The Love of a Jedi II

Chapter Twelve

As soon as the words were out of Naes mouth, the room broke into chaos; Rhea and Ezriel both talking to him at the same time. Naes held up his hand and said, "Quiet, one at a time please."

Rhea spoke up, "What do you mean you are starting your own order?"

Ezriel added, "Master Nemelc that is heresy."

Naes looked at Rhea and asked, "Let me ask you this Rhea, would you say that someone that used Force Lightening was using the Dark Side?"

"Yes, that would be as much of a given as possible."

"OK, would you say that Master Fisto was evil? What about me?"

"Of course not, why do you ask?"

"I read a report by Master Fisto, about a time that he used Force Lightening to save a little girl. I used it once myself."

"When did you use it?"

"Remember the mission to capture Count Dooku?"

"Of course, why do you ask?"

"After you were knocked out there in his Great Hall, as he was getting away, I used Force Lightening in an effort to stop him. Unfortunately I missed and he still escaped. Now after hearing these instances, would you consider me or Master Fisto as being evil?"

"Absolutely not; you are a genuinely good person. You are one of the few people I know that does not allow the ends to justify the means. You set about to accomplish as many of your goals as possible by doing what is right. Even in the middle of a war or a battle there were certain lines that you refused to cross."

"Thank you Rhea, that means a lot to me." He then turned and looked at Ezriel, "What of you? What is your choice?"

Ezriel looked at Naes and said, "Master, as long as I have known you, you have been honest and truthful to me and always looked out for my best interests as best as you could. You have imparted your knowledge and wisdom to me freely and without reservation; and in the process encouraged me to think for myself. Whenever possible you have explained to me the reasons for your decisions. I have seen for myself that the Order made mistakes and I recognize as well that there is no Order in existence now. I will follow you as well."

"For all intents and purposes, yes the Jedi Order is extinct. The Emperor and Darth Vader have done a pretty thorough job of hunting our brethren down. I will tell both of you this, there are two Jedi Masters still alive and I know the locations of both of them."

Rhea looked at Naes and said, "Ezriel and I have suspected you knew the whereabouts of Master Yoda, just from comments that Naes Jr and Amalie have made. Who else but Master Yoda would try to feed younglings Root Stew? Who is the other master?"

"The other master is Master Kenobi. You both know them, neither of them would agree with my actions, and would discourage you from following me on this endeavor. What you two may not know is that Darth Vader is in reality Anakin Skywalker. Palpatine was the Sith Lord that the Council was trying to find. Rhea, you know that years ago I had a Force Vision in which I became the leader of the Order of the Light Sith and in turn defeated Vader and Palpatine. After honing some skills with Master Revan and having a few discussions with him about the Jedi and the Force I have decided that the time is right for some changes to be made. I am establishing a new Order, hopefully one that will not be as dogmatic and inflexible as previously."

Rhea looked at Naes and asked, "So what is your plan?"

Naes smiled, "Simple, we are going to Coruscant and reprogramming the automated signal that Obi Wan had originally sent out at the birth of the Empire."

Ezriel gasped, "You are proposing that we go to the heart of the Empire, the Emperor's planetary stronghold; home to countless Stormtroopers not to mention two Sith Lords and reprogram a secret signal?"

"Sure, what's difficult about that? The key is staying unnoticed."

Rhea continued, "Saying that we succeed in that; what is your goal then?"

"We reprogram the signal to direct any remaining Jedi to us. Also while on Coruscant, I will take the time to hack into the Imperial Navy network and plant a few more bugs and surveillance programs. Any Jedi that seek us out will be vetted and once they pass muster will be given the opportunity to join our order and receive additional training. My ultimate goal is to overthrow the Emperor and Vader both; similar to what I saw in my vision. Also, we need to start to be on the lookout for any children born of Jedi and start training them; with one major difference-we will not take children from their families. Once established and in control, we will find a way to include families with the training of children."

The three looked at Naes and at each other; Rhea spoke once more and said, "We are in."

"Excellent, you three go to the Maverick and start prepping for leaving and going to Coruscant."

Ezriel asked, "What are you going to do?"

"I will join you in a few minutes, but first I have a few questions for Master Revan."

Naes watched them leave and then turned back to the holocron and said, "Master Revan, I want to thank you for the instruction you have given me. I have one final request from you."

The image of Revan considered Naes for a few seconds and spoke, "If it is within my power, I will do it."

"In my vision, I saw that during the battle with the Emperor he used several mental assaults against me. Before confronting him in real life, I must be able to withstand such assaults. However Jedi are no longer trained against such things. Do you know where I can gain the knowledge to withstand that sort of attack?"

Revan looked at him for a moment and with great sadness said, "I learned how to defend against such assaults to a small degree when I faced the Sith Emperor. When you return, I will show you what I know. Eventually to truly master the defense you will need to travel to Koriban, to the Valley of the Dark Lords. There you will gain the knowledge that you seek. I warn you though, such a trip is dangerous. If anyplace in the galaxy could be said to be filled with darkness and be called a truly evil place, it is Koriban. Many that have gone there have been driven insane by the dark presences."

Naes answered, "I do not make the request lightly, the galaxy is covered in darkness, the Force is out of balance. When I go there, it will be to learn how to defend against Palpatine's mental assaults."

Revan smiled at Naes and said, "May the Force be with you." With that Naes left the chamber to join his friends.

Several hours later, the Maverick was approaching Coruscant. Naes was at the controls, with Ezriel at his side. Naes figured he might as well let him get some practice in. Besides, Naes was busy uploading a new fake ID for the Maverick. "OK, the ship's name is now 'Dewback' my name is Olee Starstone; the four of us are an extended family, Ezriel and I are brothers with Rhea and Tara our cousins. We are a fairly well off family from Tattooine coming to Coruscant for a vacation, sightseeing and shopping."

Rhea asked, "What is the plan? There is no way that we can just stroll into the former Jedi Temple and go to the basement and alter the signal."

Naes looked at her and said, "We don't have to. That signal was discovered about a year ago. What most people don't know is that all Jedi signals operate on a sub-frequency on the HoloNet carrier signal. All I have to do is hack into the HoloNet and upload a dataspike the HoloNet will once more become a carrier for Jedi signals; and any Jedi transceiver will pick up my new message. And the beauty of it is that I can program it to exclude a certain transceiver subset. Meaning that I can choose who will not receive the altered message."

"Who do you not want to receive it?"

"I don't want the receiver for Anakin Skywalker to receive it, as well as Master Yoda and Master Kenobi."

"There has to be a drawback to the rest of the plan, nothing is ever that easy."

"You're right; the best place to upload is in the Imperial Command Communications building."

Tara spoke up, "It would almost be easier to upload the dataspike from the Imperial Palace. Imperial Command is going to be locked down so tight that a flitnat could not get in without someone knowing about it."

"True, so first Ezriel and I are going to find some disguises for ourselves and sneak into Imperial Command."

Ezriel spoke up, "I thought you wanted to avoid uploading any bugs on Coruscant because that would eventually lead to us being locked out of the system?"

"Normally I wouldn't, but I have been working on a worm program for a year that will piggyback on my earlier worm and should be so well programmed that even the best security experts won't see it for a while, and hopefully by that time we will have already eliminated the Emperor and Vader. One other thing, remember that the Emperor is a Sith Lord, that means first of all keep yourselves dampened, try not to use the Force unless it is absolutely necessary. And obviously, no lightsabers; we don't want to start a panic. This is Coruscant; the Emperor has had two years to make the entire planet think that the Jedi tried to assassinate him and disfigured him."

Rhea looked at him and said, "Where were you and Ezriel going to find disguises?"

Naes said, "Dex's"

"What about Tara and I? What do you want us to do?"

"I need the two of you to sit tight here on the Maverick, Ezriel and I might have to make a quick exit."

Rhea looked at Naes and said, "Naes, Ezriel is a better pilot than I am. Are you sure you want him going with you and not staying on the Maverick?"

"Normally I would agree with you Rhea, besides you are extremely talented with a lightsaber, the problem is that the Empire has the unspoken chauvinism and women are extremely rare in the Imperial military. Thus if you went in with me, we would look extremely out of place. And that would draw attention to us, whereas if Ezriel and I went in, standard Imperial flag officer and his aide."

An hour later Naes and Ezriel slipped into Dex's place using the back entrance. Using the stealth techniques honed over the years as a Jedi that was often sent into the field he and Ezriel slipped in without being noticed and made their way to Dex's office. Naes knew that Dex usually went to his office about this time to take care of some paperwork. He opened the door to the office and found it empty; that was alright he and Ezriel would wait. He signaled Ezriel to step with him behind the door. A few minutes later Naes could hear a being shuffling along the hallway leading to the office. Naes reached out lightly with the Force just enough to get a feel for who was approaching. It felt like Dex, but something was off about him, he was radiating worry. Naes frowned and opened himself up more to see if anyone was with Dex, fortunately he seemed to be alone.

Dex walked into his office and shut the door, with that Naes stepped out from behind the door and said, "Hello Dex. How are you doing?"

Dex jumped from being startled and turned around and saw Naes and Ezriel. "Naes, how are you doing?" At the same time he stepped forward and embraced Naes.

"I am doing well; it is good to see you."

Dex stepped back and motioned Naes and Ezriel to follow him. He stepped to the back wall of his office, where Naes knew there was a secret room-the back office as it were. Dex touched the hidden activator and a portion of the wall swung away, into the room hidden behind it. The trio stepped through and the door shut, leaving them in the room. Ezriel looked around and said, "I never knew this was here." He looked at Naes and asked, "Did you know this was here?"

"Yes, right after I started seeing Astra, I approached Dex about doing some work on the side. When I did that work, it was almost always in here." He turned and looked at Dex and asked, "When you were approaching your office, I could feel that you were deeply worried about something. Is there anything we can help you with?"

"I am alright; just the normal concerns of living on an occupied planet, the regular police are steadily being replaced with Stormtroopers. Virtually the entire planet is under suspicion of having either rebellious leanings of one sort or another. The most minor of infractions bring the full force of Imperial 'Justice' on you."

"I understand, if it is any help, I made sure that no one noticed Ezriel and I coming in, and we came in through the back door."

"What is it you need?"

Ezriel and I need Imperial uniforms to get us into the Communications building. Once in, I will upload a data spike into the network."

"What will be on this data spike?"

"I am reactivating the Jedi sub-frequency to direct them to me, for training, asylum and eventually we hope, overthrowing Palpatine and Vader. I am also implanting some data worms to give me access to classified Imperial communications. That is to aid in the nascent rebellion that is forming a leg up in fighting the Empire."

"So there really is a rebellion forming?"

"Yes, the work that you did before the Fall and afterwards has helped the rebellion get on its feet. If you don't mind, I would like stay here and create the data spike and I will also code in back door access for you to anything classified for the Core Worlds. Don't worry; it should be a couple years before they find my handy work. I will also make sure that there is no way to trace anything back to you."

"No problem, go ahead and get started on your work. I will find a couple of uniforms. My suggestion is that the two of you go in during a shift change, easier to blend in at that time."

Naes looked at him and said, "Agreed." He then turned to Ezriel and said, "Let's get started."

A couple hours later…

Dex walked into the room and said, "Here are the uniforms as promised." He then walked to the opposite wall from the door and activated another door that slid into the wall, leading into a dimly lit tunnel. Dex walked over to the desk interface and typed in a few commands and said, "This will take you to the nearest exit to the communications center. Just follow the green arrows."

Naes looked at him and said, "Thanks so much Dex, if you ever need anything, ask either Bail Organa or Garm Bel Iblis, tell them that you are friends with me." He then picked up the data spike that he had just finished working on and said, "Come on Ezriel, we have a job to do." Ezriel entered the tunnel and Naes said, "Safe travels my friend." Naes stepped into the tunnel and the door shut behind him, leaving him and Ezriel alone in the tunnel to make their way to the comm center.