Hello! This is the first chapter of my story (obviously) which follows a young Jedi after the events of Revenge of the Sith. I came up with the idea for this story, and possible sequels, after hearing the rumor of a live action series set in between the two trilogies. To me, this time period is largely unexplored, and a multitude of things can happen, of course, as long as they don't interfere with what is all ready known. Well, without further ado, here's the story.
Chapter 1 End of the Line
Guannk. Outer Rim. Closing moments of the Clone Wars.
The Republic LAAT/i gunship dropped nearly ten meters instantly, creating a near weightless feeling for the occupants inside. Completely surrounding it, blaster fire from anti-aircraft emplacements flew past, missing their targets by mere centimeters. The sky of the small farming planet that was being occupied by the Separatists was a light with red from the blaster bolts, and from the burning wreckage of the disintegrating gunships that several of the bolts had found. Though the situation was tense and wrought with danger, the occupants of the gunship showed no fear, at least on the outside.
Padawan Rika Tymor, the young Twi'lek female apprentice of Master Amminius Mindar, blinked several times as she tried to get a better look at their target location. An explosion of ionic flak jarred the gunship and she had to grab onto a support rail handle on the overhead to maintain her balance. As much as she liked space travel, this traveling into a hot LZ in an unshielded dropship was not her idea of bravery; it was suicide. However, if anyone else on the gunship shared her sentiment, she couldn't tell.
Behind her was a squad of the usual white-armor clad clone troopers that were synonymous with the Grand Army. This squad was led by Sergeant Adelo, who had served along the two Jedi for nearly a year. Each of the troopers carried the deadly efficient DC-15 blasters, while Adelo carried two DC-17 blaster pistols that he kept in holsters on both of his thighs. Though the troopers and Rika had served together for the entire length of this war, she was never fully comfortable in their presence. It wasn't the fact that they all looked the same; in the Force they all felt different, as they were each individuals and not identical copies of each other like droids. What truly unnerved her was the fact that they all looked up to her as an officer and trusted her with their lives to make the right decision. Too many times she had doubted herself, and wondered just how soldiers who were trained for war could rely on a young woman who was trained for peace.
Another salvo of anti-aircraft fire nearly hit the gunship, but the talents of the clone pilot named Buzzer avoided disaster. Rika let out a long breath in an attempt to calm her nerves. Beside her, Master Amminius Mindar looked down on his Padawan and pulled his reptilian lips back in a smile. Mindar had seen too much combat during this war and he was the first to admit so. For reasons that he himself did not understand, he had grown accustomed to these hot drops into heavily fortified enemy territory. Now, as he looked at his Padawan, he exhumed a warm comforting glow from the Force.
"Calm yourself, my young Padawan. Trust in the Force to bring us out of this safely," Master Mindar said loudly over the din of warfare. Rika lightly nodded her head and then tried to maintain her focus on the Force, though the constant jarring maneuvers executed by Buzzer made it hard for her to do so.
Mindar watched as his Padawan tried to focus and lightly smiled at her efforts. He had told her many times before that the Force cannot be strained into focus; it merely should flow into her mind like water flowing to the sea. He was about to remind her of this, when his large pointed ears picked up the humming sound of a comlink vibrating.
Mindar reached out with the Force to enhance his hearing ability and was able to discern that the comlink was in Sergeant Adelo's possession. He was at first confused as to why the Sergeant would be contacted instead of himself if information were to be relayed. But instead of turning to see what the message said, he instead faced forward and listened in on what it might be about.
He concentrated on isolating just the sounds that were coming from the rear of the gunship, and he was able to pick up a muffled sounding voice that lacked remorse.
"It is time. Execute Order Sixty-Six."
Mindar narrowed his reptilian brow as he tried to remember if he had ever heard of an Order Sixty-Six. But before he could remember that there was never one that he had heard of, his heightened hearing abilities picked up the spine-chilling sound of the safeties on the clone troopers' blaster rifles being clicked to the off position.
Rika found it difficult to maintain her focus on the Force, so she instead chose to focus on the presence of her Master for comfort. But she suddenly felt him go rigid as a sudden shockwave of fear coursed through him. Without speaking a word, she went for the hilt of her lightsaber at the same instant that Mindar went for his.
Sergeant Adelo was the first to fire. Master Mindar's ignited green blade caught the blaster bolt and sent it flying back into the skull of Adelo. Without having time to fully react, Rika ignited her blue blade and deflected the firestorm of blaster bolts that were now erupting inside the small confines of the Republic gunship.
Blaster bolts pinged off of the interior bulkheads, creating a chamber of imminent death to all inside. Together, working in harmony with the Force, the two Jedi parried every single incoming blaster bolt, whether it was from a trooper's blaster, or one of the many ricocheting rounds that were bouncing about with deadly randomness.
Though the intense firefight seemed to last for hours, in only a few mere seconds it was over. All twelve of the clone troopers lay dead at the two Jedi's feet, though it was nothing that the pair was proud of. Rika was about to question her Master about what happened, but from the corner of her eye she caught the glimpse of a DC-17 barrel swinging out from within the cockpit. Buzzer! In the confusion she had all but forgotten about him!
Mindar saw her look of shock and only had a fraction of a second to react. The blaster fired only once, but the bolt hit Mindar in his abdomen. Rika jumped forward and pierced Buzzer with the end of her lightsaber, and forced the blade up, ripping a large cauterized gash in his chest. His body slumped forward in his command chair, but his body fell on the control yoke, forcing the gunship to dive straight for the rocky surface. The sudden g-forces of the dive lifted Rika off of her feet and slammed her onto the rear bulkhead of the gunship. As she watched in absolute horror as the ground rapidly approached, she fumbled for some sort of handhold to brace for the upcoming impact.
The gunship roared a high-pitched death scream before it slammed hard on the surface, bounced fifty meters into the air, and again hit the surface, skidding for a long distance before the front end slammed into a rocky cliff face.
What seemed like an eternity later, Rika blinked her eyes and wiped the blurry confusion away. The first thing she was able to perceive was the acrid smell of ozone from burning circuitry mixed with the oddly sweet smelling air from the planet Guannk. When her vision cleared up, thick wisps of gray smoke clung to the decking and the ceiling of the gunship and slowly rolled out through the now open side door. Sparks flickered and cast a strange light on the scene, where several of the bodies of the clone troopers were still laying.
She got to her feet and after taking a moment to regain her balance, she found her lightsaber among the carnage and clipped it to her belt, then began to look for her Master. She stepped over the bodies of the troopers, now all laying in unnatural positions after the crash landing. In one of the corners near the cockpit, she found Master Amminius Mindar slumped over himself, but still breathing.
"Master! Are you all right?" Rika asked as she quickly squatted down next to him. His breathing was heavy and labored, and with what looked like great effort, he looked up at her face with unfocused eyes.
"A Jedi is always "all right" with the Force as his ally," Mindar said in a forced whisper. Rika lightly frowned at his attempt to make the situation seem lighter, but she could see that he was only clinging to life.
"We've got to get out of here, get you to a medic station," Rika said as she tried to look for some sort of device that could be utilized as a stretcher.
"No, it's too late for that, my young Padawan." Rika looked into the eyes of her Master and saw that he was right, no matter how much she refused to believe it.
"Master, why did the troops turn on us?" she asked, trying to keep Mindar focused on the now before he allowed himself to slip away into death. Mindar closed his eyes and slightly shook his scaled head.
"They were ordered to, but why I cannot say." Rika shook her head at what her Master said. How could the clones have been ordered to kill them? Only other Jedi held ranks higher than Mindar and Rika, and the order could not have possibly came from them. Rika shook her head in confusion, but she stopped when she heard the sound of another LAAT/i coming in and setting down close by.
"Come on, Master. We have to get out of here," Rika said as she tried to pick up her Master, but Mindar shook his head.
"No, Rika, you must flee. I will remain here and buy you enough time to make your escape."
"No, Master," Rika said as she shook her head, her lekku swinging back and forth. "I can't leave you!" Mindar looked into her eyes and smiled as much as he could.
"Your destiny does not end here, my young Padawan, but mine does. You must have the heart to follow the path it has laid before you."
"But," Rika protested with tears welling up in her eyes, "I can't let you die."
"Have you learned nothing as my apprentice? Death is nothing with the Force; it is only one more step in the grand scheme of things. Now take this. This is my Jedi beacon transceiver. The Council will know what to do. Trust in yourself my young Padawan, and the Force will guide you."
Rika took the small transceiver and then looked at her Master for one last time.
"May the Force be with you, Master," Rika said as she choked back more tears.
"The Force will be with you, Rika. Always." Rika stood from her kneeled position, and though in her mind she wanted to stay, the cold depths of fear pulled her away. Without saying another word, she turned from her Master, and stepped out of the gunship.
She briefly looked around, noticed where the sound of running clone troopers was coming from, and propelled herself with the Force into a lightning fast sprint away from the downed gunship.
Amminius Mindar, Jedi Knight and Master of Rika Tymor, watched as his only Padawan disappeared out of sight. He took in a large burning breath into his injured body, all the while knowing exactly what he had to do in order to protect her. It would be his final act in this living world, but he knew that once his life essence passed on into the Force, his pain would cease forever.
Approaching now from the distance, he could hear the sounds of plastoid covered boots hitting the dirt. He quickly called the Force unto himself and became a beacon of the light. Though his injuries were severe, the Force helped him stand to his full height and numbed the pain that coursed through his body. Without consciously doing it, his lightsaber hilt found his right hand, and he stepped out into the open, where a dozen clone troopers were now standing, their blasters aimed at his chest.
With the speed that rivaled the quickest blaster bolt, Mindar jumped swiftly into the fray, his lightsaber igniting and removing the heads of two troopers before the others could even react. Mindar himself did not swing the lightsaber blade, nor did he consciously know of every move he made. Instead, it was the Force that fought the troopers. But even with the Force channeled fully through his dying body, he was only able to kill ten of the troopers before a thermal detonator exploded, ending the life of Amminius Mindar, Jedi Knight and Master of Rika Tymor.
Rika stopped as she climbed onto the top of a boulder and fell to her knees as she felt the presence of her Master pass on into the Force. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and tried to focus on her own escape. The sacrifice of her Master was too great of a gift for her to waste by getting caught and killed.
Through the heavy emotions that coursed through her mind, she tried to focus on the Force to make her calm, but it was as if her connection to the Force was now severely handicapped. She could still feel it, and could call on it to move a small rock to her hand, but anything greater than that seemed to be lost to her, as if she was a youngling again. She pushed this new and aggravating development out of her mind and then tried to remember the debriefing details that they had received about the planet of Guannk.
The planet itself was of no significant military value, having no weapon or ship manufacturing plants on it. The only real value it had was a massive grain industry that helped to bolster the Republic's war effort, even though Guannk was politically neutral. The Separatists had decided to attack it to take one food source away from the Republic, however it was also taking a major grain source away from other systems in the galaxy. Guannk itself was sparsely populated by sentients; the majority of the work and shipments were conducted by basic droid facilities.
When Rika remembered this particular bit of information, she knew that she had found her way off of this planet.
She remembered seeing one of the droid shipping and processing facilities farther south of their intended landing zone when they were still in space, and it was to this that she now headed to.
The walk was uneventful and she arrived after only an hour of navigating the rough terrain. From a thickly wooded area, she observed the droid operated loading dock. There were only a few ships, the closest being a heavy freighter that was being loaded now with heavy containers of grain. After making sure that there were no watching eyes in the area, she darted forward with the help of the Force and entered the cargo bay of the freighter.
When she entered the dimly lit bay, she looked around for a place to stow away. She found a small closet containing some clothing and a few work helmets. Giving one last look outside the ship, she stepped into the closet and closed the door.
For some time, she just sat in there, occasionally hearing the sounds of heavy repulsor lifts carrying the cargo containers into the cargo bay and depositing their load before moving on. After what seemed like a long nail biting eternity, she heard the sound of someone talking outside. From what she could hear, it was the Captain of the cargo ship and it seemed like he was arguing with someone. When she listened more closely, her blood ran cold as she heard the familiar voice of a clone trooper.
"What do you mean you're holding my ship here? You have no right to do that! Last time I checked, Guannk was a neutral planet!"
"Not anymore, it's under the Republic's jurisdiction. We have orders to hold all vessels on the surface until they can be searched for fugitives. I suggest you comply."
"Or what? You'll blast me?" Rika listened harder at this point, but there was only a moment of silence before she heard the voice of the Captain again, this time it seemed more stressed. "Sure, go ahead and inspect the ship. I don't know what you're looking for though."
Rika sank back into the closet and slowed her breathing as she heard the all too familiar sound of the plastoid boots clanking on the metal decking. The sound came closer and closer, and stopped outside of her chosen hiding place. For a moment, she didn't breathe, and tried to call the Force to her aide, though it still felt vague to her. Rika held her breath as she waited for the inevitable, however it didn't come. From the entryway of the cargo hold, she could hear the sound of another set of boots running up.
"Sir, Red Group has found a fugitive on the other side of the docking bay." Without a word, she then heard both sets of boots take off and left the ship. Rika then let out a hard sigh of relief. But though the clones weren't there to hear it, someone else was. Catching Rika by surprise, the closet door opened, and she was confronted by the surly looking captain of the grain freighter.
At first he just stared at her blankly, but soon his eyes roamed over her entire body and his normally dumb expression was replaced with a lecherous smile. She was a Rutian Twi'lek with fair luminescent blue skin and matching eyes. Though she thought of herself as being plain, she in fact had a rather curvaceous figure for a young female; something that the scruffy Captain took notice of.
"Well now, what do we have here?"
Though she was trembling in both fear and disgust, she focused her mind fully and spoke slowly and deliberately.
"You see nothing in this closet," she said with a wave of her hand. For a moment it seemed as if her attempt at the mind trick had failed, but the captain straightened his posture and responded.
"I see nothing in this closet." Rika exhaled with relief but knew she wasn't in the clear yet.
"You're going to turn around and forget you ever saw me."
"I'm going to turn around and forget I ever saw you."
"You're going to take off now."
"I'm going to take off now."
"Carry on." With the final wave of her hand, the captain closed the closet door and walked away. Rika slumped back on the bulkhead inside the closet and let out a huge sigh of relief. Outside, she heard the captain bark a few orders to the loading droids, and then there was silence once again.
After a few minutes, she could hear the sounds of the ship's engines starting to warm up and the cargo bay hatch closing with a pressurized hiss. With a lurch the ship lifted off of the ground and began its slow lumbering pace into space. Several minutes later, the ship rocked with a strong pull of inertia, sending ripples of vertigo up Rika's spine; she was now safely away from Guannk and in hyperspace to an unknown point.
In the dark moments that she had with herself in the closet, she allowed her mind to drift back to memories with her Master. She had been with Master Mindar for seven years. When he selected her to be his Padawan, she was nearly too old and was almost certainly spared a boring life serving in the Service Corps. There were times when Rika thought that Mindar had made the wrong choice in her, but he always reassured her that she would make a fine Jedi, and that it was the Force that had brought them together. During the years before the outbreak of the war, Master Mindar had taught her many things about the Force, but now she was uncertain of how she could continue on without his guidance. A more troubling thought that entered her mind was this new inability to call upon the Force as she had once been able to. Perhaps it had something to do with the death of Master Mindar; after all, it was he who had taught her how to focus completely on the Force.
As she thought about this, she jumped slightly when the beacon transceiver that Mindar had given her began to vibrate. She took it from her belt, looked at it and read the message.
By order of the Council, all Jedi are to return to the Temple immediately.
Finally! There was still hope out there. The Jedi Council must have learned about the troopers turning on them, and it must not have been an isolated event. With all of the Jedi and the Council looking into this event, surely they could solve and resolve the issue. Now that she knew that the other Jedi were aware of the situation, she took comfort in knowing that Mindar's death and possibly other Jedi's would not go unanswered. With this thought in mind, Rika made herself comfortable in her chosen sanctuary and fell asleep.