1.
His first instinct was to check that his lightsaber was still attached to his hip. After a moment's panic - his thoughts seem to scatter in all directions as he wondered what he should do - he decided he was in no immediate danger. This temple was sacred to all inhabitants of the planet and neither army would dare to fire on it, at least not just yet.
The window of his room showed a bird's eye-view of the city and the sight it presented now was a grim one: intermittent flashes of blaster fire, the loud buzz of drone flocks in the air, columns of black smoke beginning to cloud the skies. The streets were empty and thick clumps of refugees streamed out of the city gates.
Failure, then.
Not only would the planet return to its cycle of violence, but the ensuing conflict may well end up drawing most of the outer rim into war. He could only hope his reading of the situation was mistaken.
The failure was his master's but he could not get rid of the nagging feeling that part of it was his own. It was hard to imagine what, exactly, he could have done to alter the course of events - he was a mere observer, consigned to lurking in the back rows and trying to make sense of the proceedings. But maybe that was merely a facet of his failure, his inability to imagine how the world might be steered. Would he spend the coming decades going over every detail of the past few weeks, wondering if he could have prevented a world war if he had been a little more clever?
There was one avenue unexplored, one course of action left to him. He hesitated only briefly.
Pulling out the holocron, he sat down on the floor in front of it and steeled himself for the conversation that was about to follow. Closing his eyes and reaching out with the force, he felt the currents within oscillating with a ravenous energy. She had, no doubt, been anticipating this for some time.
"That did not take very long," as always he heard her voice, now laced with mockery, before he opened his eyes. "It has been what - three weeks? - since we last spoke. Has your last attempt with the Jedi run its course already?"
"I am sorry about what I said before," Noval said quickly, " - we can talk about it later - I will do what you say - but now something else must be done - half the galaxy is on the brink of war - "
He stopped as he ran out of breath.
"Ah," she said. "I imagine you speak of the failed negotiations within this shrine."
"How…" Noval nearly choked on his words. "How do you know that? I've mentioned nothing about it to you."
"Indeed you have not," she said, sounding slightly peevish. "But I am not unaware of the events of the world from my little prison."
"How is that possible?"
She gave him the briefest of smiles.
"I believe you were about to explain how the spider's web of alliances will draw the nations of the galaxy into this war, one by one."
Noval controlled his mounting panic. He had always assumed that her knowledge of the world was limited to what he chose to reveal. He would have to think through the implications of this later.
"It seems you know it already."
"Though I appreciate the news bulletin," she said icily, "I cannot help but wonder if there is any particular reason you have called me forth now."
"I want your help to stop it, of course."
"Ah." She seemed to consider this. "Perhaps I should ask why, exactly, I ought be helping you?" She said this lightly, less a demand that a challenge.
"I….." Noval paused. "You must be desiring a new body. I will help you obtain one, I promise."
Nerra shrugged indifferently.
"I have no way of holding you to your promise. I suspect that, were I to give you the help you seek, you would have a convenient change of heart later.''
"Millions will die," he said, a wave of anger coursing through him uncontrollably, "perhaps billions or trillions or even more. You don't want to stop it?" His face darkened. "I know you are merely an echo of your former self, but I imagined you'd have a shred of humanity left."
"Mmm," she said, seemingly unperturbed. "Peppering your conversation with invective will not get me to help. And as to whether I want to help..."
She paused. "The force binds all things. The slightest push, the smallest touch, sends echoes throughout life. Act rashly and, in the end, all you will have wrought is more pain."
"It is a difficult teaching to absorb," she said slowly, "and perhaps this is as good a time as any to consider it. I will give you one more lesson, perhaps your final one. Let us talk about about peace in the galaxy and the means by which it may be achieved."
"I don't know if you can hear the blaster fire…" Noval began.
"My hearing is fine, padawan. Calm yourself, this will not take long. As you are well-aware, we are not in any immediate danger."
2.
"If there is one obvious fact about the galaxy," Nerra began, "it is that it always exists in a state of war. Search your knowledge of history, padawan - has there ever been a time of long-lasting peace?"
Noval forced himself to consider it.
"I suppose the periods between the major Sith wars have been relatively peaceful."
"Such times never lasted too long," Nerra replied, "and besides, widespread conflicts proliferated on a smaller scale then. But while peace has been elusive for the galaxy, there have been regions which were able to achieve it. Before we start amateurishly dabbling in galactic politics, it would be good to have a theory - that is, some understanding of the mechanisms which allow or do not allow peace to happen."
"You have heard about the twin planets of Engirra and Fressia? Surely your education at the Jedi academy - deficient as it was in matters of history, logic, and indeed basic common sense - made some mention of them?"
Noval nodded. In fact, he had not heard of either of these planets before doing background reading on the present conflict. Spiteful and petty as she sometimes was, Nerra's scorn of the academy of Dantooine was largely on-target, for his education left him largely unprepared to make sense of galactic politics.
"These two planets fought each other continually for over a thousand years. And yet, in the here and now, it is hard to find stauncher allies. Again, search your knowledge of history, padawan, there are many such cases."
"So let us consider this one at some length," she said. "Tell me, how do you think peace between these two planets came about?"
For someone who had been removed from world, she seemed quite well-informed about galactic affairs. Noval wondered just how long she had spent in the holocron; he had asked her many times but her replies were always evasive. In principle, she could have been inside the holocron for several thousand years - any longer and their speech would not be mutually comprehensible - but Noval suspected the true answer was on the order of decades or centuries at the most.
"It would be unthinkable for them to go to war now," he said. "Those two planets have been allies for centuries."
"But how did this state of affairs emerge?" Nerra persisted. "Have you forgotten how many wars they fought once? Children on either side would grow up playing at massacring the other. What changed?"
"I don't know," Noval said. He had spent much time recently trying to understand the driving forces behind politics on this planet, which left him little time to learn much else. "Perhaps they grew tired of fighting each other?"
"It is a little bit more sophisticated then that," Nerra said. "A millennium of fighting left neither side better off. Territories had changed hands, casualties mounted on both sides, and after a thousand years neither side seemed better positioned than at the start."
"Conflict depends on beliefs," she continued, "and a core of elites on both sides had come to see victory as impossible. And because neither side was very smart" - she seemed to smile inwardly - "it took a thousand years for this belief to coagulate and achieve some circulation. They had to kill each other for that long before the simple truth became obvious to them."
"I would put to you," she concluded, "that the pattern is a common one. Conflicts end not because of cease-fires and agreements, not due to clever diplomats or statesmen, though it might appear that way at first glance - or at least, not wholly because of them. No, when peace emerges it is because both sides have come to understand they will never achieve their goals in war. No successful peace treaty has been brokered without that understanding present before the very first meeting. "
"But a thousand years?" Noval asked. "Surely they could have been convinced to come to terms earlier?"
"I very much doubt it," she said firmly. "There were many attempts at peacemaking over the years, and all of them failed. Again, the pattern is a common one; pick a random star system in the galaxy, study its history, and you will find it repeated ad nauseum. Only the final peace negotiations succeeded, because the groundwork, the sense of despair and helplessness among both sides, had been laid by then."
"In fact," Nerra went on, "it may be helpful to dwell on this point a little more. Consider, again, Engirra and Fressia - did you know that, only a hundred years before the conflict ended, negotiations spearheaded by the Republic failed to get both sides to agree to the same border lines that were part of the final peace agreement? The Republic did manage to produce a truce then, only for it to collapse in a matter of months."
"That event bears some historical parallels to the present situation. Why do you suppose those negotiations happened in the first place, given that neither side had any intention of securing peace?"
Noval thought about it. His knowledge of the history of these two planets was superficial, put together from a few stray references. Yet she had given him a hint. "Allies?" he said tentatively.
Nerra nodded with apparent satisfaction.
"Indeed. Both sides needed to purchase weapons from other nations and each could benefit from having the other side look like the aggressor. Both calculated that a failure of negotiations would allow them to play the victim to their own allies, who already viewed the other side with distrust."
"But once they sat across from each other at the negotiating table," she continued, "under the eyes of many diplomatic observers, both sides found it difficult to avoid signing a cease-fire."
"This presents us with two more questions. First, why didn't this cease fire last longer?"
She looked at Noval expectantly.
"A cease-fire requires cooperation," Noval guessed again. His background readings on the Ulth and Plessians led him to understand at least some of the things that can go wrong in an inter-galactic negotiation. "Ships can cross into enemy space accidentally and soldiers often violate border lines by chance. Weapons have been known to fire accidentally. Maintaining a ceasefire requires an ability to coordinate with the other side and prevent mistakes from escalating."
"Indeed," Nerra said, "I think that is right. Which brings us to the second, more important, question: did the Republic do any good by engineering those negotiations and the resulting truce?"
"I don't know," Noval said. He thought about it for a few moments as Nerra looked on in silence. "If the failure of the truce was really inevitable, I suppose the Republic only made things worse. They reinforced the belief, probably present on both sides, that accommodation with the enemy is impossible."
"I agree," Nerra said. "And now you see why you must disabuse yourself of your Jedi impulse to jump headfirst into a conflict and force both sides to the negotiating table. In the long run, you may well end up doing more harm than good. "
3.
"Then," Noval said, "you mean to say that we should not attempt to negotiate a truce between the Ulth and the Plessians?"
"I did not say that!"
Nerra smiled indulgently.
"Our discussion up to now was entirely theoretical. I am, in fact, certain," she said, "that it is possible to negotiate a lasting peace on this planet. Can you imagine why?"
Noval took a deep breath.
Perhaps not all is lost, he thought. She seemed to be in a cheerful mood; perhaps once the lesson was over, once she had extracted the requisite apologies and regrets from him, she would show him what it was he could do to stop the war. But he would have to impress her, demonstrate to her some intelligence and creativity. He thought of everything he had learned since arriving on this planet.
"The conflict is driven primarily by the royal families," he began tentatively.
Nerra nodded.
"There is little enmity among the people themselves. I saw men from both sides drinking together when I visited a cantina. There was widespread joy all around at the rumors of a peace accord. It is only the royals, following a code of honor which has largely disappeared from the planet, who are seeking revenge and driving the conflict."
She nodded again and he followed the trail of thought further.
"Suppose we get the negotiations going again. I might try to persuade my master to expand the circle of people at the negotiating table, perhaps to include the leaders of labor unions, civil organizations..."
He ended the sentence with a question mark, uncertain of whether something like this could work.
"It is not a bad idea," Nerra replied, "but it is not enough. Even if your master were to succeed at shaming both sides into a cease fire, the royal families will not find it difficult to restart the war soon enough; some trespass or attack supposedly by the other side can always be orchestrated."
"Perhaps..." Noval searched his mind, "perhaps coups can be engineered. Someone else put on both thrones, or some sort of people's assembly that will rule temporarily…"
Nerra smiled indulgently. "You will not have an easy time putting this plan in motion, my little padawan."
"What shall I do, then?" Noval asked.
"Ah," Nerra said. "Well-"
She paused, looking him over as if she were coming to a decision.
"I think this will be for you alone to figure out."
Noval racked his brain. The two sides were already in the midst of battle; even if they could be persuaded to return to the negotiating table, what then? What more was there to do that his master had not already done?
"I do not know," he said finally.
"All the pieces of the puzzle are before you."
"Perhaps you can give me a hint."
"No," she said, "no hints."
A hint of anger flashed across her face.
"All your decisions have brought you to this point. Do you think I have forgotten your insolence the last time we spoke? Did I not say that I will exact a price upon you?"
"Here it is, then: I will not help you. I will tell you only this: a solution exists."
"I need a padawan who is capable," she went on. "Is that you? I am no longer so certain. This will be a test."
"And you are right to suspect that the war which has already began here will spread if not checked," she added. "I tell you this, if you do not figure out how to stop the fighting, the entire galaxy will be engulfed in flames soon enough."
"Do not bother trying to call me forth unless you succeed," she finished acidly. "I will not appear. You need not return me to Nar Mantell either - simply throw me down the nearest trash chute and the force shall guide my path."
She smiled again and a moment later the stream of red light dimmed and the sounds of whirring ceased. Her image flickered unsteadily and then she was gone, with only the holocron, looking small and dark, remaining before him.
4.
He made his way to his master's quarters at the top of the temple. The rest of the padawans were already assembled, Krava shooting him a relieved look as he walked in. Nimbo was in front of the viewscreen, engaged in what appeared to be a shouting match with a robotic assistant.
"Do you know to whom you are speaking? Put me through immediately, you little tin can, or you'll be scrap."
"I sincerely apologize, Master Jedi. His Royal Highness had left me strict instructions he is not to be disturbed. I assure you that your call is extremely important to him and that he will get back to you at the soonest."
The screen turned black just as Nimbo began to bellow something else. Noval sat down discreetly on the mat behind the assembled flock of students. His late arrival did not seem to be noticed. The room was full of nervous energy, the padawans visibly unsettled to watch their master stumble in front of them. Noval looked around, taking in the scene, and, just like that, a plan came fully formed into his mind. It was obvious, crude but it should work, he was certain of it.