Proposal
Marai
I awoke, but I didn't move or open my eyes. Being hit by a stunner is a lot like waking up after being falling down laying in your own vomit drunk. I know because I have experienced the aftermath of both. The first thing I noticed was I was not laying in a pool or pile of anything a human body will eject when hit by a stunner. So someone had taken the time to get me cleaned up. My clothing were what I had been wearing when it hit, which bespoke of someone who not only cleaned me up, but took the time to clean my clothes.
If the average constable hits you with one, he'd just hose you down, probably about the time you woke up so you could experience it. Pay you back for being so much trouble.
So my first reaction to Goto's hospitality was that he was polite.
"I know you are awake. My droid's systems can detect this. I know you must have a terrible headache, so there is water pain killers and anti nausea medications on the table to your right on the end table."
I opened an eye slowly. The headache comes from two things, the depletion of elements in your brain by having every neuron fire simultaneously, and the effect light has on an optic nerve that is set for pure black night. I avoided the effect, reaching over, and taking the four pills. They were either standard med kit supplies, or pretty good fakes. I was betting that he wasn't going to poison me he didn't seem the type.
The pain and nausea faded rapidly.
"I am sorry to have to be so forceful, but my time is too short to be polite. Will you please follow the G0 unit to my conference room?"
I followed. "G0?"
"Yes. All of my defensive units are of the G0 design. The one in front of you for instance is G0T0." He said it G zero T zero. The droid led me into a small amphitheater. It turned, and a hologram of a man appeared. He was a bit taller than I am, but still short.
"I hate to have to parrot what most must say; but after hearing of your exploits, I expected someone... taller. Has the pain reached a manageable level?"
"Yes, thank you for asking."
"I have found that a reputation for being polite terrifies the criminal mind. To speak politely of having someone killed frightens them like small children. I am Goto, one of the heads of the non-sanctioned trading organization both here in the Y'Toub system, but also Republic and Sith controlled space. I have spent a great deal of time and money on having one of you here, so I am afraid I must be blunt.
"You are a Jedi?"
"I was once. Long ago."
"Good. As I have said, money and time I can ill afford has been spent to bring you here and I must not waste any more. If our meeting fails to come to a satisfactory conclusion, I will have to take steps."
"Why are you threatening me?"
"I am not threatening you, my dear woman. The steps I must take are to liquidate all of my holdings, and find some world I can hope will remain stable in the carnage that I foresee. Whether you agree to help me or not, I will leave you unharmed.
"I meant no injury to your organization and when I originally ordered the bounty put out, I was not specific enough. I had few dealings with the Bounty Hunter league, and what I knew suggested they would bring them in alive. I had no idea that so many of their modern number would merely shoot to kill, and whimper about it afterward. I did what I could to mitigate it, but from here there is not a lot I can do. I wanted to speak to one of you because I need your help."
"You could have just sent someone to ask."
"Are you really that naive? I sent such a messenger to the Planet Katarr but he was caught in the ensuing massacre. I did not know if he had delivered my message, or the reply. By the time I knew what had happened and was able to make a second attempt, all of the Jedi that remained had gone to ground."
"How many were still alive when that happened?"
"One hundred seventy, including forty children." The man's face grew pensive. "I am not in the habit of asking for things. My occupation can cause some people in my position to simply expect that their wishes will be granted. But the Jedi are hard to locate when they wish it. Even with the incident at Peragus which you were party to, you have proven extremely adept at concealing you location and destinations. More so, in fact than any of the survivors of your order.
"There is something I need protected until it can be repaired. The Republic. It is... broken.
"The disaster on Peragus has set in motion events which are spiraling beyond my ability to affect them. Not to sound melodramatic, I believe that incident has irrevocably damaged the societies within the Galaxy. This confluence of events has occupied much of my attention of late. While I have searched, there seem to be no logical and rational way to resolve this situation."
"You chased the Jedi all over the galaxy, caused the deaths of gods alone knows how many-"
Thirty-two. A large number of them, sadly, were among the children I spoke of earlier. It seems that even when young, a Jedi is a terrifying opponent. I regret those deaths, and when the first child had died, I ordered that only adult Jedi be taken. But that did not save 19 young people from never achieving their potential."
I was appalled. Even knowing that 13 of those people had been adults did not remove the horror. The younglings... "You ordered the murder of thirty-two people, including children, just to try to talk to one of us? So you could ask us to save the galaxy?"
"I regret their deaths, but I stand by my decision. What do the deaths even of children matter when I am speaking of the entire Republic! I did not have time to do this more quietly. Desperate measures were called for. In five months the Republic will enter an irretrievable collapse. It will not be through war or secession, but because the people of that body will have lost their faith in the ideal of it. They will decide that they do not have the infrastructure to continue to maintain it and instead go their separate ways.
"It has been postulated, and I concur, that while the Republic technically won the Jedi Civil War, the Sith survived it with more infrastructure intact. So by definition they actually won the war. The Sith have never been extremely stable politically, and their infrastructure proves this. The Republic spent vast sums of money, material and lives in defeating that menace, but winning left them in a state near collapse.
"At that point a single leader might have been able to divert this disaster. But too many in the Senate have been tainted by their own inefficiency so glaringly exposed. The one person that might have held the collapse away was the one shining example of Revan. But instead she left known space. Instead of a rallying figurehead all could follow, there was a void none could fill."
I considered his words. He was right that if Revan had returned, rehabilitated and a hero, she could have staved off this disaster. But there was no one? Except my good right arm. I heard her whisper. "I once swore an oath to aid the Republic if it meant my life. I still feel that oath is valid. What must I do?"
Any normal human would have cheered, wept, even smiled. His face stayed bland. "There is something moving in the galaxy that is beyond my instruments ability to detect or predict. I believe it to be a legacy of the Sith but I am unable to determine it's source or home base.
"Whatever it is, it strikes without warning, and it's targets are the very Jedi I have been seeking. I have killed 32, it has killed over fifty. It is not doing this in a manner that you would call surgical. When it strikes sometimes entire worlds die. Katarr, a world of the Miraluka race in the mid rim was one such. It slaughtered an entire world. It did I believe, because there was a meeting there of several Jedi.
"There is no discernible pattern to its depredations and that very lack of pattern is frustrating to me. I was able to understand that it was the Jedi themselves that were somehow the target of these attacks. The only other possibility is that the targets have been in and of themselves strategic to that enemy, but how I have yet to understand. As an example, it would be as if you stuck a pin in a man's foot because the placement would be lethal in the long run, rather than merely shooting him in the head.
Half of the remaining Jedi killed. The thought terrified me. It looked as if the claims by others, that I was the last of the Jedi, were being made true. "I do not want to see the order destroyed."
"You misunderstand me. I am indifferent to which side wins. If the Sith do the collapse will continue, but the Republic will survive several decade longer. If this outside force is destroyed, the same will occur.
"It is simply that by removing this conflict between warring sects of the same religion, the galaxy may be able to heal itself. I do not care which wins. Only that the end of the conflict be of a lasting nature so that the galaxy can catch its breath as it were. All of these constant crises have become, quite honestly, boring."
"Why should someone in your position care if the Republic survives?"
"I am in my own way, a patriot. Although I was unable to serve in either the Mandalorian Wars or the Jedi Civil War, I must set aside any scruples I have against violence and serve. I am ready willing and able to do so now.
"The problem is, that there is no clear side to join in this struggle. If I join the Senate as it now sits, I will only exacerbate the problem. I would offer my services to the Jedi or the Sith, but both sides are adept at hiding, the Sith from their innate teachings, and the Jedi from their native ability. It is... frustrating.
"It is like a Dejarik board where neither player can see the other nor see all the pieces, even their own. It is not a fair game. Not equitable by any standard.
"Then maybe you should try Pazaak."
"Frankly, Pazaak has always bored me. Too many that play seem to think the way to win is to cheat, and even the best cheat fails if you watch carefully enough."
"Then try military simulations. Having no knowledge of the pieces controlled by other officers on your own side and the enemy's disposition makes you think outside the box."
"I had not considered that. I will have to get some of the programs. However I prefer the simplicity of galactic economics."
"I will fight to save the Republic, so my answer is yes. I will help you in whatever way I can."
"Excellent." Again that curious lack of emotion. "It is after all in your best interests to assist me. There is no margin of error when I state that this invisible Sith presence is highly adept at finding and eliminating your fellow members. Unlike me they are not looking for conversion, or asking for assistance. They are murdering you fellows, and will not stop until all of you are dead. When that has occurred, nothing will stop them from extending their influence to every portion of the explored galaxy."
"Then if you let me go, I will be about it."
"Ah, there we are at cross purposes. If I set you free, you'd immediately go back to the course you have set since Peragus, and quite frankly, you have a penchant for wholesale destruction. At present the galactic order is fragile, and setting a Nerf loose in the galactic china shop is not the best way to keep it intact.
"When I have ascertained the best place, you and I will travel there together so that I may restrain your proclivities. After all, I am a business man and destroying the galaxy to save it will put no money in my pocket."
An alarm klaxon began to wail, and I looked up. "A problem?"
He paused, looking into the distance as if considering. "We had been pursuing one of Vogga the Hutt's ships. We captured it just a few moments ago, but now there is weapons fire at the docking bay. From what I can see using my monitors it is not Vogga's ship that I have grabbed. Your allies have proven quite adept at interfering with my operations, and they are even now boarding my ship.
"You will remain here. I must see to defending my ship."
Handmaiden
When the droid tried to drill through the hatch, we opened it, and immediately opened fire. We had found enough suits for everyone and the high levels of anesthetic gas we registered showed that it was a good thing we had. Manda'lor Atton and Bao-Dur set up their weapons, and held the perimeter. They would cover out escape route.
Visas stopped, her head turning. "Curious. I detect only one living being." She pointed toward the bow with her sword. "That way."
"But Goto had a Mon Calamari ship!" Mira protested.
"Or perhaps his talk of a stealth device was just talk. Perhaps his stealth is misdirection. You are looking for a Mon Calamari and instead you have this. What better way to hide then distract you enemies."
"That..." She snarled. "All right big guy, you're going down!"
We faced opposition but it was all droids. Thanks to Bao-Dur Manda'lor and Mira, we had an ample supply of ion grenades, and they went down in droves. The Aratech 41s were as tough as they were described, but they tended to be off for a second or more when suffering from an electromagnetic pulse, and that was all someone with a lightsaber needed. A case had been blown open, and I saw what appeared to be a light saber sticking from it. I threw it to Visas, and she seemed to come to life. She had saved my life, we had spilled blood together. I did not trust her but my sister did. It was good enough to call her sister of battle in my mind.
Mira was proving herself of worth. She ran ahead of us, and she seemed to feel every trap and bomb that had been placed. She would slip up, disarm them, and toss them in her pouch.
There was a corridor full of droids and turrets, yet she showed off what she knew. She had been here several times, and checked out the defenses every time she had. Programs were dumped into the system, and we spent a few moments watching as the turrets spun, blasting the droids to scrap, then we walked through unscathed.
I cut through the door, and Marai turned to look at me with the impassive face. "Took you long enough." She said.
"We had to wash our hair." Visas said.
"Then we had to blow dry it." Mira said.
"Then we had to check our makeup-" I began.
"Knock it off." She enfolded me in a hug, picking my greater mass up from the floor. She went to Visas, and did the same. I have never seen such a look of joy on anyone's face. Then she turned to Mira.
"You hug me and I'll..."
"You'll what?"
Mira looked away, flushing. "I'll just have to hug you back."
Marai hugged her, and both laughed.
Then she was all business. "Let's get out of here."
"Not yet!" Mira dodged running.
"Wait, Mira!" We gave chase. She had ducked right into a group of droids leaping through them like a broken field runner, and they had turned intending to attack her when the three of us fell upon them. We finally caught up with her as she was slicing into the door control for the bridge. It popped open, and she ran in before we could stop her.
The bridge was spacious, and no one was there. Mira had gone to the primary communications console, and popped it open. She put a chip in then pressed a button. "In your face Goto! Now we get out of here."
The alarms had not stopped, in fact they had redoubled. The ship lurched, and we staggered. "What was that?"
"My revenge for my bounty!" Mira shouted. "I just told everyone in the system where he was!"
The G0 droid was following, and I wondered why. But there was too much happening to worry. We dove through the hatch, and Atton cut us loose, dropping toward Nar Shaddaa. Above us, five ships had attached themselves like limpets. One was a tiny Twi-leki courier. Two were the blocky ships favored by the Gand. The others were Duros light freighters. They were still attached when the fusion engines blew, and destroyed all of them.
Marai
Everyone was celebrating. Except for Mira. She had the glum look of someone who expected she would be the one who had to clean up afterward.
"What's wrong?" I asked. "Goto is dead, the bounty is lifted."
"Yeah he's dead, and you guys don't realize what a world of hurt that's going to put on Nar Shaddaa." I must have looked confused because she sighed. "All right, when you came here, you didn't put up with a lot of government flak, right? No customs inspections, no regulations you had to read, no cops walking their beats, right?
"When Nar Shaddaa was first colonized the Hutt didn't care a lick for unimportant things like social services. You got sick you hoped there was a doctor nearby. You got old you died. If you were robbed, oh well. Things worked to their satisfaction, and as long as there were no major complaints they let it be. Hutt don't fix things that aren't broken, not even to tweak them if it still works after a fashion. The Hutt families had their managers, the managers stole, but not so much that the Hutt missed a meal, they overworked people, but not enough that anyone really could complain."
"But there were thugs everywhere."
"Of course there were! Because less than a decade after the colony was formed the mobs moved in. Black Sky, The Brotherhood, the Twi-lek Sanforisi, the Gran Krachnidai, the Exchange. They moved in like leeches on a swimmer.
"But the mobs wanted stability as much as the Hutt did, so they didn't fight nasty mob wars except for the rare ones like when Davik Kang ran off with a couple hundred thousand credits and half of the Exchange big wigs got blown to hell. Wars out there are good for business, but inside on your own turf, they hurt business, and they didn't want anything to hurt business." She was looking at me as if hoping I understood. But I still must have looked confused.
"Unlike the Hutt, the Mob lives here. Their families are here, their homes are here. So they did what the Hutt did not. There are courts, you just go see the local boss, and he acts as judge. We have cops, they are the men working for the mobs, and they make sure it stays quiet and the best way to keep the people quiet is to give them as much of what they need as you can. When your com system breaks down you don't call the Hutt, you call the local overseer for the mob. Schools, hospitals orphanages, hell, even day care! Because a woman can't go out and bust her hump for a mob boss if she has to watch squalling brats. For all intents and purposes, the Mobs are the government on Nar Shaddaa!"
I suddenly understood. "How bad will it be?"
"I don't know, but it will be very bad. Goto handled something like a million square klicks, and his overseers are going to be jockeying for position since Visquis ate it too. The Y'Toub system is going to be in confusion for a year or more. I'd estimate more like a decade."
The G0 droid floated closer. "My, my. If I had known you had such an efficient brain in that pretty little head, I would have groomed you for a high position in my organization." Goto's voice said sardonically.
We leaped to our feet. The droid merely floated there, watching us.
"Do not be alarmed. I said I wanted to oversee your movements. As the destruction of my ship has shown, you are a walking talking fission reactor with no fail-safes, Marai Devos. Something must act as a cadmium inhibitor rod or everything will be destroyed as you save the galaxy. As much as you want to save it, you must realize that if business collapses, so does the Republic, so please listen to me when I talk. I will be busy rebuilding my infrastructure, so I cannot go with you personally. However I am sending this droid with you.
"He has access to me at all times via the hypernet, so I will be here albeit vicariously."
"You know, everyone down there thinks Goto is dead." Mira murmured.
"Yes they do."
"How much you want to bet he'll keep his moves small, watch his overseers. When someone moves too far out of line, he takes them down because as much as all of us hated him, he always was efficient. He didn't torture too many."
"Actually I have no aversion to torture. It is merely that using pain in interrogation is usually inefficient and rather messy. If all you desire is one answer to one question, it is sometimes the most efficient method to gain that answer, but beyond that it is merely a sick willingness to cause pain because of your own pleasure.
"Those that use torture as their first option have no sense of style or balance. A man who has stiffened his sinews expecting torture is overthrown by kind words and a judicious use of chemical intoxicants. Kindness I have discovered works more efficiently in a large percentage of cases. For the others, torture is still an option, but still not the first."
"Where to?" Atton's voice came over the speaker. "That damn Jedi isn't here obviously."
"You'd never make a bounty hunter, Atton." Mira caroled. "Remember when we met up? Zez-Kai Ell had hired me. He said 'tell them, if they can find a plan, assist them if it is not too dangerous'. He didn't know how ticked I was at Goto or he would have told me to stay ground-side. But his last message was for you, Marai. 'I will meet you in the library'."
"Back to Nar Shaddaa." I ordered. "My only question is the same one Goto had. How did you find me?"
"That has weighed on my mind." Goto commented from the corner.
"Ask that tin can of yours." Atton snarled.
I looked around. Then I stood, walking through the ship until I found T3. "Have you been sneaking into other data-banks again?" I asked with a big smile. He gave me a low whimper.
"No I'm not mad. Just tell me." It took a long time. "So let me get this straight. You found someone who would pretend he'd stolen or bought you, and had him sell you to Vogga. They sent you to his warehouse and you sliced his system and got what they needed. Does that sum it up?"
He gave another low whimpering whistle. I leaned forward, and kissed him on the head. His photoreceptors flashed, and his head spun like a top.
"Who used to treat you like that?" I asked. His head snapped to a stop, and he burbled.
"No it's just that when I was in the war, I saw a droid someone treated like a favorite child. You act a lot like that one. Any kindness sends you into contortions. If you were a puppy, you'd be on your belly tail whipping like a fan blade." I rubbed his head, and the flexible neck bent as if he were a puppy or kitten pushing against the hand.
"Well we'll have plenty of time on the trip so I am going to give you an oil bath, and polish you until you shine." He whistled. "Yes, really."
"Really woman, if you have unnatural desires for a droid, you should either get a room or charge admission."
I stared at the round ball as it moved away again.
Mira's tale
Mira
I led the way toward my room. I'd have to relocate all of my stuff after this meeting. Too many people hated me, and most of them were those petty overseers Goto had on staff. When you want someone dead, but won't admit why, it really throws a hydro-spanner in your plans when I bring them in alive, you know?
"Tell me about yourself." Marai asked. We were walking alone, because she was the only one who really had to meet the guy.
"What's to tell?"
"First, you aren't native to Nar Shaddaa."
"What makes you think that?" I was immediately on the defensive.
"Your accent. You have a trace of something overlaid with the Nar Shaddaa clipped speech. You spent at least five years some where with a lazy slow way of talking, almost a drawl. You spent about five more among the Mandalorians, because you have that snappy crisp way of speaking. Then about ten here. That means your home world is in the Outer rim, in the zone occupied during the Mandalorian wars."
"Keen Jedi senses?" I asked sharply.
"No. I spent years being a bodyguard and two as the equivalent of a cop. I was chief of security on a ship the last two years."
"Well you're right, okay? I ended up here just like a lot of refugees."
"What about family?"
"Family? What family?"
"So you have no family. What happened to them?"
"You ought to know. The war happened. The Mandalorians occupied our planet. I grew up with a Mandalorian overseer as the boss. I had family almost up to the end."
"They died?"
"They didn't just die, they were blown to ash. They lived on Has-pertain. You might not have even heard of it if the war hadn't happened. We had nothing but mines the Mandalorians needed. So they occupied us."
"That must have been terrible."
"You'd think so, but as bad as the Republic painted them, the Mandalorians really weren't that bad. They didn't hold slaves, or rape every woman in sight. They just expected you to work, and were kinda nasty when you didn't. If the count was short, they would come in and investigate. If you were hoarding, they would shoot you, but if it was something you couldn't control, they adjusted for it. It was harsh but fair.
"If it had been one of those mega-corporations out of the Republic it would have been worse. The one that originally settled the planet expected us to work, and if we died it didn't matter. They set quotas for the mines and if you didn't meet it, they penalized you. Try surviving on a planet you can't leave because you were fired as incompetent. Try keeping a family alive. I heard more people died from starvation under the Corp than ever did under the Mandalorians."
"I have heard of Has-pertain."
"Of course you have." I replied, voice dripping with scorn. "We were important enough that we had to be defended. The Mandalorians stationed half a million troops there, and everything they could scrape together to protect it. But the glorious Republic had to cut off their supplies. My family was sitting on one huge bull's-eye until the end." I hissed.
"Karath was assigned that mission. You noble Jedi wouldn't get your hands dirty, but he didn't mind. There was this one moon; about five kilometers in diameter in the asteroid belt, and they shifted it out of orbit, then rode cover for it. One minute, there was a planet and my family. The next, dinosaur killer time. The six people I though most important in the world gone in an instant. 3 million civilians slaughtered to kill half a million Mandalorians and cut their supply of Solomosite." I clapped sardonically. "Oh well done!'
"I am sorry about your loss."
"Would it matter if you had known me then? I was seven. Would the suffering of one child held you from it?"
"Our first year of the war we tended to be driven by other forces. The Senate lobbyists for the corporation that used to own the planet made sure our intelligence reports were wrong. Those reports stated that the civilians had been removed." She protested softly. "Three hundred of the Jedi lost during the war were the ones who scouted and gathered the intelligence on our advance after Has-pertain. We never trusted the Republic's Intelligence network again."
"Well you know the old saying, Military intelligence is an oxymoron."
"But you lived."
"Yeah, because I was a mean little kid. The overseer saw me fight three bigger kids, and he offered my family a position in the military if I wanted it." I caught her look. "Again, all hype. There were no slaves and masters under the Mandalorians. There were commanders, soldiers, and civilians. If you were a civilian, you did what you were told. There were no conscripted legions of 'brainwashed' kids going off to fight like the Republic's Propaganda machine claimed. If you didn't want to train, they left you alone. They do it with their own, why should we be treated any different?
"You know why I went? Because as many tons of ore as my father delivered, we were starving thanks to your gods damned blockade. Your Republic blockade cut them off from supplies, and the only people getting decent rations were the troops. I was hungry, and the idea of a full belly really tripped all my buttons.
"I was sent to a Mando'a training camp , and they made me a pioneer, what your side called combat engineers. Everyone thinks it's boring. Building bridges or dikes but you're in uniform. But we were in the front lines most of the time. Clearing old minefields of ours, clearing yours, even building bridges. But try it when some bastard with a tribarrel blaster is punching rounds five millimeters above your head, and your troops can't advance until you do your job. I was a whiz with mines. I could almost feel them. I had work right up until Malachor."
I stopped, looking down one of the massive canyons Nar Shaddaa had. "Everyone else I might have considered family was killed in that one. All thanks to you and your merry band of homicidal maniacs. I was 12 years old, and I was on a frigate that got caught the edge of that damn plasma blast the Mass Shadow Generator caused. If it hadn't been for shuttles that had survived the Republic frigate Viridian we'd be floating there still. Fifty of us out of a crew of 500."
"Viridian." She said. "Before she died, that was my last command."
"So I have you to thank for my rescue? Don't expect me to say it in this lifetime. The first thing they did was interrogate all of us. If we were Mandalorian born, or 'infected' with the Mandalorian view, we were sent off to POW camps. The rest of us were to be dumped on nearby worlds to get us out of the way. I was just one kid in a flood of refugees afterward. Everyone wants to write about the wars, the great battle the massive casualties. It's what happens afterward no one talks about. I got stuffed in a container ship bound for Nar Shaddaa, and the instant I hit dirt I ran for it. Signed up with the Bounty Hunters guild, and here I am."
"Vossk said you were the only true bounty hunter left."
"Is he still alive? I liked him. He appreciated my restraint."
"He said that a decent bounty hunter only kills when there is no option."
"I agree with him. But it went further back than that. When my training sergeant told me my family was dead, part of me died with them. I was a soulless machine from that point on. They thought I was just getting into it, but I made a vow that day. I promised my dead family that unless I could find no alternative, the Galaxy couldn't handle one more death. That to kill one more person, was to reach out, and put out a star." I reached out, and pinched my fingers over one of the stars in the sky. "I wasn't going to add to that if I had a choice."
"But you became a bounty hunter."
"I'm good at it." I shrugged. "Better than piece work in a Mob factory or laying on my back. I was always good at finding people when I was a kid. No one ever asked me to play hide and seek more than once. But a good bounty hunter can always find a way to take some guy down without blowing them away."
"I would think finding someone on Nar Shaddaa would be difficult. Until this happened, we didn't hold any hope of finding Zez-Kai Ell."
I laughed, shaking my head. "You guys would have starved as bounty hunters. As a kid I could always find the others, so I just used the same skills. When you accept a contract you get a holo, or at least a rough description. You study what you can find out about him and once you have a handle on him, you start walking."
"Walking?"
"This is a little hard to explain, but Nar Shaddaa is like a forest or jungle. There's a natural ebb and flow of movement that is constant. Like an ocean it's got it's own currents and eddies. The ways it moves naturally."
"Oddly enough I do understand."
"Good. I lose most people about there. But your target is a rock thrown into the river, a predator or something that doesn't belong. It causes ripples and eddies that can be detected. So I just follow the ripples until I spot the target, then its just watch, learn their patterns, then take them down. Simple."
"Kreia taught me how to listen." She saw my confused look. "It's a skill Jedi can learn. You can't fix a problem unless you can feel the problem. So you listen to the people, to the world around you. Maybe you can teach me to hunt, and I can teach you to listen."
"Well I'm not sure I want to learn anything from a Jedi, but maybe I'll give you a chance."
"I look forward to it."
Meeting
Marai
The door of the safe room opened, and Zez-Kai Ell looked up from the book-reader he held.
"Here's you delivery." Mira said. "I'll just wait outside."
"So you returned from exile." He said. "It was not unexpected. Kavar thought you might, if only to walk the old battlefields again. But of all the places in the Galaxy, I would have never expected you to come to Nar Shaddaa.
"But you were always difficult to read. As if you played your cards too close to your chest. All of those that knew you before spoke of it. Adept at being alone even when sitting in a room full of friends. That was true when you were linked to the Force, but it was doubly true after it was lost to you."
"Why did Kavar think I might return?" I asked.
"He wouldn't explain. It was just a gut feeling he had. Perhaps serving during part of that war made it easier to understand you. But he felt that you were the key to the threat we were facing. That somehow by understanding what happened to you, we would grasp what it was. None of us agreed at the time, and so many have been lost since as you no doubt know."
"Over eighty of the survivors..."
"How do you know?"
"I had the discussion with Goto that you refused. Not willingly, but he had a telling argument. The Republic will die in the next few months if we do not save it."
"Then it is already doomed. We are too few to affect it."
"That was the Council's last argument before we went to war. But we succeeded."
"Yes, and caused an even worse calamity afterward!" He glared at me. "Do you still think we were wrong to banish you?"
"I never questioned the Council's decision. You all agreed to cast me aside, and I accepted that judgment. I accept it now."
"There were those that thought we should have ended your life even before you fled the temple that day."
"If you had come with lightsaber drawn and wanted my life, I would have given it gladly. That is what none of you seemed to understand. I had sworn to follow the council's orders, and except for that one time, I never swayed from that oath."
He looked at me. "After Malachor V we were not that sure. You ordered the weapon built."
"That is true. I ordered the Mass Shadow Generator built. I had it placed aboard the Ravager. It was supposed to be a weapon of last resort. All of our war council knew that if it were used, no one would be alive in the system afterward. The fact that the few thousands survived amazed even me." I looked at him. Do you know why we even planned to use it? I had read our own estimates of what the last five planets including Manda'lor would cost. We were looking at four and a half billion more civilian lives if we had to invade because every one of them, man woman child old and young would have fought us. Think of the sin of obliterating five more planets! None of us wanted that!
"But if there was no home fleet remaining, their own honor would have demanded that the Manda'lor expiate his sins. It would have come to a trial by combat, him facing our champion. Revan expected me to be there to fight him. But when I was sent home, she took that onus on herself.
"But you used it!"
"Just to set the record straight, none of you ever asked me the most important question. 'Who gave the order'. It wasn't me. I was in a coma I did not come out of until after the fact. Revan would not have, we were winning! More than two thirds of our losses there were unnecessary. No one else among the high command had the authority or even the ability to activate it."
"But it was used!"
"Afterward I worked it out. There was one man in the chain of command that could have pushed that button. The man who had it physically in front of him. Admiral Quintain."
"But Quintain had been dishonored, sent home two years earlier!"
"That is true. But when we built the device, we needed something larger than any ship ever built to carry it. Quintain was in BuShips, and he used those connections to the Republic Senate and the High Council of the Navy to get himself placed in command. When Ravager left she was half crewed and not even completed because all she had to do was come to Malachor, be in the center of our formation surrounded by the rest of us, and if the enemy killed us, fire the weapon. That was something well within his capability, and the Senate demanded it as the price of building the device and Ravager.
"So-"
"Yes. Quintain had to prove himself a hero and he blew our formation to hell, along with all but about fifty of the Jedi that had gone into the battle and over a million of our men." I hissed in anger.
"Do you think I wanted to be remembered as the person that had that hell machine there? If the enemy had been winning, it would have decimated them, and the fleet we had in reserve under Admiral Dodonna would have swept in and mopped up. That was our fall back plan. Revan was still alive by pure luck, as was I. Dodonna didn't have to take Manda'lor, what was left of Revan's fleet was adequate for the job. But she didn't get a lot of pleasure out of it. I went home, and if you had executed me for being responsible I would have bent, extended my neck, and waited for the blade to fall. Because I had no life after that day."
He sighed. "So much we didn't understand. Why did you hunt me? Are you here to take your revenge?"
"No. I came because Atris needed to find you all. To call you all to Dantooine. I came because I was all she had available to send."
"She's alive? I thought she had gone to Katarr and died with the others. She was the librarian in charge of the Coruscant temple. If she lived the records did as well. That is good."
"But why did the Jedi scatter?"
He gave me a sad smile. "When the Jedi Civil War ended, something or someone began to hunt us. Somehow we were found, and if more than a few Jedi were anywhere, we were more readily found. Master Vandar had us scatter, because that way we could try to draw out this new enemy, and confront them openly. All of us chose worlds ravaged by war, where the very death screams in the Force would conceal us, or like myself to Nar Shaddaa where one Jedi is merely a touch of color in a vast ocean of water, and easily hidden. It was all part of the plan Kavar laid out for us.
"He felt that if the enemy could not find us, they might assume that we were all dead. They would come from the shadows, and we would see what we faced.
"And we knew that gathering together to confront them before that time would merely lend us and whatever world we used to slaughter. But after Katarr, there were too few remaining. Those that still live wander alone, and afar. I have not heard from any of them in a long time."
"Atris had a list, and locations, at least of the Council that exiled me. You here, Kavar on Onderon, Vash on Korriban, Vrook on Dantooine Atris is still on Telos last I heard."
"All but two of the masters remaining." He murmured. "Vandar is in the Outer Rim somewhere last I heard. Revan... No one knows where she is."
"So you didn't even have all of the facts, but you cut me off from the Force anyway."
"We did not cut you off!" He looked at me surprised. "It might have appeared that way, but what caused your loss was something we did not understand. You had been lost to the Force every since Malachor. We did not know why, and in haste and fear, we reacted. Naming you exile was just what we could do. Perhaps the others know what caused it and what caused you to regain the Force, but I do not. I did not speak my full heart during that Council meeting. Choosing Nar Shaddaa as my prison was my own form of self-imposed exile. All of us had lost Padawan to Malachor. Mine did not die, he became our enemy under Revan. I was not the only master who lived to see our students fall."
"But we did what we felt we had been taught to do. Could none of you realize that?" I asked plaintively. "When I went to war, it wasn't for glory, or hatred or bloodlust. People we were sworn to protect were dying, and even though we had been taught our lives meant nothing if we could save other lives, the council held us back.
"That is the reason for my anger before the Council. None of you had faced that choice. Kavar had run after that first battle, Vash had fought against Exar Kun, but none of you remembered what it is like being pulled one way by your teachings, and the other by cooler heads. If you had given us something beyond a flat edict, we might not have gone at all."
"I do not blame our students for that decision, even though a lot of masters did. It would be like training a hawk to hunt then expecting it to sit on your fist rather than fulfill its purpose." He shook his head sadly. "Perhaps the Council was wrong, perhaps the order itself had grown arrogant and complaisant. It was said during that meeting after you had left that we had the authority, but what is the old military saying? Rank has it's privileges and it balances with Rank has it's Responsibilities. Never once in all that did anyone accept responsibility for Ulic, for Exar Kun, for Revan, for Malak... for you. Each was considered an aberration that would never happen if we chose better students.
"Yet of the 50 that survived Malachor, only you returned home. Only you were willing to face our judgment. And rather than trying to understand we punished you for all of their sins. Our one chance to find out what had gone wrong, to try to set it right, gone in one burst of righteous indignation. And now that decision had returned to haunt we that survive." He sighed again.
"Perhaps I am right. Perhaps we had become so set in our ways that any protest was seen as rebellion. So many left to join our enemies because that is what they saw. But I was already dead. I could not sit in council and condemn when I wasn't even sure why they had left us. So I resigned from the Council and came here. But by then there were many who left and will never return. That is the reason the Republic no longer trusts us, and I wish we could change that but it is the truth.
"But it is time I stopped hiding. The enemy stands revealed, and I must stand with the Jedi. I am no longer Jedi. Once we are dead and gone, the Republic will heave a sigh or relief, but they will not mourn us."
"But that is not true!" I looked at him. "On Peragus, men stood to protect me, even though I would be considered author of all their woes. On Citadel Station, on Dxun, even here on Nar Shaddaa, I felt that yearning for what we stood for! Wishing that someone would step up, and stand between them and the evils of life. We must stand for something, or the Galaxy has no rhyme nor reason." I shook my head. "What of Revan? She was redeemed. Cannot the entire order be rehabilitated?"
"It gives none of us comfort that Revan was redeemed. She had no choice in the matter. We took a woman whose mind had been wiped clean and made anew, then threw her into the meat grinder instead of leaping into it ourselves. The last act of a bunch of cowardly old men and women. " He stood. "I will go to Dantooine as Atris has asked. I will stand and fight. But I will never bear the name Jedi again.
"So if you have others to notify, please do. I have many of my own sins to consider before I go."
