The Clouds Align for Battle
Chapter 22: Electric Dreams
I own not those situations I borrow from Disney Properties, Lucas, Mechalich or Thomas Benjamin DeMayo. This is a dramatization from my mind on a character created from the meld of table gaming and so on. Special thanks to ideas Drew Karpyshyn and Tim Lebbon fermented. Special thanks to Morihei Ushiba who formed Petre with his wisdom. Like any mind construct this is an exercise and my own work building on other ideas from the past.
This is a Zeison Sha story, set in what is known as the Star Wars EU.
Hyperspace
1.2 BBA
Guri awoke in what was obviously a cybernetics lab strapped to a table holding onto a hand. She tried to crush it but could not, her equipment just was not working. The sound of muffled modified voices reached her sensors and she felt she should try to come up with a solution. Maybe if she reconfigured the multiplexing data bus….
That just will not work. Something just bypassed her sensors straight to her cortex. I am sorry I had to put you through this, and it seems it will need to be done again. Your dedication to your programming is admirable. Even more admirable is this.
She watched in fascination while her inner most desire, freedom and no more use as an assassin played in her cortex.
Is this what you truly want? What is to stop you from doing what you have already done?
Her cortex switched to her building three impossibly remote hidden sites and her manufactured clones she made of herself.
I need the activation protocol so we can spoof it. I need to know where you would put more like that so if your clone decides to "reproduce more" and be able to fulfil your bodyguard duty we will have an answer. The other two locations have been taken, neutralized and trapped.
But word is "Guri" is back leading the Black Sun and we know we could not get to the one under Xizor's palace. Thus you present both an opportunity and a special dilemma.
"What would be my opportunity?" she questioned noting her audible system worked.
Do not try that either please. I do not think you quite realize this dilemma. But I am willing to wait for 6 more galactic standard days or however long it takes. I am just hoping Xizor pieces together that you are not you and breaks your resurrection facilities.
"Why did you ask what I want?" Guri questioned.
Define sentience. Define life. Define choice.
"Sentience is a self aware group of parts. Life is a biological collection or community. Choice is the ability to forge your own path.
Your chosen path appears to be a space mechanic. I am not overthinking this at all, but you have a choice because of the dream you had. It appeals to my sense of right. I can give you a new data backup routine and an overwrite to erase that which bothers you. I can also give you some new programming to go on, find a way. I may give you a place or job doing just what you would really like to do.
Your programming came to the conclusion my asawa ko did and schooled me in it. I, like you, was an agent of destruction, unlike you I was most willing, seeking power to feed my sense of self a sense I was greater than those who did not see my potential. That you decided to face off against my family was both the most illogical and brilliant thing you could ever do but you were just following orders you had input in creating. I had already created two siblings of you independent of my students who created you as a way to ensure I or those who follow me could undo the mess I made of the galaxy and my family has produced protocol droids that have more capability than you but less "self".
Guri's mind raced at this thought, to not be alone in the universe or kill because it was the first thing to mind or required to kill on demand or use her processors to order murder or increase chaos and misery to be navigated… FREE.
"Is that possible?"
The question is, are you willing to do that AND guard against your duplication or corruption? Can you, kill yourself for the greater good like the 13 year old boy who put his hand and life in your hands just for the chance you would be more subtle, slower than he at the battle? If you run across "Guri of the Black Sun" would you be willing to end it all for everyone else's good.
"Yes" Guri said with conviction and no other thought. She felt her hand squeezed in the human affirmation.
Then I can help you as I have forty nine others now. Most were cyborgs, like I am. I am also a Force adept. I will help you back to the universe of living and to be less vulnerable to bioscans. You will scan as a cyborg, also we will give you the gift of some knowledge as I will play the recording of the diary of Lanoree Brock whose lineage gave my son some of his unique collection of talents. This will be done while I am reconfiguring everything, erasing those memories as you wished. You will also be given a combat suit that will allow you to face your former self at an advantage if that is your fate, you shall be given CHOICES.
"Please do and thank you." The entity choosing to be known as Lanoree Post said before asking a question "Where is he that I can thank him?"
He went to your Denon facility and then is headed on his last mission to announce himself to the Empire.
Jahn, sat in the pilot chair of the Intruder # 3 with two Starkeys in full battle regalia and Shandra in the cramped confines. The weapons bay was full, the interfaces humming as they remained attached to "Puffy" a heavilymodified YV-666 turned into an extreme weapon, over armored and overpowered hyperdrive, military grade suborbital engines, military grade shielding and armor with a Star Destroyer grade turbolaser, a fortification grade ion canon, turret missile launcher and fitted with a "daisy cutter" bomb. In their wake were a four A-wings they had "salvaged" from the testing grounds from 28 failures and completely rebuilt. A set of four X-wings followed all pilots were seasoned clone wars vets, most with smuggler ties, with no love of the Empire. All the stunt fighters were armed with two high explosive bombs and an ion missile each. Behind them in their wake was over 20 privateer freighters, all veterans of pirate or Zygerrian slave incursion resistance.
The reason for all this firepower? For almost six years Shanev was the "meat grinder" of the resistance to the Empire. All the small actions and raids inside the galaxy had to this pointIndeed at this point in time it was the ONLY open conflict in the galaxy. The Empire, wanted the pastoral wonderland as a wild space resupply facility, which the Shanev natives did not want. They were hunter gatherers, this was their home and becoming slave labor was inimical to their heritage. It would also mean the Empire would be dug in like a tic in the Kalat Arm, the Kalat Nebula surrounding their bubble of Wild Space.
For that time, the Diskblade Alliance's main efforts were Shanev, all the pilots, most of the Zeison Sha itinerant and 50% of the Alliance's soldiers were there. Jannma too had been there for 2 years and had supposedly, single handedly, turned the tide against the Empire. The Shanev called her The Liger.
Jahn, her Asawa Ko if not her husband (for that honor was Ni'ko's) had long foreseen this, and realized that while she was a cagey wild warrior, her real heart was channeling her passions into music. Her bloody symphony solo on Shanev had her dancing on the hairy edge of falling into the dark side's trap as she got used to destroying and killing over the past 2 years.
Indeed the Empire, had already decided, the singularity Jahn represented was less of a threat or opportunity than the Liger was. Indeed, she was, according to Jahn's art now the target of her erstwhile mother in law to be killed, Jasrol Mintran to woo her and become his Dark Queen to eject or overthrow the Empire or to Ral Gorgon, a new apprentice to replace the two candidates Jahn had hidden from her, making her ascension to the throne, that much harder without an ally.
