Chapter 10: I Am No Jedi

15 BBY

Now a fugitive, wanted by the Empire, the former Jedi Master Baylan Skoll wandered the galaxy, looking for any work he could find. Before long, he found his way to Ord Mantell, in the Mid Rim, part of the Bright Jewel system. There, he met a Trandoshan named Cid Scaleback. She recruited him and he eventually became a mercenary.

On his jobs for hire, Baylan allowed himself to pour out all his anger and frustration at the loss of his former life, his friends, his once-lover, his former Master. He was always careful to never, ever wield his lightsaber unless it was absolutely necessary or he had no other choice.

One day, Cid eventually dispatched Baylan to a remote asteroid named Polis Massa. There was some medical information that a client of hers needed to get their hands on.

Baylan gained entrance to the medical facility easily enough. As he rifled through the medical files, however, he couldn't help but feel the Force pulsing through him again, calling him towards one particular batch of files.

He retrieved a data processor and plugged it into the holo-projector. A blue rendering of video footage beamed up before him.

The recording showed a man standing over a young woman, her legs spread in childbirth. In the man's arms was a baby.

Baylan stared. It couldn't be….. It couldn't be…. but, yes, from this angle, the bearded man looked an awful lot like Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The woman on the medical cot seemed familiar too, and it wasn't until she spoke that Baylan was able to place her.

"Obi-Wan….?" Senator Padme Amidala of Naboo murmured, weakly. "Anakin….? Is he all right….?" Obi-Wan did not answer, as best as Baylan could discern. "Obi-Wan…." The dying woman pleaded. "There is good in him….. I know….. I know there is…. still…." She moved no more.

The hologram winked out. Baylan stepped back from the data player in shock.

His mind flashed back towards that night in the Temple without his brain telling it to. Seeing the cold and yellow eyes of Anakin Skywalker from hundreds of yards away as he massacred their colleagues.

Padme had asked after the traitor's welfare the way one might ask after a lover. The baby in Master Kenobi's arms…. was that Anakin Skywalker's baby?...

All at once, Baylan flashed back to that conversation he and Skywalker had had at the Padawan symposium several years before. Baylan had asked Anakin hypothetically about what to do if one was tempted to stray from or even break the Jedi Code. Though Baylan had not stated how he wished to break the Code, Anakin had warned him away almost, from such temptation.

Now, Baylan knew why.

Anakin hadn't dissuaded Baylan away from a relationship with Gellayria because he wanted to help him. Anakin had dissuaded Baylan to protect himself and his own, verboten relationship with the beautiful Senator from Naboo. The more Baylan postulated on the theory, the more it made sense, and the more resentful he became. Once again, for Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One, the rules did not apply. Anakin was free to take a lover, knock her up with his demon seed (kriff, perhaps he had even married her!) yet Baylan was not.

And now Gellayria was dead. And Anakin Skywalker, under a new name, was seated at the right hand of the Emperor.

Letting out a bellow of rage, Baylan ignited his green lightsaber and slashed the holo-projector and the data recorder inside it to bits.

He glared down hatefully now at the green plasma, seeing it as a reminder of his old life. It had been a hard life, the Jedi path, to be sure, but it had been a good life too. All of it had been taken away from Baylan without his consent. No matter what doubts and questions he might have had about some of the Order's policies, he had adored…. the idea of it.

Now that religion was gone. The Jedi had been wiped out by the Sith, who had been hiding in plain sight. It irked Baylan to ponder how none of them, not even Master Yoda himself, had seen it coming. In his most bitter musings, he dared to conclude that maybe the Jedi had deserved to die, after becoming so blind to their original mission and assuming a role – that of soldiers – that Baylan knew was never meant to be theirs.

Switching his saber off, Baylan now opened the hilt and plucked out his kyber crystal, holding it in his gloved palm.

His first instinct was to crush it in his fist. He could keep the hilt, as a reminder, maybe pawn it off for a few credits, those that were still worth anything…. But, no. It wouldn't be right. As scarcely as he used it, Baylan still appreciated how a Jedi's weapon could be bloody handy in a fight.

Still, he glared hatefully down at the glowing, pulsing green crystal. Master Dooku had imparted on him the lesson to always question, and where it was necessary, Baylan had, even while trying to be a good soldier, a follower, despite his misgivings.

Maybe Dooku, who had been raised a Jedi and died a Sith Lord, had been right all along. Perhaps the Jedi path was not the best path – it couldn't be, because look where it got them!

Baylan nodded. He would give in to his emotions. To the Dark Side. After all, there was no one left of his old comrades to stop him. Imbued with new power and vigor, he would overthrow the Emperor. He would hunt down Darth Vader, an old colleague who he had once respected but now only felt deep disgust for, and take his revenge. For Gellayria. For Master Tapal. For little Wabat, and Shaden Wessiri and all the rest of them.

Holding his palm above the kyber crystal, Baylan splayed open his fingers and attacked the crystal with the Force.

The green crystal - a sentient, living thing - cried out in pain through the energy field. Baylan gritted his teeth and bore down harder, intent on sucking the color out of the thing.

But no matter how much rage he summoned, no matter how forcefully he worked open a crack in the stone, Baylan could not get that kriffing crystal to bleed. The most that he managed was to suck away all the green in the stone, but the shade that replaced it did not, at least under this artificial lighting, match the crimson blood-red blade of the Sith Baylan wanted to be, yet somehow could not commit to fully.

Baylan finally stowed the defaced kyber crystal back into his lightsaber hilt. When he thumbed the switch and ignited it, his face was bathed in orange, matching almost the same orange of the flames he had seen leaping from the Jedi Temple.

…. The color oddly suited him.

Returning to Ord Mantell, Baylan decided not to mention the mess he had left behind on Polis Massa to Cid. He had the medical records he had been originally sent to retrieve, in his trusty satchel, and that was what mattered.

Docking his Corellian ship, Baylan studied a hidden compartment in the wall as he waited for the pneumatic gangplank to lower. Behind the false durasteel panel, sat the Jedi texts he had fled the Temple with that night several year cycles ago. Sometimes at night, he would stay up and pore over them, desperately seeking the answers as to what he could have missed. Where the Order had gone wrong…

Perhaps he would never find those answers in a book. Perhaps the answers didn't even matter. All Baylan knew was that, if he could no longer be a Jedi, he would be something better. Something that was neither Jedi nor Sith, and thus greater.

Striding down his gangplank before closing his ship up, Baylan headed into the dusty streets of Ord Mantell.

He was halfway to Cid's dive bar when the sounds of a commotion in a back alleyway caught his attention.

The alley was cloaked mostly in shadow, but from what little light trickled down, Baylan could see a group of stormtroopers harassing a Human youngling. The youngling – a female – couldn't be any more than a few year cycles old. Dirty, matted blonde hair clung to her head, and thrashing away from the stormtroopers now, she appeared fierce and feral. Certainly, she had been living on the streets for some time, quite likely abandoned.

"C'mere, ya little runt…." A Stormtrooper muscled his way towards the little girl, only to rear back as he let out a howl through his mouthpiece: it looked to Baylan as though the rabid girl had kicked the stormtrooper in the shins.

Suddenly, Baylan felt the girl's Force essence slam up against him through the energy field. He was struck by the raw power and potential in one so small.

Oh, kriff…. This little girl was Force sensitive…. If these hapless troopers or anyone else discovered this, she would be spirited away somewhere to be exterminated, no question.

While he no longer considered himself a Jedi, it was a Jedi's duty that now compelled Baylan to act. He moved with surprising speed into the alley, despite his girth.

One Stormtrooper was alerted to the new presence in the alleyway, and lifted his helmet, but by then it was just about too late.

"You there! – HAL – GAHHH!"

Igniting his orange blade, with eyes cold as steel, Baylan went to work, tearing his way through at least half a dozen stormtroopers. Most of them, he killed instantly – bisecting them, decapitating them. Within moments, it was all over.

Hearing a gurgling, Baylan glanced down. One Stormtrooper was still alive, despite now being legless.

"Je-Jedi…." he croaked, blood dribbling from the space between where the helmet met his chin.

Baylan crouched down before his victim. "Oh, no, Officer…." He drolled. "You are mistaken…. I am no Jedi!" And he sent his orange blade through the trooper's skull – a mercy killing, perhaps, but still.

Turning about, Baylan's gaze made a sweep of the alley. For a moment, he thought the feral little girl had made her escape, fleeing in the confusion, but then, he spotted her huddled in fright near a trash receptacle.

Kneeling, Baylan gently held out a gloved hand. "Hello….. Come here, my little friend. Don't be afraid…."

Slowly, by degrees, the blond girl edged out into the light. Trembling, her blue-green eyes nonetheless locked onto Baylan's.

Her essence in the Force hummed.

In his time at the Temple, Baylan had never taken a Padawan apprentice, despite many of his colleagues almost pleading with him to do so, insisting that being a Master would suit him. So it was ironic that, now that his brethren were all gone or nearly, he was starting to consider it.

Baylan made his decision. When the girl was close enough to take his hand, he tenderly clasped it.

"Come: more will be here soon…."

And the ex-Jedi turned mercenary led his new Padawan apprentice out of the alleyway, towards his ship, and to whatever adventures awaited them out in a wild, ruthless galaxy.