AUTHOR's NOTES: I wrote this in MS Word, but on the transfer to copy & paste it seemed to combine some words. Originally I put some notes or annotations and I took them out but something caused several words to combine together. I'm going to just add the chapters and then fix them as I can. I'd like to get all the chapters in. I have the entire book written, though I will try to make it into a trilogy, still lots of ideas to continue the story. But haven't done any more new writing.
CHAPTER 1 – Clone Betrayal
Shasie was a Jedi Knight, at only twenty-five she had been Knighted for nearly five years. She was a Jedi Guardian, who specialized in protecting people. Nowadays almost all the Jedi became Guardians or Sentinel's after training. Very few Consulars, like Ki Adi Mundi, were needed in a war, at least for their intended purpose of negotiation and diplomacy. The Clone Wars should be coming to an end now that the de facto head of the Separatists Count Dooku along with the deadly cyborg, General Grievous had been eliminated. Perhaps they could get back to being peacekeepers once more. This war has been a huge burden on the Jedi Order, which was never meant to be an army.
As she approached her quarters, lost in her thoughts, she felt a magnified disturbance in the Force, something akin to a tidal wave. A strong one. The Force is an energy field that surrounds all life and binds the galaxy together. Jedi were gifted people that could harness that energy to varying degrees. Several people she knew well had just passed into the Force. A war was going on, so it shouldn't be out of the ordinary to sense deaths, but she could not shake the feeling that something more sinister was happening. She blinked and scanned around the corridor of the RSS Corrigan, a Republic Cruiser where she was currently assigned as General of the clone garrison's ground forces. They had completed their mission to capture General Taski, one of the Generals that reported directly to Count Dooku, a former Jedi Master who turned against the Republic and the Jedi Order. She gazed up from the pounding pain of grief that struck her as more were people were dying only to spot Clone troopers marching toward her.
She peeked back around her shoulder and realized another Clone squad was coming from the opposite direction. Flanking her! Her bright grey-green eyes went wide in surprise. Her allies, the deaths. Something was very wrong. They had their weapons ready, which doesn't happen onboard a Republic ship unless there are enemies about. But no enemies were between the two squads, nobody was... except her. Jedi were dying, that's what she felt. Many of them. This is a trap!
Her training and instincts kicked in and there was no time to dwell on it. Time slowed as she accessed the Force to guide her. Her door was too far first squad was already there, and now she could see there were more troops behind that one. She leapt to the nearest door and entered the code quickly to override the lock and launched herself inside just as the first sizzling energy bolts struck where she'd just been.
The blonde Jedi pulled out her lightsaber and activated it towards the door controls. The glowing azure blade of energy extended into the panel, sending sparks and small streams of smoke into the recycled air of the cabin. She realized somebody was stirring in the unknown quarters she entered. It was the assistant gunnery officer of the ship, who was getting out of bed after the intrusion. She remembered the name, Lieutenant Bulo. She was an older Zeltron woman, who's braided metallic dark blue hair was infused with streaks of aging grey. The grey hairs didn't seem to diminish her beauty as it just seemed more distinguished. She cocked her head and asked with a voice both elegant and alluring. "What in Kessel are you doing? Is there a problem, master Jedi?"
Shasie stared at the red-skinned woman and blinked a few times. "I was going to ask you the same thing. Several squads of clones just converged around me in the corridor and fired at my position. Why?"
The gunnery officer wiped her eyes and watched the Jedi's blue laser sword pointing in her direction causing a surprised gasp. "I don't know, I really don't. I've been asleep for a few hours. The crew were finishing up some maintenance and then we were going to head out to assist at Cato Nemoidia for one big push against the Separatists. I haven't heard about anything else going on. I swear, Jedi Tensen. There must be some mistake."
"There was no mistaking blaster fire coming at me!" she said indignantly.
The woman held her red hands up in an apologetic way, "I didn't mean your mistake, I meant the clones..."
Shasie shook her head making her blonde braid swish like a Nexu's tail. Her voice was stern, "Clones don't make mistakes, they obey their directives. Please open your console and show me your current orders. Quickly, if you please."
The Zeltron didn't have much of a choice, not with that deadly energy blade. She didn't stand a chance even if the Jedi was without her weapon, the incredible feats they could do were something akin to magic, as the legends have said. She had seen them personally doing amazing acrobatics, and hurl remote objects with the flick of a officer fumbled through her desk and pulled up the display and moved clear so Shasie could view it. The display read, 'Jedi declared enemies of the Republic after an assassination attempt on the Chancellor... terminate all Jedi on sight.'
Shasie's look of utter surprise was palpable to the Zeltron, who could read body language very well. "That is impossible. It can't be, the Jedi Council would never sanction such an act!"
This time the officer spoke up, "I can tell you believe that, and you are not part of this, whatever it may be. I've met quite a few Jedi and their padawans. To be honest, most of them have personalities of an inventory droid, but they've always displayed high moral standards and the utmost respect for all sentient life. Something isn't right about this new directive. How can I help?"
The Jedi squinted at the older Zeltron as she touched the thoughts of gunnery officer's mind. The red-skinned woman was genuine in her offer of aid. "I shall not put that on burden on you lieutenant. You would be court martialed, at the very least." The blonde Guardian looked around the cabin searching for options as the door pounded from the outside corridor.
"Oh, but you are forcing me to comply," she replied with a wink. She went over to her bunk and laid down, "I won't look or move, please don't hurt me," she said, acting solemn, but gave a brief nod to acknowledge she was fine.
The blonde Jedi pondered the ship's layout in her mind recalling her location on the ship. The ship she served on for on for many months side by side with the people whom are now trying to kill her. Shasie searched her own memory and then she had it. She was above a cargo bay close to a bank of escape pods. 'Thank the Force' she commented to herself. "I'm making you a new escape hatch, Lieutenant. I apologize for the mess." Shasie drove the glowing blade down and began to carve a circular pattern around herself, just as sparks from a blow torch began to cut through the cabin's outer door. Her lightsaber was faster, though.
As the blade cut through the last of the circle, she plummeted about twenty feet down into the darkened cargo bay, and landed gingerly, like a spry Lolth cat. She ran out of the hatch and down the corridor to the escape pods. She hurriedly examined the three escape pods. She opened all three airlock doors of the pods and then went into one of them. She shut the hatch to her pod first, then reached out with the Force and closed the other two hatches. She hit the launch control on her pod, and as the countdown started, she closed her eyes and visualized the pods' controls and activated their launch sequences in tandem.
The pods burst out of the respective launch tunnels and Shasie immediately flipped the ship downward to the underside plane perpendicular to the cruiser, where the ship turrets couldn't get a lock. She turned away and back toward the planet they just left, Aargonar, in the Mid Rim. A Separatist planet, just licking their wounds from their lost battle against her and the Republic. 'They've got me between a Hutt and a hard place,' she groused. She might well be joining her colleagues soon who were winking out of existence in the Force. She had felt many hundreds die by now.
Bile threatened to expel from her gut, but she pushed it back down and concentrated, and ignored the pain she felt in the Force from the deaths. The Jedi knew they would be launching fighters soon, so she maxed out the thrusters and sped away. Her trick would buy her only a small amount of time. She quickly grabbed a environ-suit and let the auto-pilot guide her while she donned it. She hoped she wouldn't need it. Neither side would bother rescuing her adrift in space.
Most of the fighters were grounded after the prolonged battle on Aargonar, but a squadron of Clone Scout ships hastily prepped and launched from the Republic cruiser in pursuit of the Jedi. The battle tested clones attempted to narrow the distance, but Shasie gained a lot of ground toward the planet. The globe grew in size, although it was still a good distance away. "Come on, come on, " she pleaded with her controls. The scout ships didn't bite on the two decoy pods, they must have detected there were no life forms onboard from the command deck of the cruiser and relayed that information. She couldn't out fly these clone pilots, but the Force is powerful ally, as wizened diminutive Jedi Master Yoda was fond of saying. She centered herself and concentrated on her surroundings, letting the flow of the Force guide her path once more.
The Jedi Knight cut non-essential systems and coaxed more speed out of the pod by bypassing safety protocols. That allowed her to increase her speed beyond the safe was dangerous to push the engines this hard and could easily overheat and seize up, but the more immediate threat were the clone pilots getting into firing range. She began to pull away from them, but they also tried to accelerate to match. They were just out of targeting range and couldn't gain any ground on a straight away path.
Shasie made it to orbit hitting the atmosphere at breakneck speed. Her pod became cocooned in orange fire from the friction of air surrounding the planet. The temperature in the pod rose to a point that she was sweating profusely. She continued full speed toward the surface with the three clone scout ships still giving chase.
The Jedi Knight was heading down way too fast toward the rapidly approaching ground. Additional warning alarms blared, and her panel flashed red showing that she was approaching a busy airspeeder lane directly in her path. She had to maneuver away to avoid colliding with the planetary traffic, giving time for the clones to make up ground and getting worryingly close to firing range.
Shasie maneuvered around the traffic lane and was forced to veer off course to avoid casualties. She was hoping to find open water but found grassland that turned quickly into desert, she scanned the view from the viewport for a place to set down and decided to direct the pod to a large patch of sand dunes. She hoped to bury the pod in the soft sand and cushion the landing. They would have trouble targeting her if she could land it just right.
She dipped the pod's nose down and then at the last several dozen meters before hitting the ground she yanked on the controls to pull up. Her hands felt numb on the grips. She managed to level it out before it impacted the surface by the width of a short jawa, thanks for her repulsor engines. She wasn't out of trouble yet as the repulsors overheated and shutoff and began to drop the last few meters. The air currents near the hot sand buffeted the pod and sent it into a flat spin as it met the sand. The pod spun around and around on its horizontal axis like a rotary blade, making the blonde woman dizzy as it kept bouncing roughly from dune to dune.
The scout ships followed the Jedi General down and skimmed the surface to get a better angle of attack on the escaped pod. They unleashed a salvo of laser bolts from their dual linked blaster cannons just as the escape pod first hit the sand, striking it hard across its side and rear hatch. Sand from the blast dispersed in the air forming a blinding cloud. The pursuers maneuvered away from the cloud of sand particles and glass shards, nearly colliding into each other. They were forced to pull back around, and locate the target again, as the pod decelerated enough to come to rest against one of the dunes.
The Jedi wasted no time and yanked the lever to release the escape hatch. She dived through the opening, and rolled forward as she gathered the Force and propelled herself thirty meters away toward another tall sand dune. She twisted her body to land feet first deep into the pile of drift sand.
The ships re-acquired the pod and strafed it with blaster fire again but didn't manage to score a hit. Suddenly the scout ships turned tail and sped off, up and away from the planet. Shasie's head just crested out of the sand and raised a sand coated eyebrow at the unexpected retreat. Then she understood why. Two squads of planetary patrol fighter craft angled across the sky chasing after the clone ships. She found herself rooting for the Separatists now, which was an ironic turn of events in a very disastrous day.
As the vehicles faded into the distance, the Jedi General darted back to the pod and scavenged what equipment she could remove and carry. The Jedi understood that she would need something to trade for money. She couldn't stay on this planet long. The Republic Navy knows where she is and she had a bad feeling they weren't going assume she was dead and would return.