Chapter 16: Gatherings
Ryloth Embassy, Coruscant, 28 BBY
"Graxorra! Shoe-button! Behave, please!"
Consul Tyyson's commands were utterly ignored by the twin fox-dogs leaping around his guest's feet, sending up a discordant jingle as the crystalline bristles they'd inherited from their vulptex mother rattled against one another. Having become familiar with Tyyson's pets—and his habit of taking them absolutely everywhere—Gretta placated the creatures with the treats she had brought with her and patted each one gingerly on the head. She could not quite bring herself to coo at the quivering duo, but her attentions were sufficient to calm them down, and they retreated to the dog bed under the consul's desk, where they curled up tightly, waiting for whatever might happen next. Gretta liked dogs; the Antilles family bred beautiful animals in the countryside. But these hybrids seemed to lack both the mysterious beauty of the wild vulvices and the trainability of domesticated canines.
"Good doggies!" Tyyson praised the animals. "You remember Lady Antilles, don't you? And she always has treats for us!"
"Us?" Gretta could not resist asking, as she settled herself in the chair the Consul pulled out for her.
"Ah, well, you know, Gretta, that I never had children of my own. Graxie and Shoe are my babies now. And they are excellent judges of character; you'd be surprised how many diplomats ignore or insult my sweethearts. Did you know that the Reesarian Ambassador suggested serving my beauties as appetizers at the next Senate opening?!"
"Perhaps he was just teasing. You are easily wound up when it comes to your…babies."
"That I am, my lady, that I am. So what can I do for you? Coruscant's bright lights have dimmed since you and your husband left the planet. Is Bail coming out of retirement, perhaps?" Tyyson's lekku twitched with excitement at having new gossip to spread among the elite of the city.
"No, no, nothing like that, my friend," Gretta told him. "I am here on a different matter. I have been helping a cousin to restore a classical Selon building that had nearly fallen to ruin, and, unfortunately, our security was not quite as competent as we'd hoped. A young twi'lek girl managed to break in; she was caught before she was able to do any damage, but it seems that she's been living in the underworld, surviving on whatever she can steal."
Tyyson shook his head. "An all-too familiar story, I'm afraid. Until my government succeeds at catching and punishing those on our world who sell our females to other species, such children will continue to appear throughout the Republic." Tyyson, Gretta knew, was the author of a book exposing several powerful corporations on his home world for their abuse of twi'lek females, though he had, for his own safety, published it anonymously. "She may be the child of a family that fled slavers, hoping to find safe refuge here. Without money or connections, refugees find themselves in desperate situations. Does the girl have family?"
"None she is willing to claim." Gretta plucked at a silver hair that Shoe-button—or perhaps it had been Graxorra—had left on her robes. "My cousin is very young and terribly idealistic," she lied smoothly, "and was shocked at the conditions of the local shelters here on Coruscant. She is refusing to leave the child there, and the girl—Jhoni is her name—flatly refused to be repatriated to Ryloth."
"I can hire her, if that's what you're asking," Tyyson offered. "We always have need of new servants at the embassy, but no one here is really prepared to raise a twi'lek child, especially one from the streets."
"Of course not," Gretta agreed, even though she privately suspected that Jhoni would be easier to supervise than Tyyson's expensive pets. "I wanted to ask if you would facilitate my sponsoring her application for Alderaanian citizenship. I would have made a formal request of the ambassador, but he is so determined to deny the continued presence of the slave trade on Ryloth that I'm afraid he would find it politically impossible to agree."
"He is more concerned with appearing to be progressive than actually helping our people these days," Tyyson admitted. He thought for a moment. "It would take a bit of creative paperwork, but I think between us we might just manage it. You're sure you want to take on the responsibility? If word gets out among the lower levels that you are giving asylum to criminals, you could be very quickly inundated with a crowd of sad beings demanding your help."
And that, Gretta thought, is why Alderaanians always grow tired of the capital city. Instead of working together to solve the problem of the starving masses, elite Coruscanti raise the height of the walls that keep them from seeing it. Even courageous and empathetic beings like Tyyson are corrupted by the wealth and isolation of the upper levels. "If a wave of children start climbing the balconies, I assure you, we will handle it ourselves. Let us speak further of this creative paperwork."
Shoe-button jingled softly from the floor, as if he approved.
Sector 7G, Ilum, 28 BBY
Professor Huyang, who awaited the younglings aboard the Crucible, did not want Leia on Ilum which was perfect because Leia did not in fact want to be here.
Let's be honest, she admitted to herself, as she huddled in her thick winter coat, you hoped Master Windu and the Council would forbid you from violating the sacred space of the Jedi by entering the crystal cave. Mustafar is supposed to be the planet where the jedi go to die, but for me, there is no more haunted place in the universe than this cold little planet. "Ilum," she murmured aloud, "killer of worlds."
"Did you have a question, Leia?" Master Ky Narec asked, pitching his voice to be heard above the frigid wind. An average-looking human with brown hair and green eyes, Master Narec had agreed to use her first name immediately, unfazed by her actual age or rank. He merely swept her up into the group of four younglings he was directing, including her in his explanation of their purpose here: to find their crystals and begin construction of their lightsabers.
"I'm sorry, Master," Leia answered. "This place is weighted with memories for me."
"You've been here before?" asked Remy Keevan, a shy but very curious Pantoran who had attached herself to the Alderaanian. "Have you been in the cave? Did you find a crystal? But you don't have a lightsaber." Her eyes widened, and she touched Leia's arm sympathetically, "Did you lose your lightsaber? That would be a terrible thing."
"I have never been in the cave, Remy, and although I did have a lightsaber once, I did not lose it. It was passed on to someone who needed it more."
"Enough chatter," Ky told the group. "Come, if we direct the Force together, we can open the Temple doors." He raised his hand and concentrated on the ice that concealed the entrance to the ancient building, and one by one, each youngling imitated his stance and added their power to the adult's. After a moment, the ice seemed to shatter and melt away, revealing a huge pillared entrance, and Leia hurried to keep up with the others as they followed Master Narec inside.
After giving the younglings further instructions, the Jedi used the Force to open a frozen waterfall, directing each initiate to enter quickly and find their crystal before the sun set outside, and the water refroze, trapping them inside the cave. Leia sensed some form of deception in Ky's warning, but decided to ignore it. After a year on Hoth, ice held no terrors for her.
"Are you okay, Leia?" a tall Weequay boy asked her. "I'll protect you if you're afraid," he promised.
"Thank you, Kiro," Leia responded. "but my fears are all in my own mind, not in this cave, and I will have to face them alone."
After a bit of exploration, the group came to a room that opened onto three separate passages. Each initiate listened for direction from the Force and chose a tunnel. Leia hung back. Only after each child had disappeared did she open herself to the Force.
16BBY: Two Imperial Star Destroyers hung over the small planet where the icy crust was bubbling as its core was relentlessly strip-mined by huge machines. Crystals were shattered and crushed as they filled the maw of the terraforming construct, until a single, huge crystal, the size of large bantha, was exposed, destined to become the power core of a technological terror. The screams of its victims echoed through time and space.
15ABY: The original trench created by the Empire's strip mining now completely circled the planet, carefully lined with crystals set in parallel rows where they could send energy back and forth between them, increasing its power minute-by-minute, linking to huge arrays capable of channeling the power of an entire sun, and at the hollow core, engines were being installed…
34ABY, Hosnian System: the inhabitants of five planets at the center of the New Republic looked up and saw a new moon in their sky, cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. Ilum had a new name, Starkiller Base. But the obscenity did not last for long. A small band of saboteurs destroyed the thermal oscillator that kept its horrific energies stable, and the planet that had been sacred for a thousand years imploded, turning into a small star, burning away one of the last remnants of the Jedi Order and piercing the heart of the General leading the Resistance.
Survivors named the star "Solo."
Leia shuddered as she wrenched her mind from the terrors of her past, finding herself kneeling on the stone floor where the three tunnels began. She panted as if she had run for miles, before pushing herself to her feet.
And there, in front of her, floating at shoulder height, was a kyber crystal.
Tentatively, she reached out and wrapped her hand around it, feeling the sense of rightness that Master Narec had described. But at the same time, she also felt another power, a sense of being watched by something huge and overwhelming and not quite sentient. A warm wind swept through the corridor, twisting around her legs and brushing at her clothes. It pressed against her, almost affectionately, and then it and the alien presence were gone. Exhausted, Leia turned and headed back for the Temple doors, deciding to take the strange encounter as a good sign. Maybe if this sacred planet approved of her, then she wasn't on the wrong path after all.
Jedi Temple, Coruscant, 28 BBY
Anakin Skywalker had decided to do something stupid.
He was still angry, angry and in denial about the life that his daughter from the future had predicted for him. But after spending time with his mother and even introducing her to Obiwan, he felt vaguely as if he were waking up from a very long sleep. His senses were sharper, and he was more aware of the strange patterns his own thoughts and emotions sometimes took.
His mother, for example, had been mildly outraged that Anakin was not trying to form a bond with Leia. "She is family, Ani, and she is here all alone, decades from everyone and everything she ever loved," she'd pointed out. "If you have been lonely among the Jedi, imagine how she feels, wandering among people who must be ghosts to her."
Well, Anakin hadn't wanted to imagine it. That girl was far too confident, standing alone in front of the whole Jedi Council and predicting the destruction of the Order and the Fall of the Republic. But his mother had been enslaved for a long time, watching powerful people tear families apart, buying and selling away loved ones with no warning, always, always afraid. To her, Leia might have the power of a thousand Jedi Masters, but she would only see a lost grandchild.
And she expected Anakin to do something to help his daughter, no matter how he felt about her or how ridiculous it was for a thirteen-year old padawan to even have a child. "What am I supposed to do, Mom? Tell her bedtime stories?" he'd asked sarcastically.
Shmi had not found that response even slightly funny.
I can't raise a daughter who is three times my age and hates my very existence, Anakin thought. Jedi don't have family anyway. She has the Organas, let them take care of her.
But there was one thing he could do, one very stupid thing, to give Master Organa the love that his mother thought she needed.
He took a deep breath and opened the comm-relay. "Padme? I mean, Queen Amidala? This is Ani, Anakin Skywalker. I hope you remember. Anyway, something very strange has happened…"