Star Wars Infinities: The Warrior
By Christopher W. Blaine (darth_yoshi@yahoo.com)
DISCLAIMER: The characters and situations contained in this story are ©2002 by George Lucas and are used herein without permission for fan-related, non-profit entertainment purposes only. This original work of fiction is ©2002 by Christopher W. Blaine and may not be reproduced in part or as a whole without the express permission of the author.
CHAPTER 8
"Son of a Sith-spawned gutter whore!" Ferrin Durron exclaimed as the Millennium Falcon came out of hyperspace. Alarms were screaming and lights were flashing, giving the impression of absolute chaos.
It could not have been a better explanation of the situation they were currently in.
He looked over to his co-pilot, a boy of fourteen with unkempt black hair. "What the hell happened?"
The boy snapped back. "We hit a large gravity mass!"
Ferrin looked out of the viewport to see what appeared to be a small moon in the middle of nowhere. Several large vessels, wedge-shaped and bristling with turbolasers, surrounded the moon. "It's a fleet of some-type."
"Brilliant, dad; what gave it away?" the boy asked as he pulled the throttle controls back and put the ship in a tight turn. The communications light suddenly came to life, casting the relatively dark cockpit in a red glow. "We're being hailed."
Ferrin nodded but did not move to make a reply. Instead, he was intently looking at the scanning equipment readouts. After several moments, he saw that several small fighters were being launched from the moon. "They're inorganic…mechanicals!"
"And lightning fast!" the boy responded, adding power to the rear deflector shields. He regarded the flashing light. "Are you going to answer that?"
Ferrin gave the lad a stern look and then reached over to open a channel. "Unidentified vessel, you are under orders to power down and await to be boarded," a baritone voice said.
Ferrin closed the channel. "See, they didn't have anything worth saying anyway." He got up and removed his brown robes, revealing tan combat fatigues underneath. "I'm going to man the dorsal gun; can you control the other from here?'
The boy smiled. "I can control both from here and fly the ship of I want, but aren't you being a little rash? You've always told me that rushing into a fight…"
Ferrin held up a hand. "Kyp…son…we're in a different universe now. Stretch out with the Force not to control the inanimate, but to sense the life that is around us. Feel the thoughts of the pilots of those vessels coming at us. I know you've never had to do that, but you will not survive here if you don't."
Kyp closed his eyes and his father felt him send the tendrils out through the Force and latch onto one of their pursuers. Kyp's probe was too evasive however, and suddenly one of the ships's veered off course, spinning into the cold depths of space. The horror of what he had done quickly skewed Kyp's features. "I didn't mean to…"
Ferrin laid a hand on the boy's shoulder. "The time for regrets can come later. I sense something dark about that moon and the pilots coming from it." He could feel an underlying current of the Dark Side permeating this part of space, something he had not felt in nearly two decades.
Many years ago, Ferrin had been an apprentice Jedi under the tutelage of Master Ovos. Headstrong and filled with the desire to be a great warrior, Ferrin had developed a reputation for getting into trouble. Often times, despite the stern warnings from not only his master but also the Jedi Council, he would find himself patrolling the walkways of Coruscant, looking for evildoers to apprehend.
During one such outing, he had ended up facing two bounty hunters, Zam Wessel and Jango Fett. Escaping, he brought information he had learned about then Tatooine representative Lord Vader to the Council. By listening in on a conversation between Fett and some hired guns of Jabba the Hutt, Ferrin had discovered that Lord Vader was really Anakin Skywalker, a former ward of the Jedi who had disappeared a decade before.
Then Chancellor Palpatine, under the guise of senate pressure, was having the Jedi investigated for possible foul play in the case of Skywalker. It was all a hoax, a charade orchestrated by Palpatine himself who was none other than a Dark Lord of the Sith. Ferrin had gotten that bit of information when he had, rather foolishly, attempted to control the mind of Darth Vader.
Vader hadn't killed him, but it had left Ferrin with the taint of the Dark Side about him. That taint had been passed on to his son, Kyp, though the boy had done very well in his lessons when it came to controlling it. He still had a smart attitude that occasionally got him into trouble, but overall, Kyp was a fine Jedi warrior.
"This is not a safe place for us. It will take two minutes for the navcomputer to get a fix on where we are at, but it looks like our trip to Dagobah has been cancelled." Ferrin turned and headed down to the passageway to the ladder that led down to the lower gun platform.
"We can't afford not to go to Dagobah!" Kyp called after him, but his father was out of earshot. The ever-famous impulsive Durron nature was showing and Kyp turned to the matter at hand. He put the Falcon into a spin and slipped down his relative Z-axis, pouring as much power as he could to the engines.
All the while, he was considering the power he now possessed, how amplified the Force was here. He normally kept himself shutdown, as the Force was of very little use where he had grown up. It was almost like walking your entire life and then being told you had to run all of a sudden. He was confident that he would not make the same mistake twice.
The fighter he had caused to veer off course was slowly returning to the formation of four and Kyp saw that several of the larger vessels were making their way in his direction. It was odd seeing vessels with such distinct, sharp lines; there was a beauty to it, something clean and sterile. Kyp was tired of always feeling dirty, of always running, and yet, if he didn't, he would die.
Just like his mother.
He could still remember her, Lyndia Jade-Durron, Jedi Knight and loving wife. She had been the inspiration for both Kyp and Ferrin and her recent death still weighed heavily on them. She had gone down fighting, just like the warrior she had proclaimed herself to be.
Now, they were on their way to a swamp planet in the galaxy of his father's birth. Ferrin and Lyndia had escaped the purges led by the anti-Jedi fanatics that had been stirred by Palpatine's campaign of hate. They had gone outside the galaxy to meet up with the Jedi master J'orrus C'Baoth and what Jedi they could muster.
On Dagobah they hoped to find what remained of the Jedi Order, waiting as it had been agreed upon before the dispersal. "We can't outrun the smaller ones, dad! Do you want me to open up…"
"No!" Ferrin yelled back through the intership commlink. "You keep that shut down! It's our sabbac card up the sleeve!"
"What the hell is sabbac?" Kyp asked as he put the ship in a straight line towards what the computer was calling the galactic core. He then flipped on the communications unit. The same warning was being repeated. "Not very original, are they?"
Desperate seconds ticked by, the faithful hum of the hyperdrive the only sound. Kyp eyed the hyperdrive controls; the Millennium Falcon was an obstinate and ornery creation, more alive than most of the creatures Kyp had encountered in his fourteen years of life. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the ship's droid brains (there were three separate ones!) started bickering with each other. They had already shown their discontent for the recent modifications Kyp had made by turning the heat off at random intervals. In the dead of space it took no time for the temperature to drop below freezing.
"Incoming!" Kyp called and two fighters swept by. The targeting computer for the upper quad-cannon could not identify the ships, little more than ball-shaped cockpits with large solar panels for power collection. They were fast, too, and Kyp typed in a note about their speed and named them "fastballs".
The sound of laser fire told him that his father was working the guns and there was a slight rocking sensation as they were hit from behind. The rear shield indicator glowed bright yellow and then went out. "Oh! You piece of garbage!" Kyp screamed as he punched the control board. The shields came back up at ninety-five percent. "Don't do that again!" he warned the vessel.
In response, the navcomputer chirped and Kyp turned to look at it. They were only halfway to Dagobah and the instructions that Ferrin had typed in had them heading towards an entirely different location. "Tatooine?"
A bright light outside the cockpit took his attention away from their course and he watched as one of the fighters was reduced to atoms by his father's firing. Kyp took the controls for the upper gun and closed his eyes. Through the Force, he could "see" the other fighters on approach and even predict their future movements. This was so different from what he was actually used to that he momentarily got lost in the sensation. A whole new world was opening up to him the more he stretched out and he had to question why his parents had ever left this paradise for the hell they had been living in.
This universe was permeated with the Force. It wasn't a light dusting; it was a full shower or glorious, beautiful life energy flowing between the very strings that held the galaxy together. He began to feel his mind open, his soul burned brighter and it was as if the universe was saying, "welcome home".
But there was something else as well, something in the shadows of his thoughts, something dark and cold. It called to him and told him about power undreamt of, power that could have saved his mother. He saw himself as a conqueror, a dream all little boys have at one time or another, and entire planet on its knees before him. "You need no other, Jedi, boy," it said in soothing tones. "Reach out to your enemies, you know you can! Smite them with a thought!"
And he could if he wanted to. He knew with just the subtlest of suggestions, he could make all of the pilots pursuing them break off and attack each other. He could even make them eject into the cold vacuum of space and some part of him relished in the idea of doing it. His hands started to shake.
"Kyp! By the Force, boy, snap out of it!" Ferrin said, shaking his son.
Kyp blinked his eyes and looked up to see his father standing there, a concerned look on his face. "What? Where are we?"
His father stooped down and looked his son in the face. "We're in hyperspace; we made the jump minutes ago. What happened to you?"
"I was concentrating on firing the guns, reaching out with the Force…"
Ferrin nodded. "I sensed you were deep in the Force…too deep for someone of your experience."
Kyp shook his head and looked his father up and down. "Who are you to say that? That isn't fair!"
"It is quite fair, my son, considering that you've been living in a place almost absent of the Force as we Jedi know it." He pursed his lips as he pondered his words. "We will discuss this in length later, but for now I demand you shut yourself off from the Force. When we get to Dagobah, there will be more experienced Jedi there who can help you ease into it."
Kyp wanted to protest, but he didn't. He loved his father too much not to obey and on some base level, he knew he was correct. He did as he was commanded, cutting off the line he had to the Force and suddenly felt very tired. "I need to go lie down," he said.
Ferrin allowed his son to go back to the lounge and took his place in the pilot's seat. He wiped the sweat from his brow and closed his eyes, using a Jedi calming technique to slow his heartbeat. He wondered if bringing Kyp here had been a mistake.
The boy's training had been anything but orthodox; lessons on the run, emphasis on fighting skills and almost nothing on passive tactics. He was turning out to be the type of Jedi that you only saw in holodramas, brash and arrogant, but was it his fault? Though Lyndia and he had shown the boy love, they had also shown him death and misery in their adventures.
He should have brought Kyp here as soon as he was born, but Lyndia, still hurt over having to give up her first child, Mara, would not hear of it. Ferrin should have been more forceful with his wife, but he realized that it would never have happened. Lyndia was the strength of the family and slowly, he and Kyp were becoming distant. His boy was becoming a man.
He had felt Kyp stretch out in the Force during their flight and had been pleased that he was adapting so quickly. Then he had felt the tug of the Dark Side calling to Kyp and he wanted to jump from the gun deck and run to his son, but he couldn't. The Millennium Falcon then began a series of maneuvers that Ferrin knew Kyp could not have performed unaided by the Force, but they were no subtle, they were forced and aggressive. Then he had felt Kyp's mind reach out to the pursuing pilots and one by one, he had forced them to eject from their ships.
Their dying thoughts echoed through the Force.
Only when the ship had gone into hyperspace was Ferrin able to shake the boy from his trance and Ferrin knew why. The Dark Side wasn't just calling out, it was directed. It was a message to all Force-talented beings, broadcast on a level only the most powerful could hear. To Ferrin it was whisper in the ear, to Kyp it must have been blasting out like a thunderous god from above.
He knew that feeling all too well. He could feel it whenever he accessed the memories of Anakin Skywalker he had absorbed that fateful day on Coruscant. It was the mind of the master, the Dark Side king, the Dark Lord.
Palpatine.
Ferrin only hoped that there would be enough Jedi on Dagobah to help him steer his son away from the dangerous course he had started out on.
