Symmetry and Imperfection

Part 15

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It took much time and tinkering to get the aging communications equipment to work at all. Between having to find a clear channel to slice and secure and cajoling the connection into stability, Naum began to worry that Abi would wake and find him missing. She was suspicious of everyone – not that he could blame her – but he wanted to do nothing more that would make her see Jedi in a bad light.

The connection finally stabilized and Naum sighed in relief. The Council was fanatical about getting reports from their agents in the field.

"Knight Koghan, what is the status of your mission?" The image of a small, pink-skinned being, one empty eye socket closed by a scar and a topknot of thin brownish hair resolved itself on the receiver.

Naum's sigh of relief turned into a quickly suppressed groan of disappointment.

Of all the Council that might have taken the com tonight, Naum wished that it had not been Master Piell.

The Lannik always saw things in black and white. His mind ran in straight lines and he had little use for any deviation from what he saw as the sure course. While the small master was one to carry through with a plan, despite any obstacles, he had little care for those who might be caught between him and his goal. While he had compassion for those hapless beings, it was Naum's opinion that compassion after the fact was the next thing to useless. The master focused on the Unifying Force, discounting the Living Force as being purely of the moment, and therefore trivial for one who took the long view.

Naum was becoming of the mind that the Living Force influenced the Unifying Force. Certainly the effects of 'trivial beings' were being felt throughout the galaxy. With the chaos that this mission had become, and the many shades of gray between the black and white, there could not be a worse choice of master to hear his report.

"There are many developments within the scope of the mission, Master Piell. I was hoping that the Council might be able to guide me to some resolution." If he could get someone like Master Dimas or Master Uadi

"The Council has given you a mission. We are concerned that you accomplish it as directed, not with side issues, Knight Koghan." Piell's ears flattened perpendicular to his head and his scarred face showed annoyance.

No, there was not a worse master to whom he could report. Naum took a deep breath, banished emotion from his mind, and reported the events only in direct relation to Abhaia. Where he felt that he could, he laced in what he knew of her past, and of the rogue Jedi on her trail. When he brought up the people she had left behind, suggesting the Council would find no opposition if they were to evacuate Illoni of the captive women and children, he received a very rude shock.

"That is irrelevant to your mission, Knight Koghan."

Naum could only blink at the hologram and think that his transmission must have crossed another on the same frequency and scrambled the words.

"How?" The question leaped from his brain to his tongue before he could censor it.

Now Master Piell wore the incredulous expression that only a moment before had been on his own face. Naum almost expected his topknot to stand on end from astonishment. "Knight Koghan?"

"How is the welfare of the people, suffering people, held unjustly, treated as livestock, irrelevant to my mission? Especially as the perverted miscreants calling themselves Jedi are the ones holding them and who had a hand in the creation of the mission you sent me on?" Naum's voice was utterly level, but memories of Qui-Gon and other maverick masters who made the Council squirm filled his head. "We are fond of calling ourselves the guardians of freedom and justice, master, but whose freedom and justice are we guarding? The people suffer, master, and where are the Jedi? Hiding like phrix bugs when someone turns on a light."

The Lannik was looking at him as if Naum had spontaneously grown an extra head. "You were told to acquire the woman, ascertain whether or not she is capable of being rehabilitated and to neutralize"

Naum raised his voice, the first time he had ever done so to a member of the Council. "You mean, I was told to kill her and scuttle back under a rock if we attracted any notice."

He was tremendously gratified to see the flap-eared stump flinch.

"Knight Koghan" Peill stressed the title.

"Yes, Master Piell, I am a Jedi Knight. I took an oath to uphold justice, and freedom. To foster peace and alleviate suffering. To uphold the dignity and value of all beings." Bitterness coated his tongue with the taste of ashes and dust. "I fought, Master, to live that oath. I held to the Code. I will live and die a Jedi and know that I upheld the spirit of the Jedi, rather than what we have allowed ourselves to become."

Piell's jaw was almost resting on his chest and Naum was waiting for a thousand generations of Jedi to arise and strike him dead. What he had said was so close to Skywalker's defiance of the Council that it gave Naum the shivers.

It apparently reminded Master Piell of the same instance. It was one of the wedge events that had driven the people even farther from seeing the not only Jedi, but the Republic Senate, as having anything to do with them or their 'petty' concerns. The Lannik master gathered himself for a rebuttal and then stopped, his eyes tracking something in the dimness behind Naum.

Turning, Naum caught a flash of scarlet in the darkness. A soft step gritting in stone dust and sand reached his ears and Abi stepped into the light, her wide blue eyes fixed on him. Her sleep had not been restful, she was disheveled, and looked even more exhausted than when she had laid down some four hours ago.

"Abi" He had to explain to her something that he could not even begin to explain to himself, stopping when she raised one small hand.

"I heard enough, Jedi Koghan." Quiet and soft, her voice silenced him with its tone of resolve and her eyes were weary and haunted as they met his. "You are a Jedi knight and an honorable man. You are all that I was told a Jedi could be."

"But" He stopped in astonishment as she stepped up to him and pressed a finger to his lips, the only physical contact she had permitted, much less initiated.

"Hush. I know what you were ordered to do. I know, now, that you omitted a great many things that you should have told me. But I also understand why you did it." A smile ghosted across her lips. "We all have secrets, Naum. You are a good and loyal man, I bear you no ill-will for doing what you felt you had to do. I will trust you after this to listen to your own conscience and not the dictates of another."

She removed the silencing finger from his lips Naum found himself falling into the aquamarine of her eyes. Piell was jabbering, but the words made no sense. Nothing made sense anymore. Slender golden-brown fingers brushed through his hair, his hands rested somehow on her slender waist, and he registered the shock of her lips on his.

Piell's jabbering stopped as if someone had tossed him down a black hole and there was only the sounds of surf and rain. Only the feeling of Abhaia's light frame against his and the benediction of her kiss.

Abi broke the kiss, her arms twined around him as she smiled into his eyes. There were a thousand things that he wanted to say, but she spoke first in a voice resonant with power.

"Sleep, Naum Koghan."

~