Star Wars
The Trouble With Palpatine
Written by Rachel E Hayler
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
I felt it. The thundering tremors reverberated through the cavernous, peacefully curving walls of the halls throughout the Jedi Temple. Inquisitive and fearful beings rushed to the arched windows, peering out into the Coruscant twilight sky for the origin of the pounding drone growing steadily more imposing and increasing in volume.
A Padawan yanked at the hem of his master's Jedi tunic, his eyes wide as he hissed, "Master, those clones are in attack formation. What are we going to do?"
The boy's master had turned a grim smile towards his apprentice, or as much of a smile as was possible for a Rodian, "We are going to protect the Temple at all costs, Padawan. We cannot allow the Temple to be over-taken on destroyed."
Although there had been an attempt to keep the comment muted and private, everyone in the vicinity overheard it. It was just the kind of forbidding confidence booster that was needed. An almighty surge of light-side energy streamed through me, and a more confident smile blossomed on my face. The situation was dire, but the Temple was alive with the pure strength of the Force. It was with us, it was our ally. We were united, and we could take on anything that threatened our way of life. No amount of clone troopers could compare to the combined power of our wills and courage.
Oh, how wrong I had been.
Within mere minutes, the Temple had been over-run. Everywhere I looked I caught the flash of gleaming white plastoid armour that glowed menacingly in the evening light. My lightsaber sprang into my grip a second before the clone troopers arrived around the corner, my perceptions alert as fire hailed in on my position. My hissing, sapphire blade whistled through the air with the honed precision of years of military combat, trimming down the lines of the enemy before me. It was strange how my mind began to work as I tried futilely to defend myself. Due to my fondness of technology, I had perfected the art of turning my mind into a sort of heat sensing device, or something that worked in a similar principal. Immediate threats were highlighted in red, the lesser intimidates outlined in darkening colours of the spectrum.
This technique had proved to be excellent in past battles, allowing me to cause maximum damage to my opponents with minimum or little damage sustained to myself and my allies. Unfortunately, the sheer scale of the enemy was far greater than anything I had ever experienced.
Drawing deeper upon the Force, I drew my previously sweeping blows to be closer together and sharper, allowing me room to deflect fire quicker and more accurately than before at any clones that dared to take a shot at me. Of course, that was a lot of clones. Eventually, I developed a technique where I deflected laser bolts into the chest armour of one clone, knocking him back and thus taking him out of the battle momentarily, but angling the blast just enough so that it careened off of the shining breastplate at a wild angle and struck another clone in an unprotected joint. With the help of the other Jedi in the archaic hallway, that lead to the bridge walkway suspended high above another cavernous passage, we drove the clone ranks back to a position that made us feel more comfortable. This did not last long; however.
I heard the unmistakable snap-swoosh of lightsabers clashing, and my danger sense piqued. Jedi taking on Jedi? What were the odds?! Fortunately, I had no care for odds in any shape or form. However, a death-defiant scream punctured my hearing, and my opinion quickly changed.
Ahead, the Jedi master and apprentice who had powered confidence into us leapt into a unified front, their cobalt and emerald blades bursting into motion against a hooded figure who emerged from the end of the corridor. The man's lightsaber – I presumed he was male – counter-attacked with an animal ferocity that clearly took the two Jedi by surprise. Within moments, the young apprentice had been slain; his head being ripped clear of his shoulders.
The boy's death left a deep rift in the Force, which rapidly erupted into grief and terror as the boy's Rodian master pounced at her apprentice's murderer with a hate filled passion that she clearly had no hope of sustaining or controlling. Her anger fuelled onslaught was no match for the man, and she collapsed to the floor…in two halves. My gaze dropped to her fallen body pieces, and then rose again as the man began to advance towards me. His features were hard to distinguish, but the closer he closed the gap between us he became shockingly more recognisable.
"Skywalker?" I barely registered exclaiming, but before I had time to react his blade was upon me, punishing my defences with such strength that at first I was over-whelmed.
He began to drive me towards the suspended walkway, and I had to desperately comprehend his attacks. Strong, powerful and crippling, using his upper body strength to pommel through my guard and end my life quicker than I could say my own name. I swallowed hard and drummed a sense of peace into my mind, allowing it to flow through me as I concentrated. Djem so. That was his form!
Speed would be the only thing that could save me.
My confidence beamed and I could my entire being laughing assertively as I dropped into a crouch and rolled to the side as Skywalker chopped his blazing blade down my right flank. I rose to my feet a second later, hammering attacks in a random series of patterns, not thinking, at his limbs. I drove him towards the edge of the bridgeway, our lightsabers clashing against one another as we dangled precariously near the brink. With my sapphire blade trapping his from cutting me neatly in two, our struggle became futile as we poured our energy into trying to send one another plunging towards the cold stone floor far below.
With
an eruption of dark-side energy that I had not been expecting,
Skywalker knocked my blade out of my hand and sent it spiralling to
the cacophony of the battle below. Even though I was
weaponless, my Corellian ego bubbled to the surface of me, and I
fixed him with huge grin, "You know, Skywalker, for the hero with
no fear, the fear I sense in you now would put that title to shame."
The traitor glared at me, his eyes glowing molten red, "There is no fear in me!"
"As sure there is sand on Tatooine," I replied simply, my smile about as bright as the twin suns above that planet.
I was ready when he prepared to strike me, snapping out a hand so that I caught his attacking arm in an iron grip. We wrestled tirelessly, Skywalker's blade mere millimetres from my face. My arm muscles began to scream as the effort became almost unbearable, but I held on. I would not become one of his victims. I could only hope that the feeling within me that I was not going to die would stay with me.
Suddenly, my legs gave way beneath me. I had no idea how it happened, but a giant spasm in my right thigh caused me to sink to my knees before the merciless, blazing fire of his hissing sapphire blade. The hum of his lightsaber was the only noise that reached my ears, drowning out the sounds of firing blasters and ear-piercing death-defying screams. The buzzing had seemed to intensify; the only blast that punctuated the constant din was the ferocious beating of my heart. My mind whirled as I risked a look over my shoulder, calculating the drop that I would have to take if I dropped from the walkway to the hall floor below. The pain that I would have to endure would be excruciating but might be the only chance that I had of making it out alive.
I looked up into Skywalker's azure eyes, and forced my brilliant smile to remain on my face and hide any feeling of uneasiness that was lurking and churning in my guts. "You may have the power of the Force behind you, Kid, but no one can out-smart a Corellian!"
With that, I shoved out at the fallen Jedi's legs, knocking him backwards as I leapt to my feet, coiling the Force around me like a spring and dropped down from the edge of the walkway. The wind whipped me to the side as I fell, pitching me away from my desired landing place. Well, not the wind; a Force shove! I could sense Skywalker smirking as I collided with a battalion of clone troopers when I finally smacked against the cold, stone ground, causing even more damage to my battered body.
I skidded across the floor, hearing the shattering sound of my bones splintering inside my body. I finally slowed to a painful halt after bashing into the leg armour of another trooper as I continued to roll, then landed hard on my back. My vision blackened instantly as I slipped into a void of cold darkness, lacking life and consciousness….
A soft groan was the thing that snapped me back to the real world. I rubbed the sleep dust from my eyes as I pushed myself into a better, more upright position in the piloting chair. I was hardly surprised that the Force has disturbed me in my sleep once again; especially when it placed a vision in my head of one of the various deaths that I could have suffered, if events had turned out differently. The past few hours had been full of them, the endless tossing and turning where I was constantly waking up in a cold sweat. Not surprisingly, the attack on the Jedi Temple back on Coruscant had only occurred a short while ago.
"Kai?" The call punctured my contemplative silence, but filled me with a burst of furious, relentless relief.
I sprang from my chair and broke into a jog, storming towards the ship's small main cabin. On our mad dash from Coruscant, we had stolen a Republic shuttle, slaughtering all of the clone troopers on board – like the animals that they had become – and jetting away before the monstrosities had had a chance to chase us. Fortunately, my brother-in-law's astromech droid, R2-11-TDE had somehow worked its way on board and managed to disable the tracking devices that may have been installed within the ship's internal workings.
I suppressed a shudder that worked its way into my shoulders at the thought of my brother-in-law as I entered the cabin, calling gently as I went, "Keisha?"
Sitting upright on the bunk in the centre of the room my wife, Jedi Knight Keisha Farlander looked dazedly at the bacta drip in her arm, then gazed across at me, "How long have I been asleep?"
I smiled softly at her and crossed the floor so that I was at her bedside, then sat down on the edge of it and leant down to kiss her on the forehead. "Far too long."
She gripped the collar of my flight suit and drew me closer to her for an intense, passionate kiss that lasted for several long, desperate minutes. She pulled away a moment afterwards and her voice came out as a faint whisper, "I kept having dreams…nightmares about-"
I hushed her before she could say the name. "D…don't think about it. We need to stay strong."
Her brown eyes welled up with a liquid pain, but she forced back any tears that threatened to over-whelm her. "You're right, I know." She flashed me a brave smile. "Where are we headed?"
"Tatooine," I answered instantly, which drew a confused yet slightly curious expression from her, so I elaborated in a tone that was far more angry and cold than I had been intending, "I figured that it would be one of the only planets that Skywalker won't set his blast forsaken boots on."
My wife contemplated it and then nodded a second later, "Good idea. Though I wouldn't mind a run in with that hut'uun right now."
I sighed, somehow unable to look into her defiant gaze as I sunk down on my back onto the bunk beside her. How could I reply to that? Her anger and grief ran deeper than I could even begin to contemplate or probably never understand, though on a human level rightfully so. After all, my brother-in-laws death had been a shock to the both of us. A lengthy lightsaber battle had occurred between him and Skywalker, a sparring fight that left a trail of destruction behind them. My brother-in-laws power had reeked havoc upon Skywalkers defences to the point of submission, where the fallen Jedi had slumped against the burnt out innards of a Jedi Starfighter.
I don't know what had compelled me to do it but before Keisha's brother could strike a killing blow, I had pounced forwards, preventing him from killing Skywalker. Part of me, the Corellian within me – that is, kept reminding my mind that I had done it so that he would not have had the vengeance for how that man had injured my wife; let alone the other Jedi he had murdered. Deep down though, I knew that I had done it out of camaraderie for the younger man. He had been a nerf herder, for sure, but I didn't want to see him get hurt or worse turn over to the one thing that we had been trying to destroy for so many years. Besides, Keisha would have killed me if I stood idly by while something happened to her younger brother.
Unfortunately, he didn't see it my way and turned on me with a rage that I was surprised at. It wasn't long before my consciousness failed me and I apparently dropped down to the floor beside my wife, who was presumed to be dead, just as she miraculously awoke.
Next thing I knew, the ceiling above the grand main hanger began to crumble, perhaps due to the immense power of the Force that was coursing through the walls of the cavernous room. My brother-in-law held up as much of the tumbling rocks as possible whilst my wife, her apprentice, Skywalker and I made a desperate dash for the exit.
Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, my last memory of the whole event being the young mans final words, "Look after her, Kai, if you die, I'll kill you."
And now, here we were, on the run from an unknown enemy with no knowledge of what had happened to make the clones revolt against us back at the Temple on Coruscant.
I blanked out my thoughts at that point. I needed my mind to be clear if we were going to survive this purgery. I managed to beam a smile up at her, "Not if Lena or I got there first."
My wife gasped suddenly. "Oh blazes! Lena! What happened to her?"
I smiled softly, keeping my tone calm though I knew there was a scolding brewing deep within her brown eyes, "She said that she wanted to be on her own for a while, so she took the Breeze and went home to Alderaan."
"And you just let her go, by herself?" She asked, more of a flabbergasted statement than an actual question that demanded an answer.
I gave her one anyway as I raised my hands defensively and spoke in a sheepish tone, "It was her decision. Besides, we both decided that it would be wise if we all separated."
Keisha's head drooped, so I propped myself up on one elbow and lifted her chin up so that her gaze was once again level with mine. "She'll be alright, Keisha. Trust me."
She nodded. "You're right, of course. I know it."
I smiled broadly. "Good, then I'll head back to the cock-pit and check on Tee-Dee's progress with the ship's transponder codes."
She shook her head, once again drawing me tantalizingly close before I could rise from the bunk and kissing me for another long, passionate moment, and then whispered in my ear, "Or you could check on that a bit later?"
My smile crept up into my usual, lop-sided and typically Corellian smirk, "I could do that."
"Good." Was all she said, and suddenly the room began to grow very warm…
