Jedi Trial

by David Sherman

  A sergeant standing nearby said, “Come on, you two, I’ll take you down. Be sure not to expose yourselves above the trench line, or you’ll get zapped for sure.” Crouching low, the pair followed him off in the opposite direction from the one the lieutenant had just taken. After some twistings and turnings, the trench ended at a fortified embrasure. “Sector five,” the ser-geant announced. Bloodstains and shreds of clothing marked the spot where medics had treated the last crew operating the gun.

  “I’ve never even seen a weapon like this, much less know how to operate it,” Erk said, looking at the E-Web repeating blaster.

  “I’ve been trained on all types of infantry weapons,” Odie replied. “I’ll fire the blaster, you monitor the power generator.” She turned to the sergeant. “When will we be relieved?”

  “When you’re relieved, and I don’t have any idea when that will be,” he answered. He handed them each a ration packet. “Make them last—they’re all we have left. Sleep in shifts. One of you monitor the tactical net at all times. Comm check every thirty minutes. Don’t miss one. Fire your weapon only when you have a target. You aren’t down here to stop an assault, only to give us a warning if one comes and slow them down a little. When they start closing in, that’s the time to go back up that trench to the main defensive position as quick as you can. It’s up to you to decide when to bug out, but don’t wait too long. Your communications call sign is Hope Five; the command post is Izzy Six. Synchronize your chronos—it’s sixteen fifteen. Check in at sixteen forty-five.” With that, he scuttled back up the communications trench.

  Despite her brave words, Odie hadn’t trained exhaustively with the E-Web repeating blasters, and it took her several minutes of examination to refamiliarize herself with the system. When she felt confident enough, she began explaining it to Erk.

  “This blaster should be connected to the other ones in the outpost by its built-in long-range secure com-link,” she said, pointing out each component as she mentioned it. “That means if we come under attack, the targeting systems on the other blasters will automatically zero in to give us supporting fire and vice versa.” She rapidly checked the comlink. “Good, it’s working. Everything’s still powered up, so we don’t have to go through that sequence—that can take up to fifteen minutes.”

  “What’ll this thing do?” Erk asked, looking at the blaster. He unfastened his equipment harness and tossed it in a corner.

  “Might want to keep that on, Erk,” she warned. “You never know when you might need something in there.”

  “Yeah, I’ve glanced at it—mostly groundpounder beauty aids, most of which I don’t even know how to use. So what’s in those pouches?”

  “Neat stuff. I haven’t had a chance to inspect everything yet but—”

  “I want you to teach me how to use this blaster, Odie. I don’t need all that junk slung over me to do that—it’ll only get in the way. You tell me if there’s anything hanging on here I might need, all right?”

  “Sure. Well, this blaster, see, it’s a pretty deadly antipersonnel weapon. Its effective range is only two hundred meters, but its maximum range is out to half a kilometer. With the interlocking fields of fire, I don’t think any droids will get through. Your job will be to monitor the power flow so the gun doesn’t overheat during action. If I get disabled, just switch to the power generator’s preset mode—this switch here. That’ll prevent dangerous surges, but it also reduces the weapon’s rate of fire considerably. I’ll teach you everything you need to know about how to use it, then we can spell each other.”

  “How’d you learn all this stuff?”

  “Recon troopers are infantry, too,” Odie answered, “so I’ve been trained on weapons, even if I don’t carry a blaster rifle.”

  The embrasure had been drilled out of the rock in a way that allowed for plenty of overhead and flank protection. Forward observation was through narrow slits cut in the stone. Erk peered through one of the viewing ports. In the fading light he could still clearly make out the blasted ground between sector five and the dry riverbed, which was littered with destroyed droids. He wondered what had happened to the defenders of this position when it had been overrun. For the first time, a feeling of hopelessness began to possess him. How could anyone expect them to survive in this position? “We’ll have to sleep with our headgear on,” he remarked, “since we’ll need infrared capability once it gets dark.”

  “Right. The blaster has an infrared target acquisition system. Before it gets too dark to see, I’ll show you some more things about it.”

  The night passed quietly. The lines were probed in other sectors, resulting in intermittent blasterfire. At those times the tactical communications net came alive with reports and orders, and both Erk and Odie became fully alert, but once the shooting died down they took turns trying to catch some sleep. They divided the night into two-hour watches. Odie had taught Erk enough about their weapon that he could operate it by himself and deliver immediate fire if anything moved in their sector. Even watching through his night-vision devices, Erk’s eyes played tricks on him: irregular mounds seemed to move if he stared at them long enough. He found himself rubbing his eyes and shaking his head frequently to clear his vision. He fought to stay awake. As a fighter pilot he knew very well how fatal inattention could be, but he wasn’t in a high-performance fighter now, he was sitting in a damp, rocky crypt that smelled of blood and feces, hunger gnawed at his stomach and made him faint, he hadn’t slept in ages, and he ached all over. His knee, in particular, throbbed painfully.

  He sighed, shook himself, blinked. First light would be in a few minutes, then dawn. Usually he loved this time of day, before the rest of the world was awake, and everything was quiet, clean, peaceful. He shivered. The nights in this part of Praesitlyn were very cold and the days scorching hot. He looked down at Odie. She had drifted off to sleep as soon as it was her turn. He smiled. She could’ve been out there with the recon troopers, doing what she did best, riding free like the wind, but instead she had volunteered to stay with him, and here she was in this hole, the only thing between her and the invading army a thin wall of rock. When they got out of this mess…

  Erk’s heart fluttered. Something out there had moved! His palms on the aiming handles suddenly grew sweaty. He nudged Odie with his toe, and she snapped awake instantly.

  “Something’s out there,” he whispered. He was fully alert now, as every fiber in his body reacted to the adrenaline surging through him. He was surprised to hear himself chuckling in anticipation. “Come on, come on,” he whispered, focusing the gun’s optics, impatient for the action to begin. He could see as clearly as day through the sighting system. Then the entire field of vision through the firing port seemed to heave up and come at him.

  “Izzy Six! Izzy Six! Hope Five. Here they come!” he said urgently.

  Erk began firing into the mass of oncoming battle droids. He was aware of Odie at his side, monitoring the power surges as the blaster roared.

  A tiny voice inside his helmet asked, “Hope Five, Izzy Six here. What is the enemy strength? Repeat, what is the enemy strength? Over.”

  “Thousands of them,” Erk shouted. “Thousands!”

  * * *

  Chapter 14

  My Dearest…“ No, that wouldn’t do, too impersonal. He started over. ”My love…“ No, no, too, too ordinary. He thought uncertainly about what to say next. Try this: ”I miss you more than I can say. My heart is overflowing with love for you, my dearest, sweetest…“ He wrote in this vein for a while on a sheet of flimsiplast, then paused and reread the paragraph. No, no, no, he sounded like a lovesick adolescent! This was his wife, a Senator, a heroine, a woman who was the life mate of a Jedi Knight, or a man who soon would be one—or dead.

  Anakin Skywalker sat in his cabin on board the Ranger. In a few hours he would transfer from the Ranger to the Neelian, a corvette accompanying the transports. Halcyon would remain on the Ranger to lead the attack while Anakin commanded the landing force. Th
en Halcyon and the heavy cruisers would smash a hole in the enemy blockade, a hole through which Anakin and the ground forces would make planetfall on Praesitlyn. They knew through IFF— identification-friend-or-foe—systems unaffected by the communications blackout that at least some of Slayke’s fleet had survived the initial contact and were still in orbit around Praesitlyn, in contact with the remaining Separatist ships.

  When Slayke had been pardoned for raising his own force to attack the Separatists and commissioned to act on his own as a privateer, he had been given his own set of IFF codes. These codes contained all the information on file about each ship in his fleet, its name, class and armaments, ship’s complement, and so on. Each ship had been equipped with a transponder that, when queried with the appropriate IFF code, would respond with its proper identification, thereby establishing that it was a friendly vessel, hopefully avoiding the kind of “friendly fire” incident that all too frequently occurred in the heat of battle. Halcyon was confident that once the attack commenced, Slayke’s vessels would join them, and together they’d overwhelm the blockading force. So far the cordon placed around Sluis Van did not appear to have been disturbed. If those ships moved to participate in the battle, things could get complicated.

  The landing zone on Praesitlyn had already been marked out: a piece of rugged terrain behind a dry riverbed on the plain just below the plateau where the Intergalactic Communications Center sat. Halcyon had picked that spot rather than one on the plateau itself because he felt a pitched battle that close to the center would be more likely to result in its destruction and the death of the technicians who were presumed to be prisoners of the Separatists.

  Halcyon, Anakin, their commanders, the troops, and the crews who staffed the fleet had done all they could to prepare for the coming battle. Now it was time to rest. In a few hours the fleet would arrive at its initial point, the sector of space surrounding Praesitlyn that the captains had selected as the area where they would bring their ships into attack formations. The enemy fleet had to know they were coming by now; they had been inside the dead zone where communications had been cut off with the rest of the galaxy for some time. In fact, Halcyon had been in the middle of a report to the Jedi Council when the equipment had gone dead, a sure sign that they had entered the hostile zone of influence.

  Anakin crumpled the flimsiplast and fed it into the shredder. He pulled out another. A Jedi did not feel fear, despair, loneliness. He knew that the coming battle would be won and that his division would acquit itself well: Grudo had told him so many times, and Grudo knew armies and commanders. In fact, Anakin had been a phenomenally quick study in the art of command, throwing himself into the task every waking hour of each day the fleet was in transit. He had immersed himself enthusiastically in all aspects of military management, as well. Neither did he feel despair; he looked forward to the coming battle. They had right and justice on their side, and they would prevail. He eagerly anticipated meeting the legendary Captain Slayke. And he didn’t feel lonely, either. His relationship with Halcyon, who treated him like a younger brother, had grown even closer. And Grudo, the faithful, solid, reliable old Rodian, had stuck so close to him during the voyage that they had become inseparable companions.

  Anakin Skywalker was no stranger to fear, pain, despair, and rage, but all that was behind him now, in another life. He began to write again: “You are with me now, my love. I feel the warmth of your breath on my cheek and smell the scent of your hair and clothes as you press your body close to mine. We faced death together, my love, and conquered it. Tomorrow, though I face death again, your love is with me and will sustain me…” He wrote for some time. Often on this voyage he had wished he could use his considerable Force sensitivity to look in on Padme. But even if he could, he knew he wouldn’t: that would be an inexcusable abuse of his powers as a Jedi, and because he had already broken his oath by marrying Padme, he was determined not to do it again to satisfy his personal desires. Still, as he wrote, in his mind’s eye the walls of his spartan compartment seemed to fade away, and once again he was reunited with his beloved Padme by the beautiful lake on Naboo where they’d consecrated their vows of eternal love and companionship.

  A lump had formed in his throat by the time he finished the letter. He reread it. His handwriting was not easy to decipher, but something like this could not be committed to an electronic medium that might be read by someone else. It was private in the extreme and would remain that way. He shook his head and smiled. “I can’t believe I wrote this.” He brushed away the tear that had formed in the corner of his eye, then blinked and looked around. Well, there they were again, the steel bulkheads of his tiny compartment. The gentle throbbing of the Ranger’s drives coming up through the deckplates warmed the soles of his feet. Reality.

  Carefully, Anakin folded the sheet of flimsiplast several times and then sealed it tight. He wrote across both sides, PERSONAL FOR SENATOR AMIDALA, and placed it lovingly inside his cloak. Before he left for the assault, he’d leave it and his other personal things in the custody of the captain of the Neelian, to be delivered in the event of his death.

  He lay on his bunk and closed his eyes, but sleep just wasn’t there for him now. Halcyon had agreed that instead of taking a shuttle to the Neelian, Anakin could take his customized Delta-7 Aethersprite. Well, if he couldn’t have his Padme, he’d have his starfighter and spend the next few hours tinkering with her.

  A battle fleet never sleeps. Crew on board the ships might sleep when off their watches, but a battle fleet is always awake, always alert, and on the eve of going into action soldiers sleep in shifts at their battle stations. A tension runs through a battle fleet so that the individual vessels and their crews are like the components of a vast living creature, a predatory animal on the verge of leaping onto the prey it has tracked through the depths of space. But in this case the prey could fight back. Perhaps even the clone troopers felt the tension—not that it affected their mental states significantly—and Grudo felt it, too. For Jedi Master Halcyon, it was a familiar and exhilarating sensation, but nothing to lose any sleep over.

  Halcyon had finished his last war council with his captains, and they had departed to their separate commands. All was ready. Now the final waiting had begun.

  When Halcyon woke from a brief sleep he sat in his quarters and wrote, “My Dearest Scerra and Valin…” This was just the latest in a series of letters he had written to his wife and son to be delivered in case of his death—but hopefully in person once this expedition was over. He was writing them by hand, to protect them from prying eyes and to keep safe—for now—the secret of his violation of the Jedi oath. Finished, he folded and sealed the letter and added it to the packet he’d been keeping, a dozen letters in all. The thought of his wife and son warmed him.

  He put the thought of his loved ones out of his mind. He had endured the separation from them for so long now that the pain had subsided into a dull throb deep in his vitals. It was no good to think of such things. He stretched. He’d go find Anakin, give him a last-minute pep talk, bolster both their spirits. The young Jedi was proving to be a commander in his own right. Oh, everyone knew he was brave—what he’d done at the Battles of Geonosis and Jabüm and in other desperate situations had proved that. On Jabüm he’d been personally ordered by Supreme Chancellor Palpatine to leave the battlefield after more than a month of hard fighting, forced to leave his friends, to help with the evacuation. And Anakin had obeyed the order, however reluctantly. He was no stranger to pain, death, defeat. He knew he had a destiny. He was destined to command. The young Jedi possessed a great Force sensitivity; he was bright, bright to the point of genius. Halcyon was sure Anakin would be a Master someday and even sit on the Council. And now he had demonstrated his aptitude for command, the ability to lead, that ineffable quality of personality that convinces others that one knows what one is doing, and if they follow, they will succeed. Observing him daily, Halcyon was sure Anakin had put his emotions behind him.

  Hal
cyon stood. There was only one place Anakin would be at this late hour.

  “How’s it going, Anakin?”

  Startled, Anakin stood up in the cockpit of his starfighter, Azure Angel II. “Just making some last-minute adjustments.” He hopped down from the fighter and wiped his hands on a rag. “I’m ready.”

  It was quiet in the docking bay; the other machines, shuttles mostly, had been secured against the impending action. The pair sat on some empty crates.

  “Just a few hours and we’ll be in it,” Halcyon said. “You have ten thousand troops under your command. How do you feel?”

  “Ready.” Anakin slapped his knee. “Ready.”

  “Is your arm all right?”

  “Never felt better.” Anakin flexed his fingers to prove it. “Master Halcyon—I’ve been meaning to ask you something…”

  Halcyon looked closely at Anakin. “Sure. What is it?”

  Anakin hesitated, then blurted, “Grudo told me about your run-in with Slayke and, well, I thought I’d ask you…” He shrugged. “Why—that is, why did you fight him that day? Not so much why did you fight him, but why did you fight him the way you did?”

  “I’ve wondered about that myself.” Halcyon took a deep breath. “I never wanted to go after Slayke, you know. Others thought him a rebel at best, a pirate at worst. But I thought he was only doing what the Republic should have been doing all along. I had plans to go home to—” He caught himself. “—to visit with friends, take a rest, but the Council appointed me to lead the judicial corvette they were sending after Slayke, and I had to follow my orders, do my duty, do what I am sworn to do. We Jedi have no personal lives, no families like other people.” His voice took on a tone of bitterness that surprised Anakin. It was a bit how he felt himself right now. Unconsciously he touched the spot beneath his cloak where he was carrying the letter to Padme.