THIS OLD TEMPLE: AN EMPTY ROOM
by ardavenport
"Wait a sec."
Luke stopped and turned. Standing above him on the steep stairway, Han Solo dug around in the equipment bag slung over his shoulder. His arm-lumin pointed downward while he searched, creating a glow in the dusty air that shone on him from below. The dark shadows jumped wildly around every time he moved that arm.
Finally he pulled out his weapon belt, blaster and spare ammo. He fumbled to get it around his hips under the now much lighter bag still hanging off his shoulder.
R2 whistled impatiently.
"Afraid of ghosts?" Luke asked, his voice muffled under his breather mask.
Han Solo looked up with a sneer, just visible under the clear-plas mask that covered his nose and mouth "You never know what you're going to find in places like this, kid." He finished tying the holster to his thigh and stood, white shirt bright against his black vest and pants in the hazy light. "This place may have been sealed up for twenty years but there's still plenty of room for something nasty to develop." He descended the last few steps to stand with Luke. "Unless you think it's too dangerous for me to carry a blaster in this place."
Only lawfully deputized security personnel and droids were legally allowed to wear weapons on Coruscant. Han Solo, with sidearm, might not have been out of place in the lower levels of the New Republic's capital city-world where enforcement was a little lax. But in the upper levels of government where Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker and his sister, Leia Organa circulated, Han Solo went unarmed.
Luke shrugged. "I don't know what we're going to find in here. I'd be prepared for anything."
Han chuckled. They both looked around. Luke's squat astromech swivelled its domed head competely around, its single large eye-sensor scanning.
They had entered the ruined Jedi Temple through an access point on the roof, after having three large construction droids cut through the heavy plating that it had been sealed with. And after installing an air lock over the access way before opening it. Coruscant's heavily controlled ecology would not allow them to vent anything sealed up inside to the outside atmosphere without going through a long series of approvals, committee meetings, reviews and declarations. Even Luke's status as hero of the Rebellion and Jedi Knight could not change that.
Up on top, Chewbacca waited for them with the machines. Han's Wookiee first officer absolutely would not tread the haunted passageways where thousands of Jedi had been massacred by Emperor Palpatine during the 'insurrection' that had prompted the formation of the Empire.
They stood in a highest-level corridor just below the roof. Charred wreckage littered the floor, the walls black and cracked in places. There was nothing usable. Luke pointed his light forward and back. And picked forward.
Luke led. Han's light went forwards and back as he followed. R2's treads crunched and pushed aside small bits of rubble; the droid emitted a worry whimper as they went. They turned right at the end of the long, wide corridor. There was a heavy, blaster-scarred door ahead. Luke's light panned slowly before diving down onto a very distinct shape.
A body. With a pale gray head clearly visible, one thin arm bent at the elbow above it. Han's light played over it to another body shape.
"Oooooo-wwwwwuuuuuuu," R2 whined.
"Is this what you came for, kid?" Han asked, standing close to his friend.
"Come on." Luke led them to the ruined archway.
They stood at the entrance into a large room, thick cylindrical columns down a central aisle, storage crates along the walls. Their lights did not reach to the end. Bodies lay clustered on either side. They were all shriveled with age of varying degrees and species. One hairless sinewy humanoid lay with twisted limbs and blackened torso next to a brownish gray crumbling skeleton in brown Jedi robe and pale tunic. A bloated, portly body with a neat pinpoint blaster bolt between sunken eyes lay half covering a broad hairy chest with exposed charred ribs showing through the blaster hole in the body. The mane of the head was charred, the jaws open, exposing the enormous curved white fangs of a predator species.
Luke's boot hit something and his light caught a glint of dull silver at his feet.
A lightsaber lay neatly lined up next to the light brown shoulder of the predator's robe.
Scanning his light around at the bodies, Luke found the other lighsabers, lying near the heads of the bodies.
. . . . he smelled smoke, saw an after-image of it, the blackened blaster scars fresh, only hours after the battle . . . . Clones with their own astromech, positioning the bodies and the lightsabers so they could be holo-scanned . . . .
Luke exhaled and the image faded.
This place was strong in the Force.
Han looked nervous.
"They lined them all up with their lightsabers so the bodies could be identified." Luke pointed with his arm-lumin at each dead Jedi, each face turned to be visible.
"Yeah. That's the Empire for you. They were always big on efficiency," Han muttered.
"Come on." Luke lead them through the storage area. There was a stairway at the end. They descended three levels before finding a door out into the faded light of of a few decades old wall lumins, probably the Temple's emergency lighting, the units running on their own batteries. R2 used side-jets and internal anti-gravs to float down over the steps behind them. The droid whistled and tooted after swiveling its domed head around as it rolled out into the large, dark room.
"Where are we?" Han pointed his light in all directions, finding only plain walls and patterned decoration by the ceiling. Everything looked gray with black shadows except where their lights highlighted a blue, brown and rust-red pattern on the floor.
"I don't know. R2."
Immediately a colored holo of the Temple appeared aboard R2's head. It turned slowly before the image zoomed in under the roof, blinking.
"Upper training hall." Luke's light scanned the floor over a pattern of pale yellow lines of circles and rectangles. Otherwise, there was nothing there except for a few benches along the wall, not even blaster marks. They moved on.
With R2 recording as they went, they passed through hallways with doors blasted open. Several doors led into one large room with smashed equipment, shelves and dark dirt on the floor. Another door led a fresher with all its fixtures blasted. A whole series of doors led to small rooms with charred, blackened lumps in the middle, but nothing else. R2 shrieked and backed away from one large room filled with blasted, melted droids.
One hallway led into a larger space, partially blocked by a destroyed generator. They stepped around it to a long, doorless and totally black hallway that led to a large open area at the top of a wide set of stairs. There were more bodies, over a dozen, crammed together.
. . . . there were too many clones coming after them, the defenders barely deflecting the rapid-fire blaster bolts. And then the shots came at them from the open hallways on either side. Caught in the crossfire, the Jedi fell, their lightsabers going out, green, blue, green, one by one. . . .
"Hey, kid." Han grabbed Luke's upper arm. He inhaled deeply and the after-image in the Force blew away like smoke. But he could still feel it, in that room and further into the Temple, as if the past were close at hand.
"You okay?" Han asked.
"Yeah." He nodded. "I'm okay. It's just . . . . a lot happened here."
"Yeah, ya got that right," Han agreed, looking around at the darkness above and around them. After cosulting R2's map again, they moved on, down the stairs. They were just doing an initial reconnaisance, collecting enough information to take back to the planetary ecology officials that would allow them to open the whole Temple to atmosphere so the whole structure could be evaluated. They both had bags slung over their shoulders and Luke periodically stopped for an air sample. R2-D2 had all scanners running.
Heading down to the lowest sub-levels, they planned to move upward, getting an overview of the whole Temple. Once they had to move three bodies that blocked a stairway. Sometimes the Jedi were together, three and four fallen together where they had been massacred, sometimes they were alone. But they were always in the open areas, large rooms, halls and stairways where they went down defending the Temple. None of them were in any of the rooms. But when they got to the lowest level of vast stripped storage rooms and broken vaults, intuition led Luke down a narrow hallway, black with no emergency lighting.
. . . . the Temple was lost. There were too many clones. The Dark Side was suddenly strong, as if the walls were closing in, the air stifling. Darkness, evil everywhere. If they could get some of the younglings out. There was an old utility tunnel, blocked off ages ago. . . .
At the end of a narrow corridor was a blackened hole, huge chunks of duracrete wall gouged out, not by blaster, but by lightsaber. The bodies of the two adults lay twisted and scarred by multiple blaster hits among the dozen or so youngling bodies clustered by them, little hands still clutching the robes of their elders. None of them looked any older than four standard years.
"They shoulda' put in a back door." Han said, the light from his arm lumin scanning and spotlighting the scene. R2 plaintively whistled.
"Yeah." Luke turned away.
They made their way up through the ruins. It would be a lot of work restoring the Temple, a job Luke had not really expected to fall on him. But the rebellion was over and they won. Now, as sole surviving Jedi, he had technically inherited it, a massive runined temple that looked like a Hutt palace, that Yoda had only mentioned in passing during his training.. Leia said that the New Republic Senate would allocate resources for the work. After they got an evaluation.
When they got to a long, enormous open room that R2's map said was the Archives, all they found were nearly floor to ceiling shelves, stripped of any data modules over a scattering of bodies under pale blue and yellow emergency lights like very faint moonlight. Luke looked down at an older, humanoid woman, body convulsed, sriveled and desciated, lightsaber laid down near her gray-haired head. She had been cut in two with a neat, clean slice. Darth Vader had personally dispatched her. R2 cooed sadly, scanner whirring.
"The Emperor didn't leave a lot left." Han's arm-lumin spotlighted over the wrecked Archives, the empty shelves.
"Yeah." Luke got no impression through the Force about what had happened, but he did not think that had anything to do with his father having done the deed. The brief flashes of vision in the Force seemed to be declining the more bodies they passed by. The loss of vision seemed to make the Jedi even more dead and gone. The air felt heavy and musty in his mask.
They moved through the main areas of the Temple. All the ships and speeders in the bays were gone, but the clones destroyed the droids there and in all the other parts of the Temple; the maintanence areas, med-center, interior gardens, communcations centers, eating halls. R2 was audibly upset whenever they came across them, especially the blasted astromechs.
Halfway up, back to the roof, Luke knew that he was looking for something specific. He just didn't know what. They took a side trip to the center spire. It wasn't really necessary; they had already confirmed that the Temple was structurally sound and there were no operationally significant functions there. Just spiritually significant ones.
. . . . the clones pushed them further and further back. They kept going upward. Maybe there would be an escape from the roof. The Temple had become a death trap set by the Sith . . . .
"I wonder why there aren't any bodies up here? I can't imagine that the strormtroopers cleaned up." Han Solo grasped the railing of the balcony and looked out at the execellent view of the city plain of Coruscant, the towers and higher structures of the government, the big commercial districts and the upscale high-rises in the distance. The Temple stood alone, its base surrounded by the stormtrooper barracks that Emperor Palpatine had placed there and were now being dismantled by the New Republic.
"The stromtroopers were up here first." A warm breeze blew Luke's bangs aside. It was late afternoon under a beautiful cloudless blue sky. The Weather Control Autrhority had announced clear weather for the next few days. "They had an ambush up here for anyone who was going to try to escape this way."
"Oh."
Out of the corner of his eye, Luke saw Han scowling. But Han didn't ask about how he knew that. He had mostly stopped asking about that 'Jedi stuff' awhile ago. The Force was very strong in here. But not for Han Solo. He walked through the most sacred parts of the Jedi Temple, completely unaware of the power, the potential. Now that he had completed his training as a Jedi, Luke found it refreshing that most of the galaxy didn't know anything about the Force. Or care. Yet the Force was still there, unimpeded by anyone's awareness or lack of it. If felt right, a healthy perspective on where he fit in it all, what he had to do, and learn . . . .
. . . . and there was so much to learn.
Leaving the center spire, they headed back to their air lock access. But the feeling that Luke had missed something remained and grew.
"Hey!" Han followed down the stairway that Luke suddenly went down. "Where you going?" R2 whistled.
"Just following a hunch."
"Hmmph." Han grumbled, but he respected hunches, whether they came from the Force or not.
Going down three more levels, he suddenly turned to the right.
. . . . Trust your feelings . . . . Luke heard Ben Kenobi's words in his mind clearly. But it was pure memory. The presence of his father's old master was nowhere near.
Crossing into an open area, his lumin beam scanned over a centerpiece of a long dead bush with bare, twisting branches high over his head in the dark. He saw a line of small rooms, their doors broken open, faint bluish white emergency light coming from inside, an irregular line of lighted openings in a bluck wall. But there was hardly anything in them, just squat round pedestals, some of them knocked over on their sides. Every door in the Temple had been broken or blasted open. The stormtroopers had done a thorough search.
Through a wide archway, he saw a very long hallway of doors, a few old light panels still working in the ceiling. Inside the first door was room with a low table, a few floor cushions, a sleeping bench and end table. Stepping inside, Luke saw what looked like a ruined fresher, its door blasted open.
Han joined him, panning his light all around. "Hmmm, must be the living quarters." His light settled on some pale, mostly empty shelves by the fresher door. "Not much. Pretty cramped, too."
"It's bigger than what you've got on the Falcon."
"Yeah, but that's out of necessity, kid. If you're living planetside, you expect a little more living space."
Luke reached the lone dark shape on the middle shelf. His hands touched dusty fabric and when he pulled it off, the folds of a long disused Jedi robe hung down to the floor. The owner had been very tall. Luke put the robe back and they left. R2 quickly backed up from the doorway and chirped; there were no bodies or shattered droids in this area.
"Doesn't look like much to see here," Han commented a little impatiently. Luke didn't disagree, but he went further down the hallway anyway. A few of the rooms had rugs or some abstract wall decoration or an extra side table or chair, but they were otherwise largely the same.
Luke suddenly stopped. He slowly turned to his left, his arm lumin pointing into another room. He saw a chair with blue cushioned seat. Inside, was a low table, reddish cushions on the floor, an end table and a sleeping bench with a rumpled covering. The fresher door was black and blasted open like all the others, the shelves next to it completely bare. He turned around and then straightened, closing his eyes, clearing his mind. Whatever insight that led him into this particular room had come from the Force, but he had no idea why.
"Hey, Luke."
He inhaled deeply, feeling his senses fill the room.
"Luke."
R2 bleeped and twittered.
A light shone on his face. He could see it through his closed eyelids, impossible to ignore.
Sometimes it would be nice if Han Solo had a little grasp of the Force.
He opened his eyes. "Yeah. What is it?" He walked back to the entryway.
"Is this what you're looking for?"
Han's light shone on the name plate on the wall by the door. Luke stared at the faintly glowing letters.
** Obi-Wan Kenobi – Master – Jedi Council **
Eyes wide, he re-entered the simple room. Closing his eyes again, he took a deep breath. Han did not interrupt this time.
Long minutes passed, but no images, no sounds or smells came to him. When he finally opened his eyes the only thing he was certain of was that Ben Kenobi had not been in the Temple when it was attacked. But that didn't seem like much of a revelation.
What surprised him was that he had never asked about it before.
There were so many things . . . . his time with Ben Kenobi, when he was alive, had been too short to ask about much of anything. And while he had many days training with Master Yoda, he had learned early that if Yoda did not want to answer any of his question, he wouldn't. At some point, he stopped asking them. But in retrospect, his questions had been mostly about fighting and battles and his father, all the things that he had learned about second-hand from any old veterans or anyone in the Rebel Alliance with any experience with the Jedi. Not the things that Yoda thought were most important for him to know. Things about the Force and balance and how he was supposed to pass on what Yoda had taught him.
He had no answers now, just an empty room.
Looking up at the blackness of the ceiling, he thought about Ben and Yoda and what he would ask them now. They were there, their prescene still lingering in the Force, guiding him somehow. Sometimes. But apparently not at the moment.
"Find what you're looking for?"
He sighed, the breath sound loud in his breather mask. "No." He shook his head. Maybe this wasn't the one he was meant to find. Perhaps Yoda's room, or his father's would give him more insight. Perhaps something would come to him when he came back later. . . .
. . . . . but there was no reason to come looking for answers in this room. Or any of the others. The Force could just as easily lead him to Yoda's room. Or his father's. But they were just empty rooms.
Luke went back to the door. The name plate was just outside, for visitors to see. Just inside the door was the control panel for the room, environment settings, com, lighting, data access.
"R2, can you access this?"
Luke stepped back to let R2 extend a data connection to the outlet at the bottom of the panel.
"What can he do? There's no power." Han asked, standing next to him.
"R2 can supply the power to access the data if he acts as a proxy for Temple computers."
The wall panel lit up.
R2's dome swiveled back toward Luke and Han. 'Oop-oop bloo-eek-fweet.'
Luke smiled. "Can you access the name at the door and all the other rooms?"
R2 bleeped, dome swivelling back and forth a negative.
"Well, do as many as you can."
R2 bleeped an affirmative.
Han turned and Luke looked up. The name and title at the door winked into a flash of static and then went out, the letters replaced by lines of dots. Han stepped out the door into the hall, looked either way.
"He got 'em all around here at least."
"Yeah, we can do the rest when we get the power and computers back." Luke looked around. Even through his breather, the air seemed to have cleared, it tasted fresher.
Han nodded approval. "Clean start. Good idea."
Luke grinned at his work and then back into the now anonymous room. A 'clean start', that felt right. He tapped R2's dome and followed Han out.
"Come on, R2"
"Brreeeeee-ziii-ziik-zik-zik-zik ooooop-oop."
They left together.
*** *** *** END *** *** ***
Disclaimer: This story first posted on tf.n on 3-Mar-2011. All characters and the Star Wars universe belong to George and Lucasfilm; I am just playing in their sandbox.