Chapter 10
Palpatine slams his hand on his desk as he finishes reading another report about a failed mission by one of his inquisitors. Yet another mission wasted chasing force ghosts to planets that just don't have enough life to hide a padawan, let alone a knight or master.
Then there's his force visions that he uses to root out traitors and insurrectionists. Recently they've been showing an unrelenting wave of darkness spreading across the galaxy. But it's not his darkness.
His anger spent for the moment, he picks up the data pad again and looks at the next intelligence item. A small group of Jedi possibly heading towards Kashyyyk.
Opening up the report he spends the next few minutes perusing the rumours, observations, and proposed solutions, before he approves the plan that allows them to escape the planet on a known ship. Then he sends orders to Vader to have an invasion force follow a couple of jumps behind the Jedi. It will provide a good pretext for bringing the planet under his control.
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Shaak kneels in the center of a clearing on the surface of Felucia as she just allows the force from the planet to flow through her as she casts her senses out.
As she spreads herself out over the hive, allowing her sense of the force to expand with it, she reflects on the last few months.
After Maris attended the funeral of Zonder, she almost immediately approached Master Secura about an adoption into the hive. Since then, the two of them have made massive strides in confronting her fears. Stemming as they did from the trauma of needing to survive alone after her last master died until she arrived.
A small smile appears on her face as she feels Swims-with-hry'lth's instinctive reaction to her presence give way to pleased acceptance. That smile widens as she feels widening circles of purer life in and around the part of the planet Swims moved to after she became a queen.
With a sense that the planets descent to the dark side has been arrested with the continuing construction of those purification wells, she turns her senses out to the wider galaxy and the future.
As she struggles to deal with the sensation of sensing the galaxy from multiple points at the same time, Shaak almost recoils as she senses a large darkside presence travelling near Kashyyyk.
Reaching out over the hive, she almost loses her trance as she tries to pull Master Secura in with her. However, with the queen of the hive joining her and helping her deal with how disorientating the disparate senses are, their sense of the galaxy clears up and the two of them can tell that the darkside presence is heading towards Kashyyyk as a destination.
Together, the two of them try to divine the purpose of the visit, only to find four small presences four jumps ahead of them, and less than a day away from Kashyyyk.
As they start to pull back, the force shows her a vision of thousands of tiny lights being extinguished, before being raised again as part of the darkness and hunting more and more lights.
Shaak is left reeling as Master Secura abruptly leaves their joint session in an uncharacteristic, but short lived, fit of anger. Looking at the other Jedi's memories, Shaak is surprised to see that Master Secura perceived the Jedi as leading the dark sider to her nest and her people.
As she's meditating on what she saw, Master Secura returns and dumps a large face hugger in her lap.
Shaak looks up in surprise, "I'm not ready."
Master Secura puts her hands on her hips, "Tough, I either split my hive now, or all of those lights get turned to darkness. I cannot do it on my own anymore. I'm going to Kashyyyk to inform the chief of what we've seen. That queen will live for 24 hours. How many people are you willing to let die because you are afraid?"
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Rhrillullosh bites her tongue as she finishes putting together the fusion pack that will go with the plasmacaster she's building to replace her bowcaster.
As the weld finishes cooling, she presses the 'button' on the side of the fuel tank and watches the pressure gauge as it slowly rises to five times atmospheric pressure. Once it's reached the minimum operating pressure, she taps a couple of commands on her wrist computer and flushes the fusion chamber twice before attaching a gas analyzer to the exhaust vent. Then she refills and empties the fuel tank three times before she's happy that only hydrogen is being produced by the runic array Ulli helped her design.
Granted, she could have just used a standard fusion battery, but she wanted to see if she could get the slightly larger Yautja fusion generator working as it uses a gravitational gradient to compress the fuel hydrogen rather than a magnetic bottle. According to her calculations, it will be slightly less efficient than the magnetic fusion that's commonly used. But it is also the same technology that they use for their faster than light travel, and it provides the plasma for the plasma caster.
On the other side of the coin, the startup energy requirements are an order of magnitude higher than those needed for a magnetic bottle.
Setting aside her personal project, she moves onto the "pirate defense" helmets, as they've become known as now. As pretty much all of the warriors agree with Chief Hrebrurk that they are dishonourable, especially when paired with the shoulder launcher. But they have agreed that the helmets can be used for guard duty, and the launcher can be used for repelling pirates and slavers.
Rhrillullosh chuckles as she fits the droid brain into a helmet, "If they think that's dishonourable, wait until they see the plasmacaster. Not that I'm going to let anyone outside the hive have one."
Her mother calls out, "Rhrillullosh, I hope you're not wasting time!"
Rhrillullosh calls back, "No mother, I'm finishing my orders."
Then she pretends she didn't hear her mother grumbling about princesses getting involved in warrior business.
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Vittanak glance back towards the cabin where his, no her hive sisters are waiting to spread out across Thabeska while she tries to get an in with the Fardi clan. And, as of a couple of hours ago, scans the settlements for force sensitive people.
It's been a rough year since he was freed by Queenie. Sithspit, she needs to think of herself as a she. Well coming up on a year anyway. Not that she'd trade her freedom for her masculinity, not like some of the others that had actual skills and not just labour or entertainment value. Some days it takes more work to remind herself of that.
As her ship touches down just outside the Fardi compound, Vittanak double checks the runic charm bracelet on his, her wrist and uncomfortably stands up. The motion a stark reminder of how much her body has changed, and is still changing.
As she heads back towards the cargo ramp, she does a couple of dancing steps she learnt from Ulli's memories. Oh yes, she might not be male anymore, but she is certainly free to learn whatever she wants now. And what she wants to learn is how to make runes.
In the cargo container she walks over to her trade chest, an item she enchanted herself with runes, and the reason why the queen has allowed her to attempt this gambit at all. Lifting the lid, she uses the shrinking charm on the inner liner that appears to be flush with the external crate before lifting it out to reveal a space that's twice as large as the exterior of the crate. It's not as good as some of the compartment trunks that are in their ancestral memories. But it's something that they know how to make, and the inner liner conceals the runes too. Quickly climbing down the ladder, she grabs a brace of thermal detonators and puts them into a leather bag before she climbs out again and reinserts the liner.
Given how obvious she was in her planned route here, and how many times she was inspected by imperial guards, these should be a perfect demonstration to the clan for why they should employ her. After all, thermal detonators are so illegal that no amount of bribery would have got her past an inspection. Preferably as a courier.
As she walks up to the gate, Vittanak allows the force to wash through her with her queens aid. Her eyes widen in surprise as her queen recognizes one of the force sensitive people inside the compound.
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Ahsoka Tano glances up from the speeder she's working on as Fardi opens the gate to the compound. As the gate pulls back it reveals a Corellian woman who screams uncomfortable. Looking at the pointed tips of her fingers, it's quite possible that she's just not sure of her welcome.
Shaking her head, she turns back to her work and stifles a yelp as she spots a data crystal sitting inside the panel she was working on. A crystal that absolutely wasn't there before as she's holding the component that fits in that space.
Palming the crystal, she discretely plugs it into her datapad and runs a scan on it. When is comes up empty except for a single unencrypted text file, she opens the file.
Ahsoka Tano
I have seen shadows crossing the galaxy looking for lights, before they extinguish them and turn them into more shadows.
If you need a way off planet, we can provide one. If you want proof say "Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader" and someone will bring you to me.
Knight Aayla Secura
Ashoka frowns and shakes her head, "There's no way that Akakin's Darth Vader, he…"
She trails off as she's surrounded by fire. As the fire burns away, she rolls to her feet and looks around the underground village she's found herself in. As she spots a pitch black monster behind her, she takes a cautious step away from it.
A quiet pop behind her has her spinning around even thought he Force is quiet inside her. The Rutlian Twi'lik that's standing there smiles broadly, "Tano, thank the force you survived."
Ashoka frowns as her eyes start to take in the black claws on the Twi'lik's hands and feet, "Do I know you?"
The Twi'lik shakes her head, "Not really, you and Skywalker evacuated me before we crashed on Maridun. You spoke to me about your confusion about compassion and attachments if that helps."
"Secura? But you're dead."
Aayla sighs, "The force provided the means of my survival before I knew I needed it. Without that intervention I would be dead." She lifts her hand and looks at it, "Though it wasn't without consequences."
Ashoka looks around, "Is this a force vision?"
Aayla shakes her head and her eyes go distant, "No, we're on Felucia. The worker behind you transported you here. She will return you once you're ready to leave. If you give her a name she'll come when called and can bring you back here whenever you want."
Ashoka opens herself to the Force to try and sense any deceptions, "What?"
"Tano, I won't lie. There are things that I would like your help with, and the changes that I've undergone are far more than skin deep. The first thing I want your help with is keeping those lights alive and away from the darkness. Given that we know that Palpatine is a Sith, and he corrupted Anakin, I'm presuming that he's the source of the shadow."
Ashoka shakes her head, "No, it can't be. Anakin would never."
Aayla steps forward and carefully pulls Ashoka into a hug, "He is, and he did. Master Shaak Ti is on the surface meditating at the moment, otherwise I'd take you to speak to her. She was there when Anakin attacked the temple."
Ashoka shudders as the truth of Aayla's words shivers through the force, "I…"
"Shh, it's ok. I know it's a shock to you. Give the worker a name, and go home and examine your feelings. Once you're centered again, we can talk. She can also take you to see my padawan, Ekria, on her ship. Master Ti's padawan is usually with them too, as they're scouting planets for me along with Drake. "
"I'm not a padawan anymore."
Aayla leans back so that she can look Ashoka in the eyes, "I don't care. The Jedi Temple is destroyed, the council is gone. We are still Jedi, and that can include you if you want. But we can't live by the Ruusian rules anymore. As long as you live by the code, I would be proud to call you a Jedi." She looks at her hand, "Given the changes that have happened to me, the council would be forced to expel me for having too many attachments. But if you don't want to speak to people associated with the Jedi Order, you could see Ulli and Rhrillullosh on Kashyyyk."
"I don't understand, how did I get here? What's going on? Why do you want me to name that thing?"
Aayla takes Ashoka's hands, in her own, "That's a conversation that will need a lot longer than you probably want to be away from your job right now. Vittanak can answer most of your questions, and I think she's going to be staying in the area for a few days while Fardi tears apart her ship trying to find all the smuggling hideaways."
"How can you know that!?"
"Give your worker a name and talk to Vittanak. Trust that I have a good reason for asking you to do this."
Ashoka huffs, "Fine, she's Mal Mal."
"Don't touch her dome unless she rubs it against you. But if you ask her to, she can take you home now. While she has some memories, her personality is still developing, so how you treat her will shape who she is."
Ashoka frowns, "You make it sound like she's a slave."
Aayla shakes her head, "The memories she has comes from a symbiotic species that likes to serve. Her own species is a hive mind with a single queen the directs the hive. She's no more a slave than you are. But I think it would be better to speak to someone else and get their perspective on it. Not only because of who I am, but also because of what the Jedi Council did to you."
"Fine! Mal Mal take me home!"
Mal Mal walks up to Ashoka and leans against her as flames appear around the two of them. A moment later she's back in the Fardi compound a short distance away from the speeder she was working on.