Chapter Eight: Knightfall

Jennara Oswin rubbed her head in slight pain. She could sense a distant emptiness in the Force. Something was disturbing it, and Jennara could feel it, or at least the aftereffects of it. Something terrible was happening somewhere, but where exactly, she could not pinpoint.

"Are you alright, my young Padawan?" asked her Master, Coleman Kcaj. Master Kcaj had taken Jennara as his Padawan only seven months ago, but she was already learning more from him than she ever could in a boring old classroom.

"Yes, Master," she said, her girlish voice contrasting sharply with Master Kcaj's deep, imposing voice.

The Ongree's inverted face looked at her with a bit of worry. Jennara, despite being only eight years old, knew for a fact that he could see right through her.

"Are you being entirely truthful with me?" he asked.

"I thought I sensed something, Master," admitted Jennara sheepishly. "Something's happening."

"I do not sense anything," said Master Kcaj. "Jennara, you are truly gifted in the ways of the Force, but you are still young. Younger than most Padawans. You have not yet learned to sort out the major disturbances of the Force from the more trivial ones."

"Will I?" asked Jennara, looking up at her Master.

"With time, yes," said Master Kcaj, smiling at Jennara. "Come. We must practice your saber techniques. Do you have your training saber?"

Jennara patted the training saber on her belt, smiled, and said, "Yep!"

"Then let us be off," said Master Kcaj. "The night may have fallen, but a Jedi's work is not always done when the sun goes down."

Gleefully, Jennara put the pain in her head out of her mind and skipped alongside Master Kcaj's long strides down one of the many hallways of the Temple. Jennara found it quite admirable that nobody ever got lost in them. She figured she would eventually learn these hallways and memorize them as she traversed them with her Master.

Jennara, having already pushed the pain totally out of her mind, was surprised to find that it had returned, a bit stronger this time. She clasped her forehead in her hands, willing for the pain to go away.

"Jennara?" asked Master Kcaj. "What's wrong?"

"My head, Master," said Jennara. "It hurts."

"You need some rest, Jennara," said Master Kcaj, taking her hand. "Come with me."

"Master, where are we going?" asked Jennara, her head hurting even more now.

"Back to your quarters," said Master Kcaj. "Come on."

"What's that noise?" asked Jennara. She had started to faintly recognize the sound of blasterfire inside the Temple. She wondered what was going on as Master Kcaj pulled her close and didn't let go.

"It's nothing," lied Master Kcaj. "Don't worry about it."

Even as the words escaped his lips, Master Kcaj had already drawn his lightsaber. Jennara looked at it with fear and trepidation. Anytime the otherwise peaceful Master Kcaj drew his lightsaber, Jennara knew there was trouble. Big trouble.

"I'd say we need to worry about it, Master," said Jennara as the two Jedi rounded the corner and entered Jennara's quarters.

"Stay here, Jennara," said Master Kcaj. "You'll be safe."

"But, Master-" began Jennara.

"Do as I say," ordered Master Kcaj, trying to keep his voice calm, but eyes brimming with fear. Jennara could sense it rolling off him in waves. He was terrified.

"Goodbye, Jennara," said Master Kcaj as he left his Padawan's quarters.

Jennara sat still on her bed for about a minute before she decided that she needed to go help her Master. If there were as much danger to the Jedi as he feared, then it was Jennara's duty to help as much an eight-year-old Padawan could.

Jennara grabbed her training saber and ignited it. The short, yellow blade slid slowly out of the hilt, and she opened the door to find the Temple in chaos. All through the hallway, Padawans, Knights, and Masters dashed to face some unknown enemy, and they seemed frightened, unprepared. Jennara snuck into their ranks, virtually undetected by the other Jedi, who were focusing solely on their enemy. She ran with them, her yellow lightsaber shining brightly in the night, and soon found herself looking upon a horrifying sight.

All of her life, Jennara Oswin thought that the clones were her friends. They were nice to her, and some of the more techno-savvy clones even showed her a few tricks on how to break through security systems. But now, she found that clones with blue accents on their armor were shooting at the Jedi and killing them. She saw the dead bodies of some of the Jedi and began to cry silently. Standing in the middle of the battleground, ignored by all sides, Jennara realized that she was a target to some of her friends, nothing more. Master Kcaj had been right. She was safer back in the quarters.

Jennara spotted her Master fighting bravely alongside Master Eeth Koth. The Ongree and the Zabrak were a beacon of hope for both Jennara and the other Jedi, rallying the others to fight back against the clones. They were courageous Jedi Masters, but even they had to fall this night.

Eeth Koth went down first. A blaster bolt impacted his stomach and sent him hurtling into the nearest wall, where more clones shot him mercilessly, tearing holes into his body. The clones shot him so much that the bolts eventually stopped impacting flesh and started impacting the wall behind him. Master Koth's green lightsaber deactivated for the last time, and Jennara watched in horror as Eeth Koth slumped to the floor, dead.

Coleman Kcaj, realizing that the others would soon follow in Master Koth's bloodied footsteps, called for a retreat.

"FALL BACK!" he shouted. "FALL BACK!"

He turned his head towards Jennara, and he saw her, yellow lightsaber in hand, ready to fight and die if necessary beside her Master. Master Kcaj, in his distraction, didn't see the clones coming up behind him.

"MASTER!" Jennara shrieked. "LOOK OUT!"

But it was too late for Coleman Kcaj. The clones had used the Ongree's distraction to shoot him just like they had shot Master Koth. Jennara screamed in terror as Coleman Kcaj fell to the ground, his lightsaber flying out of his hands. She screamed because she had watched her Master get brutally murdered right in front of her. She screamed because she could have done something about it.

She screamed because it was her fault.

Jennara ran for her life. She ran away from the clones, from her dead Master, from everything. Fear overtook her eight-year-old mind, and she ran away. Her lightsaber had deactivated in her hands, but she barely even noticed. She only focused on running.

It's my fault, she kept thinking to herself.

She ran down so many corridors, losing herself in the halls of the Temple, looking upon the bodies of dead Jedi, wondering where heroes like Anakin Skywalker were to protect the Jedi from this massacre.

Master Kcaj is dead, and it's all my fault.

She found a small room that would serve as a hideout for her. She quickly opened the door and rushed into the room, locking the door behind her and fusing the controls shut with her lightsaber. Her saber may only have been a training saber, but it still worked against a lot of metals, like the door controls.

It's my fault!

Angry and distraught, she chucked her saber at the wall as hard as she could. She curled up in the corner of the room, adopting a fetal position and rocking back and forth in a steady rhythm.

For the first time in a long time, Jennara Oswin began to weep.


Some pretty heavy stuff in this chapter. Not gonna lie. Writing the fall of the Jedi Temple from the point of view of a little kid was an interesting choice, if I do say so myself, and Jennara Oswin goes through a lot. I wanted to include Operation: Knightfall in this story, as it's such an integral part of Episode III's plotline, but as the Doctor is on Kashyyyk at this point, I can't really do it from his perspective. I actually had it in my head for a while before I wrote it that I would use this chapter to introduce the character of Jennara Oswin (this universe's Clara) into the story. She'll come into play a little later, but here's her intro to tide you guys until the Doctor meets her for the first time.

Also, I apologize for this unacceptable lateness. I was unable to access my files on Friday, as I was visiting my father for the day, and it just completely slipped my mind that I needed to post. So, I apologize for this lapse in updating, as well as any future lapses that may or may not occur for the remainder of this story.

Now, to business. Remember that extra stuff that I said I was going to post, including a timeline of the Doctor's life, a New Jedi Order roster, and a list of major characters? Well, I've decided to write a little something extra to go along with that, called "Adventures of the Doctor." It's going to be written as though the Eleventh Doctor were writing it for his students in the New Jedi Order, so there will be plenty of I's and we's and you's and all that good stuff that comes from writing in the first person. Basically, what it entails is one chapter per Doctor, with the exception of the Eleventh because he's "writing" the whole thing. So, it'll have ten chapters, each one detailing a different point in the Doctor's life. Example: The First Doctor's chapter will be a short one about his promotion to the Council, while the Second Doctor's chapter will be a longer one about the first time he visited Gallifrey and fought in a battle there. I've got several more of each Doctor's stories planned out, including a full-on encounter with the Master for Number Three, and that gosh-darn terentatek fight that I so casually mention several times throughout the main story. Speaking of which, terminology I will use to clear things up. When I say "main story," I refer to the six films and TCW. When I say something along the lines of "extra stuff," I refer, most likely, to AotD. Got it? Good.

Which episode of Series 8 am I supposed to talk about? I don't really remember. Let's just say that whichever one it is was awesome (because it was) and move on. I'll resume discussion of Series 8 not in the next chapter, but the one after.

This Friday: The Doctor escapes Kashyyyk and tries to regroup with surviving Jedi.

Well, that's about it for this author's note. Until the next chapter, my friends!