Chapter Two – Change of Command
Jaina sat in the pilot's seat of the Lambda-class shuttle, waiting for Darvix Zorvan to arrive. He was late, and Jaina was beginning to loose patience. She should have been on Tatooine's surface by now, instead she was trapped in the Mon Mothma's primary hanger. There were other things she needed to be taking care of. Jaina had stacks of paperwork piling up on her desk. She had missed calls to return. She could be doing all of those things, but instead she was waiting for one very late Jedi Master. Jaina began to tap her foot impatiently against the cold durasteel floor of the shuttle.
"Sorry I'm late," Darvix took a seat in the co-pilots seat next to her. "Those breakfast pastries they serve in the cafeteria are to die for. Couldn't get enough of them."
"Shut up," a woman said as she entered the shuttle, taking a seat in one of the passenger chairs. "You'll have to forgive him. Six years in isolation didn't do much to improve his already meager social skills."
"Colonel Solo," Darvix gestured to his female companion, "this is Kasari Lisae. Lucky woman had the pleasure of spending over half a decade trapped in hyperspace with me. Enough with the pleasantries, though. Skywalker will have my head if I'm any later than we already are."
"And whose fault is that?" Kasari asked.
"Yours," Darvix smiled. "It took Vik and myself twenty minutes to drag you out of the cafeteria. You acted like you hadn't eaten anything but ration bars for six years."
"Shut up," Kasari glared as she fastened her flight seat's harness.
Jaina tried to tune out the argument her two passengers insisted on engaging in while she carefully navigated the shuttle out of the hanger and into open space. She had never spoken with Kasari before. Jaina had heard her name spoken several times at the academy. Word-of-mouth seemed to indicate that she was a rather exceptional Jedi who had been cursed with a terrible Master. Darvix Zorvan, on the other hand, was another story entirely.
She had been forced to take an ethics course at the Jedi Academy on Yavin IV that was taught by Master Zorvan. It wasn't long before it became the part of her day she would dread the most. Zorvan was merciless when it came to interacting with the young Jedi padawans. Jaina had even heard of an unofficial betting ring that placed wagers on the over/under of how many students would flee the classroom in tears from his verbal berating. If Jaina remembered correctly, she pushed one such wager into the "over" category after leaving classroom in tears after one such Zorvan verbal berating.
That alone was enough to cause her to question General Antilles decision to make him the executive officer of Rogue Squadron. Of course, there was nothing binding Jaina to that decision. Wedge Antilles was a retired military officer who didn't serve the fleet in any official capacity. Despite that, she couldn't deny that his opinion carried more weight than most others, current military or not. If he believed that Zorvan was executive officer material, then it was probably true.
Despite that, she didn't want Zorvan in her squadron serving as her executive officer. Unfortunately, who was she to question General Antilles' wisdom?
Jaina guided the shuttle towards Tatooine's barren, wasteland surface as her two passengers continued to quarrel. She skimmed shuttle along the surface, nearing the coordinates she had programmed into the ship's navigations computer. Her uncle and Mara Jade had taken refuge in a secluded hut not far from the moisture farm he had grown up on. After the war, Luke decided to disappear from public view. The destruction of the Jedi Academy and the New Republic had taken a great toll on him. In order to cope, Luke left the Jedi in the hands of Kyle Katarn and retreated to his homeworld to recuperate and reassess life as a whole.
It hurt Jaina to see her strong uncle reduced to such a depressed, miserable state. He had placed more blame on his shoulders than he deserved during the war, and now it had come back to hurt him. She understood his pain. Many good men and women died under his command over the years, though never to the scale that he endured during the Vong war. Perhaps years of service to the Jedi and military had finally pushed him past the breaking point.
Jaina spotted the hut in the distance and eased back on the throttle. Luke had told her that the building had belonged to Obi-Wan Kenobi prior to his death aboard the first Death Star. As far as she knew, Luke was spending his days meditating and tending to a handful of moisture vaporators. She found the latter amusing. Luke would always tell her tales when she was younger about how much he hated working on a moisture farm. The vaporators were the bane of his existence. Now he had his own to take care of.
Jaina began the landing procedures. All the while, her two passengers continued to argue.
***
Darvix stepped out of the shuttle and winced as the blistering Tatooine heat hit him. He hated the planet with every fiber of his being. After defecting to the New Republic as a teenager, Darvix made Tatooine his first home. He immediately regretted it. The famed Colonel Gavin Darklighter's parents took him in and promptly put him to work on a moisture farm, where his job was to tend to the electronic equipment on the moisture deposits. He'd spend countless miserable hours in the scorching heat provided by the planet's twin suns. Perhaps the greatest day of his life was the day he was shipped off to Coruscant to enroll in the New Republic's starfighter academy. It occasionally rained there.
He followed Jaina to the hut's entrance with Kasari in tow. Darvix shielded his eyes from the sun as he glanced around his surroundings. Nothing but barren desert to one end and canyons to another. He would have to sneak out while no one was looking and make his way towards Mos Eisley. The wasteland surrounding him was starting to become depressing, and when Darvix began feeling depressed the only remedy was hard liquor. Or an episode of Galactic Hospital.
Darvix watched as Jaina keyed the door chime. The door slid open, revealing a familiar head of flaming red hair.
"Oh sithspit," Darvix groaned, "You took Skywalker over me? My male ego has been forever bruised."
"You know Zorvan," Mara Jade grinned slightly, "I'm not sure whether or not to be glad you're alive, or to castrate you on the spot."
"I missed you too, Hotlips," Darvix replied. "Is Uncle Luke home?"
"He's out at one of the moisture deposits," Mara Jade replied. "I'll call for him, come on inside…Touch anything and I will kill you, Zorvan."
"Yes ma'am," Darvix replied as he entered the hut.
The hut was meagerly furnished, just enough to get by. The walls were bare and save for some furniture, there wasn't much to speak of. Darvix sat down in the main living area and waited for Luke to arrive. Ten years ago he had given Darvix a special assignment that took him to all corners of the Galaxy and beyond. Darvix, a blood descendant of the ancient Jedi Atton Rand, had been tasked with locating information about two fallen Jedi: The Exile and Darth Revan.
Six years ago the mission led Darvix on a voyage beyond the borders of the Galaxy. Three years ago he discovered an ancient Sith facility that served as the final resting place of the Jedi Exile; a woman who would stare the Dark Side of the Force in the face and turn away from it's influences. Darvix had learned that the Exile reformed the Jedi Council after the Jedi-Sith War four thousand years earlier. The history books referred to her as a fallen Jedi, but Darvix had discovered that she was, in fact, a redeemed Jedi who had saved the Galaxy single-handedly.
Darvix awoke from his reverie as the door slid open again. A rather worn and haggard Luke Skywalker greeted him.
"Darvix?" Luke asked as he walked towards him. "You're…not dead."
"I've been getting that a lot lately," Darvix frowned slightly. "I'm still not sure what happened in the Galaxy while I was gone, but it sounds like I made the right decision to take a six year vacation."
Luke shook his head, "You have no idea."
"If it's all the same, I'd rather not talk about how system was laid waste to while I was gone," Darvix's shoulders slumped. "I've got a report to file with you."
"You found the station?" Luke's eyes looked as if they were about to bulge out of their sockets.
"I found more than we could have ever hoped for," Darvix said. "I've got the historical logs of the Ebon Hawk."
"The Ebon Hawk?" Luke asked. "The flagship of Darth Revan? That's supposed to be nothing more than a myth."
"I assure you, it wasn't," Darvix replied. "I haven't studied the information in depth…that's a job for your scholars, not me."
"What can you tell me?"
Darvix thought for a moment before answering, "We were wrong."
"We were wrong?" Luke raised a brow. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"You, me, the Jedi, the New Republic, the history texts," Darvix explained. "We were all wrong about Revan, Atton Rand, and the Exile. They weren't fallen Jedi. They were all saviors of the Galaxy."
Kasari spoke up, "We encountered a holo-recording on board the Ebon Hawk that was created by the Exile shortly before her death. Both she and Revan knew that history would be skewed to show them as villains of the Old Republic, so she created a message specifically for Darvix intended to clear their names."
"Revan managed to repel a Sith invasion lead by his former apprentice Darth Malak," Darvix said. "The Exile rebuilt the Jedi Council that existed until Emperor Palpatine's rule. If that wasn't enough, both decided to head outside of the Galaxy to duel with the True Sith."
"The True Sith…" Luke murmered. "They do exist, then? It's not a philosophy or a teaching by followers of the Dark Side."
"From all indications they are a very real and very present danger," Kasari said. "The logs don't contain a great deal about them. All we know is that Revan and the Exile encountered the True Sith but were unable to destroy them. They managed to cripple the Sith, but the Exile warned us that they would not remain in hiding forever."
"The Exile left us with one last prophecy from Revan," Darvix said. "The Sith will return for one great and final battle to determine the fate of the Galaxy. Fail, and the consequences will ripple far beyond our borders and touch innocent life forms we had no idea existed. The penalty for failure would be beyond our comprehension.
"Succeed," Darvix continued, "and the Force will cease to exist as we know it, leading the Galaxy into a state of glory that is far beyond anything we can understand. Either way, Revan had one order for us: The Jedi will be the spearhead of the Galaxy. We must be prepared or we will fall. If we fall, then innumerable life forms beyond our Galaxy will suffer as a consequence.
"I don't know when the Sith with return," Darvix said. "It may be in a day, a year, or not within our lifetime at all. All I do know is that it is time for us to change the way we teach and prepare the Jedi."
"We cannot let what happened with the Vong ever happen again," Luke said. "As such, we have to change the way we conduct ourselves."
"We have to be proactive now," Darvix nodded. "I've been thinking a great deal since arriving in the Coruscant system several days ago…Perhaps the Vong were meant to be a wakeup call for the Jedi. From everything I've heard the Jedi and the Republic were flat-footed in dealing with the invasion fleet. That can never happen again."
The room was silent for a long while. The information that Darvix had just divulged was shattering news. It was hard enough to comprehend the workings of just one Galaxy, but if the prophecy was true, the Jedi would be responsible for the well being of so much more. It was an enormous responsibility.
"You've done well, Darvix," Luke said. "Everything I asked for you delivered, your work and dedication have been exemplary. I suppose it's time to return you to your original duties as a peacekeeper of the Galaxy. I'll put you in contact immediately with Katarn and have you reassigned to new duties."
Darvix fixed Luke with a regretful expression, "I can't, Luke."
"Oh don't do this to me, Darvix," Luke looked as if he had been punched in the stomach. "I need you, the Jedi need you."
"Not as much as the military needs me right now," Darvix said. "I'm returning to active duty and signing on as Rogue Squadron's executive officer."
"You're what!?" Kasari bolt upright and made her way towards Darvix.
"I'm sorry," Darvix wore an expression of regret upon his face. "I spoke with General Antilles after arriving in the system. The military is in desperate need of command material and he feels I'm best suited for the job."
"It figures he'd steal one of you back from me," Luke heaved a sigh.
"It won't be a permanent post," Darvix explained. "I'll be tasked with rebuilding and training the squadron. A year, year and a half we'll have the unit functioning again and I can retire from service."
"Do you think this is the right decision, Darvix?" Luke asked.
"I- I don't know," Darvix responded. "Perhaps…yes. Luke, this is something I have to do."
"This represents the last of your past demons, doesn't it?"
Darvix nodded solemnly, "Yes… Master Skywalker I really appreciate all that you've done for me. If it wasn't for you I'd be rotting in a brig cell somewhere. However, I have work that I have yet to complete, and it lies with General Antilles and the military."
"My role in this tale of Jedi grandeur is over," Darvix admitted. "What happens now is beyond me. Hundreds of years from now the history texts should refer to some great and powerful Jedi as the one who put an end to the Sith. I should only be a minor footnote in the story… My work with the Jedi in this capacity is over, as it should be."
"Very well," Luke said. "You're released from your duties as a Jedi Master. You will retain your title as a badge of honor for the great tasks you have accomplished…and if you ever decide you want to come back, our doors will be open to you."
Darvix stood and extended a hand towards Luke, "Wedge gave me the same offer when I left Rogue Squadron over a decade ago."
"I'm sure he didn't think you'd cash in on it," Luke replied with a smile. "Now get out of here. I expect you to hit the flight simulator hard."
Darvix smiled, "Yes sir."