Before he'd passed into the Force, Jade's grandfather had told her a lot about the world where he'd grown up. Luke Skywalker had said that his younger self had felt trapped on his uncle's moisture farm and longed for greatness far beyond. The greatness he'd gotten, often at high price, but he said that sometimes he found himself looking back at his restless youth on Tatooine with nostalgia. At least then he'd been innocent.
Jade had been through too much to be innocent, but her life on Fengrine reminded her a lot of her grandfather's stories of Tatooine. She and Jodram worked crops on their small plot of land just as young Luke Skywalker had gathered moisture on his. Their home was even more simple than what he'd grown up with. There was no utility garage to park their landspeeder, only a wood-walled shed. The house was a single building, two storeys, with just enough space for two adults and two children not to get on each other's nerves. The household's equipment was rudimentary in other respects; it lacked, for example, a long-ranged transmitter than connected to the HoloNet. Most of the homesteads on Fengrine had similarly modest equipment and Jade hadn't wanted to put her family in a position of visible superiority over the other people on this planet. It was for that same reason than she'd refused the planetary governor's offer to provide a home. To earn the trust of normal beings Jedi had to live like them, with them, and this meant that when Jade and Jodram weren't settling disputes in Unity and Justice trials they lived like farmers. Like her grandfather, a long time ago.
She'd taken to it surprisingly well, and so had Jodram, but sometimes the inconveniences grated. When someone needed to talk to her an alert was routed to their short-range comm beacon at their homestead, and from there Jade had to ride the speeder into the nearest major settlement and use its interstellar transmitter.
The town was the second-largest one on Fengrine and the most populous on its southern hemisphere. It was much tamer than Mos Eisley back on Tatooine; its sprawling spaceport facilities mostly hosted unarmed and light-crewed cargo ships that touched down to fill their kilometer-long holds with grain and foodstuffs. Jade knew one of those was scheduled to come in today, but she saw no sign of it as she maneuvered her landspeeder to the communications center. Its transmission dish rose on a tower at the spaceport's edge like a beacon, visible from well outside the town.
The staff at the comm station treated her with deference as they led her to a console and private booth. When she sent out her response to the hailing signal she had to wait for almost five minutes before the connection went through; apparently she'd caught her cousin at a bad time.
When Allana's holo-image appeared before her, the older woman was beaming a calm smile. "It's good to see you again, Jade. I hope I didn't interrupt anything."
"Not at all," she said. Rebuilding Senex-Juvex into a working member of the Alliance had been the primary challenge of Allana's term as Chief of State. After stepping down from that position and into her new hybrid role as a bridge between the Alliance and the Jedi Order she was still Jade's main contact to the galaxy outside Fengrine.
"I heard about your latest arbitration," Allana began. "Fengrine's governor called me to express his appreciation."
"I'm glad." Jade knew she hadn't called just for that but decided to keep the small talk up just a little. "Are you still on Coruscant?"
"For now, yes, but I'll be heading back to Ossus soon." Allana's expression grew serious. "I don't want to be too alarming, but your presence might be required there too."
She'd been expecting something like that. "Does this have to do with those raiders chopping up Imperial space?"
"That's right. What have you heard?"
"That some Jedi helped the Imperials stop the latest convoy attacks. I heard Davek planned it that way."
"He did. Arlen and Marasiah were there." After a short hesitation she added, "Arlen was injured, but he's all right now."
Jade fought a wince. Her simple life on Fengrine, part-time farmer and part-time judge, had allowed her a peace of mind she'd never had before, but it still took her away from the people she cared about. Arlen had helped train her as a Jedi, both before and after her father's death. She'd always believed she'd feel it in the Force if he were killed, but when he'd been injured she hadn't sensed a thing.
Jade tried to put her mind on the future. "Did the Imperials request more Jedi help after that?"
Allana shook her head. "They're Imperials, Jade. Very prideful. They haven't requested help from the Alliance either. Jaina thinks they'll use the Jedi based on Bastion as much as they can and leave it at that."
"Then what will you need me for? Or is it us?"
"That's what I wanted you to think about. Grand Master Lowbacca knows that it's important for the Jedi to keep a presence in Senex-Juvex. He hasn't decided whether to recall Jedi for an operation, but if he does, he wants either you or Jodram to be a part of it. Which of you goes is something we've agreed to leave to you."
"But what would we do exactly?"
"There's some indication these attacks are being commanded by a pair of beings- a king and queen, supposedly- somewhere in the Unknown Regions. If this turns into a large-scale invasion, a war-"
"The Jedi will go into uncharted space and investigate. Since there's no law or government in those systems we won't have to act on invitation like we would in Imperial or Alliance space."
"You have a knack for politics."
"No, just a grasp of reality." She sighed. "So you want one of us to sign up for an unknown mission in unknown space… while the other one sits here and takes care of the kids?"
"They're both important jobs."
"I know. When do you want an answer from us?"
"There's no timeline yet. We might not even request you at all. Davek's putting together a battle plan that's supposed to blunt these attacks. Right now you and Jodram need to think about it. That's all."
"All right. We will. Is there anything else?"
"Not at the moment, but I'll call again either way." A little smile creased Allana's lips. "If I were you, I'd invest in a long-range transmitter for your house."
"None of the farmers on Fengrine own one. They all use the central facility. We're not in the Core, you know."
"I know. It would be convenient, that's all."
Jade shook her head. "I remember something Grandpa Luke told me once. He wanted there to be a 'Jedi on every streetcorner.' Jedi interacting with normal beings all over the galaxy, living like them. That's what I'm trying to do."
"I think he'd be proud of you, in more ways than one."
Jade looked askance; she'd never been good with flattery. "Thanks."
Allana snorted amusement. "I'll talk to you again, Jade."
"Understood. May the Force be with you."
When the signal ended Jade released another sigh and left the comm station. She wasn't looking forward to tonight's conversation. Jodram, she knew, would insist on going himself. Nat would ask questions that demanded too many answers and Kol would sit in his high-bottom chair, watching the rest of his family with wide-open eyes and that took in everything and, Jade sometimes suspected, understood them better than a three-year-old had any right to.
As she walked across the yard toward her speeder the heard a roaring in the sky, the signal of that cargo ship coming in to land. She didn't look up into she realized that roar had a higher pitch than it was supposed to; the roar became a stutter and she arced her head back to see a clear blue sky. She looked around and saw other people staring up too, alarmed and confused. A few were pointing and followed their stabbed fingers. A ship was approaching from a distance, coming in over the sprawling farmlands around the settlement at a faster speed than it should have. It was still far off, still small, but she could see the corona of its engine-flares flickering madly. When she saw a tongue of flame lash out from one engine, she sprinted for the spaceport control tower not far from the transmission station.
She normally hated using Force suggestion on innocent beings, but in this case she needed to get through the secured zone as fast as she could. By the time she got to the traffic control center the staff was all bleeding tension in the Force. The first thing she heard as she stepped through the door was someone say, "Altitude's at twenty-eight hundred meters and dropping fast."
"Deceleration?" another voice asked.
"Negative."
"They can't land at their speed," scowled an older human who looked to be the flight control chief chief from the pips on his collar. "Hail them! Tell them to break off!"
"No response, sir. They're coming in hot."
"They'll tear through the whole town!"
Jade scampered across the platform toward the observation tower's broad viewports, and only then did her presence register with the panicked staff.
"Miss!" the control chief called. "What the hells do you think you're-"
Someone else grabbed him hard by the arm. "Sir, it's her!"
She barely heard them. She stood with both palms pressed against the cold glass, looking out at the sprawl of the settlement, the broad blue sky, and the growing shape of the freighter as it approached, trailing flames.
She took less than a second to burn the sight into her mind. Then she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let herself sink into the Force.
It was a paradox that had been so hard for her growing up. When you drew on the Force you used it to enact your will, but to successfully do it you had to surrender your will and let yourself dissolve into the immensity that was the galaxy's invisible unifying power. Letting go without losing your purpose was hard enough, but once she'd finally learned to do that the worst part had come. In letting go she'd let herself fall into something that was vast and great and powerful beyond comprehension and it had felt like she was being swallowed by agony. To touch the Force had been to touch her earliest memory of it: the horrible death of her mother at the hands of Darth Xoran. Every time she'd used the Force she'd felt some of that pain, and the more she'd used the greater the pain.
That was a long time ago, barely a memory. Now she fell without thought, without effort. She let herself be subsumed into the great invisible power that resonated with the final moments of her father. As Ben Skywalker's life had dissolved into the Force he'd left her warmth and strength and a love that would never pass away, and this was the power she drew from without hesitation.
She surrendered to the power and the power surrendered to her and they joined together like a tide to swell beneath the crashing ship. They caught it, slowed it. Its great careening speed and massive bulk was almost too much; as she stood before the glass, eyes still closed, her breathing grew fast, sweat dampened her face, and her hands began to tremble.
She didn't release or give in. She didn't worry, she didn't think. She made herself into a conduit for the great river of power that held the cargo ship over the town, then lowered it onto the long stretch of the landing platform. It was not a soft impact; as the great spacecraft's belly careened into the paved permacrete stretch, the impact sheared off metal plating and sent out sprays of friction-sparks. The heavy craft rebounded from impact, bounced up, and smashed down a second time. That collision was enough to knock its power generator out of alignment. The out-of-control engines finally died. The hauler screamed across the landing zone to its very edge, where the nose of its cockpit control section impacted against the spaceport's high barrier walls with a mild crunch.
Then it was over. Jade's eyes opened. Strength left her body and she crumpled to the floor. Panting hard, she tried to grab the glass for purchase but it slipped away from her; palms left long streaks of sweat as she fell.
She was surrounded by people but all she could make out was a forest of trouser-legs. Finally the gruff and gray-haired control chief squatted in front of her and put a hand against her face. His fingers were icy cold against her cheek; she savored the touch.
"Master Jedi-" he said, then froze. He didn't know what to say.
Someone behind him reported, "Emergency team on the tarmac now."
"Comm line established," someone else called. "The team reports minor injuries only, sir."
The controller's face relaxed into a relieved smile. "Thank you, Master Jedi. That was… That was amazing. I don't know how many lives you just saved."
The river inside her was dwindling down to a trickle. Her breathing stabilized and the shaking stopped. All that was left was an exhaustion greater than any toll physical exertion could take.
She found the power to reach up and cup the hand on her cheek, then smiled back. "Just doing my job," she said.
-{}-
By the time Jade got back to their home Jodram had already heard. When she'd stepped through the door she'd still looked faint from the exertion but she'd smiled and told him not to worry, surely knowing she couldn't stop him from doing just that.
"I didn't even think as I did it," she told him later that night, after dinner, after they'd finally put both sons to bed. "I just let it happen."
"I heard that ship burst its engine on some space debris coming through orbit. If it had crashed down in the middle of town-"
"It didn't."
"Because you didn't let it happen."
She sighed and leaned against him. Their bedroom on the second storey of the house was dark except for the glow of their bedstand lamp. "Sometimes you just know what to do. The Force moves you and you move in the Force."
He knew what she meant. The philosophy of surrender to the Force, and by surrender using it, was at the core of what all Jedi were taught. He'd experienced moments like that too, where he felt like he got just a little bit closer to the unifying oneness at the heart of the universe, but he knew, without a doubt, that he'd never have been able to do what his wife had this afternoon.
The reason was obvious. Some beings had an innately stronger connection with the Force than others. Jodram's father Doran was a Jedi; his aunt Jesmin had trained for a little while, then washed out because as hard as she tried she simply wasn't strong enough. Jodram was strong enough to be a knight like his father, but his raw abilities would never match Jade's. To be a Skywalker was to inherit a natural power few Jedi could comprehend.
Sometimes that power frightened him. He didn't know what it would mean for his sons. Jade's father and grandfather had lost and suffered deeply even as they built the Jedi Order into the thousand-strong organization it was today. Both her parents had died fighting Sith. Jade was gentle by temperament; she always had been and it was what had attracted him since they were teenage apprentices together. Perhaps because of what it had cost her family already, she showed no ambition to lead the Jedi Order. What she wanted was what Jodram wanted: to lead a simple life, raise their sons, and be a Jedi all the while. But sometimes, after getting unexpected reminders of just what a Skywalker could do, he wondered how long the Force would really let her remain what she was now.
"There's something else," she said out of nowhere.
Her tone was serious and he stiffened. "What do you mean?"
"I was in town to take a call from Allana."
"Oh, that's right." He'd forgotten amidst all this.
"She was relaying a request from Lowbacca. If the Jedi decide to mobilize and send people into the Unknown Regions, he'll want one of us to go."
"One of us?" he frowned.
"Our choice, she said." In the low light her green eyes looked big and deep. "It's important to keep one Jedi here, doing what we're supposed to be doing. And let's be honest, Fengrine doesn't need two arbiters anymore."
"I was thinking more about Nat and Kol."
"I know." She found his hand atop the bedsheets and squeezed it. "And I know what you're thinking."
Of course she would. "We don't know what's going on in the Unknown Regions. It's going to be dangerous no matter what. The boys..."
"They'll need us both."
He wanted to tell her, they'll need a Skywalker. He found himself aching to go, not least because the thought of raising the boys without her was too awful to bear.
"This is all hypothetical," she said. "We shouldn't try and decide right away."
"You're right. We should sleep on it."
"For a night or two." She said softly and squeezed his hand again. "To be honest, I'm still a little tired."
"Are you sure you'll be okay?"
"I'll be fine by morning. Don't worry about me. Today was just a little hectic."
Understatement was another thing Jade was good at. When they turned out the light and lay down together he rolled onto his side and watched her stir slightly, then go still. She fell asleep quickly, like she deserved to. Jodram spent a long time watching the slow rise of her chest and the curves of her face, faint in the moonlight drifting through their window. It took a long time to clear his mind and surrender to sleep, but eventually he did.
-{}-
Growing up Allana had spent as much time aboard the Millennium Falcon as she had in the Fountain Palace. Her grandfather's old tramp freighter had been about as far away from royal splendor as possible, and she liked to think the clashing settings had made her pragmatic and adaptable. As an Alliance Senator she'd mostly traveled from system to system in an elegant emerald-hulled Hapan shuttle. As Chief of State she'd used a variety of official craft depending on the situation, all of them on the high end up upscale. Now that she'd settled into her Jedi-ambassador role she did more traveling than ever, and she was back to the Hapan ship she'd used as senator.
It was somewhat appropriate, then, that she spent the long hyperspace ride from Coruscant to Ossus reviewing the latest bits of news to have trickled out of the closed-off Consortium. As Allana was busy with her other duties, the intelligence-gathering operation was managed by Tanith Zel. Tall and red-haired like her late mother Taryn, she spent most of her time on the colony the Hapan exiles had been granted in Mid-Rim, but she'd stopped by Coruscant to personally deliver the latest report to Allana and was now riding out with her to the Jedi world.
The younger woman sat patiently in the shuttle's crew lounge and waited for Allana to finish reading the report. When she was done Allana put the datapad in her lap and asked, "Are you sure we can't get any more details on this?"
Tanith crossed her arms over her chest. "I don't think there are any more details to get. Our sources are close. They've gotten the best information anyone could."
Tanith had been managing their spies inside the Cluster for years and Allana no longer knew the specific names or positions of any of them. That was the best for operational security, but right now it left her in the dark and she didn't like it. "How old was Serissa Lohr?"
"Seventeen."
That was too young to die, no matter who your grandmother was. "And how was she when Melor, ah, died?"
"She was seven years old when her mother was executed, so she was essentially raised by her grandmother."
Allana restrained a frown. Tanith had been about the same age during the Sith-led coup on Hapes that had claimed her parent's lives. Jade Skywalker had been five. Losing parents early had hurt both girls deeply; in some ways Serissa Lohr must have hurt even worse, because she was raised by the one who'd ordered her mother killed.
"I suppose it could have been an accident," Allana said. "Or a suicide. Or something else."
"When she executed her daughter, the queen made a show of it," Tanith said. "This is very different. From our last report they still haven't found the princess' body."
"But they're sure she fell into the ocean."
"The reports suggest that. But it's all very unclear."
"I'm sure the rumor mill in the court's more active than ever." Allana sighed. "These reports say the queen's been in seclusion. Is she planning to have some kind of funeral? A memorial ceremony if they don't find the body?"
"Our sources have no idea. It sounds like nobody, not even the courtiers, know."
"Which lets more and more rumors spread."
"Exactly. All we can say for sure is that Princess Serissa is gone."
Allana tapped the edges of the datapad. "Do you think this could be part of some kind of plot? The queen has no successor now. If she's gone there will be a power struggle. It could get very nasty unless someone's already jockeyed to take over."
"If she's smart she'll name a successor fast, just to keep the knives out of her back," Tanith said. "And whatever else she is, Demia Lohr is smart."
A question was pregnant between them, so Allana decided to say it aloud. "If the queen dies without a successor, what do you think we should do?"
Tanith was usually quick to give her opinion. Now she hesitated, which meant she wasn't sure of the right answer.
"It's been almost thirty years," she said eventually. "A whole generation is growing up on New Hapes that never saw the homeworld at all."
"But they still want to go there some day."
Tanith, who could barely remember Hapes herself, nodded firmly. "Parents pass beliefs to their children. If anything the younger people are the most convinced that someday we should take back what was stolen from us."
"Do you think there'd be opportunity in a succession struggle?"
"In theory. If a Ducha comes out on top who favors letting the Exiles back in, letting you and your mother and the Jedi in, then yes, it's possible."
Allana smiled bitterly. "But not very."
"No. The queen purged your family's allies very effectively."
Not so effectively they didn't have intel sources, but spying was very different from statecraft. "Given the people we have on the ground now, how much do you think we could effect things, if it came to a succession struggle?"
"That's a hard question. I'd have to think about it. Maybe get in contact with our people inside the Consortium."
"I understand. There's no rush, but I'd like to have some idea."
"Of course." Tanith paused, then asked, "If Jedi teams go into the Unknown Regions, do you plan on joining them?"
The change in topic was sudden, but not unexpected. "If Grand Master Lowbacca asks me to, I will."
"But do you think it's likely?"
"I think it's definitely possible."
"I'll keep that in mind."
Allana leaned forward. "You've been putting more effort than anyone into keeping track of things on Hapes. If an important decision needs to be made, and my mother and I aren't immediately available, you should be ready to take it yourself."
She blinked. "You're still Princess of Hapes and your mother is still Queen."
Allana didn't know when she'd stopped believing in that, but it had been a while ago. Tanith, though, spoke with full conviction. Allana had lived on Hapes long enough to know its many ugly sides and felt some of the loneliness and alienation that had driven her mother into a hidden affair with her father in the first place. For Tanith Hapes was an ideal and a goal, given just enough definition by childhood memory to seem attainable.
If the day ever came when the Exiles could go back to Hapes, Allana and her mother wouldn't lead the return. Tanith and her generation would, and after spending all their lives in the Alliance they'd bring back new and foreign ideas that would change the Consortium's ossified aristocracy forever. Allana wanted that day to come, not for herself but for Tanith and all the Hapans living under a murderous queen propped up by Sith.
She said, "I'm not as young as I used to be. My mother certainly isn't, and we both have other responsibilities besides."
"I don't want to take away your authority."
"You already have, but that's a good thing. You need to be ready to take more of it." She gave Tanith a little smile. "I think you'll handle it just fine."
Tanith looked away, embarrassed. It was a rare expression on her and it faded quickly into determination.
That was good, Allana thought. Whatever happened on Hapes would happen; she'd long ago resigned herself to having little effect there. What needed her attention now was uncharted space. There were mysteries and dangers hidden there to which Hapes could never to compare.
