Padawan Neria Halai - Geonosis
"Easy, Padawan." Master Kullenan's strained voice mirrored the frustration that Neria was feeling. "The fidgeting, the sweat, it's all a distraction. You need to reach out and lift those rocks."
The padawan wanted to, but she found concentration as difficult now as she had when she was a mere new apprentice all those years ago. Her increasing power had pushed her deeper into meditation, but without the fine adjustments required, she could only do so much while in such a relatively inert state.
The clamor outside didn't help. The heat was bad enough, but the shouted orders, mechanical grinding, and constant scrape of supplies being moved only increased the irritation weighing on the Twi'lek's mind. That only compounded the sweat trickling down her back under the robes, the heat of the sun outside slowly overwhelming her.
"I'm trying, Master," she said through gritted teeth. "There's so much noise outside."
"When battle comes, there will be far more noise, and the droids won't care that you have trouble concentrating over the sound."
Of course. Everything always came back to battle with her new master.
The human had been a veteran of combat even before the Clone Wars had begun, one of a handful of Jedi Knights sent to quell violent conflict before the Separatists started their mad campaign on the Outer Rim. Ever since then, his life—and indeed, the lives of all Jedi—had seemed to revolve around nothing but the war.
Neria Halai had been passed off to him from her last master, who'd given up on trying to teach her just like the last two she'd had. The Jedi Council had conceded that she needed a hand more firm than the last three, but she had also been keenly aware that they were growing tired of her. Two of the masters had said as much, and four had indicated agreement.
Simply put: if she couldn't succeed with this one, they'd likely expel her to the farms or medical corps.
Master Kullenan hadn't been particularly eager, either, going so far as to tell her that he didn't need a pupil to add to his worries on the battlefield. Yet he'd given her some grudging credit after she'd faced him down in a practice duel and given him more of a fight than he'd expected.
"I can deflect fire well, Master, and you've seen how I duel."
"Yes, you don't lack for skill, but sometimes there will be more droids than you can handle. If you're truly unlucky, you may meet one of the agents of the dark side. What will you do then? What skill set will you turn to when your blade does not suffice?"
Neria conceded the point to him, as always. At one time, she would've argued and scathingly panned his teaching, but now she was on her last chance.
She tried again, making another effort to block out all the noise around her and sink back into the tranquility of her calmed mind. This time, she began to feel it, a quiet thrum that seemed to course through her body. The power called, and instead of grasping at it, she calmly let it approach.
There was far more behind the mere wisp she was feeling, a mere sprinkle of rain easing toward her from a vast and terrible hurricane.
The Force, and it was quietly calling to her, urging her to take hold of it. She could feel its presence all around her, from the dirt under her crossed legs to the metal of the armor under her master's robes.
The young woman found it in the jar between them, and ever so slowly, she eased it up. Then the half-dozen heavy rocks around it were lifted into the air.
Neria revolved them around her, then gently set them down atop one another, stacking the rocks haphazardly before setting the jar on the very top. Once she was certain minuscule structure wouldn't collapse, she withdrew.
Kullenan had no smile on his face, only a less severe slant to his lips than before. "Good," he told her. "I need to see more of that and fewer excuses."
"Yes, Master." She looked down at the small formation she'd exerted some energy trying to create, then back up at him. "I just don't know how to do it quicker. To reach out and just use it in the middle of sparring like you do."
"I know, and that's one of several reasons I'm your fourth master instead of your first and only." How he liked to remind her of it. "It's no different from the saber. With practice comes ease, with ease comes flexibility, and then comes the sheer power that allows you to throw a squad of droids all at once."
"I—"
Her question was cut off by the cry of blaster fire outside. There was a shout from the hill in front of the camp, then came more fire. Her master's brow furrowed, then he grimaced a set of unblemished teeth.
"Droids," Kullenan muttered. "Always so difficult to sense when you're not expecting them." He rose to his feet, hand moving down to the long hilt at his hip. "Let's hope there aren't too many. Can't have you fighting off an army on your first time out."
"You're letting me fight?" Neria asked, cerulean eyes shining with hope.
"Like you said, you can deflect fire well, and I've seen how you duel. Just stay close to me and listen to my orders."
"Yes, Master."
They rushed out into the heat of Geonosis, the sun of the arid desert planet overbearing even when inside. Clones rushed to the perimeter in small teams, the armored and nearly identical soldiers difficult for her to differentiate.
Not only would this be her first battle, but never before had she fought alongside the clones. She'd seen them at the Jedi Temple, and she'd met several on her rare expeditions out into the city, but those had been her only interactions with the soldiers of the Republic. She'd found them painfully professional and resolute, excellent qualities in a trooper but not very interesting to her.
Most uncomfortable was the realization that she was second-in-command of the division. She'd never understood the need for Jedi to take up the role of tacticians in a government full to the brim of generals who'd navigated civil wars, pirate actions, and rebellions, but it was a mantle she'd grudgingly taken on. Her master had issued her some holobooks on the subject of military tactics, not that she'd had time to look at them before they'd landed.
Their white armor shone blindingly in the sun, their rush to the front quick and unwavering. The carbines and heavy weapons in their arms seemed to slow them little as they dashed for their positions, their commanders crying coarse orders at their backs.
A look at the semi-circle of inclines at the front of the landing zone confirmed that the droids were indeed advancing at the perimeter, scores of standard battle droids marching in the same ineffective blocks that still nonetheless saw them seizing world after world.
"Troopers," Jedi Knight Kullenan said, indicating a squad that rushed past him. "Follow me."
"Yes, General," replied one at the front, a black shoulder pad marking him as one of Kullenan's division. "Men, with me."
The padawan fell in behind her master as their leader jogged toward the marching droids as they continued to pour fiery bolts down on the entrenched clones at the front. For a moment, she wondered what, exactly, her master intended to do against so many.
He activated his saber, a blue beam erupting from both ends. The hilt of her own weapon was warm in her hands, its weight and the softly humming energy within familiar. She activated the lightsaber, a blade the same color as her master's quickly sliding from the end with a hiss.
Blocking blaster bolts and dueling as a whole was less about predicting the trajectory and more about feeling the energy through the Force, realizing where it would be in only a moment, and getting the lightsaber there before the bolt did. Her masters had warned her it was a form of precognition, not reflex.
It was also one of the few applications of the Force that the Twi'lek padawan intuitively excelled in.
Neria took to her master's side, and the two provided a focal point for the red streaks of energy fired by the enemy while the clones took up position on their commanders' flanks and poured blue bolts into the sides of the advancing formations.
The difference in skill between the two Jedi was clearly visible. Though Neria could block the bolts with ease, she was unable to consistently deflect them back at her master, something he effortlessly managed.
The attack was over almost before it began, the droids quickly falling under the combination of the clones' pinpoint accuracy and the stalwart defense of the Jedi.
Neria was about to shut off her lightsaber, but her master still held his in front of him, glancing around the now-silent battlefield with dark eyes narrowed.
"What is it, Master?"
"Something was off about that attack." He cocked his head, as if listening to a sound audible only to him. "A company-sized element against a brigade? What did they expect to accomplish?"
The Twi'lek looked back at the sprawling camp that stretched all the way from the dunes to the tunnel systems in the dirt mounds behind them. Indeed, now that she took full stock of the base, she couldn't help but wonder the same as her master. Exactly what had the droids been trying to do by marching such a comparatively small number right into the clones' teeth?
Neria held her lightsaber in front of her, much like he did, reaching out and trying to find something out there in the desert. A sniper perched on the crest of a dune, artillery hiding behind the waves of dirt, anything. Yet she couldn't find a single thing out of place but for the enemy outpost far in the distance, and she could feel her master doing the same as her. When she pulled back, he switched off his lightsaber.
"Strange," she said, following his example and shutting off her weapon.
"Hm..." He looked to the clone who'd followed them into battle. "Captain, your name."
"Sir, I'm See-Tee—"
"Not your designation. Your name, I'm sure you have one."
"Tank, sir."
"Tank. I have a question for you."
"Yes sir?"
"Were I an infiltrator, where would I slip in?"
"The tunnels, sir." The clone straightened up as if struck by an epiphany. "Which would be easiest while everyone's attention is turned to the front."
The Twi'lek abruptly followed his meaning. While it was likely only a guess, it was true that most the clones had probably given their full attention to the short skirmish at the front of the base. If someone had sneaked into their camp, that would've been the optimal moment.
But what could they be after? There wasn't much in the way of intelligence, Kullenan in particular had a penchant for committing every detail of the battlefield to memory before destroying any high-level reports, leaving only a transmission of the intelligence to the fleet above. Other than that, they had no special ordnance, no new weapon to gather details of, nothing that a spy could possibly want.
"Order each mouth to the cave searched, and put the sentries on alert," the Jedi commanded. "If I'm correct, we'll need to find this infiltrator before they can get out with whatever they're planning to steal."
"It will be done, sir."
Neria's master turned to her, the severe lines of his face refusing to budge. "We need to join the search, as well," he said. "I'm sure you know what that means."
"Reaching out with the Force to find them." She tried not to grumble, but the tone came through regardless. "I'd have more luck finding them by firing a blaster in every direction and hoping they get hit."
The Twi'lek spotted the most incremental of twitches at the corner of her master's mouth. He returned his lightsaber back to his belt, then looked up at a sun that never seemed to descend.
"Night will fall, soon," he said. "And it'll be more difficult to find them in the shadows. Come, we must hurry."
I was somewhat wary of releasing this, but there you have it, my first chapter. With enough interest, I'll keep on.
This story will follow three characters, as hinted in the summary, and I'll update (hopefully) weekly, but with all that I have on my plate, no promises.