Title: The Force Divided: Act I: Dissonance
Author: Vek Talis
Characters: Mostly OCS except HK-47 and T3 (from KotOR) & 2 Force ghosts
Genre: Action/Drama/Light Humor/Mystery
Timeframe: 1,333 years ABY
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars and never will.
Inky blackness, dotted with tiny pinpoints of light, swirled around him. The flecks of light danced and sparkled, disappearing and reappearing at random. Above himself, he watched his own body, the soft, regular breaths, the slow pulsing of his heart, the rhythms of blood trailing casually through his veins.
Time was a construct of man. Or so they said. It mattered little in his silent meditations. With no thoughts plaguing him, he felt he could have stayed there for eternity. Of course, eternity seemed the bane of his existence.
Soft, at first, then sharper beeping began to seep into his subconscious as he watched himself float in a sea of shadow. Incessantly, the beeping grew louder and more shrill. He could have continued to ignore it indefinitely, but by his very nature, he knew he had to answer it.
"What is it now?" Slowly, his eyes opened. Even in the darkness shrouding the inside of his ship, he had to blink several times to get them used to how much light there was.
"You'd think the cosmos could go a few centuries without needing me around, holding its hand." He punched a button and the beeping stopped. It wasn't an alarm clock, per se.
"Good of you to awaken, hmm."
"I-it's cold, Yoda." Vek began to shiver as the veil of sleep began to lift from his eyes. Immediately, he pulled his robes tighter around his frame. He tried to start the Ebon Hawk, but batteries weren't responding.
"Yes, cold, good. Wake you up, it should." The blue Force ghost still hobbled on his gimer stick. But he was also spry. Yoda hopped up on the console, stared at Vek.
"Twelve centuries have passed, and more, Vek," he said.
"Say what?" Vek replied absently. Though the batteries were definitely dead, he'd planned for this eventuality. A backup system, isolated from the rest, remained. Even though it, too, was dead, it needed far less power to get it started. Closing his eyes again, he touched the bare wires, using a spark from the Force to get the generator humming. It, in turn, began to reinitialize the batteries inside the Hawk.
Before long, the engines were thrumming and life-support – and better, heat – began flowing through the ducts.
"Now, what were you saying?" Vek asked the ghost.
"Twelve centuries, and more," Yoda said sternly. "For a very long time, asleep, you have been, Master Vek."
"Time flies when you're having fun," he replied.
Yoda glared. "Knock your shins, with my gimer stick, I would." Then, the former Grand Master of the Jedi sighed, down deep within his diminutive frame. "Arisen, the Sith have. And the Jedi." He seemed sad about it all.
"It's a never ending cycle," Vek said. Yoda had lived for nearly nine hundred years. He'd seen his fair share of cycles. Vek, on the other hand, had been here for fifty-five hundred years.
"We've both seen too many friends come and go," Vek added, at last feeling his extremities start to thaw.
"Too many, yes," Yoda replied. "And yet, calls, the Force does."
"I could have ignored it," Vek said, though Yoda shook his blue head slowly.
"No, you could not."
Vek's tongue clacked against the roof of his mouth and he blew out a thousand year's worth of peace. "You're right," he said quietly.
The Ebon Hawk, by now had warmed up sufficiently to get them moving. "Where am I?" he wondered, having long since forgotten where he parked the ship. A few bleeps on the navicomputer and a map popped out into a full three dimensions.
"Oh, yeah," he said. "Sernpidal." It was far enough away from prying eyes that he'd hoped to be away from the galaxy for the rest of his unnatural life. As a Frag – that is, people From Another Galaxy – he'd been told he would have a longer than average life span. If they'd been able to tell him he'd live for over five thousand years, he might have tried to take the easy way out. Like walk into a room with five hundred Sith masters.
A vision of the master he missed, flashed behind his eyes. Vizif, a Miraluka, was the person who discovered him here, in the GFFA. She'd been kind, taking him as her padawan even after the master in charge of her enclave wanted to forbid Vek from becoming a Jedi.
Quickly, he pushed her memory away. So many lifetimes had passed him by.
"Sernpidal," he said again. "The Tingel Arm." The Hawk floated in a nebula. Pinks, purples and reds morphed together in cloud like formations. Kind of like the aurora borealis back on the Earth he wished he'd never been born on.
"Back, to the center of it all, you must go," Yoda said. His words snapped Vek out of a threatening malaise.
"I need information first, Master Yoda," he said. Beside him, an ancient astromech droid stood. "T3, I need your help," he said. The droid was as dead as the Hawk. Like the ship, he got the droid started with a burst of energy from the Force.
The droid bleeped and turned its cylindrical head a full rotation. When its visual receptors at last fixed on Vek, it beeped and whirred happily.
"I'm glad to see you, too, T3," Vek said. "Are you well? You have any maintenance issues?" When the droid bleeped 'no', he said, "All right, then. I need information on the Jedi and Sith. Current information."
When he tried to stand, he needed a second to will his muscles to start working again. "I feel old," he said, which was about the biggest understatement one could make. He'd been over seventy when he 'died' on Earth. He'd felt every minute of his existence then.
"While you work, T3, I'll wake up our other companion." Vek left the droid and Yoda in the cockpit. The joints in his knees and hips creaked and popped as he took those first few ginger steps.
"What a millennium of sitting on your ass will do," he grumbled, shaking his head as he walked. Even his neck made all kinds of noises as he stretched it.
Immediately beyond the cockpit was the speeder bay, with the ramp to depart the Hawk behind him, adjacent to the cockpit. A bipedal droid stood against the far wall, its rusty colored chassis a subliminal warning that this wasn't your average droid.
Before he switched it on, however, a second blue figure walked into the bay. The newcomer stopped, stared, then glared at Vek.
"It's about time you awoke. Can you feel it?" He spread his arms, threw back his head. "The Sith are strong again. You, my friend, could gather that strength to you, and rule the galaxy."
"All right, Sheev," Vek said. He wondered again why the Force chose to burden him with these two particular Force ghosts. Of all the friends he'd lost to enemies and old age over his unnatural life span, why did it have to be these two?
"Don't tell me you aren't tempted?" Palpatine stared, his yellow eyes looking whitish in the blue glow of his ghost. "Feel the power surrounding you. It wouldn't take much to make you the strongest Sith in the galaxy."
"All right, all right," Vek said, holding a hand up, palm facing Palpatine. "I'm just trying to get my bearings first," he said. "I've been away for a long time."
"Yes, good," Palpatine said, elongating the words in his mouth. "You will think on this, good. Don't let that fool Yoda change your mind. I think you will see the merits of my words, in time."
"Fine," Vek said, just to get the former emperor to shut up. He flicked the starter switch on the other droid. It took a few seconds to warm up, then its wide head lifted from his chassis and it reached for its blaster rifle.
"Statement: HK-47 is ready to serve, Master." The droid scanned the speeder bay, rifle at the ready. "Query: Are there any meatbags you wish me to blast, Master? Observation: I see nothing but this sad, empty bay."
"HK, we've been asleep for twelve hundred years," Vek said.
"Observation: You have deprived me of more than one thousand years of meatbag blasting? Oh, Master, the cruelty of it all."
"Yes, he denies himself the pleasures of seeing his enemies beaten and broken before him," Sheev Palpatine said disapprovingly.
Of course, not having the Force, HK could neither see, nor hear Palpatine. It was better that way, Vek realized, or the droid and emperor would have bonded too well.
"I need to investigate the galaxy," Vek told HK. "There have likely been many changes the past millennium. Get yourself ready for action and I'll inform you of where we're going as soon as I know."
"Statement: This unit is always ready for action, Master."
"Wonderful." Vek knew HK could tell when he was being sarcastic. But he didn't care, either. He left the droid in the bay and returned to the cockpit.
Before he got there, however, his vision became cloudy and he nearly stumbled into the wall. Jungle foliage crowded around him, pressed against his every sense. Anger, intense and burning, oozed from every pore in a girl. Darkness and light warred within, tearing at her.
And then, the vision was gone.
Shaking his head, he walked into the cockpit and sat down in the pilot's seat.
"A vision, you saw, yes?"
"A girl," Vek said and Yoda raised an eyebrow. "Surrounded by darkness."
The Grand Master closed his eyes, concentrated. "Yes, a vision of the future, perhaps."
T3 bleeped and rotated its head to regard him. On the three dimensional map, three planets rose above the rest.
"Dantooine, Onderon and Coruscant," Vek said. "Is that where the Jedi are?" T3 bleeped confirmation. "What about the Sith?"
The faithful droid blooped again and the map changed. A small group of stars popped up, centering on a particular system.
"Korriban," Vek said, the taste in his mouth turning. "Why do the Sith continue to return to Korriban?" He punched a few buttons. "They've built themselves a small empire again. What about the Republic?"
T3 whirred and accessed data. Words appeared on the view screen.
"There is no Republic?" Vek was surprised, but only a little. "People have a hard time agreeing on much of anything. Especially with politicians around, sewing division."
Most of the systems of the known galaxy were independent. "That will make it easier for the Sith to expand," Vek said, then thought of Palpatine. The former emperor would no doubt find that encouraging.
"It reminds me of the way it was when I first came here," Vek said. "Except for the Republic not existing," he mused.
Turning to T3, he said, "We should get moving. Set course for Dantooine. Let's have a look at these new Jedi." Faithful as ever, T3 set course. The hyperdrive crackled to life. Vek sat in the pilot's seat, remembering old friends, long gone. The corners of his mouth turned down and he averted his gaze to the floorboards as the panorama of stars melded together, and the Ebon Hawk slipped into hyperspace.