Star Wars

The Vision Trilogy

Episode I: Trapped

It's been 300 years since the defeat of the EMPEROR and the fall of the GALACTIC EMPIRE. Most of the galaxy is now under the thumb of the GALACTIC FEDERATION OF FREE ALLIANCES, the JEDI KNIGHTS are a completely separate political entity no longer dedicated to the protection of the GALACTIC ALLIANCE… but the people, and LUKE SKYWALKER and company have all long passed.

Now, JEDI MASTER GABRIELLE KORR is returning from DANTOOINE after scouting a location to place the first new JEDI PRAXEUM in hundreds of years to the ancient JEDI world of TYTHON, where the JEDI have made their home.

But, just as the shuttle she is on hits the halfway point, JEDI MASTER GABRIELLE KORR begins to sense something of the future…

Chapter 1: Shot Down

It had been there for a while now, that nagging sense in the back of my head that told me that I needed to sit down and wait. This happened every now and again, and I was never quite sure what I was going to end up seeing in the end. At these times, I just had to sit down, close my eyes, reach out to the force, and meditate until whatever it wanted to tell me came soaring into my head like a blaster shot.

That was me Gabrielle Korr, great-great-great-granddaughter of the rather popular Jedi Master Jaden Korr. I never really understood why he was so popular, he never did anything all that particularly special, but he was still something we ended up covering in history class back during our Jedi training. Of course, I already had to hear it from my mother all the time, bragging about our family history like it was the most important thing in the world.

Still, that was definitely not what I was thinking about as my headache got progressively worse. I sometimes wondered why the force took so long to get to the point as I meditated. At these moments, I would always just repeatedly tell myself… "You're a Jedi… get a hold of yourself! Pain shouldn't be a problem, just center yourself."

Yet I just couldn't handle centering myself whenever this pain came back. So I just had to sit there, wait, and suffer with a straight face… because I was a Jedi and Jedi always kept a straight face on. Especially when they were meditating… alone… in their private cabin on a shuttle. Okay, maybe that was a weak excuse, but I guess I always did want to keep up that Jedi dignity. Especially because I was new to this Jedi Master business, only having been made a Jedi Master the week before.

Still, after a while, the headache was getting particularly bad and I couldn't take closing my eyes and deep breathing anymore. So I opened my eyes, stood up, and tried looking out the transparisteel viewport… watching hyperspace pass by. I felt like drawing my lightsaber and practicing with it, but I wasn't stupid enough to do that when I knew what was coming.

Just as the headache really started to drive my patience, it finally happened… although I didn't at all like what I saw.

At first, it wasn't images, just blackness that solidified right in front of my eyes. I started feeling things first, emotions. Anger, resentment, fear, hate… the dark side. Then I heard things, disturbing things. Screams, cries… all that business. The images started coming then, a blood red lightsaber at first, the handle clouded by shadow. It was weaving, sometimes passing out of sight behind something I couldn't even see.

Everything turned into colored smoke, and slowly it started to solidify into a scene. Someone in a set of black robes slashing their lightsaber black and forth. It was a feminine form, and others started appearing. They were also wielding lightsabers of various colors, and as their faces solidified into something I could see, I started to recognize who they were. These were Jedi Knights, some I knew, and they were getting cut down by this woman whoever she was.

The one thing I did know about her is that she was most definitely a dark force user. The dark side permeated the vision. Of course, the red lightsaber was a dead giveaway, but still, that feeling assured me more than the lightsaber ever could. Even more so then the murders she was committing could've.

She just kept going, cutting, and cutting… killing friends of mine. My vision started flashing all over the place, centering on a place before the woman's feet as everything froze exactly as it was. I felt like I was watching a holovid inside of my head as what I could see slowly rose from the floor until it reached the woman's face. It was blurred at first, but I think I knew who it was even before I saw it. I sensed it really, but denied it because I didn't want to believe what I was sensing was true. But still, the feeling was confirmed, when in horror I saw my own face staring back at me… before everything went black again.

At first, I thought my vision was over. But I was wrong, the picture solidified quickly this time. I saw myself still dressed in black robes with my hand on the head of someone else dressed in the same attire. I had this look in my eyes that really said it all, this man was my apprentice. My view started moving then, and I heard my voice say something.

"The rule of two… is no more."

That's when I saw it, there were so many more beyond just the one before me. There were nearly a hundred more men and women, and that's when it went to black again. This time though, it really was over. I felt my face on the cold floor as I returned to myself. I was sprawled on the metallic surface.

At first, I had always felt this was deeply embarrassing. No other Jedi ever ended up in these positions when they had visions. Eventually though, I had just gotten used to it. Whether this ability of mine was a curse or a gift, I still didn't know. What ability you ask? Well, that will be best explained by continuing my story.

I stood up, my headache was gone. You would think I would've been tremendously worried after such a dramatic vision, I wasn't. Let's just say this wasn't the first time this had happened, but still, it was somehow different this time. I may not have been as worried as you might think, but I was still worried. It had never been so… vivid before. So clear. This felt more like one of those visions certain to come true rather than one of those visions that might or might not.

I already knew what the response was going to be, but I needed to ask him. The one who had been my Master for so many years, the one who was really still my master, the master of all of the Jedi. The Grand Master Nicolas Graun. He was a harsh presence at times, but when required he was wise. So, I quickly left my cabin and paid a visit to the holocom room. I couldn't believe my luck, but the room was completely empty.

Sure, this wasn't the most popular route in the Galactic Alliance, but it was still a public shuttle, and you always expected to find others here. But… there was no one… it was deserted. I got a dark feeling from the force then, less like a vision then a ping on my danger sense. Even though it was light, really on the edge of my feelings, I barely managed to not whip out my lightsaber right then and there. I put it off to the paranoia I usually experienced after such dramatic visions, took a deep calming breath, and proceeded to one of the holocoms and keyed in the frequency to the Jedi Temple on Tython.

An image of a woman appeared and she gave a standard greeting in basic, asking what I needed.

"This is Jedi Kni- Master Gabrielle Korr. Can you please redirect my call to the personal holocom of Grand Master Graun?" I asked. I felt quite stupid, having left my personal holocom all the way back in my room on Tython. It had the Jedi Master's frequency saved on it and I had not memorized it… so here I was… forced to call the Jedi Temple directly.

The woman said nothing more, merely redirecting my call. I sighed and looked down at my feet as I prepared to wait a while. He was the Jedi Grand Master after all, he probably wouldn't answer my call all that quickly. So here I was, all the more surprised when he picked up immediately and said bemused (as he had seen and heard me sigh), "Something wrong Gabby?"

I couldn't help grinning. It was rather rare when Jedi Grand Master Nicolas Graun was amused, but here that was. Still, my grin quickly turned into a frown and I scrunched my face in an "I'm unsure what to say" expression… because… I was unsure what to say.

"I don't need you here to sense that there is definitely something wrong. Is it the visions again?" He asked. I brushed back my long brown hair out of my dark blue eyes as I responded. I brushed the long thin scare that crossed over my left eye as I did this. That wasn't all that old, so it was still sensitive and I flinched a bit.

"You know me so well." I responded.

"Well, your gift does make it so that I receive your calls quite frequently." He replied. "I am glad to advise you on what you have seen of course, no matter your rank in this order."

He was of course referring to the ability I mentioned earlier. See, ever since I was a child, I have been especially susceptible to force visions. More so then any other Jedi that has ever lived apparently. The future, the past, the present… didn't matter… I received a lot of these visions.

"I'm not sure I consider it all that much of a gift master." I replied.

"Ah, but I am your Master no more."

"You'll always be master to me master."

This was a bit of a running joke between us. Whenever I called him Master he would bring this up. Now that I thought about it, I supposed he was always more cheery when talking to me alone then his usual composure let on.

"Either way, I feel that this time it was one of those visions." Graun said. I sighed.

"Yes, it was… but it was different this time." I told him.

"Gabrielle, those visions are not set in stone. We all have temptations to fall to the dark side, there is no reason for us to embrace those feelings and do so."

"This was different master… in more ways than one."

"How so?"

"In the other visions I've had like this. It's always just been me, and it's always just been me killing people I don't know… but it was different this time. It wasn't just me, there were more… there were a lot more… and I was killing Jedi… people I know." I said biting my lip. "It was also more… vivid. More intense. One of those visions that I am extremely sure will come to pass. But… I don't want it to!"

"They are never…"

"I know they aren't set in stone master! But you can compare this vision to the one I had back on Bakaris, or Onderon. Or one of the countless other ones that have come true…"

"I see… but it doesn't matter Gabby. I trust you. You would never do that. You need to remember that the dark side is a choice, it's not something that just happens. You can stop it from happening."

I sighed.

"There was more… regardless… this vision seemed to say that I would be the one to bring the Sith back to the galaxy. Not like the Dark Jedi… I mean the Sith."

"This is indeed disturbing, and while it may not be you who brings this to pass, it may be a warning that someone is trying to bring them back." Graun said. "The Sith are a lot worse than the Dark Jedi… much grander plans and much more power. But… you said much more. Why?"

"It seemed that I wanted to abolish the rule of two… to bring the Sith back to the point they were at during the days of the old republic."

"Hm…"

Suddenly, I felt pain in the force, great pain. My pain, and fell to my knees breathing deeply as I sensed this.

"Gabrielle? Is something wrong?" Grand Master Graun asked. My danger sense flared as he asked this and as I made to respond I turned my eyes to the window.

"I think something is wrong…" I asked. Master Graun looked like he was about to respond, but then the signal cut out and the whole ship rumbled deeply as it dropped out of hyperspace. There must've been some kind of strain to the inertial dampeners to because I went flying forwards into the holocom. "What in the force is going on?"

The window I had been looking out of showed only stars and space, but when I looked in the other direction I saw something else. A huge, and old looking, Imperial Star Destroyer was firing at our little shuttle. Beside it was an equally old looking Interdictor vessel. Behind that, a quaint little green planet. My first guess was pirates… but no, that didn't make sense. This wasn't exactly an extremely popular route with rich supply ships or anything.

My second was that they had been looking for someone else, but hooked us instead and didn't want to just let us continue on our way. That seemed likely, but, of course, there was one more possibility for me to consider. Perhaps they were looking for someone on this ship in particular. But it didn't really matter to me as I drew my lightsaber and ignited it watching its long blue blade extend as I extended my senses.

All I sensed were frightened passengers, and I didn't sense any craft heading towards us either. This meant they didn't intend to board us, probably meaning to shoot us until we were a small pile of slag in the corner of the galaxy. Still, realizing my lightsaber wasn't going to help, I deactivated it and started a run towards the cockpit. It looked like I was going to have to solve this a different way.

I had to fight my way through a lot of confused and scared passengers on the way. I knew that even with my status as a Jedi Master and my fancy robes, there wasn't much I would be able to do about this mess. I sent out calming feelings through the force, and while this did a little too calm things down, there wasn't anything else I could do.

I needed to get through them fast, so I resorted to simply using the force to push them aside on the way to the cockpit. The shuttle kept rocking with turbo-laser fire, but at least the shields were holding for now. Still, this was a shuttle, and I couldn't expect that to hold up much longer. I reached out and touched the mind of the pilot, he seemed entirely unsure of what to do and had resorted to ineffectively throttling in the same direction without any sense of evasion.

I sent out calming feelings to try and make him focus, but it didn't really help and he kept us on our suicidal path to nowhere. There was no way this ship was ever going to get out of the range of the Interdictor in time to jump to hyperspace, the enemy whoever they were already knew this or the Interdictor would've hit us with a tractor beam by now.

Well, at least that was a slim chance of survival. It was certainly better than nothing. Although, I honestly would've preferred being captured to this. Still, I continued on regardless and eventually made it to where I was going. The door to the cockpit was locked to prevent the passengers from getting in in a panic, and there were a bunch of them crowded around the door.

"Please calm down, we are currently being fired at by vessels of unknown allegiance, we will make it out of this." The captain said over the intercom. I couldn't help but scowl at that.

Not at this rate we won't… I thought. I used the force to push aside the crowd by the door, and then the force to manipulate the simple locking mechanism open. I then pushed in the door and went inside, quickly closing it behind me and relocking it. I could certainly do without the panicked crowd… that was a sure thing.

The captain quickly looked at me, and he seemed to be the only one who still maintained his composure. There were three men here. The captain, pilot, and co-pilot. The pilot and the co-pilot were both yelling at each other completely unsure of what to do, while the captain was thinking. He wasn't a military man, that was clear, and he was trying to recall his protocol for this situation. My arrival certainly didn't help.

"I'm Jedi Master Gabrielle Korr. I'm going to get us out of this." I said with a calming tone.

"But… how?" The captain asked me.

"You two, get off of the controls, I'll handle this." I said with a lot more confidence then I felt. They listened immediately, glad to be rid of the responsibility.

"Have you ever driven one of these before?" The pilot asked.

"No." I replied.

"We're doomed." The co-pilot said.

"No we're not, shut your trap and let me get us out of this." I said. He bit his lip and nodded as I took the controls. I was completely unfamiliar with them, and I wasn't even that good of a flier in the first place, but I took a deep breath and let the force guide my hands and feet and figured it out soon enough. With a mixture of my mind and the force, I grabbed the stick and quickly pulled into a sharp right turn right towards the planet with maxed out thrust.

I knew there was no way we were getting away from that interdictor, so the next best thing was a crash landing. It quickly turned into a race of "who can make their efforts count first?". I tried as many evasive maneuvers as I could, up, down, left, right… but it was really inevitable that the Star Destroyer was going to shoot us down. My efforts would only determine whether or not that was being blasted into space dust or a fierce crash landing.

I have to say, neither option was really preferable, but I didn't have much of a choice.

"What are you doing?" The captain asked.

"There's no way we're getting out of the range of that Interdictor. I'm going to take us to that planet." I replied.

"Do you even know if it's habitable?"

"No, but we don't have any other choice right now. Please, quiet down, I'm trying to focus."

I didn't really need him to be quiet honestly, but it was annoying me to no end. The alarms started to go off even louder at that point, indicating low shield power. I needed to concentrate on the piloting, but I quickly spoke up.

"Someone get over here and redirect all non-essential power to engines and shields." I said. The pilot quickly followed my command and sat down in the co-pilots seat. The lights went off in the cockpit then and the shields rose back to acceptable levels. We still weren't there, but we were getting close to minimum safe distance for the escape pods. "Turn the monitors off to."

"But…?"

"I'm a Jedi, don't need them." I quickly said. He nodded and did what I said as everything started shaking. As the monitors went off I nodded and looked behind me without removing my hands and feet from the controls. "Captain, get everyone to the escape pods. In fact, why haven't you done that already?"

I knew I was getting bad news, I felt it before he even said it.

"The escape pods in this vessel were removed to cut costs…" He said.

"What? That's illegal! You idiots removed the escape pods to cut upkeep costs?" I said annoyed. "Don't answer that. Get everyone to the rear of the ship and get them to buckle in, this is going to be a bumpy ride."

He nodded and everyone left me to my devices as the ship rocked back and forth. Fear started to pervade my mind as we approached, I wasn't really sure we were going to make it in time. But I let go of fear, and concentrated on myself and the force. Fear not only led to the dark side, but it would put everyone on board in jeopardy.

Still, as I flew the ship as well as I could considering the circumstances… I couldn't help but feel the Dark Side emanating from the Star Destroyer. Something was very off about all of this, and I didn't really enjoy not having the answers.

But I was pulled out of these thoughts as a turbo-laser struck dead on where the shield generator was. The energy of the blast penetrated the weakening shields and breached the hull. It burned through a bunch of wires and the shields dropped. Yes, this ship was definitely not built for a combat situation. It had lasted longer than I expected though, so that was something.

Still, we were not yet close enough for a safe landing. But this was hardly my concern as I felt lives snuff out. Three people in the room were sucked out into space as blast doors slammed closed.

"No…" I said to myself. My first month as a Jedi Master was not going well. But I couldn't worry about that as I tried to keep us from taking any more hits. We were lucky, we reached minimum safe distance for the crash landing. I actually believed we were going to make it without taking any more hits for a moment, we would be beginning re-entry in a moment… but it was unfortunately not to be.

Another perfectly aimed turbo-laser shot hit our engines. As I fought for control of the craft, I knew that force users had been behind these shots. They were too accurate, too precise, too controlled…

But as I was saying, I was trying to keep control of the large burly vessel, but I was unable to do anything. The controls completely gave out and I strapped in as the vessel spun out of control as we entered the upper atmosphere. I knew we would burn up in re-entry if I did nothing, so in a last desperate attempt I re-routed power through a few components so that I could bring partial shielding back up. This unfortunately turned off the inertial dampeners and artificial gravity and suddenly everything was one great pull and push.

I used the force to hold my lunch, but it didn't do much to prevent the forces of the spin from making me sick. Several minutes passed as we span and fire crept up the viewport before me, but at least it looked like the Star Destroyer had lost track of us. Also, as all power had been routed to the shields, the annoying alarms couldn't play.

But I felt it in the force as we rapidly approached the ground. Most of the rest of the people on board had passed out at this point, but my Jedi abilities were keeping me awake, and I both felt and saw the ground approaching. The fire from before dissipated as the front-heavy ship tilted forward and the wind resistance stopped up from spinning. The ship was headed straight for a forest and I held on as we approached.

We hit the ground and trees hard, my restraints hurt me as I was slammed forward into them. But it didn't take long for them to snap as another cheap purchase of this company doomed me. I slammed my head hard against the viewport, and unfortunately, no amount of Jedi abilities could keep me awake from that. I blacked out.