A Shift in the Force: Chapter Fifty Three: The Chu-Gon Dar Cube
AN: A lot of excitement about Mustafar considering what happens in canon…
"What do you know of Mustafar, Jay?" Sabé asked as they cruised slowly over the planet, keeping far enough away that anyone on the planet couldn't detect them on their scanners.
"Mustafar is a lava world in the Outer Rim Territories that is part of the Atravis Sector," Jay-Seven informed her rather matter-of-factly. "Mining appears to be the planet's primary source."
Sabé hummed in agreement, looking down on the planet through the viewport. It was a mesh of red and black swirled together and cracked like cooled magma.
"Why would you even want to come here?"
Arthree surprisingly beeped in agreement.
"Certainly no one at the Temple would want to," Sabé snorted in amusement, her eyes shifting to look into Jay-Seven's optical lights. "There's an old legend about this place that we were told as younglings…they say Mustafar is where Jedi go to die."
"Yes, I can see why you'd want to go," Jay-Seven said dryly and Sabé rolled her eyes for good measure.
"It actually used to be a forest world, the Jedi had an Enclave here some five thousand years ago," Sabé said, shifting the console in order for The Dawning to drift slightly. "Master Chu-Gon Dar was the one that started it…supposedly his mastery of the Force was unmatched, but those details were always a bit sketchy." Sabé wrinkled her nose slightly. "What was really interesting about Master Dar was that he created a unique Force-sensitive object, something no one's been able to replicate since, well, at least not on the scale of Master's Dar's…his was called the Chu-Gon Dar Cube and it could manipulate the Force to alter the physical properties of some of the items in close contact with it."
"So you are looking for this Cube?" Jay-Seven inquired.
Sabé bobbed her head in agreement. That couldn't have been just a dream she'd had of Kit…it was far too real for that, and what he'd said about her and Holocrons had stuck with her. Sabé had always had a love for ancient history, it had been one of things that had drawn her to the Jedi Shadows and to understanding the Jedi and the Sith in the first place.
"About a thousand years after Master Dar created the Jedi Enclave, the Sith launched an attack against the Jedi there, evidently the battle was so intense that one of the nearby gas giants was pulled out of orbit and into its current position." Sabé nodded towards the stars nearby. "That and the battle itself caused a volcanic eruption large enough to cover the whole planet. The Cube disappeared during the battle and was never seen again…so of course I'm interested in it."
Arthree expressed his lack of surprise in his mistress' choice of a planet to investigate and Jay-Seven didn't even need to bother with a reply to that.
"Hush," Sabé swatted a hand towards her astromech, "I'm trying to focus."
She closed her eyes, drawing on the Force, only to frown when the Force rang with warning to deter her.
She sensed more than heard the: You should not be here.
The frown across her lips deepened. What did that even mean?
But the Force offered her no answer. As cryptic as always. Sabé shook her head, focusing once more and ignoring the Force's warnings for once. She was here for one thing and that was the Cube. It might've not contained the vast knowledge of a Holocron, but it was utterly unique, an object that had been attempted to be replicated many times to little avail.
Sabé had no idea the true extent of its abilities, but it was certainly something to be desired.
She opened her eyes at a soft pulse through the Force. "There," she murmured, swinging the ship around and forward towards the planet.
The Techno Union was the one that owned the mining rights on Mustafar, but Sabé would be staying far out of their scanners' way so their ship wouldn't even be detected unless there was a patrol, but from the look of the lava, that wasn't exactly the smartest decision.
"I'm going to have you take the controls, Jay," Sabé added as she stood, forcing Jay-Seven to do so immediately in order to keep The Dawning level. "I don't know how long I'll be, but I don't want you landing on the planet."
"I'm certain we could find a stable piece of cooled lava to land on," Jay-Seven replied perturbed.
Negative, Arthree beeped and Sabé was sure that if Jay-Seven could glare, he would have done so. Those two were never going to agree on anything, that was for sure.
"That won't be necessary," Sabé said quickly, not restraining a roll of her eyes. "This isn't a ship I want getting into the Techno Union's hands."
The Techno Union was technically with the Republic, but they were also with the Trade Federation, and as a native Nubian who had fought in the Battle of Theed, Sabé was already war-worn and wary and distrustful towards the organization.
And she'd rather not get involved with them if she didn't have to.
"We'll have to land," Jay-Seven stated matter-of-factly.
"No, we won't." A smirk lit Sabé's lips as that as she clipped her comlink to her arm guard and made her way out of the cockpit.
"What does she mean?" the droid asked the astromech suspiciously, but Sabé didn't wait to hear the answer as she pulled a breathing mask from the compartment in the med-room, slipping it over her nose and mouth, clipping it to her belt before striding out to hit the large button that descended the ramp.
Sabé had no idea if Mustafar was breathable, she'd only skimmed over the information on it within her Holocron, but, even so, there had to be a lot of ash in the air and Sabé wasn't a fan of that.
She took a leap off the platform and into the open air. The heat was the first thing that hit her, buffeting her as she freefell to the planet's surface, not for the first time wishing for the jetpack she'd left with her armor on Tython.
But Sabé didn't need it.
She channeled the Force around her, tucking and rolling once as she hit the ground, the ash warm under her organic hand.
The pulse of the Force reverberated in her mind and she understood why the Force had been so insistent, why it had wanted her to turn back.
The planet felt wrong, choking her breath from her lungs more than the ash possibly could have. Her knees buckled slightly and she was momentarily blinded by the rawness of the Force. Sabé fell to her knees, bracing her hands in the long-since cooled lava, breathing harshly, her breath fogging the oxygen mask over her mouth and nose before clearing.
On Korriban it was different. A Jedi would've had screams bleeding into their brain from just beyond the atmosphere, but a Sith only heard enticing whispers, and even that was nothing like what she felt here.
She could feel the fear and the pain and hear screams echoing in her mind, and for the life of her, Sabé couldn't even figure out if they were from the past or the potential future that the Force so often tried to warn her of.
Sabé closed her eyes and focused inwards, centering herself.
There was a young Togruta girl before her with rusty blue skin with swirling white pigmentation across her cheeks and brow, her montrals short, showing just how young she was.
A yellow 'saber was held in her hands and it sputtered faintly, as though it was losing heart with its master.
"Master, please," the girl begged an older man as the earth shook, "there is still time! Let me get you to the ship!"
"The ship is gone, Raala," her master said tiredly, a thick black burn across his midsection as he extended a cube-shaped object wrapped tight with cloth. "You must take this and ensure the Sith never possess it."
"I won't leave you," Raala insisted, her eyes wet as the earth gave another tremble and she stumbled with a yell of "Run!" behind her.
"You must!" her master pressed, holding her close and then pushing her away in a single moment. "Go. Go!"
Raala couldn't have been more caught between two placed, but she clutched the cubed object in one hand and her lightsaber in the other and ran.
There were battles as far as the eye could see, clashes of red and blue, green, purple, yellow, and orange. Raala dived around them as best as she could, horrified as she leapt over the bodies of childhood friends and at the sight of lava flowing where the beautiful river that she had played in not last week had once been.
The ground gave another violent tremble and Raala lost her footing, the force of her hitting the ground sending the cubed object flying from her hand.
"No!" She watched with wide eyes as it sank right into the lava, disappearing underneath the surface in moments.
She didn't even see the red lightsaber as it sliced down into her back, exiting her chest through the front.
Sabé opened her eyes, getting the uncommon feeling that she might be standing atop someone's corpse, entombed in ash and lava.
The girl, Raala, she had possessed the cube before it had been lost…to the lava.
Sabé looked out over the sluggishly flowing lava, splashing up against the side of the ravine. It was strange to think that where the lava rested was where a river had once ran. The effects of the battle on Mustafa ran deep and Sabé didn't think she'd ever considered effects of that kind of magnitude, because scores of Sith had attacked the Jedi Enclave on Mustafar and in her time, the Rule of Two was still held to be rather set in stone, the idea of there being so many Sith wasn't just unheard of, it was impossible.
She exhaled sharply through her nose, extending a hand towards the lava and focusing hard.
The Cube pulsed faintly and she smiled behind her oxygen mask.
It was still there, deep within the lava, somehow still intact after all those eons of remaining surrounded by scorching lava. It would've been impossible, that is, if it hadn't been Force-sensitive to begin with, and Sabé was beginning to suspect that it had some kind of protect mechanism.
She could feel it trickle against her mind as she extended the Force, envisioning it in her mind, the Cube, encircling it with the Force and drawing it up little by little.
It was painstaking work, but Sabé didn't dare rush it, she didn't want to think of what could possibly happen if she lifted it too fast. She imagined it melting into nothing; it would be just her luck that the Cube would survive thousands of years at the bottom of a river of lava only to be melted by her bringing it to the surface just a little too fast.
She was too focused on her work to realize that a patrol had come by with a single Rodian aiming a blaster at her head, she didn't even notice when a shot rang out and the Rodian and his speeder fell into the lava, starting to burn up just before they hit the lava with a splunk!
Sabé had faith in Jay-Seven's ability to keep her safe when she couldn't do it herself, focusing instead on the task at hand, waiting patiently until the top of the cube penetrated through the surface of the lava, lifting up until it was hovering in the air.
Brown eyes stared in awe. It had a faint glow not unlike the ones that Holocrons held, this one a white-blue color that leaned more towards white than anything else with an old symbol for change on each of its faces.
"Jay, I'm going to need a pick up," Sabé said out loud as she examined the cube without touching it, wary of the heat emanating from it.
"Obviously," the droid grouched and Sabé smirked, "one day you are going to get yourself killed by being absentminded."
"That's what I have you for, Jay," Sabé couldn't help but laugh as The Dawning made a pass back towards her, ignoring the security droid's answering grumble as she boarded and they took off without a look back towards Mustafar.
Ahsoka was stumbling under the weight of her datapads, and maybe she shouldn't have grabbed quite so many, so that when she finally reached where Caleb was sitting, working on his homework for their Language Studies class, her datapads spread across the table.
"Did you get enough?" Caleb snorted and she stuck out her tongue at him.
"Did you know that there are only two Jedi Shadows in the Temple?" she demanded of him instead. "Can you imagine that? There's more Temple Guards than there are Jedi Shadows!"
Both looked up from the table to where one of the guards was walking past, giving no indication that they'd heard anything that Ahsoka had said.
The Guards were rather strange, if you asked Ahsoka. They always wore those white masks with the gold pattern like a fern spread across it with armor of a similar design across the chest plate and the arm guards they wore, their lightsaber pikes folded at their back. She didn't think that she'd ever seen any of them out of their armor, much less their masks. Some said they were the perfect Jedi, more devoted than any other Jedi in the Temple, the ultimate expression of detachment.
Ahsoka thought they were just a bit creepy. She didn't want to think about wandering around the Temple in the middle of the night and running into them; she'd probably scream loudly, knowing her.
"There's only two?" Caleb asked once the guard had distanced themselves enough from the two Initiates. "I wonder why?"
Ahsoka scowled. "Master Tycho told me it's not a very respectable specialization, that Master Amidala is just proof that that specialization should be lost to time."
Caleb paused, frowning. He didn't understand how the Jedi could say that about someone who had once been their own.
"I think that's ridiculous," Ahsoka continued to grumble, "Jedi Shadows can't be all that bad."
"How kind of you to say."
Both Initiates jumped, turning to see Master Taria Damsin standing there with her own datapad in her arm, and easy smile on her lips with her blue-green hair falling loosely over her shoulders.
"Master Taria!" they both stuttered out. The pair had had her for one of the classes, hyperspace navigation, when she'd given a brief lecture before passing the rest of the class to their usual instructor.
"A bit interested in Jedi Shadows, Initiate Tano?" Taria asked instead, considering the pile of datapads that Ahsoka had spread across the table.
"Um, I guess?" Ahsoka's pigmentation darkened in her embarrassment.
Taria's smile widened as she sat down opposite Ahsoka and Caleb, straightening the datapads so they weren't spread across the table. "Do you know what Jedi Shadows are? Either of you?"
Ahsoka shared a glance with Caleb. "No," both admitted, just a bit sheepish.
Taria gave a small laugh that earned her a reproachful look from Madam Jocasta as she moved past with another young Initiate in search of a data-chip for an assignment.
"The Jedi Shadows are, shall we say, the spies of the Jedi Order."
Caleb's eyes widened. Somehow he'd always had a mental image of spies being completely clothed in black jumpsuits with weapons hidden on their bodies, but Taria didn't really match that image. Her hair was bright, her face was exposed, and she wore a dress over her stretchskin; she wasn't the type of person you'd consider to be a spy.
"Among our fellow Sentinels, we are highly respected," Taria continued, "but many within the Order do not share that same sentiment."
"Why not?" Caleb asked curiously. "Because of Master Amidala?"
Taria arched an eyebrow. "I wasn't aware Master Amidala's choice of specialization was public knowledge."
Caleb's tawny cheeks burned with color. "I, um, might've looked her up," he admitted and Taria's lips curled.
"I think the disapproval of the specialization has only come in recent years, the past few centuries," Taria said instead. "The primary role of Jedi Shadows is to seek out any remaining traces of the Dark Side, something that brings us closer to the Dark than any Jedi would ever want to."
"Oh," Ahsoka said in understanding. That must have been why the Jedi didn't particularly like to advertise the specialization; no one hated the Dark Side more than the Jedi, even if they'd never quite use that word.
"Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some reading to do."
She stood swiftly and Caleb eyed the name on the screen of the datapad.
Who was Maw?
"Momma, are you in trouble?"
Sola's eyebrows rose and she looked across the table to Ryoo from where she was sitting next to Pooja to make sure that she ate everything.
"Why would you ask that, baby?" Sola asked softly and Ryoo's drew into a thin line, pointing at her mother's face, where there was a purpling bruise at the edge of her jaw and healing bruised ribs under her shirt.
Ryoo was so young that she didn't fully understand what Sola was doing, she barely understood that her father wasn't coming back, still she understood better than most. Ryoo was very intuitive, a habit she'd picked up from her aunt, and something had had always made Sola wonder, but when Ryoo had been born, her Midi-chlorian count had been tested and hadn't made the cut-off for the Jedi.
Sola had spoken to Sabé on the subject.
"Talik said the Force can sometimes run in families," Sola mentioned as Sabé levitated one of Pooja's toys, smiling as she giggled, grasping her hands towards it, bringing it to herself with her own use of the Force. "That that might be the reason that Pooja is Force-sensitive."
"The Force is…complicated," Sabé admitted thoughtfully. "Back when Jedi could had families, it didn't always pass to the offspring of Jedi…it skipped generations sometimes. It's possible that being related to me helped her chances, but I couldn't really say."
Sola had only hummed.
"You two and Ryoo were tested when you were born, weren't you?" Sabé asked suddenly, referring to Sola and Padmé. "What were your results for Midi-chlorian counts?"
"Oh." Sola blinked, trying to recall the exact numbers, but it had been so long ago. "I think we were all just under the cut-off, I think, somewhere in the nine thousands."
That made Sabé's eyebrows arch in surprise. "Really?"
"Is that so shocking?" Sola asked wryly.
"Not so shocking when you consider that a first degree relative has the second highest Midi-chlorian count recorded," Sabé acquiesced. "I'd say you're moderately Force-sensitive, not enough to be taken to be trained as a Jedi but also not so little that you would be considered to be an ordinary non-Force-sensitive individual."
"I'm sure we would have noticed if we were Force-sensitive," Sola retorted, rolling her eyes.
"Maybe not," Sabé countered easily. "Not all the skills of the Jedi are things that you see…sense, precision, intuition are all things a Jedi uses but are largely unseen."
All Sola had done at the time was frown, but now she couldn't help but wonder if Sabé was right, if Ryoo's intuition was her own Force-sensitivity coming to light.
"Ryoo, you know what Aunt Padmé does is to keep Naboo safe, don't you?" Sola asked gently and a crease formed between Ryoo's eyebrows before she nodded. "But sometimes what she does doesn't always work, sometimes politics are corrupt."
"What's corr-upt?" Ryoo asked, sounding the word out carefully.
"Corrupt is like…it's like having someone like Aunt Padmé who's supposed to look out for her people only doesn't," Sola said, not entirely sure if she was explaining it well enough. "Do you understand?"
"Like when Daddy died," Ryoo said without blinking, "and the bad guys didn't get in trouble for messing up his build-ing."
Sola's heart throbbed in her chest.
"Yeah, baby," she choked, "just like that."
Ryoo was so young that one day soon she would only remember her father from holo-pictures or from vague dreams, and that was going to be the thing that broke Sola's heart the most.
"Your children are welcome on Tython," Gratina had said. "The family of Amidala and Darth are always welcome among us."
Sola had appreciated the gesture, but this wasn't a life that she wanted for her children. It might've been one she had chosen for herself, but her children she wanted to keep far away from her line of work for as long as possible.
If one day they made the choice to live on the wrong side of the law, well that was up to them, but it did certainly seem that, at the rate they were going at, Padmé was going to be the only one in the family actually doing anything legally.
"And when people think other people are corrupt…like the bad guys that didn't get in trouble for Daddy's death…they hire me to find out if they are corrupt." That was about as mild as Sola could put it, as she was first and foremost a slicer, but Gratina was still putting her through the paces of physical combat and marksmanship.
Sola wondered if Sabé had ever gone through the same. She doubted it; Sabé had always been a bit of a living weapon.
"Okay," Ryoo said brightly, hopping off to play her little game when there was a polite buzz at the door, shortly followed by Padmé entering with an easy smile.
She was wearing her hair in buns on either side of her head, sporting a casual blue dress, looking far better than Sola and making it look effortless, as usual. She'd been running back and forth from the palace over the past week, helping their mother with their father's recent illness and checking in on Sola and the girls.
Padmé noticed the bruise first and her eyes went wide. "Where'd you get that?"
"Training," Sola said carelessly as she moved Pooja to crawl around in the middle of her mass of toys in the living room. "How're things at the Jedi Temple?"
Padmé rolled her eyes. "Talik is apparently training an Initiate in the basics of Niman, which is the style Sabé and Talik use—"
"I thought they used Jar'Kai," Sola said flummoxed.
"They do," Padmé agreed, "but Jar'Kai's using two lightsabers, something Niman works best for."
Sola suspected that Talik or Sabé was the one to explain that to her the first time around.
"Anakin's on a mission to Saleucami right now, so Talik's keeping me up to date," Padmé added, smiling at Pooja who waved excitedly at her before sucking on her pacifier with renewed interest. "One of the council members actually ran into Sabé a little bit ago and apparently gave a message from her to them that they didn't like."
"Is this the council that we don't like or…?" Sola knew that Sabé had always been very positive about the Council of First Knowledge, on which she had served for a brief period.
"The one we don't like," Padmé said, remembering the last time she'd crossed Mace Windu when she'd arrived at the Temple to bring Sabé home. She didn't really think Windu was the problem, even though Talik clearly hadn't had anything nice to say about him, but she did remember Sabé saying there were many on the Council that didn't approve of her.
"Good for her," Sola snorted. "Where was she?"
"Falleen."
Sola made a surprised noise in the back of her throat. "Huh, Mid Rim? I would've thought she'd stick to the Outer Rim."
"It sounds like she is," Padmé admitted. "I think she was just doing a job for House Renliss."
A small smile wormed its way across her lips. "Sounds like her."
"What d'you think she's up to now?"
"Knowing her?" Sola snorted. "Something reckless and dangerous. She wouldn't like it any other way."
AN: Only three more weeks of class until the summer! And then I've only got an online class, so I'm feeling pretty good. I've been updating fics all weekend instead of studying for an Ethics exam, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
There might be more on Anakin and Talik in the next chapter, but we'll see
As always: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW!
