CH 41: Approaching trials
After master Vokara Che submitted her findings to the Jedi High Council, her request to investigate the lightsaber of the said padawan was approved with unanimity. Any additional details to shed light on this unusual matter were very much welcome.
Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano were both present when the master healer made her presentation. It took all of their self-control to mask their real feelings, given their own memories of what they've seen on Cato Neimoidia. It was especially difficult for Ahsoka, having been traumatized by the attack on her life, an attack that came from none other than one of her own, an ally and, dare she even say it, a sort of friend. She hadn't known padawan Hivaarr for that long. The two had met during the Battle of Christophsis, where she caught a glimpse of what he was capable of. All that power, turned against innocents and at fellow Jedi… she shuddered.
What should they do? What could they do?
Anakin remembered the words of the Sith Apprentice. She loved Nelo, that was as clear as daylight on Tatooine, because no one would go to such lengths to save him in such a situation. And to think that she managed to stop that meltdown by using Force Lightning…
Apropos Tatooine: that accent was bugging him. It was quite possible that she too came from there and he wondered if he had ever met her before. She had the potential to redeem herself, given what he had seen her do, but he wasn't sure she wanted to be associated with the Jedi Order. She had many crimes against the Republic and the Jedi to answer for. As the last known Dark Acolyte who was still alive, besides Ventress, she may just be a valuable contact.
They had to get to the bottom of all this. He was afraid of what might happen to Nelo Hivaarr, if all the details were to be leaked to military command and especially to the public.
Later that day…
Battlemaster Cin Drallig typed in the password to his personal security box. It opened with a beep, revealing a leather bag with a particular silver and black lightsaber inside. Master Healer Vokara Che instantly felt the traces of Sith energy lurking about the kybur crystal.
He carefully put the lightsaber on his workbench, binding it down and using a set of special screwdrivers, pincers, and cutters to carefully disassemble it without resorting to the Force for help. Both he and his fellow master were wearing gloves and restraining their powers in order to minimize any tainting of possible evidence that they might glean from the padawan's weapon. It was meticulous work, took definitely longer, but it did prove most rewarding in the end.
The weapon's casing was very scratched, punctured and dented overall. The inner body of it was still relatively functional from a technical point of view, although at the rate that the padawan was using it, it would have exploded at one point, seeing as a few power conduits were degraded. He slowly disentangled the wiring and the last metal casing before slowly opening the shaft chamber where the kyber crystal was located.
The source of the laser beam, the light that the jedi took to when surrounded by darkness in despair, was very dim. With the help of the pincers, he removed it from its spot and turned it around, letting it bask in the natural light of the afternoon, pouring through the window of his workshop. Every padawan worth his salt would do well to remember that each and every kyber crystal was attuned to the Force, their colors reflecting not only the alignment of the user they attracted, but also their character.
This crystal in particular had almost lost its shine. He remembered it being a shining yellow, but from knight Skywalker's testimony, it had somehow turned red, a sign that it had "bled" most likely through its exposure to the Dark Side of the Force. Very few crystals were red in nature, and they would only occur on planets such as Korriban, Malachor V, Dromund Kaas or Dxun, where a great loss of human life, hatred and suffering left their mark on the Force, stopping short of opening a Wound in the Force. He had master librarian Jocasta Nu search the archives for the private documents relating to the padawans and their acquiring of the crystals. It wasn't hard to find, and it confirmed his suspicions: Nelo Hivaarr's kyber crystal came from Ilum, was golden in colour and was all in all an unusual occurrence. It was said to be strong and sensitive to its user's power and mood, therefore, it was not coincidence that it was weak when its user was in a coma.
Cin Drallig turned the crystal around, sharpening his senses to try to get a feeling of what "memories" were lingering there. He caught traces of the padawan's regret, sadness at his master's death, at the way his troops were massacred and how his saber couldn't stand in between the lasers and their bodies. The weapon was so attuned to him that he could feel "tears" emanating from it, much like a lightsaber bleeds when it is exposed to passionate energies.
Vokara Che also extended her hand, carefully picking up on the emanations, trying to get a match for what she read in the padawan's mind. Moments later, she gasped.
"Is something wrong?" asked her worried colleague, eyes on the object.
It took her a few moments to recollect herself, before speaking:
"I felt the hopelessness of the padawan as his troops and master died before his eyes. I felt that sadness suddenly turn to hate. I felt the torturing and maiming of enemies." She said, stuttering, her eyes fixated on the crystal and yet unblinking.
Battlemaster Drallig frowned, laying the crystal back in its casing.
"It felt so real! He hid the brunt of his feelings and memories from me somehow, unconscious as he was, but now, I felt what had happened on their capital ship. He must have killed and/or maimed the Sith assassins sent after them."
Her colleague listened to her unsettling words, all the while piecing the weapon back together. To the right of it, he noted the details on his datapad, intending to submit them with his report later. After a few minutes, he managed to replace the damaged parts, sealing them off in another plasteel case.
He raised the weapon and pressed the ignition button.
It revealed a flickering red light, which turned to yellow, then slowly settled for an orange hue. He turned it around, looking at it from different angles, both by hovering it in the sunlight and in artificial light. At one point, he closed off the windows and the turned on his special goggles.
An orange lightsaber wasn't unique. There were antecedents and even some current members of the order had them in their possession. Yet they were naturally so, whereas his seemed to have gained this colour upon him losing the connection to the Dark Side of the Force, as knight Skywalker and padawan Tano mentioned in their report. The martial yellow of a Force sentinel combined with the menacing red of a Sith warrior, fusing to become an unsettling, unstable orange. How poetic…
Master Che took hold of the weapon, carefully wielding it and giving it a few swings at the dummies located at the end of the vast room.
"What are you up to, Vokara?"
"I have seen and felt some of what he'd seen and felt. I am trying to emulate his moves in the hopes of uncovering more…" she answered slowly.
Hours later, the two returned to the High Council, presenting their finds, bringing the weapon with them. It left most of them speechless for minutes, captured by memories of what they've read about the history of their institution. The Jedi Temple held many memories of heroic, tragic and criminal deeds. The times of the Old Republic taught valuable lessons and they tried to take heed. Or that's what they were telling themselves.
"So, he did fall to the Dark Side." Said master Obi-Wan Kenobi on a low tone.
"Not only that, but he killed, maimed and destroyed not only droids but living, breathing sentients." Added master Windu, with his face in his hands.
"Can we consider it a matter of self-defense under duress, of psychological issues?" asked Anakin, trying to lessen the blow for his brother-by-oath.
"Let's assume that you are true in your assessment and that it was self-defense. Does someone in such a situation leave the relative "safety" of his capital ship, abandoning his troops in the middle of a planetary fight in order to give chase to the assassins? To leave for the unknown and jeopardize himself and an entire planet? Not only that, but if the preliminary reports are to be believed, he wanted to destroy an overpopulated city, for Force's sake!" said Master Shaak Ti, her face very serious. "That sure looks like genocidal intent to me and calling it unfit for a Jedi is an understatement!" she raised her tone, as if correcting a young novice.
"We understand that you have a particularly strong, brotherly bond with padawan Hivaarr. Even so, or, rather, because of that, I urge you to remember your lessons, knight Skywalker. Control your emotions, for this is a very grievous matter." Master healer Vokara Che's words rang true in his ears, but he wished he could have something solid to counter them with.
The deliberation went on for hours to an end, eclipsing any other matters of that day. Meanwhile, they were waiting for the results of the GAR's own investigation into the Battle of Naboo, as well as the reports that kept flowing in from Cato Neimoidia. This was the most serious case of gross mismanagement on the part of the Order in a long, long time.
It was late in the evening when they put the matter to rest and discussed the rest of the war effort. Finally, at near midnight (Coruscant time), they went to sleep.
It was ironic how an entire planet seemed to be both asleep and awake at the same time, the traffic never seeming to stop even for a second. But that was the capital world of the Republic: a gigantic, living mix of living organisms and machines reaching down many, many levels, beyond what the normal eyes could ever see, and the normal mind could comprehend. All the races, all the ages, all the professions, good or bad, were going about their lives, some benign, others malign. And some were very, very malign, yet hidden in the plainest of sights, for all eyes to miss.
Two days later…
High Chancellor Sheev Palpatine was worried.
His presence was being requested by the Military Oversight Commission (MOC) and the Commission for the Relationship with Neutral Worlds (CRNW), both of which unanimously desired a common meeting with him, a very rare occurrence even in these troubled times. He had his aides help him prepare by sifting through the latest official news as well as the military reports. They came up with a concise version just a couple of hours before the meeting.
When the time was up, he, alongside no less than 50 Senatorial Guards, left his building to go to the Meeting Hall nr. 43. It was a large, yet reclusive space in the Senate building, checked daily for bugs and other surveillance devices and isolated against foreign interference. His impressive retinue served to deter any attempts on his life, as well as any trivial questions from simple senators passing by. Since this was an emergency meeting, they simply had to wait.
Half of the guards separated and stood guard outside the room, while the other half entered before the High Chancellor, taking up position close to the walls of the room and in the corners, checking every inch with their severe look, before politely bowing to those present. Sheev Palpatine followed suit.
The large, spartan room was white as marble, with a lengthy, oval table and 40 chairs situated at equal intervals between each other. The light was cold, clear, illuminating every nook and cranny of the room. No windows were present and the walls of plasteel were very, very thick, just as the floor and roof were, ensuring that no one would be able to eavesdrop. All chairs were occupied, save for three additional ones at the furthest of the table, which were reserved for the High Chancellor and his two aides.
"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming here. In your report to my office, you mentioned that this meeting was of utmost importance and that I needed to read the classified files provided, which I did. A very worrying predicament, indeed. Please, let us begin." He said with his clear, politician voice, while adopting a worried stance.
A rodian woman turned her head to him, bowed respectfully, then rose and presented the news using the hologram table:
"During the last few days, our work revolved around the destruction of the Separatist capital ship "The Malevolence", which was wiping out one fleet after the other. With the help of Jedi generals Obi-Wan-Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, our fighter-bomber squadrons were able to put an end to that menace. What is strange, though, is that Naboo, your home world, sir, had been the target of yet another attack at the same time, which couldn't have been a coincidence."
As she spoke, video footage of the defensive operations around the Medical Station and the downing of General Grievous's ship was being shown. It was a sight that most of those present had become accustomed to: sparking wreckage, damaged and burning ships, floating clone bodies and rests of droids in space etc.
They were not, however, prepared to see the destruction wrought upon Naboo. They had seen what the media had already shown, including the funerary pyre in the capital city of Theed, its smoke raising towards the sky, visible from very far away. They had also seen what the media was not allowed to investigate: the scene of the attempt on the Queen's life, the outskirts of Theed and the crisped countryside, the many lakes and rivers polluted by oil and weaponry discharge…
One of her colleagues bent over the table, introducing a new datachip into the central receiver. A new hologram appeared, showing the space around the planet Naboo. It could best be described as a graveyard.
"As painful as it is for me to describe it, this is the "normal" part of the footage we've been provided with. Imagine being on this battlefield, commanding your troops against more than impossible odds, trying to divide them to repel both ground troops, enemy ships, and boarding parties at the same time." Her colleague, a Nautolan male, added.
"Both our Jedi general, knight Krav Erladin, and jedi commander, padawan Nelo Hivaarr, have done all they could to stem the attack, according to the footage we've received and the testimonies of the few surviving clone troopers. However, after the capital ship was boarded and the general was killed alongside all the troops and most of the command staff on board, the footage stopped." The Rodian woman continued.
"And this is where Knight Skywalker's investigation should bring new light onto the matter. Initially, the troops thought that both their padawan commander and their Jedi general had died. In reality however, padawan Nelo Hivaarr survived."
Chancellor Palpatine raised his brows at the mention of young Skywalker. Such an active, tireless warrior, dashing from one battle to the other, from bombing the Malevolence to rescuing poor senator Amidala to this. He was genuinely curious as to what happened next. The other padawan, however, was a nuisance, to say the least.
"The Jedi Order has so far been secretive about their side of the investigation. They must have the missing information, linking the events on the capital ship with what comes next." The Nautolan senator said ominously.
Now that did get the chancellor's attention. This case was getting more and more interesting, even as he already knew what followed.
"The padawan somehow smuggled himself onboard one of the surviving Separatist battlecruisers. Undetected, he travelled "with them" to their base of operations, Cato Neimoidia."
"Whose neutral status and lack of reaction to the occupation is dubious and will be investigated upon by my commission." A middle aged human female senator of Corellia, representing the CRNW, interjected.
"Indeed. Maybe without what had transpired, we wouldn't have known about the Separatist Alliance's occupation of that sector." Palpatine answered with a thoughtful voice.
"General Alestayr Kaspum is still piecing together the evidence being sent to us by our counter-information division. The Neimoidian security forces have been compiling videoclips, images and several other data with regards to the padawan's… meddling let's call it." The Rodian woman continued. "Going against all military protocol and with complete disregard for the lives of civilians around him, Nelo Hivaarr detonated multiple fuel- and weapon-storage facilities. The explosions destroyed countless warships AND civilian ones in the capital city's spaceport, not to mention adjacent buildings. With a cold heart and methodical mind, he appears to have targeted a few more weapons caches, a barrack, then decided to go nuclear, literally."
Chancellor Palpatine was looking more worried with each passing second, but for multiple reasons.
His other persona, Darth Sidious, realized that this padawan and his forces undid his apprentice's entire campaign of recruiting dark acolytes by killing almost all of them in less than 48 hours. At the same time, this indiscretion exposed their vested interests in Cato Neimoidia and Nute Gunray's associates would have to be reminded to stay tactful.
His public persona, if he could call it that, was worried that a Jedi padawan had gone haywire, attempting to destroy a whole megacity to exact revenge on its occupiers.
"I apologize for interrupting your thoughts, sir, but you have to see this!"
A compilation of pictures and films followed. They showed a figure, dressed in a Neimoidian security uniform, whose face was partially covered by the helm. calmly walking towards the megacity's nuclear powerplant. The way he went about it was very methodical and, to the naked eye, it wouldn't have aroused any suspicion. The infiltration worked.
In the next couple of hours, they couldn't see much, because the padawan (or someone else) had tampered with the cameras. Some isolated footage did show him brandishing two red coloured lightsabers. He cut through droids and sentients alike, having no remorse. In one film he could be seen using the Force to shatter a large group of droids. In another, he decapitated two sentients, probably humans, who were dressed like him. He had no qualms of throwing an explosive device in one of the facility's garrisons either, killing another one dozen guards who were changing shifts. Molten plasteel, contorted metal and body parts of various sizes were strewn about as if in a horror movie.
The last picture taken of him before the battle for the reactors was when he landed in the heavy water used to cool the huge radioactive rods. A large backpack, probably filled with explosives, could be seen on him.
What followed were written testimonies of survivors, footage from after the conflagration, coupled with the data from the systems, which clearly showed that there was an attempt to disrupt the plant by destroying the reactors and the command panels.
All evidence pointed to him taking it upon himself to do terrible damage against the Separatists and their collaborators. It was a 180 degrees attitude change in the modus operandi of this jedi padawan. There have been absolutely no indications of sadistic inclinations, terrible hate or thirst for revenge on his part before. His record within the Grand Army of the Republic painted a similar picture, namely that of a dedicated, self-sacrificing human padawan. The only data which might provide a clue was a recall from active military duty by the Jedi Order, followed by an assignment to the Coruscant Security forces, CorSec. Even so, such recalls were not uncommon, so he and the others gathered there had no idea what might have been amiss at that time. They needed to interrogate the rogue Padawan and access the evidence gathered by the Jedi Order.
"Let us not forget that the evidence received from the authorities on Cato Neimoidia is to be analyzed with great caution! As part of the Intergalactic Banking Clan (IGBC), they have been dealing with Nute Gunray and the Trade Federation in the past, quite actively so. They haven't reported the breach in neutrality; therefore, we must push for diplomatic consequences." The chairwoman of the CRNW chimed in. "Our commission will summon the representatives of Cato Neimoidia and the IGBC for clarification. We may be looking at a sanction package!" she added on a very serious tone.
Now that the said issue was out of the way, the senators turned their attention to prosecuting Nelo Hivaarr. For the moment, he was to be suspended from all his positions inside the Grand Army of the Republic until his trial was concluded. He was still benefitting from legal immunity as a member of the Jedi Order, based on the special statuses that the ancient institution was awarded in the Ruusan Reformation. They had the right to conduct their own separate investigations when it came to issues concerning their own members and the ever mysterious "Force". All they could do now is sift through the evidence and petition the High Council to share what they had learned in the meantime. If that failed or if they couldn't find anything, the Senate's judiciary commission would have to get involved and officially request the surrender of the boy to be put on trial with what they had.
Either way, the odds were not looking good. The Neimoidians accused him of terrorist activities, premeditated murder, attempted genocide and attempted ecological disaster on a planetary level for his planned destruction of one of their hanging cities. If he was to be found guilty, he would be publicly degraded and face decades in a penal colony at the very least. The prosecutors could even ask for the death penalty, and they would likely obtain it.
In any case, this was a very unusual trial with many variables and even more mysteries around it. Why had it happened? What would be the consequences? Should Jedi so young be allowed to lead battle groups?
The Senate's commissions had a lot of work ahead of them!
Author's note:
Disclaimer: Star Wars and its universe barring the OCs here are the property of the ominous empire of Disney, having been purchased from the eternal George Lucas. No profit is being made with this story which exists for entertainment purposes only!
Hello, dear readers! I am experiencing a chain of personal problems which have been robbing me of the much needed inspiration to write on this Fanfic. If any of you want to help with suggestions, I am open!
With kindest regards, Serdancos