(Entry Ten continued...)
- - -
A FEW WEEKS LATER. . .
I slept alone in the quarters that had five other empty beds, all of them once occupied. My dreams were vivid, sharper in sight and sound than real life. I dreamt I was a disembodied soul in the heights of the cave where the First Circle met, where the Miraluka warned them of future events she had encountered through prophetic visions, and where they schemed to divert destiny and create new outcomes. The blind prophet ordered her minions to enter their stealth fighters and make for Dantooine. The man with the youthful voice and handsome shadowed features gave his underlings a speech about the will of the Force.
That man was familiar somehow. "Wake, girl. They are here."
I gasped, opened my eyes and sat up, panted. My sheets were damp with sweat. "It's you again. Who's here?"
"An acolyte slipped past the masters who guard the corridor to the student quarters. He'll ask you the whereabouts of the Quarren before he attempts to kill you. Blank your mind and endure until I can arrive to help."
I scrambled out of bed and went to my one case of possessions to retrieve my robes. Dread and hatred like toxic fumes invaded my room and filled the space, tried to slither into my pores and nostrils. I focused on my bodily movements as I slid into my attire. Screams, bursts, and sizzles sounded from hallways away. Something was burning.
Holding my weapon in my hand, I ran through the doorway and turned into the corridor. A lithe figure in a black outfit and hooded mask stepped out into the middle of the hall and faced me. I moved my thumb for the activator.
But my enemy raised his arm and telekinetically lifted me a meter from the floor by the throat and chest. "Tell me where Vox Aben hides," he said in a strangely accented voice.
My dangling weight constricted my airways. I tried to breathe, but only drew in scant amounts of air. He only needed for me to think about the location. Oddly, his method of interrogation helped to keep the information from the surface of my mind, which was now consumed by pain and waning consciousness. His grip tightened and he gave the command again with finality. I remembered the Zabrak bound to his chair when the Jedi questioned him. I recalled his favorite technique for escaping subjugation.
I called waves of the Force into my body and let the power concentrate in my chest and stomach. The grip on my throat loosened.
When I felt my insides would explode, I took a deep, ragged breath and exhaled hard. I blasted a shockwave from my body and sent my attacker tumbling backward while I fell to the hard floor on my knees, my weapon somehow still in hand. I climbed to my feet, coughing. Sweat stung my eyes. I wiped them and blinked.
A blue glowing blade spun in the air toward me.
I darted sideways and ducked.
The blade tip grazed the collar of my robe.
I pressed the activator and swung around as the enemy blade boomeranged back. I sliced the hilt in half. Light killed the darkness.
When I turned, the assassin charged at me holding another lightsaber.
I switched on the second blade of my saber staff and matched his charge. "The Force fights with me!"
We swung at each other and we collided... again and again. Trace minerals in the air ignited and rained as sparks to our feet all while we dueled. I held the hilt in both hands, sometimes with the fingers of one, spun it over my head as a propeller of doom. I attacked and blocked at once, one after the other, attacked many times in a row and sent him back. But the fight lasted but two minutes.
I chopped off his dominant arm at the elbow. The dead hand holding the saber hilt fell on my waiting blade.
The robed, hooded assassin yelled and toppled onto his back. "If you love life, you'll kill yourself. The First Seer beheld the evil you shall bring in a few short years." I kicked him in the head, knocking him out, and I hurried for the enclave proper.
Dead bodies and chunks of stone covered the smoke-filled main chamber where blaster bolts flew and obscured pairs dueled to fatality. I kept low and made for the entrance hall, deciding the outdoors would at least be less confused.
Wreckage in the landing bay was spread further apart, stars and moon sporadically visible past breaks in the inky smoke given off by burning bodies and grass or lingering gases of grenades. Exhilarated and confident, I super-jumped onto the top of a wall, holding my hot saber staff. Aurek fighters sliced a fire-worked night sky, ejecting missiles that hit other fighters and destroyed them, or missed and hit distant hills or plateaus. There were a few basic designs I could discern. But how could they tell each other apart? I estimated that the First Circle controlled what amounted to an army. And I deduced that the woman who had communicated with me telepathically was in fact a double-agent. She had warned both the Republic and Jedi of the First Circle's attempted destruction of the Dantooine enclave, which now elapsed before my very senses.
An enemy Aurek dove a few kilometers away and fired at the enclave before pulling back up. I watched the incoming projectiles and, finally, I feared for my life since fighting my last opponent. But they exploded on an invisible barrier. The light showed a few dozen Jedi beyond the main walkway gathered together and erecting Force barriers. Two screamed and fell, affected by the feedback. I questioned what course of action I should take. The First Circle wanted me dead. They had failed the first time. And now they used far more destructive measures, killing many to reach me.
"We're failing!" A voice cried from among the Jedi. "And the Republic fighters are dropping fast!"
"We'll never make it!"
Indeed, little burning ships fell and crashed.
I jumped from the wall to the outside and ran for my comrades. Some looked at me in disbelief.
"What a relief!" Dorak, whom I now stood beside, smiled. "We thought you dead. Care to help, young padawan?"
I nodded, switched off my lightsaber and clipped it to my belt.
"More missiles! Get ready!"
We majority of survivors all raised our arms and collective hyper-focus, feeding our energies and willpower to form a Force-barrier. The barrier crackled to life, we at its inner edge. It domed the enclave, reaching so high in the sky that fighters skidded across or exploded upon its energetic surface. The missiles hit. A shock traveled from my palms, through the bones and muscles of my arms, into my skull. I grimaced, but fed the barrier.
"All right, that's good for now."
I had given too much of myself. My head spun and ached. I sat down on the grass with my legs bent under me. "I need to meditate and refresh my reserves, if you don't mind."
"Understandable," Dorak said. "But be ready when we call you to action."
I straightened my back and closed my eyes, taking a deep breath of the chill night air. My anxiety leaked from my person with every breath as the sounds of destruction and yelling faded. I allowed my consciousness to ascend into a void, a relaxed state far removed from the physical. The Force swirled about my soul. I felt it, absorbed it, gave it my thoughts and my all. But then the Republic and First Circle pilots came into existence in the spiritual plain where I took refuge.
They appeared as floating wisps flashing with real-time images and, when isolating one, I heard their thoughts. On a whim, I extended thin lines of the Force from my soul and connected with the Republic pilots. My awareness spreading into them, I sensed exploitable cracks in flawed reality, sensed how the Republic pilots could outmaneuver their enemies which outnumbered and outgunned them. I felt how those noble men could overcome and destroy those who sought to destroy them. I fed them the Force like a nursing mother, at the same time strengthening the connection between us. . . and we became as a single soul. I breathed my intent into them.
They allowed my will to consume theirs and they acted in pristine coordination according to my will. The strategies of the enemy gradually became too predictable to me. I used one pilot to shoot down two, one after the other, used two pilots to herd four enemies into tight formation, then had a third zip past from above and destroy the four, the consequential debris striking a fifth enemy fighter.
- - -
It was dawn when I opened my eyes, stretched, and rose to my feet.
The Jedi Masters congratulated me, having sensed the power I wielded in my Battle Meditation. The Republic reinforcements landed their fighters on a grassy stretch and walked up to us, holding their helmets under their arms, and diverted the Jedi's attention to discuss the incident.
I broke from their numbers and went slowly for the ruins of the enclave. What were the implications of this new-found ability? Were the Jedi going to heavily depend on me in the dark times ahead?
I came across the dead body of a young student in the landing bay. Familiar. I didn't now his name. In the courtyard I found First Circle acolytes chopped in half or dismembered. My stomach was queasy. Remarkably, most the plant-life in the central stone circle, including the proud Blbla tree, yet lived. Every Jedi in the area had at one time or another carefully pruned those branches and watered those vibrant flowers.
Inside, a couple Jedi loaded the bodies of the injured but living onto stretchers and another pushed them down a hall for med-bay. I would come to help them, but after I checked on my would-be assassin. But when I arrived at the area, he was gone and I found only his severed arm and hand on the floor.
"He escaped," a voice said. I looked up to see a woman with long white hair midway down the hall to my room. The hood of her cloak was down.
I stepped cautiously for her to better see her face. "You're the double-agent."
"And you are the mother of evil, according to the First Seer." She stayed in place, arms at her sides. Long-lashed and dark lids blinked relaxedly. She had an angular brow for a female, a long pointed nose, and a top lip thicker than the bottom. Frown lines and crow's feet gave away her age.
"This is Miss Shan, 'eh?" A tall, hooded man appeared via holo-projection at the woman's shoulder.
The all-too familiar man who I recognized from the Zabrak's memories, from my dreams, and. . . on newscasts detailing the Mandalorian War. "My colleague here told me some story about how you employed Battle Meditation to end the First Circle's aerial assault on the enclave. Impressive, for one so young."
I was flattered, but there were pressing matters. "Did you subdue the First Seer before you came here?"
"No," the woman said. "She is out of our reach. She will spend years traveling the galaxy to find servants. If she should rebuild the First Circle to its former strength, there will be new traitors in her ranks conspiring against her. That is the cycle of clandestine organizations."
"That means I'll be paranoid that someone out there's trying to kill me."
The semi-transparent man chuckled. "Congratulations. That means you're finally important." The holo vanished.
The white-haired stranger started for me. I stepped aside and she passed me, turning the corner. "Wait." I went after her. A strange mist erupted from nowhere, following her, crawling up her body while she seemed to float over the floor and accelerate with gaining speed. Her silhouette faded.