I Am Not A Jedi

The lighting was dim in the hallways, but up ahead was a glare of brightness. Mining droids rigidly patrolled back and forth across the door. Her bare feet drifted slowly over the cold, steel tread floor, each silent step followed by another. Kolto dripped noiselessly from her limbs and hair. Her entire body was wet from the bath she had woken from, but the adrenaline pumping through her kept her from freezing. She side-stepped closer to the communications hub and tucked herself into a dark corner. Though her breaths were deep, they were soundless. Carefully, she peered around the corner and counted three droids in her sightline. There would be others.

She ducked back around the corner and closed her eyes, focused on the energy in the room. It had been so long since she had sought to see through the Force that it had ceased to be instinct. The buzzing presences of more mechanical creatures filled up her senses and she counted four more droids that she could not see before. She opened her eyes. Her body was shaking from touching the Force again after so long. The moment Kreia had opened her up to it, she had been unable to fully stop her trembling.

With a deep breath to steady herself, she turned the corner. The vibroblade she clutched away from her gleamed in the sudden glare of light. And then there was no fear or uncertainty or trembling. There was only the will to act, and the will of action. She sliced the first droid across its center before it even had a chance to turn. The others immediately began to fire. She rolled to dodge incoming blaster fire and thrust her hand out, releasing a current through the Force. The droids flew backward, some smashing into consoles that short-circuited their programming and left sparking heaps. The rest scrambled to recover as she sprinted across the widened gap. She leapt into the air, wrapping both sets of fingers tightly into the hilt of her weapon, and landed sword first into the nearest droid. Electricity popped and snapped beneath her as she turned her gaze to the next enemy.

Blaster fire poured in. The vibroblade deflected two shots that would have killed her. A stray laser caught her thigh, burning a new scar into her flesh. She hissed, but then the pain was gone, numbed by shots of adrenaline. She was racing across the room, blocking more fire, and then she was swinging at her attacker. The droid brought its heavy limbs up to parry two of her strokes, but she was much quicker than a simple piece of mining equipment.

Soon, the droids were nothing but smoking, sizzling lumps of broken machinery. That's when her eyes went to the closed door on the far side of the room. The lockup. She could feel the energy flowing in and out of that room so strongly that she could almost see it, too. She moved closer, saw a man in a force cage with her mind's eye. Kreia whispered to her. His thoughts are difficult to read, but there is nothing to fear from this one. The old woman did not understand how wasted such warnings were.

Men were something she no longer feared. Not since the war. Not since Malachor. Not since her exile.

The door opened. He turned to look at her. His brown hair hung in his hazel eyes, and something untraceable passed between them. He wore a brown, ribbed jacket, a white tunic tucked into black pants, and boots. A strange sensation whirled inside of her that warmed her body in a way that adrenaline and battle did not, but she attributed it to the rest of the peculiar feelings she'd had since she had woken from the Kolto bath and reestablished her connection to the Force.

The man in the cage grinned. "Nice outfit," he drawled.

...

Just when the agony of uncertainty and the knife of hunger were becoming unbearable, the door to the lockup slid open. What he had expected to see was an executioner—droid or otherwise—finally come to end his miserable and somewhat unlawful imprisonment. The miners hadn't been too keen on his existence and only tolerated his presence, even in the Force cage, so he was positive he was to be shipped off on the next Republic freighter that passed through. The explosions, screams, and lack of human contact that had made up the last couple days, however, had been warning enough that something wasn't right and it was only a matter of time before it caught up to him.

So when those doors opened, he told himself to bravely face death and go out in a blaze of sarcasm and charm.

Only death was a tall, athletic women dripping wet and wearing nothing but her underwear. It was a sure sign that he was already dead, but the smoldering hunks of dead droid he glimpsed in his peripherals gave him a sliver of hope.

"Nice outfit," he drawled, letting his eyes wander up her long legs and across her curves. The flimsy, beige material was almost transparent and clung to her in all the right ways, accentuating all the right places. He swallowed a hard lump in his throat as his eyes passed over her chest. Then he looked at her face. It was beautiful, but hard. Her green eyes were as sharp as the vibroblade she held away from her. Her blond hair was a mass of choppy, wet tangles clinging to her face and hanging just above her shoulders. "What, you miners change regulation uniforms while I've been in here?"

The moment he said it, however, he knew it wasn't true. He knew that she wasn't a miner. He saw it in the way she walked toward him, keeping that sword extended as though she were ready to use it at any moment—poised like a professional. And she walked with the lethal grace of a stalker hunting prey. But she wasn't the death he told himself was coming for him. He could tell in her eyes. They were sharp, yeah, but they were soft. Somehow, they were understanding. Almost trustworthy. That's why, when she said, "Who are you?", he answered immediately, honestly.

"Atton," he said. "Atton Rand. Excuse me if I don't shake hands. The field only causes mild electrical burns."

"And what are you doing here, Atton Rand?" she asked, coming to a stop in front of his cage. He looked at her pointedly, and started to reply with "well, you know, one wrong turn at Telos and—" but he knew that's not what she was asking.

"Security claimed I violated some trumped-up regulation or another," he told her. "Take it up with them if you want, but they stopped listening to me shortly before they stopped feeding me."

The woman turned her head, looking elsewhere, into the distance. He stared at her, watched the water drip off her jaw and small streams run down her neck.

"What's your name?" he asked before he licked his dry lips.

"Khara Saar," she replied, still gazing off in the distance.

He wasn't sure what she'd done to get so wet—or why—and he especially had no clue as to why she was dressed like that—or lack thereof—but he was grateful. Just as his eyes started to wander back down to her breasts, her head turned back to him and he was forced to snap his eyes up to hers.

"This facility is abandoned," she told him, "save for the malfunctioning droids and all the corpses." Her green eyes looked intently at him. "Do you know what happened?"

"You mean before or after that Jedi showed up?" He frowned, not liking the idea of corpses littering the halls, especially lying beneath malfunctioning droids. "Either way, it's a real short story. You see, this Jedi shows up and you know what that means. Where there's one Jedi, the Republic will soon be crawling up your ion engine in no time." She didn't even flinch, not one tiny facial tick. "But the story gets better. See, some of the miners get it in their ferrocrete skulls that since the Jedi's unconscious, they can collect the bounty the Exchange has posted for live Jedi."

The woman tilted her head up ever so slightly. That meant something. But she said nothing, so he continued.

"Well, what passes for the law around here didn't like that idea," he mumbled. "So the two groups started fighting. Then there was some big explosion, I was sitting here for a long time, then you showed up in your underwear and things got a lot better." He allowed himself an obvious scope of her body. "Look, not that your half-naked interrogation isn't a personal fantasy of mine, but you're not a miner, are you?"

"No," she said easily.

"You're that Jedi, aren't you?"

"No," she said again. "I am not a Jedi."

And even though he knew that it was a lie, nothing had ever sounded so true.