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Dantooine


Ary the Grey

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I tried to wear Aidan out before the Ghost Breath left hyperspace””I really did. By the time that he'd been fed and watered, and his hygiene seen to, I took a second to tear into the packages that my mother had broken security to obtain. In hindsight, I began to worry over the fact that she thought that it would have been justifiable to risk an attack by purchasing baby toys””a rattler, of all things!

 

Eventually, Aidan decided that the thing wasn't edible or even particularly satisfying to taste. Then my son discovered that by shaking his little hand, he could create an unexpected and highly entertaining noise.

 

However, my good cheer at Aidan's amusement evaporated with two messages. The first was from the Eternal Vigilance, alerting the Jedi to the betrayal by the Sith (and likely the Empire). The second was of the terrorist attack on the Jedi Temple at Gala, where one of the Sith's minions succeeded in ramming a personal spacecraft into the building, despite the very considerable defenses that guarded its vicinity. I took great care to ensure that the fury that threatened to boil over didn't surface on my Force-Presence and expression””having some skill as an illusionist, I was even able to paint a false impression of happiness on my presence.

 

Aidan lost interest in the plastic toy by the time that Arlan announced our arrival, to the point that he turned away from me and simply discarded the rattler. That was when he stumbled on a fundamental fact of the universe.

 

When you let go of it, stuff falls.

 

It was amazing how intrigued he was by this truth, enough for me to cast aside my worries for a moment as he studied this theory by picking up and dropping his test subject”¦ over, and over, and over.

 

”œIt's called entropy.”

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"No." I growled, shaking my head viciously. I had yet to teach him how to sense the emotional presences of sentient beings through the Force, but the fact that I was being so cautious to not allow my anger to bleed into the Force was a clear sign of how disturbed I was. "We're not going to let some... some lunatic change our plans. We won't be able to stay as long as I could, but let's at least do what we came for."

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Dantooine was”¦ pleasant. There wasn't really a better way to summarize what I'd seen so far. The city that the spaceport serviced seemed well-run, or at least clean enough. The air, though dry to my experience, smelled fairly unpolluted and clean even in the city. It was a pleasant world, lacking in the visual splendor and geological oddities of Naboo, but it was peaceful. No wonder””it was still undeveloped and boasted few resources save for fertile soil.

 

The massive ray-like creature that floated lazily in the sky was just similar enough to a thranta to tease me with memories of Alderaan. I found myself staring wistfully at its ambling flight, only listening to Arlan's conversation with half my attention.

 

I nodded in response to my own thoughts. Maybe”¦ there was a possibility. I resolved to keep a surreptitious eye on this world and make sure that it didn't come to harm. There was some hope here for my future.

 

When my Padawan bid farewell to his old friend, I was finally jerked back to my senses by the resumption of our hike and Arlan's question. It took a second to return to full awareness and comprehend his query. ”œWhat? Oh”¦why not? I've got room on the Ghost Breath for it.”

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It was with no small amount of gratitude that I swept away the drying mess on my robes. At least the crap wasn't seeping into my shoulder any longer, but those robes were going to be a loss by the time we returned to the Ghost Breath, and even if they didn't start to stink in this sun. Glad to have something to concentrate on other than the remaining residue that caked on the surface of the garment””and was stubbornly resisting all attempts to scrape it away””I launched into a brief description of what I knew.

 

”œThere are a few ways. The Empire designed a scanner that detects Force Sensitivity, but those are rare. A precise midichlorian count can be taken from a blood sample. That used to be very popular with the Jedi of the Old Republic. But that knowledge was lost during the Purge”¦ and most Jedi simply don't care about it. It's like”¦ oh”¦ comparing the power of our lightsabers. When it comes down to it, mine works, and I can use it very well.

 

”œFinally”¦”

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A sigh escaped my lips as I regarded the corpse of the canine predator, noting the significant state of emaciation that the beast was in. No wonder it attacked us; a hungry predator made for a reckless one, and this critter clearly never managed to break into the kitchen in Arlan's home.

 

That sentiment quickly faded in what I had to do. I swept my right arm across the body of the kath hound, igniting my lightsaber as I did so to cleanly separate the torso of the beast from its hindquarters. It was a ghastly example of overkill, but the cauterized gash that the blade left behind didn't even bleed””this was the part of my task that was clean, and didn't disgust me to my core.

 

Obviously, the separated halves of the hound needed to be hauled away from the homestead, even if only to the edges of the Vass' land. I knelt beside the pieces of the animal, placed my fingertips on both halves of the carcass, and tried not to look away as a quartet of deceptively slender claws sprouted from the interior of my prosthetic hands and easily pierced its taut skin and tunneled through muscle and under bone. Shivering all the while, I tested the strength of those hollow claws””they held, fortunately””and I trudged away to deposit the corpse a few minutes away on the plain.

 

I tried not to think about the reason why my hand wasn't sweaty when I brushed strands of moist her from my face.

 

At last, I had a chance to send away a number of messages as I returned to Arlan's home. Maybe he had found what he was looking for”¦

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Finally, there was a sense of conclusion, and my head jerked up to glance at the upper level of Arlan's home, just in time to wince in sympathy. Oh, his business on Dantooine was finished, that much was sure, but it had left no sense of satisfaction””only emptiness. His parents must have left something else for him, or the kid had stumbled upon another family artifact that conjured up sensitive memories.

 

So I creaked open the door to the Vass household, noting with some dismay that the kath hound must have made a nest of their lower living area. Apparently the beast hadn't learned to climb stairs, however, for I found the stairwell and the corridor just outside Arlan's room undisturbed. There I found him, sitting before an R2 unit, tears streaming from his eyes even as the droid's holoprojector dimmed. It was clear what scene I had intruded into.

 

I felt the compulsion to say something, to break this awful silence, to let him know that he didn't have to be alone in his grief. ”œWhen my father died,”

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I incline my head towards Arlan and fixed him in an unyielding stare, not so much struck by emotion as I was an absence of it. My father had died literally at the beginning of my adult life, and far more painful than the memory of his loss were the memories of home that were starting to fade from my mind. Though I had tweaked my ships' life support systems to emit the same mix of gases that I breathed as I child, I couldn't remember how the air of Alderaan smelled, forgotten what it was like to suffer through my allergies when the wild grasses loosed their blossoms every year.

 

”œWhat are you sorry for?”

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It was simply too quiet around the landing struts of the Ghost Breath, as though the patrolling birds and chorusing insects maintained a reverent quiescence in this area. Here, the Force was”¦ dry. Not sterile, not a wasteland stripped bare by years of merciless assault by the elements, but suffering a prolonged drought, ready to bloom into the clumsy vigor of life after a summer's storm. I sampled the air, ignoring the mechanical stench of Arlan's speeder bike. Things simply felt”¦ off.

 

And I gaped in disbelief at Kyrell when I realized where he had summoned us. Thank goodness that my mother had been perceptive enough to ascertain our destination and construct an illusion so that this place wouldn't disturb my son.

 

”œI came out from under a skyscraper looking better than that.”

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I could only hope that my expression didn't turn patronizing, for I frankly thought little of Kyrell's belief that accepting a prosthetic limb would somehow affect the person he was. Compared to the degree to which I had modified my own body””both through the encouragement of my enemies and my own needs””a simple mechanical hand was nothing. As far as the Jedi were concerned, I hadn't changed much over the years””I probably became more stable, if anything.

 

But that was Kyrell's foolish wish, and I could only respect it.

 

”œFine then. We're about to leave””to Hoth, actually. I can ask for Skye's help there, and I need to have a talk with her and her son. How does cold weather sound to you?”

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((Arlan, the Ghost Breath's cargo hold is capable of storing an X-Wing-sized ship. It ain't small.))

 

While the Jedi Master and my apprentice spoke in the common room, I turned towards the cockpit to devote my attention to summoning legitimate medical attention to our destination. Halfway in the middle of my summons, I flushed crimson at Kyrell's frankly embarrassing praise of my character.

 

”œSkye, you've got a new patient. Malin””Malin, I hope you realize I can hear every word of what you're saying back there! Sorry. Malin went on a personal crusade and took a beating. Pharazon literally tore his arm off. I've got the arm under stasis, but I can't fix this kind of damage myself. I need to speak to your son anyway””can you meet us at Hoth?”

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  • 8 months later...

It took about a second for Arlan to get a reaction. At hearing her student's words, the wiry woman shifted from a state of fitful sleep to nearly full alertness. Rolling up on her back and lifting up her legs, she fairly launched herself out of bed, the rest of her body following her legs out from under the sheets. The dark-haired woman didn't blush at her somewhat immodest dress; she just murmured a not-quite-awake ”œThanks”

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The brewing process took approximately a minute, almost perfectly timed with the end of Arlan's accounting. Cupping the ceramic mug with her hands, Armiena stared into the steam rising from the caf. Just the smell of it was enough to pierce the fog over her mind.

 

”œIt's a fairly simple weapon. Given the parts and a blueprint, even an amateur mechanic could cobble one together. The parts, at least. A blaster”¦ or a slugthrower requires a certain degree of precision to be useful, or even functional””well beyond the facilities of your average garage.”

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Armiena took a few seconds to respond, long enough that the representation of a lightsaber on her holoprojector faded away, leaving empty air in the midst of the common room. Her black eyebrows furrowed into a frown and her eyes focused on something on the metal walls. ”œThat's exactly what I'm worried about.”

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Armiena bobbed facedown in the water, hugging her knees to her chest. That posture was all the better for protecting herself from bruising impacts against the tunnel walls””and she was being constantly tumbled about, her shoulders and sides continually brushing against unseen swells in the riverbed and the walls. Her greatest fear, however, was being dashed against an overhanging rock at high speed. Only her instincts and a quick application of the Force would save her from a back-breaking impact. She tumbled in the surf for what felt like forever, until the Force proved that it hadn't forsaken her by shouting an urgent warning to her.

 

Danger!

 

Without even thinking about the impulse to protect herself, Armiena threw up a protective shield with the Force””not a moment too soon, as her head was thrown to her side by a great blow and with a stab of fire in her neck. She'd hit something””she was still hitting things, she could feel impacts all over her arms and legs. All she could do was grit her teeth to hold on to the rebreather, and hope that a heavy impact didn't crash through the Barrier and break her.

 

Get out, get out now!

 

Again, an impulse from the Force””no explanation, just a sense of urgency. She twisted in the water and thrust out her hands blindly, searching for anything to grab ahold of. Her left hand caught ahold of a jagged ledge””she tightened her grip, her right hand joining it””the rock tore into her skin and set her hands ablaze with pain, her warm blood slicking the stone. But Armiena just spat a curse behind her clenched jaw and dug her toes into something resembling a foothold in the underwater rock. The current continued to pull at her body and threatened to tear her away from her lifeline, but she hung on, and inch by painful inch, dragged her body onto solid ground.

 

Armiena just lay there for a minute after she spat out the rebreather, her cheek and breasts pressed into the cutting earth. Never again would she do something that stupid””her mortality was threatened enough by just the Imperials. They didn't need her help. After simply breathing on in the dark din for a while, she began to grope blindly with her hands to gauge her surroundings. She seemed to be in the mouth of some sort of vent or tunnel, barely wide enough to admit her thin body and the backpack on her shoulders. No, not even that””crawling forward a few feet, the roof closed in on her and snagged on the satchel.

 

She would have to abandon it. Armiena paused a moment to search for a few essentials that she could clip on her belt, pulled her gauntlet onto her left hand, and continued without the rest of her gear.

 

Even freed of the extra burden, it was not an easy passage. She wriggled through with her arms plastered to her sides, pushing only with her legs. She was very aware of how the stone, worn smooth as it was, pulled at her hair. Periodically, she had to completely exhale to squeeze through a narrow pinch. Armiena continued that way, feeling slightly claustrophobic, until after an indeterminable length of time she though she caught a glimmer of light on the tunnel roof and a hint of wind on her forehead.

 

She wasn't just imagining it. The wind grew stronger, and the solid bedrock under Armiena's head gave way to empty air. A few more seconds of struggling pushed her into a much larger chamber””standing up and nearly cracking her skull on the ceiling before she crouched down, she estimated it to be just shy of two meters high.

 

Armiena had brought a spare glowrod, but it proved to be unnecessary. IN the center of the chamber, flanked by slender supports of naturally grown pillars, lay a bed of crystal deposits glittering with an inner silvery light. Her exposed skin was bathed in its glow, turning her pale skin a deathly pallor as she approached the field of crystals. An exhausted laugh echoed off the walls of the chamber when she ran a hand over the flawless surface of one of the glassy clusters.

 

She did a double-take, her brow furrowing in suspicion as she withdrew her hand. All of a sudden, the Jedi felt”¦ exhausted””drained of strength, unnaturally weak and struggling to muster the strength just to stay on her feet. She collapsed over the shoot of rock, her hand automatically reaching for a knife to defend herself against”¦ against what? Her danger sense was still, she seemed to have no enemy to face”¦ but whatever was doing this to her, she wasn't going down with a mighty struggle. Her mental defenses went up to fight off this intrusion””

 

Armiena, stop it.

 

She didn't heed the advice.

 

Oi! Sis, the Force didn't lead you here to kill you. Give it up!

 

Armiena hesitated for only a second, but that breach in her defenses was enough for the presence to overwhelm her senses with a pall of darkness. She swooned and unconsciousness quickly took her, her inanimate body clinging loosely to the edges of the crystal.

 

______________________________________________________

 

A beam of light pierced the shadows near Arlan, and from the darkness emerged Armiena Darkfire. She nodded when the light from her glowrod passed over her student's back, and automatically angled the beam to his feet to avoid the possibility of blinding him with its brightness.

 

If he were to turn around, Arlan would find that she looked like something that the kath hound might have dragged in. Her hair was a mess, pulled in every which direction out of its ordinarily neat braid; occasionally, a drop of water still slipped from her face and hair; and she looked obviously exhausted, but”¦ nonetheless in high spirits.

 

”œHey, Arlan.”

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"No, no, that's not what I meant." Armiena idly waved the hand holding the glowrod, spilling light all over the cavern walls. "I meant, why are you doing this?" She indicated the entire cavern chamber, his robe and cloak.

 

"See, in my case, being a Jedi is as much self-defense as it is some personal cause. The Empire tried to kill me, so I trained myself up so I could fight back. But I can't fathom why anyone would choose this kind of life."

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Deep in the caves, the body of Armiena Darkfire stirred once. All she succeeded in doing was disentangling herself from the crystalline pylon that she was wrapped around, and her body slid down to the rocky floor with a thud that would have hurt if she had been conscious.

 

__________________________________________________________

 

Armiena sighed heavily, the breath actually singing against the cavern walls. ”œI told a Sith once, and I thought he might have been at least reasonably rational”¦”

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Armiena suddenly vanished into thin air, without any trace that she'd ever been with Arlan in the first place. In fact, all indications were that he hadn't even moved from the crystals””everything that he'd just done might have all happened in his head.

 

There was no mistaking an extreme surge in emotion””mostly desperation””from somewhere below. He might have even heard Armiena's cry.

 

_____________________________________________________________

 

”œLet the boy be! For Force's sake, just let him be! He doesn't deserve this kind of life!

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Her primary task completed, it was now time for Armiena to find her way out of the caves. She returned to the shaft she had discovered in this chamber, gauged the dimensions of the tunnel with a brief onceover, and ran her bare fingers over the lip of the crevice. The rock was mostly smooth, worn away by centuries of gentle erosion, but it was narrow enough that she could her body in place through friction alone.

 

”œThis is gonna be no fun”¦”

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Without any ventilation, the physical exertion and claustrophobic warmth of the tunnel soon caused sweat to pour down Armiena's body in a slick that stung at her eyes. However, the hardened warrior didn't react beyond blinking away the irritation””compared to the training she had endured in her entrance into the Rebellion's ground cadre, this was nothing. At the age of seventeen, Private Armiena Draygo had been worked until she became physically ill with exhaustion; she had been starved of rest until she experienced hallucinations. A refreshing spot of spelunking was no great challenge, even if the burning in her shaking thighs spoke otherwise.

 

Where are you?

 

The Jedi Grandmaster paused in the middle of another push towards the surface. Arlan had come back, and was close enough to send a Force Message so vivid that Armiena was able to discern actual words. Knowing that she had to be close to the surface, she glanced upwards and shined her glowrod up the shaft, and saw that it narrowed so sharply that she wouldn't be able to fit. Not that she wouldn't be able to widen the passage easily enough””a lightsaber would cleave stone as easily as paper, and many natural stones would shatter if they were hit by a blaster bolt”¦

 

Stand back.

 

To transmit actual words, rather than ideas and emotions, was an exhaustive and unreliable process, but it was nonetheless simple to send basic impression through the Force. This message, though unvoiced, was clear: stay back, as Armiena was about to try something potentially very stupid, and Arlan did not want to get caught in the midst of her stunt.

 

Armiena drew her heavy blaster from the holster on her right thigh, and by muscle memory and touch alone, inspected it for damage and ensured that it was fully loaded. Shielding her eyes from the flash of light that would soon come, the midnight-haired woman took aim at the narrowed shaft above her and opened fire.

 

In these pitch-black confines, the blaster nearly deafened its wielder and filled her eyes with a persistent crimson afterimage from its brilliant glare. Obeying a whim of instinct, Armiena threw up a light shield with the Force to protect herself from debris; just as well, as she felt a few chunks of hot gravel spill down her shoulders. However, it worked, and within a minute that had to have seemed anticlimactic for her apprentice, she gradually squirmed up to a higher level of the cave.

 

She had to have looked terrible, her thin face caked with a layer of dust and sweat. But Armiena was finally free of that tunnel, her expression torn between relief and resignation as she hung from the precipice by her elbows, her body from below her shoulders still stuck in the chasm.

 

”œA little help?”

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A thrill of alarm raced along Armiena's spine when she distinctly heard the snap-hiss of one of her student's lightsabers igniting. If Arlan misestimated the cut that he was about to make, he could lop off limbs in his carelessness. Truth be told, she wouldn't have trusted herself with this kind of work; had their positions been reversed, Armiena would have lent Arlan her weapon to hew himself a path out.

 

Her eyes nearly bulged in their sockets, but she maintained some composure, simply closing them in an attempt to hide her fright. There was no way to protect herself from a lightsaber blade in this position; the only indication that Arlan would have if he accidentally cut through her flesh was when she screamed in pain if the blade made contact with her skin.

 

It was all that Armiena could do to avoid trembling with nervousness while her apprentice did his work. The hiss of Arlan's weapon being extinguished couldn't come any sooner, and he might have felt a tremor in her arm when she accepted the help up and gripped his arm just above the elbow.

 

”œI took a few. And a short dip in a really wild river a bit below us. But I made it through all right, even if I'm going to be spending a bit of time in a healing trance.”

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Some time later, Armiena Darkfire woke up. She stretched out like a roused feline, stretching her limbs back and arching her back, somewhat stiff from having spent a few hours in the complete stillness of a healing trance. This tended to result from such things; even in sleep, Armiena tended to move ever so slightly, just enough to prevent this sort of stiffness in her muscles.

 

Armiena took stock of her surroundings. Arlan was in the cargo hold, probably working on his lightsaber in a trance-like state; and his teacher would have to join him, as she had even more work to do than her novice student. However, there was something to be pursued that took an even higher priority than constructing the revered weapon of a Jedi. It helped that she had ceased to see herself as one.

 

The raven-haired woman retreated to her quarters with an energetic bounce in her step, closing and sealing the door behind her. A few seconds later, however, it slid open again, and Armiena poked her head out into the corridor to glance furtively to each side before affixing a note to the door. It read very simply: ”œInterrupt and face a death worthy of epic poetry. Lots of love, Armiena.

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((We have a Temple here?))

 

Armiena scowled, feeling the presence of a familiar Sith unmask itself, along with that of a Jedi that she had absolutely no desire to see. As far as she was concerned, Malin Kyrell was persona non grata; the only welcome that he would ever receive in her company was an arrest attempt.

 

The Sith broke away, but the expert pilot made no attempt the retreat up the boarding ramp of the Ghost Breath. Unless the idiot had traveled deep into the crystal caverns, he would probably be at his ship in minutes””and if he'd shown the foresight to operate under conditions of maximum paranoia, his ship would probably be primed and ready to lift off at a moment's notice. The Ghost Breath wouldn't be ready for combat for some time.

 

As far as Armiena was concerned, that Sith was good as gone, and if he'd had the sense to take the necessary precautions, only dumb luck would help them get back on his trail. Her guesses proved to be correct, though she was pleasantly surprised to see that another Jedi had been in position to attempt an interception””and one that she knew.

 

Striding back up the Ghost Breath's boarding ramp, Armiena seized her comlink and spoke roughly into it, her face contorted by frustration. ”œSunrider, transmit your sensor data to the Ghost Breath as soon as you are able." Hopefully, with a bit of analysis on the sensor data, that ship would be of no further use in infiltrating a planet occupied by the Jedi.

 

Her every breath escaping as a frustrated sigh, she recovered the fist-sized chunk of silvery crystal that she had recovered from the caves and made her way to the Ghost Breath's cargo hold, where most of the Jedi Master's specialized equipment was kept. Placing the raw rock in a vise to hold it steady, she stared at the crystal with unblinkingly wide emerald eyes, visualizing where she would make the first cut to shatter the stone into several pieces that could be cut into fine focusing lenses.

 

With a pair of firm taps with a fine-toothed chisel, the rock broke into seven pieces, each of which she estimated could be used to make a focusing lens in a lightsaber.

 

Her earlier frustration was forgotten, the woman completely enthralled with her work. No matter how she hated fighting this civil war, Armiena would have never been able to work with such complicated machinery on a regular basis in a time of peace--and she absolutely adored this sort of work. Cutting these stones, however, was the difficult part”¦

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Some hours later, Armiena blinked and was suddenly aware of how dry her green eyes had gotten, and how stiff her back and neck had gotten from sitting hunched over the iron workbench. Her diligence had been well rewarded with a half-dozen suitable crystals, each cut with microscopic precision by a laser to the degree of perfection that a lightsaber demanded. She admired them for a minute before turning away to gather the more mundane components of her lightsabers; it was really a pity that they would never be removed from her weapons after they were constructed””they were really quite beautiful stones.

 

The hilts of her weapons had been machined days ago, as had the synthleather grip that banded the metal. The rest of the components were easy to obtain; Armiena had taught Arlan that he could have easily obtained them all by cannibalizing the Ghost Breath for the parts, but she wouldn't have to resort to scavenging them from her beloved ship.

 

After Armiena set to work, it was more than a day before she emerged from the cargo hold. And that was just to relieve herself, drink a glass of water, and tuck into a meal of a self-heated military ration. Building a lightsaber demanded all of her attention, and spending any time beyond taking care of bare essentials stole away her valuable concentration. In a more candid moment, Armiena might have admitted that even she wasn't positive that the innovation in her blade design that she was going to attempt was going to work (if Arlan disturbed her, she was more likely to either completely ignore him or throw a fit at the interruption).

 

In addition to the activator switch and controls to alter the power of the blade from efficient lethality to an overglorified stun baton, a rotating disc was attached to the pommel of each weapon, designed to twist the focusing crystals to dramatically change the length of the blade. However, nearly all of the dual-phase lightsabers Armiena knew of were designed to extend the blade of a lightsaber””it was a difficult but feasible feat of engineering, regularly attempted by even novice Jedi. She had never, never heard of a version that shortened the blade, from nearly a meter long to just under twenty centimeters. Armiena loved her knives, and wanted to see if she could duplicate the blade length with a lightsaber.

 

Armiena had no concept of time when she was focusing this intensely, but the craftswoman knew abstractly that it had to have been many hours since she had sat down to work after grabbing her meager bite to eat. Eventually, however, she came to full attention and found herself staring at a pair of polished metal hilts, their interiors already sealed and their power cores merely waiting for the initial charge that would transform it from a heap of common parts and into the revered weapon of a Jedi.

 

After plugging their recharging sockets into a transformer she'd prepared for this very purposed, Armiena took a step back from the workbench and paced about the cargo hold to relax strained muscles in her arms and legs. As if there was any portion of constructing a lightsaber where shoddy work would produce a useless (if not dangerous) weapon, the first charge was the core of what had come to be a rite of passage for the Jedi.

 

As the power cores of the lightsabers gradually charged, Armiena meditated on the weapons, taking their Force presence into her own. This meditation was essential for the full function of the venerated blade of a Jedi: it bound its constituent parts together more tightly than any technique in soldering could accomplish so they would work with unparalleled efficiency. The lifespan of a lightsaber's charge was nearly infinite, being depleted at only a trickle if left to stand. This meditation also passed on the unique Force presence of a lightsaber””the blades were not so much machines as they were an extension of their wielder.

 

In completing these weapons and completing Arlan's training, Armiena knew her path was clear. After fighting for the entirety of her adult life against the Empire, she now had to provide a future for a new life. In the past, she'd for a number of reasons: blind vengeance, then a variety of ideological causes. It was refreshing to know exactly what state she wanted to see the galaxy in when she retired from the Jedi: at peace, united (or not, Armiena wasn't fussy about that) under a stable and sane government. The best way to accomplish that was to provide the people of the galaxy with the civilian and military institutions needed to stand against these short-sighted Force-sensitives.

 

If she couldn't change the belligerents fighting it, she could try changing the war itself.

 

To her great delight, she hadn't even had to dirty her hands in the sordid affairs of politics; the Republic had formed itself without influence from the Jedi. The other change in the war was the Talons. Over the course of years of research and design, Armiena came before the Admiral of the Rebel Alliance with two things: a rifle and a training program.

 

And those two objects revolutionized the war for the Republic. When the truce with the Empire disintegrated, the Empire came to have reason to fear this upstart Republic; its soldiers were mowing down their finest at a rate seldom seen in galactic history. The cloning vats of the Sith were seeing a lot of business lately. However, what gave her hope for the Republic was its innovation. Many of the changes made to its military were minor tweaks, to pre-existing hardware, but Armiena had already heard rumors of new tactics, new weapons, and new ships.

 

Aidan, her son, fast-approaching his first year, would not have to grow up in a time of civil war. Armiena would have been happy to sacrifice her life for that cause”¦ but she had no intention of being anyone's sacrifice.

 

”œI didn't have that choice, Aidan, but I swear, you will.”

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