Power
A Harry Potter fanfiction.
The depths of space. Beautiful, quiet, peaceful. For those sentient beings that would try to travel through it, great technological strides must be made over tens of thousands of years of intelligent civilisation. Spaceships would need to be able to travel at speeds beyond mortal comprehension. They would need screens of energy, to protect the vessel from damage that would usually be sustained when traveling at such ludicrous velocity. And computers so incredible, so intelligent as to map out a moving, living galaxy in binary code and plot a collision-less course through it in only a couple of minutes. Such ingenuity gives those capable of grasping it's significance hope for the future of civilisation.
Civilisation, however, is not only made up of those who wish to study the way the universe works to better the lives of their people. It is also made up of those ignorant enough to think it a good idea to use such magnificent technology to blow the fuck out of each-other.
And, unfortunately, it is with that element of 'intelligent' life that our story begins.
In the orbit of what is really quite an insignificant planet (both strategically and materialistically) two nameless forces wage a nameless war over ideals that very few of the combatants have the capacity to comprehend.
Missiles streak through the vacuum of space, great blasts of energy travel from one ship to the next, and a great many people are slain in gruesome, violent ways. The lucky ones die instantly in a quick flash of light, while the rest are sucked cruelly into space, silently screaming into the void as they are slowly turned inside out.
Vessels of all sizes fill the battleground in a close, crowded, disorganised mess. All around, one man fighters and bombers wiz about, blasting each other with bolts of red, blue and green energy. Frigates containing hundreds of people do their best to protect the larger ships with their many turrets. And great Cruisers carrying thousands of personnel attempt to manoeuvre through the mess the conflict has resolved into.
It is on one such Cruiser we find a great catalyst for change. Not a change that will matter to any of the combatants, or the people commanding them, or even to the ideals they fight for. It won't make a difference to any living being for many millions of years.
The Cruiser has taken heavy damage. There are several large holes on the hull, through which great plumes of flame rise as oxygen, debris, flammable materials and people are sucked into space. Atop a great steel pillar there used to sit the bridge, a command centre for the ship, but now there sits only warped, twisted metal. Two of the ship's six giant rear thrusters have exploded causing great damage to the immediate surrounding area, but more importantly compromising the ships skeletal structure.
The great panels holding the Cruiser together whine and groan with the effort of staying in place against the force of the vacuum, and the many thousands of occupants know they don't have long to live. Some turn their weapons on themselves, to save them the agony of the void. Some weep. Some stare out into space, despondent. Some have become so heartless they can't bring themselves to care.
One of the many doomed souls is running aimlessly in absolute panic. She, however, is different to the rest of them in that she in neither a soldier, a crew member or a civilian.
She is Jedi.
The guardians of peace and justice throughout the galaxy; Jedi are trained in diplomacy, mediation, ethics and war. What sets them apart from regular law enforcement is their control over what they call 'the Force'.
The Force, as they understand it, is an energy field undetectable through science that binds matter together, and which ebbs and flows throughout existence like a vast ocean of cosmic power. Through an unknown mutation, some individuals are born with the power to manipulate this energy. They can use it to do a great many things: manipulate matter, see glimpses of the past, present and future, gain control over the minds of others.
Jedi knowledge is passed down through the generations via two methods. The first is from a Master to an Apprentice, through years of study and practice. The second, is via a Jedi holocron: a small pyramid shaped object containing the experience, knowledge, and sage advice of a long-deceased Jedi Master.
This young Jedi in particular, the apprentice to a respected, wise, cunning and now late Jedi Knight, happens to have one such holocron on her person as she sprints through the corridors of the ship. The Force screams at her in warning, adding to her panic. She's aware of the danger. She knows she's going to die. But she's not in a fit state of mind to do anything rather than try to run away.
She's only fourteen standard years old after all. Some would argue too young to be gaining experience in war. Others would say that ability matter rather than age, and she is indeed a very gifted apprentice.
Fat lot of good it's doing her now.
With a massive grating noise, like nails on a blackboard, the entire ship trembles as if suffering from an earthquake, and suddenly she's flying down the corridor at impossible speed. On a reflex, she grabs at an open doorframe and miraculously get a firm grip. With a great heave, she pulls herself inside even as other crew members fly past, their screams of terror lost to her over the feeling of their agonising deaths projected in the Force. With a thought and a wave of her hand, she locks the door.
The room she's found herself in would be quite beautiful under any other circumstance. A large expanse, with metal walkways and flashing computer terminals are forgotten in lue of the technological masterpiece in the centre.
The ships Hyperdrive: a great sphere of metal, with visible streams of glowing blue liquid flowing through its veins in complex, mystical patterns.
At the moment however, it was cracked in several places, spitting the blue liquid, and hissing vaporised water and coolant. The corpse of the head engineer lay at its feet, mostly disintegrated by the volatile fluid covering his head and torso, his last used tool still clutched proudly in his gloved hand. The room was flashing red, and an alarm was blaring.
The girl took all this in, and gave her mind over to despair. She sat down in the corner of the colossal space, pulled her knees up to her chest and thought of nothing as the reality of what was happening came crashing down around her. She would never see her friends at the temple again, never become a Jedi Knight, never fulfil any of her dreams. The boy she'd had been sweet on (despite attachment being forbidden for a Jedi) back at the temple would never hold her again. She would never do as she had once dreamed and seek out her birth parents, meet them, make them proud of the person she had become. She would only be nothing, one of countless whispers in the force.
And she wept.
And then, suddenly, she became nothing. The explosion, being as close to the volatile hyperdrive as she was, ripped her limb from limb. Limbs to dust. Dust to atoms. Very little could hope to survive being that close to an exploding hyperdrive of that size.
Almost nothing, in fact.
Interestingly, Jedi holocrons are made of a material that can absorb a very large amount of energy. They need to be, to contain what is essentially the soul of a very powerful, experienced Jedi Master. It would take throwing it into a super nova to destroy one.
So, as it is, the holocron the (now dead) child had with her simply hurtled off into space, in a seemingly random direction, at close to light speed. It had so much kinetic energy, that it was able to leave the orbit of the elliptical galaxy which had been it's home of its existence thus far.
And it kept going.
The last of those who survived the chaotic battle died of old age.
It continued on.
The girl's sweetheart died an old man, having lived well as a Jedi Master on the council, but never truly moving past the death of the girl he had once loved.
Still, the holocron travelled.
The war long since ended, the ideals fought for forgotten. The people who died, forgotten. The Jedi order, forgotten. The great civilisation that spanned a galaxy tragically killed itself with its own stupidity.
And what should never be forgotten was lost.
A long time ago
In a galaxy far, far away…