Something I always get asked is, "what's it like to fight alongside a Jedi?" All the time. And for the longest time, I couldn't answer that question. I didn't know. I'd never met one. People always assume every Republic soldier has met dozens of Jedi and fought Sith all across the galaxy.

I've still never met a Sith, and thank the stars for that, because I've heard stories, and they'd make your blood curdle. My advice there is, if you ever see one of those red sabers, run. Run as far and as fast as you can, because hiding doesn't work and fighting will only get you killed. The holos tell stories about the grunts who can take on a Sith, the lucky and the brave and the insanely resourceful, but I'm telling you I've never met a soldier who came across a Sith and walked away. It's run, limp, or get carried out when it comes to those monsters.

No, Havoc Squad doesn't count. No, I haven't met them. Didn't you want to know about Jedi?

Like I said, for the longest time, I couldn't say anything about the Jedi. Mostly, they get sent on solo missions or to counter Sith attacks. All that propaganda about them leading the glorious charge for "the Grand Army of the Republic" is poodoo. Only an idiot would tie a Jedi down to a single battalion, let alone a squad. Jedi go where the Council sends them, where the Republic needs them, or wherever they damn well please.

It's… funny, I guess. The reason I met a Jedi? That last one. The Council has bigger priorities, what with the Sith and all, and I never went on any mission the Republic couldn't have used any other company in the galaxy for. Nothing special about us. So I guess that means there was something special about her. That makes sense. It's exactly what you'd have thought, if you'd met her.

It wasn't a big fight. Maybe a few hundred square kilometres of turf on a planet I'd sooner forget. But it felt big at the time. Back then, it felt like the most important thing in the galaxy, getting up every day to fight for my life, just like everyone else in my squad and everyone else in the whole damn company. Now, though, I know it didn't matter, except to keep the fight going on yet another planet.

That's what makes it so weird that she was there.

I got up late that morning. Special dispensation for having watch duty the previous night. The fight was still going from the day before, but I'll tell you right now that nothing helps a man sleep through constant artillery quite like experience and stubbornness. I'd earned my beauty sleep, and I wasn't giving it up for fire or flood.

My squad was in the thick of it. Relieved another squad as soon as we reached the front lines. I still remember the look on those guys' faces. Haggard, dirty, grateful. One of them looked at me as they left and I knew he wasn't expecting to see us again. So I sat down in that trench and waited for the storm to hit.

It was fine, mostly. We had a strong front. My CO was a bit gung-ho, but sometimes that's what you've gotta deal with. We held him in check, kept the line solid. Didn't really push, didn't lose any ground, neither. I started to feel like that'd be the day. Just sit there and hold the line for another eight hours. No problem.

Except something happened that day. I hear the lines collapsed about half a kilometer over. Everyone dead. Either Sith or something mechanical. Doesn't matter. What matters is that me and my squad were cut off from our side before we even got an order to fall back.

So there we are, right in the middle of the seven Corellian hells, and Lieutenant Shiba is yelling for us to make one final charge. "There's no way back, men, let's give them something to remember us by!" Idiot. We practically had a mutiny on our hands right there, in the middle of new enemy territory.

Then a blaster bolt takes Shiba in the chest, and he goes down. Problem is, he isn't dead. Dead, we could have left and come back for him. No, stubborn idiot survived, and we had to pick him up and start carrying him back home, ducking blasterfire the whole way. A fighting retreat.

No chance. We get pinned down after thirty meters. The comms guy is on the link with home base, giving his last words home for his kids. Three of my squadmates look like they're going to go ahead with Shiba's idea and just go down fighting. My best mate is curled up, trying not to cry. Me? I don't even feel anything. Numb all over, don't even know what's going on. I don't feel like spiting the Imps just to say I did when we get to the big question mark in the sky. Running ain't going to do a damn thing. Neither sittin'. So I got nothing, right there. Just me and the last of my squad in various stages of soiling our armour.

The Imps keep getting louder, and they're coming from all sides now. The see us curl up in this little crater and they smell blood. Artillery is whistling and taking chunks out of the earth in every direction and there's yelling from all around.

I decide if I'm going to die, at least I'm going to see it coming. So I stick my head out of that hole and look at the black and red marching from everywhere. I'd've lost my nerve and sat back down to die if that had been it. And I almost do. I turn around, sit down, and lie back against the side of the crater. Can't even hear my helmet crunch on the glassed ground cuz of the artillery.

Then she shows up, and I've never seen anything like it. It starts out as this brown dot on the horizon. Then it looks like a person, up in the sky. The Imps started shooting at it, and I can't see a thing through all the red. But it doesn't stop.

Then she lands, and I don't know what to think.

She looks around at us and says, "don't worry. You're safe now."

I look at this sea of black and red, then down at this little girl. Mirialan kid in brown robes, so young she should be home poppin' zits, not in the middle of a war zone. She's gotta be one-sixty, and forty kilos soaking wet. But she flew in there, clean over the Imp army, so I say to her, "kid, I don't know who you are, but you've gotta get out of here."

The kid walks up to Lt. Shiba, brushes a hand across his chest. Then she turns to me and looks me right in the eye, and I swear my blood freezes. This kid's face is a mess. Nothing but scars and freckles, like someone tore it off and sewed it back on again. And not someone who knew nothin' about sewing, either.

There's a whistling sound, and yelling. A few of my buddies scream. I dive forward at the girl, trying to push her down. There's artillery incoming, and that means get your head down or get it blown off.

Except this frail little girl takes my weight, just takes a step back to steady herself, and holds me up like I'm nothing. I think I hear a soft grunt and, "excuse me." Sure hope I imagined it.

I see this shell coming out of the sky, trailing smoke, and I figure it's not just the kid that's dead, it's all of us. That thing's going to land right on top of us.

This girl raises one hand and the entire world ripples, and the artillery shell just explodes in mid-air.

I stand myself up and get a better look up above us, then I look down at this jedi.

Then she smiles, and those scars stretch in a way I can't even describe, but her eyes spark like storm clouds and she looks like… like a rainbow, like a merciful god, like every storybook princess you've ever heard of, and she says, "my name is Embry. Follow me. It's time to go home."

She steps out of the crater, up into the crossfire, and I figure she's dead, but I follow her anyway. The air streaks with so much red I forget what colour the sky is. And then it all stops. No more blasterfire at all. The sound goes dead, like it's kilometers off. There's some sort of bubble, and all of the artillery and blasterfire and everything is hitting it and just scattering. It's a beautiful thing.

And this little girl, this tiny, larger-than-life Jedi in her too-big robes takes out her lightsaber, lights it up all bright emerald against the sky. She holds it up for all of us to see. Then, very softly, with that same bright smile, "come with me. All will be well."

I think that was the moment I really realized what a Jedi was. That power and confidence she had, it wasn't something I've ever seen, anywhere else. I saw a kind of hope I hadn't felt since I first killed a man at the start of the war.

I couldn't imagine doing anything else, so I went up and stood beside her.

I guess all of them see what I saw, cuz they all stomp out of that crater, even the CO. Hells, Shiba looks like he's doing better than any of us. Didn't occur to me until later the kid must've healed him.

Yeah. They can do that, just like the stories say. Never said nothing about the flying, though.

Well, Embry leads us all the way out, right through the Imps. We walk right through the army, with Imps on every side trying to beat down this bubble force field, and we're all getting antsy. Jedi Embry just walks ahead of us, every once in a while she says something like, "there's no need to fight," and, "they can't hurt you." And, honestly, there isn't. Nothing's getting through. Imps get pushed out of the way in front of us, artillery splatters across the top, and blaster bolts stop dead.

Then, something does get in.

An Imp, lying on his back in our path, squirms as the bubble swallows him. All of a sudden, we've got an Imp in here with us, and the squad stops dead and draws on him.

Embry walks up to the man and kneels over him. One of those distant echoes comes from in front of us, and I realize there's another Imp, pounding on the wall of the bubble and yelling, gun dropped at his side. The other Imps are shooting or realizing it's hopeless and turning away, but this guy slams on the walls like his fists are going to do more than the incoming artillery.

Several of the squad yell for the jedi to get out of the way so they can finish off the Imp she let in. Then somebody, Brrnz, maybe, actually takes a shot with her right there.

At first, I make the mistake of thinking she catches it. No, she just reaches out a hand and takes a blaster shot straight on. The scorch mark disappears a second later.

Then Jedi Embry turns around and looks at them.

You haven't seen danger until you've seen somebody that powerful that angry. She reaches down and helps the Imp stand, and she's still glaring at us.

"This man is under my protection," she says. "Just as much as you are."

To a man, we put our guns away. You don't argue with that voice.

Then Embry turns to the front of her shield and looks out at this other Imp, still slamming on the walls. She says a few words to the man she's rescued, then reached a hand through the shield and pulls the other guy through.

Damn, if they weren't Imps, I think I'd be a little teary-eyed, seeing them hug like that.

Then the Jedi takes beckons to us all and keeps walking forward. We follow, just like we have been since she arrived.

We've still got a long ways to go. Through all of it, dead quiet except for distant echoes. Just a walk over the fields, you'd think. Except for all the Imps and… well, I don't know. Maybe I imagine it. But you know that feeling you get after a massage? The really good kind where you doze off partway through and wake up feeling just great? Well, when we get back, it feels like that, but twice as much. I don't know when I've ever been more nervous, but I've never felt better. I had a pinch in my heel that's just gone when she drops us off at our lines.

Which she did. She just dropped us off. Asked us to take care of the two Imperials, said they were prisoners of war and to keep them safe. Then she wandered off.

This weird group of people ran up to her, a one-eyed trandoshan and a purple hologram woman and some other girl, like her, but white skin instead of green. She talked with them a bit, and then flew off again.

You know, it makes sense now, maybe they couldn't fly? Never thought about it before, but they sure didn't want her to go, and you'd think the white Jedi girl would've followed if she could.

Whatever the others were doing, the little Jedi girl kept doing like she did with us. For the rest of the day and on into the night, she flew out and came back with little squads of us, all double-timing it and looking fresh as the day they left basic. I didn't see much of her, but it must have been exhausting.

I don't know. I was busy. The whole squad was. We got sent right up to the front lines as soon as we'd got a check-up. By the end of the day they were sending the squads she rescued to join us without even a how-do to medical. No point, y'see. Kid had 'em all topped up on arrival.

We didn't win that day, or the next. As far as I know, she moved on later that night. Jedi business, I suppose. She never got to see us push the Imps back. No mistake, though, it would have been the Republic kicked off-planet if she hadn't shown up. Doubt many of us would have made it out alive. So, thank the stars for the Jedi.

Thank the Jedi for the Barsen'thor.