Author's Note: All review responses can be found in my forum for Gods of Dark and Light. (Although, I did mislabel it as being for Chapter 24 when the responses were really for Chap 23. I couldn't figure out how to edit the dang thing.) Thanks for reeading!
Chapter Twenty Four: Dark Forces Ascendant
Ekria cried.
Ferus Olin drilled into those Jedi who joined him that fear and sorrow led to the dark side. "You must learn to let go what you fear to lose," was a favorite line of his. Evidently, it was a line Anakin was also familiar with, since when he heard Ferus mention it to Mara, the Supreme Commander snorted.
Still, when the listing speeder hovered into the city, the shock of seeing her home world's condition brought unabashed tears to her eyes. It was not even a matter of fearing loss but rather the undeniable truth behind the raping of a world. It was, in its own way, worse than what had befallen Alderaan. At least there death was quick and relatively painless.
Here, the Force thrummed with the pain of billions of lingering deaths. And it was not the Force alone that made her feel anguish. She could see evidence piled in massive, blackened mounds; bodies piled on bodies dozens of meters high, charred and in some cases still smoking from the funeral pyres. The smell of charred meat soiled the air.
For the pain and suffering she could not shut out, Ekria, Jedi knight, wept, and in time buried her face in the shoulder of her lover. Jake, for his part, set his jaw in a firm line of righteous anger even as he gently caressed Ekria's back.
Kyle's anger was less righteous, and more vocal. "Kriffing sons of gundarks," he kept muttering over and over. He had never felt such overwhelming rage.
"So what are we going to do?" Jake said as they finally managed to gain enough altitude to enter the old city. Even in the upper levels previously reserved for the elite, the city had suffered. Businesses were dark, maglev trains hung dangling and useless. The public thoroughfares were completely abandoned. Over the wind of their passage, Lo'gann sounded subdued.
"We're going to get off this blasted planet," Kyle said. "From what I understand, Coruscant fell so fast and so hard, there wasn't time for any civilians to evacuate. So there has to be a few space-worthy ships around here somewhere."
"Any ideas where to find them?"
"Not at the moment. I'm sure something will come to me, though."
Something came to them, all right, but it was not an idea. Rather, it was a strike of white light flashing directly through the front of the speeder. "Stave blast!" Kyle shouted. "We're losing drive systems."
The speeder began to slow and descend at an increasingly alarming angle. "Kyle?" Ekria said.
"Yeah, what?"
"Think you can pick a different spot to crash?"
He looked up from the frozen controls to the platform they were heading for. This platform was anything but deserted, with what appeared to be close to fifty Ori soldiers waiting with staves at the ready. Try as he might, Kyle could not spot any priors."Well, we could try skydiving again," he said.
"That was a joke, right?" Jake demanded.
"Any other bright ideas?" Kyle asked.
"We crash into them," Ekria said. "And I mean crash. Give the engines everything they've got, and we jump out at the last minute."
"That ranks right up there with skydiving," Jake said.
"Yeah, but less distance to fall," Kyle said. He pushed the throttle to the max and ignored the oily smoke that began pouring out of the stave blast hole in the center of their engine. "Brace yourselves."
The soldiers waited patiently for the vehicle to come in range, and began firing.
There was a joke among the Rebellion that stormtroopers only hit their mark when they weren't trying. It wasn't really fair, of course. Having been a stormtrooper, Kyle knew how ridiculously difficult it was to aim a Blas Tech E11 blaster rifle in a full suit of body armor. Still, having been shot at on more than one occasion, Kyle often wondered how the troopers could call themselves marksmen when every shot missed.
The soldiers of the Ori did not wear full body armor and did not shield their faces. Their weapons were man-high staves they fired like rifles, either from the waist, or in some cases from the shoulder like a sniper rifle. And these soldiers truly were marksmen.
The five soldiers who fired hit the speeder head-on from twenty meters away. Their staves produced a sustained beam that sliced all the way through the length of the vehicle, nearly taking legs and arms with it. "We're going to have to jump," Kyle shouted.
His danger sense screamed in warning as the five soldiers began sweeping their weapons outward from the center axis of the vehicle. With the beam so close it made the skin under his boots blister, Kyle leapt into the air, with Jake and Ekria not even a second behind. The Force guided their paths even as the speeder below them literally fell apart. Momentum carried some of it forward, but only to crash into the safety barrier of the platform. The rest of the pieces simply fell into the bottomless maw of the lower regions.
The three Jedi had more than enough momentum to carry them forward and they landed easily on the platform, surrounded by fifty pointing staves. They rolled to absorb the impact and then came up in a fighting stance, their sabers lit and ready.
"Submit to the Ori, and you will not have to perish," one of the soldiers said in thickly accented Basic, as if he had learned the sounds without the meaning.
"Kiss my backside, and I won't have to cut your head off," Kyle said. He lifted a hand and pushed with the Force.
These soldiers were not priors, and without the power of the Ori's shepherds, were no more powerful than any other human. The soldier's eyes widened in shock and disbelief as Kyle's power threw him back into his comrades.
"All of us, at once," Kyle said. "Push them over the edge!"
Some of the soldiers shouted their extreme displeasure at this idea and turned their staves to fire, only to be flattened by the combined Force push of three Jedi. The three of them advanced, pushing again and again, until with the first scream a man fell over the edge.
"Kyle, we're committing murder!" Ekria said.
"Naw, this is murder," Kyle said, lifting one man in particular and throwing him over the balcony with what looked very much like Darth Vader's infamous Force choke. "What we're doing now is dealing with the enemy."
She stopped. "We can't do this. This is the Dark Side."
The soldiers reached for their staves. "Then at least disarm them!" he screamed.
This, Ekria at least seemed to have no trouble with. She began force-pulling staves away from the soldiers' hands while Kyle and Jake continued to push. Jake, evidently, had no trouble with killing men whose very religion made it imperative to kill them.
Finally, only a small group of unarmed men remained cowering against the rails. Kyle approached them, his saber lit. It was Ekria who stepped in front of him. "Jedi do not kill unarmed prisoners."
"I'm not feeling like a Jedi today," Kyle said. "Get out of the way."
"I will not let you murder them."
"You gonna stop me?"
"Both of us will," Jake said from behind Kyle.
Kyle turned and glared. "These people want to kill us," he snapped angrily. "They think they have to kill us to appease their gods. And you seriously want to leave them here to try and kill us again later?"
"They're not a threat now," Jake said. "Force pushing a large troop still armed is one thing. These men aren't armed. And they are terrified of you."
Kyle turned and stared death at the men. "They should be. These are the bastards that killed Jan!"
"What good will vengeance do?" Ekria said. "I know you are looking for your friend. Would she want you to kill them?"
"Actually, yeah, she probably would."
"Well, that didn't work," Jake muttered. He sensed though that the danger had passed for the moment. He walked by Kyle and knelt before the humans. "Do you understand me?"
The man stuttered something in an utterly alien language. "He's from another galaxy," Kyle muttered. "You honestly think he knows Basic?"
"One of them did. Doesn't matter, though. One way or another, he'll speak it shortly," Jake said. He put both hands on the man's head, closed his eyes, and concentrated. The man's eyes rolled back into his skull as he screamed. The other men whimpered in open terror.
When Jake let go and stepped back, the Ori soldier gasped and fell to his hands and knees. "What have you done to me?" he demanded in clear Basic.
Kyle stared. "Old trick I learned," Jake said. "I know his language now too."
Kyle shouldered past the two other Jedi and grabbed the man in a Force-enhanced grip. "Where are the Coruscanti survivors?"
The man gaped and then stuttered. "They're in containment shelters until the Priors and teachers can re-educate them."
"And where are these shelters?"
"All around us," the soldier said. "We're standing on one. All the apartments were converted. And those that have the approval of the priors are allowed to go free to the new farmlands being created for them. Soon, this horrid world will be a paradise."
It was too much. To Ekria's horror and Jake's disgust, Kyle roared in rage and threw the man physically off the edge of the platform. Before the other two Jedi could stop him, he spun and thrust out with an incredibly powerful Force push that sent the survivors also tumbling over the edge of the platform to their deaths.
It was only when he turned and saw the expressions of disgust and contempt on the faces of his fellow Jedi that Kyle fully realized what he had done. "Sithspit," he whispered.
And it was at that moment that a red lightsaber blade erupted from the center of Jake Lo'Gann's chest. Ekria at first didn't understand what the arch of his back and the grimace of agony on his face meant, but the uncertainty only lasted long enough for her to draw breath for a scream as her lover died.
A booted foot kicked the dead Jedi down to the floor. The owner of the boot smiled. "Another dead Jedi," the newcomer whispered. Ekria responded instantly with a subvocal growl as she lit her sword and charged. The dark Jedi, lean and beautiful with a head of golden hair and a cruel turn to her red lips, laughed and caught Ekria in a Force grip. She spun about on her toe in a perfect pirouette and in the fastest part of her spin let go of the hold she had over Ekria.
"No!" Kyle screamed, shocked out of his paralysis by Ekria's scream as she flew over the edge of the parapet. She reached for him, a look of terror on her face, as she fell into the dark maw of the dead city.
Kyle turned back to the woman, his rage boiling. From behind the Dark Jedi another figure appeared. He wore the white robes of an Ori prior, but had neither the complexion nor milky eyes of one. In fact, he had no eyes at all, and wore a black band around his head where his eyes should have been.
"Very nicely done," this newcomer said. His voice was high-pitched and oily. "You must be Katarn."
"And you must be Jerec," Kyle said, the rage still burning in his mind.
"I like a man who can murder in cold blood," Jerec said. "Slaughtering unarmed prisoners is…" he grinned, "…simply delicious. That is the kind of determination I like in my Dark Jedi. Just think what an asset you would be."
"Dark Jedi?" Kyle snorted. "You're not Dark Jedi. You're Ori lapdogs."
"Lapdogs with power, though," Jerec said. "Jun!"
A young man barely out of his twenties stepped to Jerec's side. He looked first at the dark Jedi's leader, then to the blonde as if seeking her approval, then at Kyle. "Kill Katarn," Jerec commanded.
"Gladly," the boy said, grinning. It was the oddest thing. Kyle did not sense the Dark Side in Jun, only an intense desire to meet with the woman's approval.
Jun laughed, raised both arms, and suddenly disappeared in a shimmer of Force power. Kyle remained still for a moment, and then quickly slashed his saber down to his left. The force cloak faded and Jun stood staring in shock at the long slash across his torso.
"I've had training from Ferus Olin and Darth Vader," Kyle said. "That little trick doesn't work any more." He flicked his wrist, and the dying dark Jedi flew backward off the platform.
"What do you think, Sariss?" Jerec said to the woman. "Is he a suitable candidate?"
Kyle saw a flash in the eyes of the woman named Sariss. Perhaps it was anger or grief. Perhaps it was nothing. As quickly as it came, however, the flash was gone and the gaze turned to one of intense scrutiny and calculation. "He has a great deal of potential. And he obviously has no fear of touching the Dark Side."
"Come a step closer and you'll feel just how much of the Dark Side I can touch," Kyle threatened.
Suddenly an irresistible force grabbed him and lifted him from the platform surface. He dropped his lightsaber and gasped for breath as the pressure around his chest increased. From around a hidden corner stepped a Prior, chalky white like all the others, and ancient looking. "This one will serve us well," the Prior said. "The darkness you speak of has taken hold of his heart, and made him subject to our will."
"Very good," Jerec said. "Sariss?"
"I will turn him, or dismember him."
"Welcome to the family, then, Katarn," Jerec said with a maddeningly high-pitched laugh.