His words made her smile painfully.
"I'm Katrina, and this is Bastila." The young woman returned her smile.
"I'm Waverly." She spoke so quietly Katrina had to strain to even hear her name.
She had come to realize that perhaps separation was also the definition of war; she had seen it everywhere. War led to dissention and distrust, to factions of people with different beliefs and their only common bond being that they were too stubborn to reconcile with the other side.
She was seeing it here on Telos, between the paranoid and depressive people on the side that still had the chance for life, and this young woman, quiet and friendly, on the side that was far beyond death. The sides and the people seemed to be mismatched.
"How did you, or anyone else for that matter, get out here?" Bastila asked.
"And how are you continuing to survive?" she added.
Waverly was silent, and looked around skeptically as if Katrina was wrong and the destruction around them was fully capable of supporting life.
"We've been doing it for so long I guess questions like that catch me off guard." She smiled again apologetically.
"But these are not things to be talked of out here. Come. I'll take you to our village."
It was as if their questions hadn't been asked. The woman had an aura of calm around her.
Katrina glanced around again at her blackened and silenced surrounding and supposed that complete devastation could only lead to a deadly calm.
"I hope this village she's talking about isn't an imaginary one," she murmured to Bastila.
"You would be surprised as to what can be accomplished when faced with the realities of war. Besides, if all the Telosians out here are similarly gifted as this one, they have a decided advantage." Katrina watched Waverly move swiftly in front of them, never a misplaced step. She realized suddenly what she had not noticed before.
"The Force is strong with her." Bastila nodded.
"I wonder if that is the case with all the others she speaks of."
They tried to follow but Waverly moved too quickly.
"Might we slow down a little?" Bastila called out, her usually sure steps now thrown off balance from her injured ankle.
Waverly instantly stopped.
"I'm sorry. We've learned to move very fast out here. If you don't, eventually the earth might give in beneath you, or the lightning might hit very near where you are."
"Or the Telosians on the other side might shoot you?" Katrina added.
They were following very near the borders of the energy field. She doubted there was much to sustain anyone farther out, if indeed there was anything to sustain these people at all. At times it seemed that Waverly would turn and say something to them, but it only sounded like a slight whisper.
"Welcome to our home." The four words were the only they could finally discern from her hushed speech as they came upon the encampment.
The dead hulks of trees had been used as rudimentary shelters, furniture, and walkways over the unstable terrain. Now and then there was a storage bin or footlocker that Katrina knew must have been given to them recently, but they were few and far between. It wasn't much louder than the dead wilderness. Everyone spoke in the same hushed tones that Waverly had, and in the end it only amounted to a buzzing kind of sound.
They were all filthy, and they were all small and thin. Whether this was from malnutrition or some other effect of living out here Katrina didn't know.
"The Force is strong here," Bastila noted.
"Is it the people or the place?"
"A little of both." The man who had answered Katrina's question was tall, much taller than any of the others.
"Welcome. I am Leman, the leader of this little band." So tall, in fact, that she wondered momentarily if he had been elected leader merely from his obvious height over everyone else.
"Nice to find a face without a blaster on this planet. I'm Katrina." Leman smiled; a thin, wispy, pained kind of smile.
"If you don't mind, could you speak a little softer?" She suddenly noticed how everyone, not just Leman, had looked at her as she had introduced herself.
"Sorry," she whispered. He smiled again, this time more genuinely.
"You'll find it's much easier on your lungs as well. We have all learned to say and do nothing unnecessary or very loudly. With the atmosphere being what it is out here, it makes it not only a way of life but a vital part of staying alive."
"Since you have noticed our particular brand of medicine for all that ails us, may I assume that you two are also versed in the ways of the Force?"
"We are Jedi," Bastila answered. Leman nodded.
"I thought so. Your lightsabers, if nothing else, betray you. You'll find you're among welcome company. Many of us, though not all, are Force sensitive."
"Is that helping you to survive out here?"
"Partly, though this area has always been strong in the Force, even now despite its obvious destruction. The Sith could not take that away."
A pang of guilt hit her as she thought of another area that was once a refuge turned into a desert because of the Sith, because of her.
"Why are you out here at all? Did the rest of Telos drive you here because of your abilities?"
Leman slowly seated himself on a nearby log.
"Some of us, yes. Others feared being driven out or hated by their own families, some wanted to be free to practice it. Others are here for their own reasons. Some do not agree with current Telosian politics or practices, and some merely wanted a place where there was no fear, where there was no constant reminder of the things that had happened in the war." He seemed to shudder through his last words.
"But wouldn't being out here, in the middle of the worst of the destruction, be more of a constant reminder?" Leman smiled again.
"Ashes to ashes. It is better here on this black slate to begin a new life rather than seeing the ruins amid life that could be resurrected but isn't."
She was reminded of herself in the moments before they had gone through that last door on the Leviathan, the last one before Saul Karath or Malak had opened up their damnable mouths. When Carth had winked rakishly at her and she and Bastila were grinning despite of their predicament.
"And how do you survive out here?" Bastila asked, seating herself next to him.
"While the Force can provide us with many things, it cannot conjure up food or medical supplies. We are helped by some within the base nearby. They cannot give often, but we make do with what we get and are grateful for it."
"It can't be easy," Katrina commented.Leman looked wistful for a moment.
"No, easy wouldn't be a word to describe our lives here. We have lost many, to disease or hunger, some to the unknown forces at work in this destruction. The atmosphere thins year after year and the oxygen grows less and less. Someday this area will be completely uninhabitable to any kind of life, no matter how resourceful. We grow quieter and someday we will be silenced forever."
She glanced in the distance at the energy field. However weakened, it was still a wall separating these Telosian ideals from those on the other side.
"It is a shame you and your followers are not the ones in power on Telos. The Jedi Council and the Republic would be more than willing to help, but those who are in the power don't seem to want anything more than to be left alone." Leman nodded, an ambivalent look coming over his lean features.
"We do not desire power. However, we, like those in power, desire also to be left alone. We desire the freedom that was once on Telos, the ideals our people once held. We desire to be allowed to practice them without having to hide ourselves out here."
"But that would require gaining power. Those things will never happen unless you do something," Katrina murmured. Leman held out his hands apologetically.
"We are not the ones with blasters, my friend. We are not the ones stifling Telos from reclaiming her former glory. Everything can be rebuilt or grown again, and it would only take faith and patience, two things that, I am sad to say, those in power and the people of Telos have not had for a long time."
"But doesn't that make you want to change something? If Telos can be rebuilt, and you know it can, doesn't that make you want to make sure it does?" She was getting louder again and she knew it from the way that more and more people were slowing what they were doing and watching her.
"We are not warriors, Master Jedi. We are mostly the former learned of Telos, tired of the ways of anger. Were we to even attempt challenging them, though the word is not part of our natures, is there any doubt we would be either locked up as agitators or many of us shot even before getting to that point?"
They were no different than the others. Fear, she saw, was universal and despite their lack of anger or paranoia, they were just as afraid as those depressed creatures on the other side of the wall.
I'm surprised they even took me or Carth in and tried to revive us. You'd think they'd have just said 'Well, they're as good as dead' and left us out there for how much despair they're in.
"But the planet will not last much longer like this," Bastila said impatiently. Katrina was relieved she wasn't the only one getting frustrated. "Telos needs to rebuild if it is to survive and prosper, and it cannot rebuild without the assistance of the Republic and the Jedi."
"We do not agree with their distrust of the Jedi," Leman added. "After all, it has led to many of us being ostracized from our own loved ones. I understand that decisions such as an act of war are costly and must be thought through before being decided on. Unfortunately, much of Telos takes the Council's decision personally."
Some of us can't help but take the Council's decisions personally.
She was tired.
"Help...someone help me..." All three of them turned to see a figure stumbling in from the edges of the camp. He was black as the ground, covered from head to toe in dirt and grit, almost blending into his surroundings. Several rushed over to him as he collapsed to the ground.
Leman was at his side quicker than Katrina or Bastila.
"What was it son? What happened?"
"Tlas and I were out...looking through the ruins. There was a ship-"
The Ebon Hawk. It couldn't be anyone else. Katrina exchanged glances with Bastila.
"It landed...but it sent up so much earth...there was a sandstorm..."
"Was Tlas-"
"No...We made it through the storm...but then some guards from beyond the wall...they killed Tlas...and then they attacked the ship."