Chapter nine:
"Swing down from the left, and back across. Step the left. Parry high, parry low, parry mid right and stab out about a foot. Step back, parry high. Lead forward, press your attack, sweep it down in front of you. Good, he's stumbling. Now cut through his knees. Got him!" Thea sounds very pleased with herself, as I vanquish a foe that exists only in her imagination.
"Are you sure you're not just making this all up?" I ask.
"There are many forms of lightsaber combat," Thea scoffs.
"Yeah, you told me about seven main ones," I say, "Which one have I been doing?"
"Um…"
"Like I said."
"I do my own thing," the image of Thea bites her lip as she paces in the air above her holocron. "Well, judging by my excellent sense of time, we've got the chance to run you through a few more sets before we're joined by assorted Rebel youths."
We've taken over one of the small gymnasiums that decorate the Kryat's floor plan. My force powers have been getting stronger day by day, which means I've been able to spend far more time levitating objects and far less time meditating (Thea insists that they are one in the same, or at least aspects of one greater truthful union, and I don't bother to disagree aloud).
Thea has explained a bit more to me about lightsabers, how they're made, how they're used. I still focused on training with blasters, knives, and grenades, as those were the weapons my enemies and my allies would primarily be using, but Thea had decided work a bit on my lightsaber form.
To this end, I'd been able to reserve private hours in the gym for me and my holocron, between groups of soldiers or open access to those with intent to exercise.
My dark workout clothing is damp with sweat. I wave my hand and my water bottle flies to my grip; I take a swig, resting my metal pipe on my shoulder. Hollow and about twenty-eight centimeters in length, I'd ordered the pipe myself, straight from engineering. Thea admitted that she couldn't feel it's weight, and that she couldn't really see anything all that well, but it seemed a perfect surrogate lightsaber to her.
I hoped to make my own lightsaber at some point; a real one. They seem to be very enjoyable weapons.
By my reckoning (because I'd be damned if I ever bothered to look at a calendar), it had been about two dozen days since my incidents with Galen and Vaynich. I hadn't seen either of them since. I'd met a few of Galen's old crew, Jayze I remembered from times long past. I promptly ignored them all. It seemed the easiest way to react.
I had the word of the best doctors in the rebellion that Vaynich would make a full recovery, but not a quick one. I'd managed to break his mental conditioning, programmed courtesy of the Galactic Empire, and now they had to give the old victor inside a chance to reemerge. Vaynich had been transferred to another, much smaller, ship (named The Quorra or some such) where he spent his days taking vitamins, sleeping in and talking about his feelings. I felt sorry for any psychiatrist to cross his path.
President Coy glanced at my request for larger quarters and delegated me to the officer actually in charge of housing. The nervous little man took one look at me and practically tripped over himself in a scramble to get me approved and moved. The quarters were about the same as my previous ones, only larger so as to fit two beds. They suited Primith and I very nicely.
Primith had taken my advice about finding something to live for very seriously. She spent nearly every day in the medical bay, getting under foot and learning what she could. She studied medical texts on my datapad (which she'd basically taken over) every night. My mother's death had made a huge impression on her (things like that tended to on ordinary people) maybe she felt like she could have saved if she'd known a bit more first aid. She couldn't have, of course, but it was a healthy interest nonetheless (pardon the pun). It also kept her busy so I could train, study and practice in my room without unwanted spectators. Train I did, all day, every day.
Menissa had no more holos for me to star in. Now that my status was wholly established, and the war fully started, she told me she was dealing with other subjects. She still kept turning out new propaganda pieces using footage from my work in her studio before, along with images of me fighting stormtroopers that Edwin had recorded.
I ate lunch with Edwin every day and found playing with his emotions an important part of my training. Over a week I took him from a juvenile crush on me to a passionate love for a forbidden woman far above his station (or a different unachievable woman at least, though there had been plenty of ideas about her in his head before I took hold of them). He told me Menissa hadn't responded to the love note I'd helped him write for her.
Syra Antilles and I worked out together a couple of times. I played with her head a little too, but not enough to get her to do anything interesting. She talked so much that I had a tendency to get distracted by whatever mundane facet of her life was up for discussion.
I hadn't heard anything from Fenric since the message he'd left me (which I hadn't bothered to respond too). I'd talked briefly to Zanna over hologram. Black Sun was in the final stages of joining the Rebellion, partly because the war was turning in our favor with surprising speed. System after system was turning against the Empire in their own special way, everything from closing trade routes to starting all out riots in every city. People had had enough of taxes, and trade restrictions and watching their children killed as a spectator sport. Fear is a weapon, and a good one, but overstep your bounds and you start finding proactive fearful people with nothing to lose.
Zanna said that she'd be back soon, and Thea had voted that I celebrate by training longer and harder than usual.
Thea watches with a critical eye as I launch into a new set. It's always a little funny swinging at empty air, but I understand the principle and the importance. I just have to remember that in combat, when I'm hacking through human beings, there'll be a lot more resistance to cut through than the empty air can offer, all that meat and gristle. At least that's how it was with swords. I wasn't sure about lightsabers.
"How easy is it to cut through people with lightsabers?" I ask aloud.
"Taking another's life is always regrettable, and it weighs so heavily on the soul-"
"No I mean literally, how smoothly does the lightsaber cut."
"Really well," Thea says after a pause. "It just burns right through."
I whip my pipe up under an invisible opponent's ribs, elbow the imaginary man behind and kick him off his feet before taking his head off.
"Sometimes I wonder about you," Thea says. "You talk about all this dark stuff, but you sound so…sterile."
"Sterile? So I'm not pregnant while I'm talking about it?"
"That wasn't what I meant."
"Do you mean like clean?" I ask.
"Meh. Just…calm really. You're calm. Cold. Cold to all the waste and death and destruction. Not Jedi, definitely not, but not really Sith either. There's not the same kind of passion there."
"Hmm. That's nice," I separate an imaginary assailant from his hands. "I've been meaning to ask about that actually. You haven't told me much about the dark side."
"There's loads of history and case files," Thea says, "You can look at them in my database sometime. As for the dark side, it's just accessing the force through negative emotion, raw emotion, and primitive emotion. Hate, anger, fear, mild sarcasm, it's all a big ball of aggression that they keep pent up inside."
"And when they use the force?"
"They pour it all out. Usually with lots of lightning."
"So that's what it's like? Just letting it go?"
"So some have said," Thea explains. "Why are you asking me that anyway?"
"I was wondering a little bit about that," I say. "Are there really two types of the force?"
"There's only one force," says Thea. "That we know about, that is."
"And emotion doesn't exist," I'm not even fighting now, just swinging my pipe absentmindedly as I watch Thea pace in the air above the holocron.
"How doesn't it exist?" she asks.
"Well it's a thing," I clarify, "But it's inside people's heads. It's feeling, perspective, glasses to look through."
"And a whole lot of chemicals," says Thea.
"That too," I say, "But if there's only one force then that force is neither light nor dark. Not Jedi, not Sith. There're just people who feel different ways when they use it."
"The force is one big thing," says Thea, "But it is so very big of a thing that it can have many, many facets and faces. That said, I'm inclined to agree with you. It's the people that matter. Life just exists, our choices are how we build or destroy, and have a positive or negative effect on our environment. Oh, and behind you."
I stab my pipe back behind me without even looking.
"Don't worry," Thea says, "Nobody's perfect."
"Why do you mention that?"
"I figure you slipped up," Thea shrugs. "That line of questioning, your interest in descriptions of Sit behavior. It happens to everyone. Just don't let it happen again. Do no harm, that's the Jedi way."
"Do no harm unless slicing up people and things for great justice."
"It's not a perfect system," says Thea.
"Well I'm no Sith," I say. "Anger is stupid."
"And does that make you a Jedi?" Thea muses.
"I'm not really sure what I am anymore," I say.
"It seems like the galaxy doesn't really belong to Jedi and Sith these days," Thea admits. "You're a survivor. Maybe that's enough. I am too, or at least my holocron is. Together, after this war gets won, maybe we can start over. We could make our own Jedi temple, start teaching some kids."
"I've had my fill of children," I say.
"Oh, bad memories."
"Distracting memories," I say. "So…will you teach me how to shoot lighting?"
"That's Sith stuff."
"So? It's powerful. What if I need it?"
"Then you'll settle for telekinesis and speaking of telekinesis, let's switch gears and practice some of that. I want you juggling at least two more items than your record before our time runs out."
"We've only got another four minutes," I realize, checking the clock.
"Then I guess you'd better get busy."