Zahavi wanted to speak. His work here would have been so much cleaner if he had his true voice returned to him. It would have been better if he could have hired a team to dig up this ancient Rakata site in the desert. With his true voice, he could have explained the necessity of the work, and how vital it was that they assist. They may have joined up of their own free will if Zahavi could have spoken to them.
Instead, they toiled day and night with a blank stare in their eyes. This crew of unfortunates, vagrants, the lowly, they mumbled faintly about their work as they dug and cleaned and brushed away a thousand years of sand. Several had gone blind, many more had worn their fingers down to nubs. Their minds were no longer their own. Not even when Zahavi rounded them up in a recessed section of the dig site did they comment. They shuffled mindlessly to where they were directed, ignoring each other, with a singularity of purpose.
Zahavi wanted to speak. He wanted to thank them for their service. He wanted to assure them that the work they did here would to secure the future for countless generations. He wanted to comfort them, to give them some hope that their lives had been given in service to a greater good, that their sacrifice did not come at the hands of a random and uncaring universe, but rather preserving the lives of countless men, women, and children in a future age.
Zahavi wanted to tell them all of this. But he could not. Instead, he looked over the gathered minds he had enslaved and spoke the one word that was given to him to say.
"Kill."
Without a beat of hesitation, the slaves turned on each other. Pickaxes and shovels that had been used to unearth this ancient site now rended flesh and cracked bones. A brutality none of them had ever known washed over them, and they tore at each other with the mad fervor of the damned.
Zahavi wished not to see, but he did not move. He owed them this, at least. One set of eyes would witness their sacrifice, and remember their faces. He watched as the mob ripped itself apart. And when the final victor of the fight succumbed to his wounds and passed on, Zahavi picked up a shovel and set about covering the mass grave. He wanted to speak, but he said nothing. His only remaining Word was reserved.
Fiachra slipped away from the dormitory, wrapping herself in a cloak and covering her head with a hood. The last few nights at the Academy had been miserable. Staying in such close quarters with the other students had finally started to wear on them, and the bickering and yelling was making it difficult to get any sleep.
Ever since the test a few days ago, in which their teacher Haran'buir had declared them all failures, the students had been quick to find reasons why others had caused them to fail. Zhejari in particular felt cheated, as he had been the first to retrieve the idol, and was well on his way to recovering it when the test had been ended. He held particular ire for Sesna, who had seemingly seduced Khalon to distraction instead of participating in the trial. Sesna, in turn, scolded Zhejari for the assumptions he made about her character, and refused to engage in any meaningful discussion.
Kaikorero and Nila-Om seemed civil enough, but both were finding their own grievances with the group as well. Kaikorero kept a nest of clutter in her corner of the room, and it was constantly spilling over into Nila's perfectly maintained section. On more than one occasion, Nila had mistaken some of Kaikorero's possessions as junk, and had disposed of them over the waterfall that sat outside the dormitory balcony.
Tensions were building, and Fiachra was having a difficult time concentrating on her studies. Yet on these pleasant nights, the air was cool, and it did not take long to walk out of earshot of angry voices. Past the training circle, down the hill a ways, there was a lovely little stream that cut through the tall grass, coming to rest at a pond near the edge of a cliffside. It was a private, quiet area, and Fiachra had found it much easier to pack a bedroll and sleep out here than to stay in her assigned quarters. Of course, she had to wake up early, as the sun rose over the treeline, and sneak back inside before the day's lessons began, but she felt this was a small price to pay for a night of good sleep.
She was unaware, however, that she was not the only one on campus who enjoyed sleeping under the stars. So she was greatly startled when she lay against a mossy stone and heard it grunt under her weight. She shrieked and jumped to her feet, pulling a dagger from her belt. A hand emerged from beneath the stone and gestured to her in a sign of peace. "Wait!"
She watched in horrified embarrassment as the stone got to its feet, clearly a humanoid male, and took a swig from a bottle concealed in his dirty and grass-stained robes. He swallowed the gulp of a foul smelling whiskey and tucked the bottle back into his vest. He then turned to Fiachra and made an inviting gesture. "Okay, you can stab me now, if you still want to."
"Wh...who are you?" Her voice trembled. She was no fighter, and she did not know if she should be threatening or apologizing.
The older man sleepily rubbed his eyes and looked her up and down. "I'm...the one you pulled a knife on after trying to lie down on me. That's...you know...mixed signals."
Her face flushed. "I'm sorry. You startled me." She put the knife back in its sleeve on her belt. "I'm Fiachra." She made a short, quick bow as she had been taught in Professor Volaro's Civil Studies class. "A pleasure to meet you."
The older man raised an eyebrow, sizing her up. "Bersk."
"Pardon me?" She was confused. Was he telling her to bersk? Was this a command, somehow asking her to make up for her mistake? How does one 'bersk', anyways?
"That's my name. Bersk. B-E-R-S-K. Rhymes with...I don't know. Something, I think." He sat back down on the mossy patch next to Fiachra's bedroll and pulled out the bottle of whiskey again. "Don't mind me. You can still sleep here. Just, you know. Not on me. Think Michael might kick me off campus for good if he saw that."
Mortified, Fiachra scooped up her bedroll and fled back towards the Academy. Better to toss and turn than to spend a night next to this foul-smelling drunk.
"Okay. Good night!" He called after her. He took another swig of his drink and spoke in a mock conversational tone. "See boss? I'm great with kids."
Not everyone in the Academy was preparing for rest. In the tactical room, Michael and Haran'buir were going over the analysis of the trial several days before. Eyebot cameras had picked up most of the details, and they were learning quite a bit about the new students.
"Kaikorero had the best tactical plan, using her squad of Dawnbreakers to cover her escape with the idol she stole from Zhejari." Michael noted Kaikorero's accuracy with the grappling hook that had snatched the prize away from Zhejari's hands.
"Agreed. But the goal was to recover the idol and return to base with your full squad. She left hers behind. As did Nila-Om and Zhejari both." Haran was unimpressed with the results of this trial, and had stood behind the failing grade he had given the entire class.
Michael pointed to white dot on the holomap before them. "Fiachra took care of her group, staying with the 'injured' squad member."
"But it took her out of the game entirely. And by trying to protect the other two, she sacrificed movement. She was barely halfway into the forest when the match ended." He pointed to the red and blue dots on the east side of the map. "And don't even get me started on these two. They'd rather make out then take the test seriously."
"I don't know," Michael countered. "Look at Sesna's squad. They were moving into a flanking position on Khalon's team. She might have been orchestrating a distraction to break the stalemate they had found themselves in."
"So her tactics are fine when fighting horny teenage males. Give her a medal." Haran was frustrated with this line of analysis. He was used to training Mandalorians, not civilians. "Zhejari demonstrated some real power going after Nila-Om. I noticed you weren't real crazy about that."
Michael shook his head. "Zhejari comes from a noble Sith family. The Dark Side is strong with him. It allowed his emotions to cloud his judgement, and someone could have gotten seriously hurt in that thunderblast he conjured."
"He was going after Nila, who had taken the idol from Kaikorero. Let's talk about her. I've never seen anyone move that quickly. Are all Voss that skilled?"
Michael shook his head again. "She's only half-Voss, and I suspect that skill of hers is coming more from her father's side than her Voss mother." He frowned. "He'd be proud of her, if he was even aware of her existence."
"Well, whether it's the Voss training or just good genetics, the girl is an asset. She's fast as I've ever seen, and we can use that." Haran crossed his arms. "For someone who's never built an army before, you sure do know how to pick them."
Michael shot a disapproving look at the Mandalorian. "I am not 'building an army.' I am running a school."
Haran shrugged. "Call it what you want. But most schools don't hire guys like me to raise a militia for security."
Michael leaned over the holomap. "Being a part of this family paints a target on our backs. We've been attacked before, and an Academy full of us makes for a great big pile of dead bodies if we go unprotected. That is why I brought you into the fold."
He leaned back and sat in his chair, rubbing his temples. "I don't even want to imagine the kind of horrors that would be in store for these children if we weren't taking every precaution to protect them."
Zahavi wanted to speak, to offer some kind words as he shoveled the final mound of dirt over the mass grave he had filled. But he spoke not, and turned back to the archeological dig site. He approached the Rakata terminal they had unearthed earlier that morning and flipped the power switch.
Centuries old machines hummed to life, and the ancient transporter platform began sparking with energy. Zahavi smiled as the readout display flashed on, with the image of a white and green planet and a single word.
Belsavis