinked her eyes a couple of times, then bowed her head.

  "Yes, this is so."

  I glanced down as factolds began to slot together for me. When she'd had me at her mercy, I'd projected Tyris' image from my dream into her brain because I had recognized her fighting style as that of the Anzati Jedi. I'd done it instinctively and had missed entirely the significance of her saying "Mas-ter?" as she hesitated. She was looking at me, seeing my uni-form, my silver blade, and seeing me as my grandfather or clearly someone who had come to finish what Nejaa Halcyon had started. Try as I might, though, I searched my memory of the dream and could not place her in it.

  Elegos pressed his hands together. "These you honor were your teachers and friends. Their deaths you blame on a Hal-cyon and other Jedi, one very much like me, yes?"

  An edge returned to her voice. "I do." She thrust a finger at me. "It was a Halcyon who slew my Master and my husband that day, and retreated to leave us alone. They did not care for us, for the damage they had done. They were supposed to serve all life and living creatures, but they deserted us, proving the lie of the Jedi. We had already known-our Masters had told us- that we were a breed apart. The advent of the Jedi here on Susevfi merely proved all they had taught was true."

  Luke opened his hands. "Truth is often a matter of point of view."

  Anger flashed through the Saarai-kaar's eyes. "You were not there. You have no point of view."

  I was about to mention my dream, but Elegos reached out and placed a hand on her knee. "But I do. I would share it with you."

  She looked sharply at Elegos. "You were not the Jedi there that day."

  "No, I was not, but I will share with you a secret-I will give you my trust that you may return it. I know you do not want to hurt anyone, which is why I can trust you. I would have you accept my trust so you can stop yourself from hurting."

  Luke gave me a sidelong glance, but I nodded reassuringly to him. "He knows what he is doing."

  The Saarai-kaar's voice sagged beneath the weight of suspi-cion. "What will you do?"

  "The Caamasi have a gift in which significant memories be-come treasured and, in special circumstances, can be shared. We discovered, as a people, that we could share them among ourselves, yet with non-Caamasi species, they could only be communicated to the Jedi. I think it is their connection to the Force that allows this, and any of us who have come to truly know a Jedi are privileged to be able to share these memnii with the Jedi."

  He twisted back and caught my right hand in his left, drag-ging me forward. "I have come to know this man under a vari-ety of identiti
es, one of them being Keiran Halcyon; the grandson of Nejaa Halcyon. Nejaa is the Halcyon Jedi you ac-cuse of being a murderer and the Caamasi who was with him that day was my uncle. My uncle passed to me the merehis of what happened here, sharing with me the memory of his friend's death. This is the point of view I have of those events, and I would share it with you in hopes you would understand the other point of view."

  The Saarai-kaar held her hand out to Elegos. "Show me the memory."

  Elegos stood but did not relinquish his grip on my hand. "I do not know you well enough for me to transfer the memory to you. I do know Keiran well enough to share with him, and you know he can project it into your mind."

  "You want me to trust a Halcyon, too? You ask too much, Caamasi."

  Elegos looked down at her. "Is it too much to ask when it could free you of a burden you have carried for over forty years? Is it too much to ask when he has not slain you nor your companions, and yet could easily have done so-bearing in mind this is the purpose you claim he has come for? Your caution is admirable, but do not let it be a barrier to a greater truth."

  She hesitated, then nodded once. "What I will see, I will consider."

  "Good." Elegos looked at me. "Prepare yourself."

  "Am I sending just to her, or do I include Master Skywalker and her apprentices?"

  Luke smiled. "I would be honored to share that memory." The Saarai-kaar' eyes tightened, then she nodded. "Let them see."

  "Okay." I set myself. "Ready, I guess."

  I felt a tingle run through my hand and up into my brain. I touched the Force and entwined it with what I was getting from Elegos, then pushed it out toward the others in the room. I felt contact with all of them, some hot and some oh so cold. I just served as a conduit and watched the merehis pour through my mind.

  Even if I had intended to edit and modify it, I doubt I could have. Since what I was seeing came through Caamasi eyes, and was wrapped up in Caamasi kinesthetics and senses, any changes I had made would have been patently human and obvi-ously artificial. Moreover, the intensity and volume of sensory input overwhelmed me. I saw and heard, tasted, touched and smelled-boy, did I smell things-so much that I couldn't cate-gorize it. The merehis was like a holovid presentation so com-plex that only by watching it again and again could I begin to grapple with all of the elements.

  I found myself in Ylenic It'kla's flesh, with his fellow Jedi on either side of him. My grandfather he classified as Spicewood- he knew his name, of course, but the Caamasi's acute sense of smell led him to store identity information with scent being more important than name. The other Jedi he identified as Desertwind. I heard Desertwind warn the dark Jedi we faced, and all of our replies, the same as in my dream. Then the battle was joined, blades flashing, barking, sparking and hissing.

  Moving into combat in the Caamasi's body felt thoroughly alien. His gangling limbs and deceptively slender muscles con-tained incredible power and grace. His feet shuffled through the dust, always keeping us in balance, with our legs ready to propel me forward in a strike. I watched my foe come in, watched her flick her blade this way and that, probing my de-fenses. I could tell she had some skill, but how much remained a mystery, and a hint of fear trickled through me as she at-tacked.

  Pain exploded on my left flank as the red-haired woman-

  Dustrose-raked the tip of her blue lightsaber across my flesh. I caught the stink of burned down and it almost overrode the pain. I spun away with impossible quickness, turning a full cir-cle and bringing my red-gold blade around to bat her blade aside.

  She was good, but I knew I was better.

  My Caamasi muscles tensed, then brought the blade back up in a rising slash that slipped beneath her guard and opened her from hip to shoulder. Dustrose reeled back, then flopped to the ground. An explosion of blue energy instantly consumed her body, knocking me back and down.

  Through the link with the Saarai-kaar I felt a jolt of grief at Dustrose's death, but it was as nothing as I looked to the left. I saw Spicewood on the ground, his lightsaber beyond his reach. I knew that if I could concentrate, if I could push past the pain, I could move his lightsaber back into his hand. It would only take a moment, and the Anzati Nightsweat's gloating clearly appeared to give me that moment.

  Then Spicewood dove for his blade and Nightsweat stabbed down. I could almost feel the blade burning its way through my friend, severing the ties his life had to his body. I would have expected him to die instantly, but he managed a smile. The azure blade fixing him to the ground sputtered and died and in an instant I knew what he had done, how he had employed the rarest of all Jedi gifts, and what a terrible price he had paid for it.

  Nightsweat rose into the air, then convulsed and seemed to implode. I saw the body fly back through the tents built beneath the duracrete dome. Nightsweat exploded, as did the dark Jedi Desertwind had slain. Their mortal bodies no longer able to contain the dark-side energy, it flashed out in a blue fireball that shattered the duracrete dome. I rushed to Spicewood, pull-ing him clear as the dome began to collapse. I felt Desertwind supporting the dome around me, then he let it go as we got clear.

  I knelt in the dirt, cradling my friend's head in my lap. Desertwind stood by my side, resting a hand on my shoulder. "I think he knew Tyris was a good enough swordsman to get one or the other of us. Nejaa knew he could not defeat him with a lightsaber, so he found another means to protect us."

  I caressed my grandfather's face, wiping away the blood from the cut on his head and the corner of his mouth. "To have survived so much to die here. It is sad."

  "But to die in the defense of all that is good, it must be celebrated and remembered."

  I nodded. "It will be a sadder day when such nobility is for-gotten."

  "Or feared."

  "Worse yet, yes." I smiled, breathing deep of Spicewood's scent, then was aware of the lessening of his weight upon my thighs. I looked down and saw him fade away, his burned clothes collapsing, his lightsaber settling into the dust. Beyond his boots, a last section of the dome groaned and sagged in, with a couple of the tiles that had been set into it exploding into fragments. I picked one up and ran my thumb over it, feeling the strange glyphs incised into it.

  I began to shiver and Desertwind supported me. "You've been hurt, my friend. We have to get you away from here. In a place of evil like this. there can be no healing." "I can make it back to Yumfla."

  "Go~d, and then to CoreIlia." Desertwind helped me up.

  "Ncjaa's family will know he died a hero."

  The memory faded out as my vision of the room flooded back. I tasted salt on my lips. I reached up and swiped away at tears. I turned to thank Elegos, but could not speak past the tightness in my throat.

  Elegos nodded. "I know."

  The Saarai-kaar began speaking in a small voice. "I know well the pain of lost comrades your uncle felt, Caamasi. I mourn for him, but his belief that he and his friends were right in no way means they were. When that dome collapsed, my husband was crushed. We lost a half-dozen friends and I was left alone with three other apprentices." She pressed her hand against her stomach. "And the boy growing in my belly. We hid from the Jedi and mourned and buried our dead. We had been sealed together, bound together by the deaths. We made a new beginning from the tragedy, and yet this memory would seek to have us believe we were walking the path of evil."

  I nodded my head. "The memory proves it. The writing on the tiles, I recognize it from Yavin 4. It's of Sith origin."

  The Saarai-kaar nodded. "Our masters had uncovered infor-mation about Sith techniques from an antiquarian who had recovered artifacts. They learned that the Jedi had stolen their discipline from the Sith, had perverted Sith teaching and our masters were returning us to the true way. Jensaarai is a Sith word for the hidden followers of truth. As the Saarai-kaar, I am the keeper of that truth. We are not evil."

  Luke shook his head. "In fact you are not."

  I frowned at him. "They were following Sith practices. Are you forgetting Exar Kun and
all that?"

  "Not at all, Keiran. They were being taught the Jedi way by people who had accepted Sith thoughts and philosophies, but they themselves were not sufficiently developed to be initiated into them. Their masters had not yet found the hooks by which they could be opened to the dark side. And then, after the deaths of their masters, they continued learning, but did so with the orientation of protecting themselves from the Jedi. They dedicated themselves to defense-choosing the correct path for the wrong reasons."

  I shivered. "But with such a hate for the Jedi, they should have come forth and helped the Emperor hunt them down."

  The Saarai-kaar leaned forward, covering her face in her hands. "Again we were betrayed."

  As she sobbed, one of the apprentices-Red-removed her mask. "The Saarai-kaar's son was of an age to be independent when the Emperor started hunting down the Jedi. Against her wishes, he left here and offered his services to Darth Vader. He was slain outright, and Jedi hunters came here, but never found us. I was but a child then, but I remember the hiding, the fear. Our community kept us strong."