The Way of a Siluan

Chapter 5: Destruction

Garth Jetty was, admittedly, a cargo pilot; but he was a cargo pilot with style, and could make his little freighter swoop and zip like a starfighter. On that particular day, his cargo was just one passenger: an elderly Yemerian, and a Jedi Master at that. Lu Mang was his name, but Garth knew him as Master Lu. Sitting there wrapped in a brown Jedi cloak with his tan-gray tail curled around his feet, the little lizard-like Jedi cut a rather quizzical figure.

The two had long been friends, and today they were on their way to the AgriCorps station on Deema, where agricultural Jedi from across the galaxy were gathering for the biannual AgriCorps Symposium. Garth smiled to himself as he came in for a landing, seeing the station sitting there amid the patchwork of rice paddies and nut groves that made up Deema's subtropical farming landscape. He'd met Master Lu back when that station was an old Jedi's dream with no budget to fund it, but look at it now! A block-like library, a tall communications tower, a power reactor, living quarters and a beautiful domed temple formed a central core of buildings, around which experimental fields spread out in concentric rings.

Having safely landed near the outermost of the concentric fields, Garth and Master Lu were greeted by Lemma Bridger, the site manager.

"Garth, good to see you again!" she said, and gave him a quick hug before she saw the aged Jedi get out of the freighter behind him. "Master Lu! You're here!" she exclaimed before remembering to bow politely.

Master Lu smiled gently and bowed. "It's good to be back, good to be back," he said in his creaky voice.

He was in no hurry, but Garth was. "Lemma, good to see you, but I gotta take off again," he said. "Master Lu, catch you round, eh?"

Master Lu waved goodbye and walked with the Lemma along a wide path between fields thick with crops. Several young Jedi worked among them: weeding, harvesting, pruning, making observations.

Master Lu breathed deeply. "The Force is strong here!" he said, stretching his arms up. "It's good to be back!"

"I can't believe they let you off duty from the war!" Lemma said happily. "I thought you'd never make it for the Symposium."

Master Lu laughed grimly. "Oh, the war. I would like to think the Jedi Council is beginning to understand that my being a Jedi Master doesn't automatically make me fit for battle. The more we fight, the more I hate this war, the more all the Jedi do."

Lemma scowled. "But you're different," she said. "You belong here with the AgriCorps. You chose to serve with us. They shouldn't be making you fight."

Master Lu sighed. "I would rather be here, it's true, but please let us be strong for each other, Lemma," he said gently. "If we give way to our anger, what will become of us Jedi? I agreed to the summons, so I am as much to blame as the Council. But..." he said, and straighted up as if to shake off the unpleasant topic. "But I do miss training the young ones here. How is the new batch coming along?"

Lemma rolled her eyes and shook her head. "I don't know how you did it," she said, glancing at a pair of young Jedi pruning berry vines as she and Master Lu walked past them. "The ones who got passed up 'cause they didn't have the skill to be full-on knights, they're OK once I manage to show them that what we're doing here actually matters. But the ones who got sent here because no one at the Temple wanted to deal with their attitude problems, I swear forty years of Jedi training isn't enough to give me patience for them. It's been pretty rough at times."

Master Lu looked suddenly tired. If he was looking for a happier topic, this wasn't it. Here, as on the battlefront, the Jedi were hard pressed. "Well," he said, shaking off his discouraging thoughts, "while I'm here I'll do what I can to help you. Your work is more important than you may realize, Lemma. Too many of them loose their way for thinking that being in the AgriCorps makes them less a Jedi than the Knights are. We must do all we can to teach them otherwise."

There was the sound of aircraft. Master Lu, a fresh from the battlefront, ducked and looked for cover.

Lemma laughed at him. "Don't worry, it's just the crop sprayer..."

Her voice was cut off by the sudden sound of shooting. She and Master Lu both fell to the ground, caught in the spray of laser-bullets as three Republic Y-wings passed low overhead, broadcasting their ammunition.

Back at his little freighter, Garth looked up when he heard the sound, stopped checking the engine and slammed himself back into the cockpit. He took off after the Y-wings, gaining on them, shooting down the closest one but missing the second and third. He kept gaining on them as they approached the AgriCorps station's central cluster of buildings. Garth watched in disbelief as the remaining two Y-wings fired proton torpedos at the power reactor. There was a massive blast as the reactor blew up, and beads of sweat formed on his forehead as he pulled away barely in time.

Looking back, Garth realized that for the clones behind the controls of those Y-wings, blowing up the reactor was a suicide mission: neither emerged from the mushroom-cloud of destruction that was quickly enveloping Deema's quiet landscape. Garth found he couldn't get through to the Jedi Temple on the comm link, so he made a snap decision: he would just head straight back to Coruscant and report the destruction in person.

"Damn clones!" he yelled into his forward viewport as he pulled the lever to make the jump back into hyperspace. With the blue swirls of hyperspace writhing before him, Garth slumped back in his pilot seat, feeling kicked in the gut. Master Lu had been a friend for more than a decade. Garth had seen the blood, sweat and tears that he put into building that AgriCorps station from scratch, and had shared in the effort himself. Now a thousand-odd AgriCorps members were dead and the station in smithereens, all because of a few rogue clones. And all because some damn Jedi Knight wasn't keeping an eye on them, Garth thought.

These thoughts did not prepare Garth for what he found on Coruscant. Flying low over the city, he arrived to find the Temple surrounded by a legion of clone troopers, and every Holonet news channel reporting the clones' "bravery" in putting down a "treasonous uprising" by the Jedi Knights. He circled the temple in his freighter, numb with disbelief, until he noticed one of the clone troopers scanning his ship with a hand-held probe, then recording something on a datapad. Garth quickly got his freighter out of sight.

Garth raced to visit every Jedi outpost he knew of, but it was always the same: facilities bombed or heavily guarded, and not one Jedi to be found alive. Many of the fallen were clients and friends of his, but he hardened his grief into pure adrenaline and kept on flying. There were still a few Jedi he knew of who might be left, and he knew where to find at least one of them. He sped toward the planet Nechako, and the Moosachu Plains, where he had dropped off his friend Devin Strong and Devin's wife Shie just days before.