Nar Shaddaa - Rebel Alliance Headquarters

[ObliviousKnight]

The cloning bays were a lonely sector of any Jedi facility. Aside from the fact that they tended to be several degrees colder than the rest of the structure, everything was made of sterile metal and plastoid and glass, and the staff consisted almost entirely of steely-eyed medicine men who spoke exclusively in many-syllabic terms and… many other aspects, the mere existence of the cloning vats raised uncomfortable questions about uncomfortable subjects like the disconnect between the hypothetical soul and the body, memory and existence, to say nothing of the handy workaround concerning death and its significant mention in the Jedi Code. That, and after perishing under violent circumstances, some Jedi awoke in their new bodies in a state of extreme disorientation--sometimes in a violent state of mind.

 

Don’t flinch. Don’t flinch. Don’t beg. Don’t look away. Don’t ignite. This is that his choice. You’ll be back. You’ll be back. Don’t….

 

The last few seconds of that disastrous boarding action were something of a haze of red pain and black unconsciousness. If asked later, she would recall something about forcibly clenching every muscle in her body in an effort to not allow Ryu to distance himself from the fact that he was killing someone who had deliberately placed themselves at his mercy. But at the moment, that recollection was as dim as the lights aboard Goliath. What she knew now was cold air, flurry sheets, flimsy overalls on her body, and concerned murmuring about her.

 

“Careful, Antilles, the notes say to keep your distance while--”

 

“Shavit! Draygo! Draygo! You’re… hurting me!”

 

For at that moment, Armiena had sprung from the cot in an avalanche of bedsheets, knocking over a tray of medical probes. The reborn Jedi clasped onto the medtech, squeezing onto his shoulder and arm with all the strength that her newly-formed hands could muster. It took a few seconds for the glare of dim lights to fade against her unused eyes, for the sensation of horrific agony to give way to the mild annoyance of a room that was three degrees colder than her preference, and for her hands--both flesh--to register that she was clasping onto skinny arms and bone, rather than the freakish strength of a berserking Sith Lord’s muscles.

 

“Draygo?”

 

The pale green eyes looked from side to side. “Where am I?” She sensed her Padawan nearby. Her son was nearby.

 

“Nar Shaddaa, We’ve been--hurk!”

 

At that moment, Draygo had drawn the thoroughly frightened medtech in for a painfully-tight hug. “Thank you.”

 

____________________

 

Several minutes and a few routine scans later, Armiena was allowed to change into her robes in the company of the other med tech, a female Mon Cal.

 

“No, it’s alright. I need to know. What happened at Corellia?”

 

“Not really my field of expertise, but… scuttlebutt is that the planet stands. The entire base was cheering only the other day--”

 

“--oh, hey, you kept the scars!” Armiena glanced at her partially-naked torso, eyes tracing the fractal-like pattern of scars that followed a network of surface capillaries on her torso, neck, and right arm. That was a souvenir of absorbing a lightning strike on Coruscant just after its moon had grazed the planet. And then there were a number of less spectacular but more easily-displayed souvenirs from less memorable occasions--minor blaster grazes, a miniature notch on the left side of her jaw--the only remaining mark from her first appointment with Master Organa...

 

“We debated that--but you always expressed pride in the scars you kept--but it’s simple enough to erase them if you prefer.”

 

“No, I’ll keep them. I want people to know what I’m capable of. Anyway, back to…”

 

“Right. Corellia. Sith fleet withdrew, apparently heavy casualties on both sides but much worse on their side--”

 

“--The robes are tighter than I remember.”
 

“They’re the same size, actually. We added about ten kilos of muscle. I hope you don’t mind our license, we were operating partly on scans from six years ago and right after Coruscant--”

 

“I was training back up. Hmm. There’s probably going to be a quiet, lonely night where I’m going to be asking myself some uncomfortable questions, but….  Armiena watched the muscles in her shoulder and arm ripple as she flexed and smiled. “This will work. Good. We’ve earned ourselves some time. We need to move quickly, gotta get to the Grandmaster. We have a chance to finally turn this around, scatter the Sith fleet…” At this point the sudden silence of the Mirialan had become poignant enough that even Draygo, despite her preoccupation with her vat-fresh body, had taken notice. “What’s happened?”

 

“Grandmaster Alluyen hasn’t yet, that is, we haven’t yet received instructions to begin… Would you like to view the body?”

 

“Oh.” Draygo sat heavily on the cot. She felt the warm leather of a set of boots on her bare feet. Reinforced shafts, slightly tight around the ankles--just as she preferred. A belt with a standard-issue comlink and a datapad awaited her use. “No. Not necessary. I need a walk.”

 

________

 

Several minutes later, Draygo was pacing the ring of one of the military base’s briefing rooms. An enormous holoprojector occupied the majority of the room, the emptied seats taken up only by a tidy pile of small arms and what appeared to be a high-yield ion pulse bomb. What to do? Her Padawan was clearly distraught--her son was closed off--and the Jedi Grandmaster was dead. Only the fact that the Sith Empire wasn’t hanging over their heads like a broadsword from an ancient adage made this situation less dire than the month at Borleias. The advice she had been given was simple: Work the problem. Solve one problem at a time until you run out of problems…. or you run out of time.

 

Armiena leaned on the holoprojector pit and stared into the glittering array of projectors and lights. For a moment, she thought she had felt the presence of one of her old friends, as reassuring as a hand on her shoulder. It was almost as though Darex was encouraging her to fight past the pain--that the sensation was only temporary, but purpose lasted forever and she would soon be past it. Were there even any Jedi still alive from that class of Hopefuls still alive? Or had they all spent their lives fighting the war? Why had The Force discriminated against her own existence, allowed her to claw her way back into the war to be ground up and spat out once again?

 

Her right hand drifted to a plastoid mug of synth-caf. Pain jolted from contact the steaming beverage.

 

Whatever the cause was, Armiena knew that she owed it to her friends to not wallow in loneliness. Her hand drifted to the datapad and comlink at her belt--worthy weapons even for a Jedi Master--and went to work. Four messages would suffice at the moment.

 

The first message she sent went to her Padawan. “Genesis, it’s me. I’m sorry. Things didn’t go as I’d hoped. I need to know that you’re ok.”

 

The second message that she sent went to her son. “Aidan, I’m sorry. Boarding action at Corellia went badly, I hope that you’re alright. I could do with a hug if you want to see me. I love you.”

 

The third message went out as a general signal to any nearby Jedi. “This is Draygo. If you’re here on Nar Shaddaa, then you’ll know about the Grandmaster. We need to see to succession quickly and counterattack while the Sith are still recovering from Corellia. Briefing room…. one of the ones right off of the rotunda.”

 

The last went to an encrypted channel to a disused base in the Mid Rim. “I need a favor. Aryian is dead. I need some serious firepower. Can I ask for your help in--Force!” At that moment, a deafening metallic roar emanated from the comlink and caused her to jerk the device away from her ear. It was always difficult to understand her Wolf Spiders when they were enthusiastic about a summons--but she had come to appreciate that a deafening roar was typically an answer in the affirmative. She continued sending messages and tapping away at the datapad, dispatching messenger droids when Holonet channels couldn’t be trusted. Draygo would continue working until someone finally snapped her out of the reverie.

 

[ObliviousKnight]

Draygo glanced up from the datapad. A quick glance at the screen showed that she had left fairly sensitive information open to view from anyone who stopped by--for example, the Rebel who had abandoned a high-yield bomb in the briefing room--but she suddenly had much more important priorities than infosec and rose from her seat. The wear on her Padawan was obvious--heavy bags under the eyes, signs of dehydration and a strip of adhesive residue on the boy’s wrist. Either Genesis had been significantly injured at Corellia or he was having difficulty dealing with the aftermath of combat.

 

“You look terrible,” Armiena said, offering a sad smile just as she drew him into a hug. She felt bones on his back.

 

“You’re not weak for this. Weakness has nothing to do with it. It’s decency.” The veteran Jedi said in some attempt to reassure him as she allowed the half-Miraluka to draw away. “I killed for the first time when I was about your age. I felt sick for days. It wasn’t the smell. It was the thinking. He was a stormtrooper, masked--obviously--nothing to identify him except a yellow pauldron and the fact he was a few centimeters shorter than the rest of his column. I didn’t know him from Tarkin. He never saw it coming. I couldn’t stop thinking… what did that say about me?”

Draygo didn’t know what had happened to her Padawan aboard Goliath. However, he was alive, and presumably whoever he had faced could not say the same.

[ObliviousKnight]

Draygo listened quietly, not saying a word, not even moving a muscle save the tightening of her lips and the occasional nod. She didn’t even glance to the side when her datapad buzzed and a rather lengthy message appeared on its screen. Whatever it was, it appeared to be composed largely of capital letters and what sensitive tactical data was visible was interjected with taunts and obscenities. The woman seemed to not even blink--at least, not until the muffled roar of a distant re-entry rocket managed to rattle its way through the reinforced ceiling of The Red and Black and the veteran Jedi was compelled to glance upwards.

 

“You’re in fine company,” Armiena acknowledged after the rocket cut out. “That entire boarding action--my call--was a disaster. We encountered… he might have been the Dark Lord. I don’t know. I never saw his face, never heard his name. I was deafened for most of the fight, but Ryu seemed to know him. We incapped the Dark Lord, then Ryu turned on me. It did not go well, hence…” And Draygo held up her right hand for explanation--flesh and bone, rather than the bronze-like alloy she had been refitted with after Coruscant.

 

“I knew that we would probably come to blows at some point when Ryu regained his memory, but this was far more quickly than I had thought possible. I suppose that I thought that if I gave him a choice, allowed him to go free and was able to process his memories at his own pace, he might have become something of a passably-decent person rather than a monster of historical proportions.” Armiena’s jaw clenched and something dark and bitter visited her expression. “There’s something to be said for lessons learned from failure, but what a failure.”

 

She glanced down at her boots and let out a long sigh. “Alluyen is dead,” she said to her feet. “I’m going to ask the other Masters to let me take her place.”

 

[ObliviousKnight]

Again, Draygo flashed that little smile. “The only thing that I’m guilty of is being a fool. I’ve been accused of much worse than that. I expect that if I didn’t believe in foolish things, then I wouldn’t be here. I have to believe that people can change their destinies and that they have free will. I have no choice.” At that moment, the barely-perceptible whine of a low-powered repulsorlift engine approached and a squat, cylindrical droid hovered in. Its chassis, not entirely unlike the utilitarian form of an Viper-class probe droid, bore the scorch marks of atmospheric re-entry and the smoke of a primitive rocket engine. 

 

Draygo made eye contact with the courier droid as its photoreceptors scanned her body. Apparently satisfied with its recognition scans, the droid deposited a little plastoid box on the railing surrounding the holoprojector pit. The veteran Jedi cracked the seal, revealing a set of five palm-sized metal discs. Armiena just nodded and clipped one to her belt

 

“I think that your time as my Padawan will soon come to an end,” Armiena explained as she rose and began to leave the briefing room. She made her way to a concentration of Jedi within the Rebel headquarters. “There’s always more to learn, but at this point it would be unfair of me to keep you under my thumb and not allow you to operate and develop your skills independently. Speaking of which, there’s a job that I need handled by someone I trust implicitly. I’ll tell you when--” 

 

Draygo scowled as an unmistakable sensation of numbness fell over her entire body. The color fled from Draygo’s face as she pressed through the medical bay and to the other side of the numbing bubble cast by the ysalamir and to a private ward containing Sarna, Eleison, an unknown Rebel Talon, and a Mon Calamari Healer whose name she had only read a few minutes ago. “Sarna, Eleison, Kil,” Armiena began, nodding to each of them in their turn. “I’ll be brief. The Order is in a difficult spot. In the present emergency I am submitting myself as a replacement for Master Alluyen until our situation is normalized--and if you will have me, I would like the three of you to serve on my council.”
 

Brief, indeed, but the veteran had no desire to waste the precious time of three Jedi with an unnecessary face-to-face meeting--not when she had a much better tool to replace that.

 

[ObliviousKnight]

“Just… Master. I always disliked that title.” For a second, Armiena’s eyes widened and there was a glimmer of emotion in her face that resembled… fear? Apprehension? Or perhaps it was merely a sudden appreciation of the awesome burden that the veteran Jedi had just volunteered to bear. Whatever it was, the moment soon passed and she jostled a plastoid crate containing a set of small discs. The miniature divots of holoprojectors and sensors could be seen about their surface. “This is likely to be one of the very few moments that we are all in the same location. That's probably for the best. There’s a lot of work to do. I prepared something that we could use to coordinate our efforts. The comm unit is simple enough to operate once you have it calibrated to your Force signature, just place it on a flat surface and it will tap into an encrypted Holonet channel to maintain a virtual Council chamber.”

 

She stared directly at Sandy Sarna. “I know about your mission to you-know-where, and as profoundly risky as it may be, it’s necessary. Force knows that we have so little on-the-ground intel there. We need to know everything you can give us--orbital infrastructure, interstellar traffic, planetary defenses, location of air traffic control towers, it's all needed. I suspect that ysalamir’s for the initial infiltration, get you into atmosphere without every Sith noticing you're there--just… kill the damned thing if there’s a hint of trouble,” she added unhappily to the towering marine behind her as she approached the younger Jedi Master. As she handed the smaller woman the communications unit, Draygo drew the smaller woman into an embrace that had to have been startling and whispered something into her ear.

 

Spoiler

“You’re one of the best people that I know. I’d be proud to call you my own.”

 

She repeated the same gesture for the half-Anzati, again handing her one of the communications units and murmuring a few words under her breath.

 

Spoiler

“I know it’s not an easy path. Keep the faith. It’s worth it.”

 

Turning her back on the two Jedi Masters, Armiena faced the young Jedi Healer, her Padawan, and the Wookiee who loomed over every other sapient in the room. “Kil, Genesis, Kirlocca. Perhaps a less dangerous mission for you three, but still of critical importance. Chandrila was hit badly by the Mandalorians during their raid across the Core. The few remaining elements of their fleet were driven off by the Rebel Alliance, but the planet was damaged horribly by their attack. Mass casualty events in the cities, terrible damage to orbital and surface infrastructure, even failures of basic infrastructure like water purification. The Rebel Alliance is out of their depths when it comes to managing a reconstruction effort like this. We can’t allow a world this core to Coruscant to remain in such a vulnerable state.

 

“The Survivor’s Foundation has dispatched a pair of their larger ships to take the lead, but… they’re borderline pacifistic. If the Mandos left stragglers behind, or Force forbid, the Sith show up in force, they won’t be in any position to resist. So, you have two objectives: assist the Survivor’s Foundation with their reconstruction and security wherever you’re needed; and reinforce the planet’s defenses wherever you can. The planet will need an early-warning system in the event that the Sith are eyeing it for takeover. We cannot simply allow the Sith to have complete domination of the Core, no matter what happens.”

 

Draygo passed another of the communications discs to the young Mon Calamari Knight. Although her Padawan had nearly completed his own training, Armiena suspected that Genesis wasn’t quite in the mindset to operate on the doorstep of a Sith-controlled Coruscant, and would be relieved that know that there would be both a Jedi Healer as well as one of the Order’s most veteran Masters alongside him.

 

“Now, questions? I can help you secure any resources you need, but I have a target that I want to tend to myself.”

 

[ObliviousKnight]

Draygo’s gaze shifted towards the back of the medical ward as she spoke, scanning the famliar face for a Kiffar that she had lambasted with some harsh words the last time they had spoken. That recollection--the last time she had seen Alluyen, now that she thought of it--failed to elicit embarrassment or regret, yet the expression on her face began to harden as she issued her orders and began to reflect on the prospect of using a fellow Jedi and sapient being for the skills that made them both useful and dangerous.

 

Then her Padawan spoke, and the mask slipped away. The idea of sending Genesis to operate independently from her guidance--from her protection, more accurately--would wrack her nerves for weeks and months, but she had decided that it was necessary for the boy’s development as a Jedi and the excellent young man that he was becoming. He would be stronger for the experience if he made it through--and there would be other Jedi who could keep an eye on him--but Draygo would be on the verge of pulling her hair out for want of news of her apprentice.

 

“It will hurt more than you know. But you’ll make it through… one terrible day at a time.” There was a vague, half-remembered pain in her eyes--something would have been useful to relate had she not been surrounded by half of the Order’s operational Jedi. “And then one difficult day, and then one day at a time. And if the Sith do make an attempt, I’ll be in range to reinforce--Kirlocca! I’ll need you in a moment.”

 

Armiena seized her Padawan by the shoulders and drew him in for a hug. She could feel bones under the robes--he’d lost weight since Corellia. She murmured something into his ear, so that only he or someone who was very close would be able to hear her.

 

Spoiler

“Make yourself proud, Genesis. I love you.”

 

The moment couldn’t last, however. Draygo had to stop indulging herself, had to pull away and accept the fact that there was a very good chance that she had probably ordered one or more of these fine sapients to their deaths. Anything less than her own full efforts would have been an insult to them. “Master, Exorcist--Force be with you,” Draygo said with a nod towards Sarna and Eleison. And to the towering yet speechless Rebel Talon, she added, “Captain, make their eyes water.”

 

And then she left the ward, searching for a Wookiee Jedi Master and a Kiffar whose skillset she was likely to require for her chosen battlefield.

 

Edited November 12, 2020 by ObliviousKnight

[ObliviousKnight]

Again, there was the stifling presence of the ysalamir that lingered on the very edge of the medical ward. Upon straying into its radius, Draygo stumbled and staggered into the side of the portal as it slid open to admit her passage…and once again into the sliding doors when they automatically closed after a few seconds. She glared towards a corner of the medical ward’s lobby where an armored harness rested, waiting for the metal doors to complete their closing cycle and then dutifully open once again to allow her to leave. What that marine had been thinking, bringing one of those inconvenient reptiles to a meeting of half the Order’s operational Jedi…

 

As she jogged to chase down a remarkably fleet-of-foot Jedi Master and a three-meter tall Wookiee, Draygo passed innumerable Alliance personnel who darted to either side of the base’s corridors to make way for her passage. Draygo couldn’t avoid reflecting on the many times that she had visited similar military installations, either as Jedi Grandmaster or as a Jedi attache to support conventional military forces--one visit had resulted in her physically assaulting Starlisk for a catastrophic lapse in judgement. She would need to meet the leaders of some on the new factions within the Rebel Alliance--the Imperial Remnant and the Imperial Knights in particular--for a relapse of Starlisk’s misguided militancy could spell doom for the entire collaboration. At the same time, the Jedi couldn’t be allowed to slip back into their ecclesiastic tendencies--the previous war had shown the potential of close coordination between Republic marines and Jedi who had been trained for combat.

 

“Kirlocca, Vos, good, I’d hoped to catch both of you,” Draygo breathed heavily as she gained the distance on the two Masters. The two had found a hall dedicated for hand-to-hand drills and Draygo felt the obliging spring of a training mat under her boots. Her pale-green gaze judged the distance across the training mat. Even if a few Rebel marines had begun to watch them hopefully, there would at least be enough range for a semi-confidential conversation. “Wonderful. It’s not quite privacy, but we’ll have some space while we speak. A matter--two matters--that I will be personally very grateful if you could pay some attention to.” She nodded to the Kiffar. Vos had a reputation for building lightsabers, not for any particular purpose but simply for the joy of the craft. “Hilt me.”

 

[ObliviousKnight]

Draygo accepted the hilt with a jerky nod. Her fingers played over the surface of the metal hilt in a quick familiarization with the weapon, running up and down the surface of the cool metal to find an ideal point of balance, feeling the grooved engravement that wrapped around its curvature. There was a bit more ornamentation than what this particularly pragmatic Jedi typically preferred in a weapon--she would have been perfectly content with high-grade durasteel and synthleather grips--but the purpose of this duel was conversation, not competition. She ignited the blade with the hilt held overhead in a double-handed stance, characteristic of Ataru, and noted with pleasure as a metallic hue entered the viridian blade with a flip of a switch.

 

“An indicator hue,” she said, her stance widening for what promised to be a leap towards a chosen target. “Interesting. We’ll need to...”

 

With a tremor of Force-assisted muscle power and a smile, Draygo leapt towards Kirlocca, the borrowed lightsaber in a flurry of motion. The slashes and shoves of her lightsaber were all noisy and visually pleasing to watch from the point of an unlearned spectator, but hardly technical and not truly threatening to an experienced duelist. But the veteran Jedi enjoyed the exertion and the joy was evident in her voice and face. “I’d like you to keep an eye on my Padawan. Genesis Stormhelm, the--eye patch, a bit unsure of himself during the briefing. He’s--” Draygo panted her way through a cadence of blows that was straight out of a beginner’s lightsaber kata. “Turning into a wonderful young man, but… Corellia was a horrible shock to him. I think he needs to make difficult decisions for himself, put in the hard work for himself, see… how very far he has come. The worst thing that I could do for him is to be watching over his shoulder every moment.”

 

At this point the flurry of predictable blows ended and Draygo paused, taking a step back to catch her breath. She had never been much for conversation during a lightsaber bout. “I expect that he’ll come through just fine and be better for it, but… I’ll worry the entire time. You understand?”

 

[ObliviousKnight]

“Thank you, Kirlocca. I’ll be in touch.” Even as Draygo began to unclip another of the miniature holoprojectors from her belt, the Wookiee turned heel and left. “I hope.”

 

A small crowd of sapients had begun to gather around the Jedi, a mixture of Rebel soldiers and a pair of robe-wearing Jedi from the clerical ranks of the Order. A few of the soldiers were murmuring unheard, but presumably appreciative remarks under their breaths--a Weequay passed a credit chit to one of her counterparts in the Imperial units of the Alliance. Extinguishing her blade, Draygo sighed and rolled the tension out of her shoulders. Now there was just her and the Kiffar.

 

The veteran Jedi bounced on the balls of her feet and twirled the lightsaber hilt in her fingers as through it was a stylus. Again, her hands moved towards the familiar double-handed guard of Ataru, but drifted to an uncertain overhand grip with the hilt directly over her head, the emitter pointed towards her back. An exceptionally learned practitioner of the lightsaber arts would have recognized it as a modification of a Juyo opening stance, albeit an emulation by a novice of the form. Still, what Draygo lacked in experience with that form she made up with enthusiasm, and she ignited her viridian blade and brought the weapon crashing down onto Vos’ guard.

 

A twist of her wrists brought the blade dangerously close to his ears, rather than the landing harmlessly against his own weapon. Even as the duel opened up again, Armiena kept a smile on her face and continued in a conversational tone. “I wanted to speak to you because you have unusual skills for a Jedi, the kind that make life miserable for people like the Sith.”

 

[ObliviousKnight]

She saw the leap coming. Armiena had used a similar flip on her Padawan only a few days ago as a demonstration of Ataru acrobatics. While it worked

 

Draygo had come to this meeting with a plan. She’d even had a few minutes to come up with the faint outline of a plan, to try and empathize with the Kiffar Jedi--maybe even make an attempt at flattering him--but she detected the faintest hint of distraction. It would have been an insult to the Jedi to trace that emotion deeper, but she decided that her characteristic awkward attempts at tact were likely to result in disaster. What mattered here, she decided, was the fight--and blunt, open words.

 

She didn’t try to disguise her enjoyment at the fight, displaying it openly in a wide grin and a light in her eyes as she met each blow to her torso and legs with ease. Her lips twitching in concentration at the unfamiliar staccato rhythm of Juyo, she pressed upon Vos’ position--and immediately took a step backwards upon sensing the characteristic tension within The Force that signaled a Force-fueled leap over her head. Armiena saw that stereotypical acrobatic of Ataru coming--she had only demonstrated it to her Padawan a few days ago--and swept away any preemptive overhead slash as she fell back in order to intrude upon Vos’ landing position.

 

Draygo allowed the Kiffar a moment to adjust the sling around his neck, then it was back to the duel. It would have quickly become clear that this was an unfavored lightsaber Form to the veteran Jedi and that she had yet to pick up on its finer points of maneuver and footwork. What she did know, however, was to attack relentlessly--hips, ribcage, fingers, kneecaps, armpits, neck, no part of Vos’ anatomy was safe from the assault. The seemingly random slashes and thrusts, however, were inexpertly delivered and were overrun by her own footwork, causing her to stumble into a clash of their blades that resulted in her pressing ineffectually against the guard of his orange lightsaber.

 

Her eyes were suddenly wide, the veteran Jedi clearly not quite understanding how to extract herself from the bind of the orange and viridian blades towards an advantageous position. Even as their blades sparked and hissed against each other and the duelists attempted to work out a parry that would place them in a position of lethal advantage, Armiena had Vos’ full attention for the moment. “Don’t I know... it. It’s a lousy trade, learning how to kill your fellow sapients… and… unlike vibroknives or blasters, we can’t conveniently put ourselves in a holster.”

 

Armiena had never been much for talking while in combat, and the strain was evident in her grimace and the bead of sweat that was only centimeters from dripping into her right eye. 

 

“But people like us are useful.”

 

[ObliviousKnight]

This time it was silence that was Vos’ response to her remarks--not even one of the glib comments that had irked her in the past. Draygo supposed that she had touched something of a nerve with her observation. That wasn’t entirely surprising, considering that she had all but accused him of being a killer, much like her. Vos managed to break away from the bind and dart away from the retaliatory swipe from towards his back, but being somewhat slower than usual with her inexpert command of that jerky slashes of Juyo, she was just slightly out of range and the tip of her blade was picked away by a defensive flourish as the Kiffar withdrew.

 

The veteran Jedi fell back on her left leg and raised her guard in anticipation of Vos’ counterattack. Her borrowed blade slashed upwards at the thrown lightsaber in an attempt to throw it upwards into the ceiling, only for the viridian to swipe through air.

 

Feeling the persistent tug of The Force behind her, Armiena lowered into a fighting crouch. Rather than simply bracing herself against the telekinetic pull and swatting away the rushing lightsaber with a defensive slash, the veteran Jedi leaped towards her opponent in a swirl of brown robes and a green blade. Spinning like an oversized top so that anything within half a meter of her blade was in danger of being slashed, her body raced with even greater speed towards Vos than the Kiffar’s pulled lightsaber.

 

[ObliviousKnight]

“Thanks for the spar,” Draygo smiled and handed over the hilt of the borrowed lightsaber. After having faced down both Kirlocca and Vos, she had broken out into an admirable sweat and she wiped at her eyes. “You’re pretty good. A tenth of a second faster, and that wouldn’t have worked.”

 

She glanced to one side. A number of Rebel soldiers and Jedi had gathered to watch the spar; a Gotal passed a credit chit of a small denomination to one of his counterparts on the Imperial side of the Alliance. Draygo had hoped to conduct this conversation in some privacy, but a Rebel sergeant broke up the gawking crowd with an faux-angry bark: “Back to work, you loafers! This is a sparring hall, not the fiddler’s green!”

 

Draygo had no idea who or what a fiddler was and just stared at the Weequay for a second. Eventually she remembered herself and drew closer to the Kiffar. “The Galactic Core is in a state of chaos. Yeah, the Sith managed to break the Galactic Alliance and occupy Coruscant, but I suspect that they are currently finding themselves burdened with an embarrassment of territory that they cannot possibly control--cannot possibly police or secure. Matters will be even worse after Outremer kicked them off of Coruscant. I intend to turn the Core into an ulcer that will bleed the Sith Empire white.”

 

“Borleias got hit shortly after Coruscant fell. It was never strongly defended, but it’s on the doorstep of… everyone: Corellia, Coruscant, Chandrila, Anaxes, even some of the planets in the deep Core. We don’t have the resources for a full-on invasion at this point, but what we can do is turn it into a perpetual nuisance for the Sith--sensor relays, tapping the local Holonet grid, local snubfighter wings, recruitment--one of the largest refugee camps is in the galaxy is just a few klicks from the old praxeum.

 

“Problem is, of course, most Jedi are not particularly good guerrillas. It’s not we’re supposed to be, but you and I…” Draygo paused, realizing that she was about to confess something that could potentially give the Kiffar some power over her. “I’ve always found it easier to identify as a common soldier. For me, the Rebellion was--is--home, and the robes never quite fit me very well.”

 

 

______

 

High above the Rebel base, a battered Barloz-class Medium Freighter began to descend to Nar Shaddaa. Somehow, its pilot--an old woman of indeterminable but undeniably humanoid heritage--knew the Rebellion's most recent clearance codes and began a descent to The Red and Black.

 

[ObliviousKnight]

Draygo wasn’t so novice that she still wore her heart on her sleeve and readily displayed every emotion on her expression, but her presence fairly recoiled in The Force. Intense emotions rallied for dominance--a sudden craving for a strong drink, a temptation to physically strike Vos, the burning of an intense ego--but what won out was driving, ruthless purpose. The muscles in her jaw worked silently and her fingers rapped nervously on the table between them.

 

"I'll concede that winning this war is going to require a degree of bastardry. That's the nature of the business. But it will be targeted and there will be clear contrast between us and our enemies. If things look like they’re about to get really bad… let me know in advance so I can alert the Survivor’s Foundation. Just try to not let things escalate to the point where we need to mobilize a hospital ship.”

 

That craving for a forbidden drink grew stronger. These were decisions that Grandmaster Darkfire would have made many years ago, relying on her political instincts rather than sticking to the ideals she claimed to cleave to. It might win the war, but it would make her miserable in the process. 

 

"As for the Imperial Knights, driving away those people through his lack of pragmatism was the worst mistake that Darex ever made. He had very specific ideas about what a Jedi is and isn’t… and if there is anything that I have learned it’s that the Order does not belong to me." There was a certain edge in her voice as Draygo wrestled the concept of her closest friend into the past tense. "That schism might take decades to repair, might never get repaired. If that's the case, I'd like them to remember us as old friends who they disagreed with than a bunch of old bastards who drove them away. I might regret the decision to trust them later down the line. If that happens, then that'll be it. Eleison will be gone. For that matter, if Sarna or Kil end up disappointing me, I'll ask them to step aside for someone else. The war is bigger than any one of us.

 

“So, Borleias. It’s a doorstop to Anaxes, Chandrila, Coruscant, and some of the Deep Core. I suspect that the Sith will respond in force if we attempt invasion and we can’t manage a second front at this time. But I want to make that planet ours. I’ll be going down with a team of engineers to establish a foothold--long-range sensors, hangars, that sort of thing. Then we’ll make the rounds to infiltrate the local refugee camps and take on recruits. Last and most importantly, there’s a Holonet relay station in Juanthir. It serves the entire Namadii Delta leading up to Coruscant and tapping it will give us a clear idea of Sith operations throughout the Pyrian system and the colonies.” These details were rattled off by memory--Borleias was practically home to Draygo and she was intimately familiar with the world’s infrastructure.

 

“If you have any local… ne’er-do-well friends, we can make use of their services in smuggling personnel and materiel throughout the Core. As for your Padawans, if you trust them… I have always fervently believed in giving our junior members experience in the field.”

 

[ObliviousKnight]

“Dirty tricks squad. Ungentlemanly warfare,” Draygo grinned at the Jedi Master. “Fireworks. Not the traditional Jedi bowing and brandishing lightsabers and making clean stabs through the heart. I do want to win this war.”

 

The smile fell away and the veteran Jedi’s expression grew serious. The overall effect on her appearance was to give her the air of an overgrown hawk. “You have a few days. I have some preparations to make. Messages to record, repairs to make, programming spikes to prep, explosives to pack. I’ll be… somewhere on this base, trying to not blow myself up.”

 

Armiena gave Vos a quick nod and departed. A familiar presence had just arrived at the Rebel base. As she descended into the landing bays that surrounded The Red and Black and the presence resolved itself into a familiar identity, Draygo made out the lines of her Barloz­­-class Freighter and steadied herself for the task of meeting her mother.

[ObliviousKnight]

“Grandmaster! Grandmaster! I’ve been looking for you all day. ”

 

Only seconds from setting foot on the boarding ramp of her freighter--no longer stained with rust, she noted--Draygo sighed and cast an irritated glance at one of the many clerical workers hired by the Jedi Order for the myriad beancounting duties that the Order generated. She silently grumbled; these paperpushers were hired for the specific purpose of keeping paperwork from requiring the attention of the higher ranks. The Togruta paused and her satisfied smile faltered for a moment before the bureaucrat remembered to present a dataslate for Armiena’s attention.

 

“Sorry, Master Draygo, but no one else was authorized to sign for this one. It was supposed to go to Alluyen directly…” 

 

Draygo didn’t waste time reading the paperwork. She just stabbed her finger into the screen of the dataslate and made a jerky motion in vague facsimile of a signature--any signature. As she turned in a slow swirl of brown robes turned and began to board her ship, something niggled at her attention that the moment called for something more than a thoughtless scrawl…

 

“What did I just sign?”

 

“Order of droids from Mechis III, Master. It was a custom contract--and large enough that it required a Master’s signature, Master. There were some irregularities with the delivery…”

 

“Oh. I’ll… have one of the kids look at it.” Draygo mused as the unpleasantly warm air of Nar Shaddaa’s upper levels was replaced by the cool, but stagnant climate control of her ship. “Some bright, eager Knight with too much time on their hands. Wait, irregularities?”

 

But she had already gone out of earshot of the clerical worker.

 

____________________

 

“‘Lo, Mother.” 

 

“Grandmaster.”

 

Armiena sighed as she spilled a duffel bag filled with circuitry and far more volatile components out onto one of the workbenches on the lower deck of the McShipface. It didn’t surprise her that the ancient Miraluka had somehow learned of her seizure of the leadership of the Jedi Order--she had long ceased to question how deeply her sources had penetrated the Order--but the uncharacteristic coldness was a distinction from her customary support. This promised to be a difficult conversation, and a second sigh escaped her lips as she idly sorted out the pile of explosive components and wiring.

 

“It’s the cloning, isn’t it?” Draygo removed a thin plastic glove that covered her right hand, revealing not the coppery metal of a prosthetic, but space-pale flesh and bone. “I think this is the first time that your sources are out of date. This isn’t even my first time getting popped out of a cylinder, though they exercised some artistic interpretation this time. It’s been… five times? Six? I’m not sure about one of them.

 

“The first was Tatooine. Stupid mistake of a young Jedi Knight, I got ambushed and shot down like a kath in a miserable cantina. Second: Borleias. Head exploded by Kakuto Ryu. Three: Butchered like a nerf by Ar-Pharazon. Was not pleasant. Fourth: buried under a tower on Coruscant by Trowa Barton. The fifth… I will never speak of again. Mistake of a stupid, idealistic idiot, never try that again. And the sixth you see before you.”

 

My difficulties with the decision of the Jedi Order to clone its casualties has never been from a superstitious belief in the nature of some indelible soul, Grandmaster.” The grey-clad Miraluka limped heavily from one side of the workshop to the other. Despite Armiena’s close observation of her mother’s physical condition, the Miraluka never made “eye” contact with her daughter. “No. You’re still my daughter. The flesh is of no concern. I’ve always feared that by granting this immortality to its agents, your Order is teaching itself to become… cavalier with life. That you hoard and spend lives like credits. And you--”

 

“Mother, that’s a load of nerfshit and you know it. I earned of those deaths and I made some Sith assholes on my way out. That first time--”

 

“I don’t care what--”

 

“Jedi on the run from the Empire managed to get away. As I understand, she’s living on a farm somewhere in the Mid Rim. Second? The old Dojo was being overrun by a horde of drones that SEED sicced on us. Folks were literally getting eaten alive. I was so effective in culling their numbers that the Dark Lord decided to deal with me personally. Third? Leth-Aurek-Peth is now rotting in a prison designed specifically for bastards like him. Four was in the process of saving billions from a planetwide bombing attack--fair trade, if you ask me. And the sixth…

 

“I gave Ryu a choice. something that he hasn’t enjoyed in decades. Keep killing as a Sith, continue as a murderer without a cause, or be someone new. I had no idea who that person would be, doubt he did either. He chose… poorly. I will see to it that he never forgets his choice.”

 

Misal’s arms crossed, and for the first time she “looked” her daughter in the eye. “Did that speech make you feel any better?”

 

“What?”

 

“You ‘survived’ the last war barely a person.” Those frail arms hugged around the body of the Miraluka more tightly. “We found you suffering horribly at the bottom of a bottle. It took months of therapy before you were prepared to face the Jedi again. What will happen this time? Slaughter is still alive--hasn’t even faced justice for his crimes. Vos--”

 

“I never saw to it that Starlisk faced justice, either. I won’t make that mistake again.

 

“And as for myself, I don’t care how many times I need to get cloned. I’d hoped that Aidan would be able to live his life in peace. I won’t make him face this war alone.”

 

____________________

 

After that, the two Draygo women fell silent. There was a lingering sense that anything that could be said had already been aired and that neither person’s opinion would change. Rather than simmer and resent, the two got to work. Misal had always been far better than her daughter at programming and quietly sat at one of McShipface’s terminals, constructing a rudimentary consulary worm into a data spike that could be stabbed into a standard scomp port.

 

Armiena’s talents had always been more mechanical. Idly humming to herself, she began to assemble circuitry and wiring--and a nergon-14 warhead with a generous payload--into a satchel charge. Contrary to what some in explosive ordinance disposal believed, assembling bombs was not the work of amateurs. Amateurs routinely made critical errors that caused their charges to misfire, or fail to respond to a detonation code… or improperly construct their fuses and blow themselves up in karmic fashion. Bombmaking was the work of professionals, and the younger Draygo soon found herself in a familiar state of focus, oblivious even to the return of two Jedi Masters to Nar Shaddaa. Her thin, space-pale fingers carefully soldered and welded proximity and lifesign sensors, speakers, a multitude of electronic parts and comlink components, and an extremely complicated holographic fuse into a charge that would fit tidily into a small satchel, barely even breathing for fear of an errant twitch.

 

Some hours later, the device was stuffed with protective packing and she finally trusted herself to step away from the workbench. Gratefully accepting a glass of water from her mother, Armiena shoved a mop of sweaty black hair from her face and coughed and wheezed away several hours of irritation from breathing caustic fumes.

 

The next piece of kit to overhaul was a lightsaber that she had been loaned nearly a year ago.

 

[ObliviousKnight]

There was no time in the present emergency to make a visit to Ilum or Dantooine. At the moment, Armiena would have to rely on the kindness of strangers for her equipment. From McShipface’s armory, the veteran Jedi had retrieved a small metal box and placed its contents in front of her as she sat cross-legged in the workshop. She unrolled a length of soft microfiber towel, revealing a fire-scarred lightsaber hilt. This one once had ornate, almost feminine engravings wrapping around the hilt, but the oxidation and fire of the detonation of its own battery had scarred them beyond repair.

 

It was a pity that the damage seemed permanent. She had been given that lightsaber by a Sith during a desperate moment, during the failed attempt to halt the fall of Hesperidium and prevent the ruin of the capital of the Galactic Alliance. The two had never met before. There was no conceivable reason for a Sith to loan a stranger--and a Jedi stranger--a weapon. Armiena thought of that day frequently. Even if the weapon was irrevocably damaged, its destruction had at least been in the course of saving billions.

 

Armiena took another gulp of water and breathed deeply. She laid her space-pale hands on both ends of the weapon and gently turned it over in her fingers. Crystalline deposits had built up around the clasps and welds that held the weapon together--probably residue from its battery, highly toxic. Restoring this weapon was likely to require a full day of work, if not more.

 

“Mother. Shut the boarding ramp. Don’t let anyone interrupt me… unless… the Sith fleet is in orbit or the sun is exploding or something of that nature. Imminent death and destruction, that kind of crisis.” She called out into her ship.

 

She closed her eyes and just felt the weapon--not the grimy deposits of battery waste and the ragged scarring of oxidation around the blade emitter, but really felt the weapon. Almost immediately she gasped and doubled over, tears leaking from her eyes in shared pain. This woman had known horrible trauma, recent tragedy--something so horrible that touching it threatened to tear at scars within herself. Was she healing from that trauma? Was it even possible to heal from an experience that had left an impression like this on her weapon? Armiena pushed herself away from that pain and forced her attention into the innards of the weapon.

 

Ruined. All that remained was a mass of melted plastic, metal, and smoke. The solitary crystal, however… was intact. Its heart was at least functional.

 

“‘m alright,” she heard herself croaking. “Need parts, scouring brush. Oxy-Aurek torch--the little one, the one with the adjustable head. Right. Never built one. Let you know.”

 

The handheld torch soon arrived and the younger Draygo began making a delicate pass over the surface of the weapon with the scouring brush. To her relief, much of the carbon buildup simply fell away from the weapon in ashen clouds--and with a curious sense of prickling that travelled up her right arm, Armiena realized that she was scraping away at the charred remains of her own right hand, from another body and another life. The plasticky, oily grime simply fell away, revealing the curved engravings. Her fingers travelled over the length of the hilt--there was no detectable seam between smooth metal and the etchings. They had been etched into the hilt with acid. She smiled--that was technical, delicate, and dangerous work.

 

Gripping the weapon with The Force like a vise, Armiena pulled the hilt apart at its seams.

 

A melted mass of batteries, insulation, circuitry, and wiring fell out and landed with a thud on the deckplates. Armiena gave it a nudge with her finger. It did not move--it had stuck to the metal. It also stuck to her finger, and the veteran Jedi had to grip the wad of material with a rag and fling it into the unseen distance. She heard only one impact. She made another pass on the inside of the hollowed hilt with the scouring brush and a second with the oxy-aurek torch. Something liquefied and spilled out in a black sludge. A single crystal shone out from that puddle.

 

Armiena called out for parts. Circuit boards. Superconducting fiber. Insulator strips. Capacitors. Magnetic stabilizers. plasma focus matrix. Power cell. Flux aperture. Field energizer. Hands moving in well-practiced motions, she gradually assembled the parts into a shape resembling a lightsaber. She breathed in the fumes of the oxy-aurek torch as greedily as though they were the scent of a pleasant tea.That single crystal fit neatly into the focusing chamber. Curiously, she felt no hesitation in building this weapon, unlike Dantooine--restoring it didn’t feel merely instinctive to her, it felt right. 

 

All that was left was the microfusing of the hilt. Armiena took another long sip of water. The cup of caf--when had it become caf?--refreshed the dryness in her throat after days of delicate work. Armiena lifted the weapon with her hands and took a long look at its entirely in The Force. Again, she had made… minor errors in its construction, requiring a longer trance than was typically necessary. The focusing crystal was perhaps a micrometer out of alignment and the insulating strips had not been perfectly sealed--an easy error to make, but one that would turn the weapon into a fireball in her hand upon its first ignition.

 

Armiena took the weapon to her breastbone and let herself lose her awareness into the study of the weapon. The woman who had given her this weapon had known agony unlike anything she had ever felt, and hopefully would never feel. The veteran Jedi had known the death of her friends, the vaporization of her home, torture at the hands of the Sith, and the ruin of everything she had built, and this was still a new pain. She could not even identify its source. Despite the freshness of the pain, despite the fact that Armiena was a complete stranger to her, despite the fact that she had every right to remain as armed as possible during an emergency of historical proportions, she had given her that weapon… almost without hesitation.

 

Armiena decided that she would cherish that memory and carry it with her.

 

There was a microscopic shift, one that could not be detected with the naked eye. There was a brief sensation of warmth against her breastbone. And then it was done.

 

Armiena rose from the deckplates. She gave a few weak coughs and blinked slowly, rolling the tension out of her shoulders knees. The veteran Jedi lifted the silvery-grey hilt to her gaze and pushed sweaty black hair out of her face. It was no longer stained with oxidation and burned carbon, but as polished and smoothed as though it had just been constructed by its first owner.

 

No, not its first owner. Its only owner, Armiena decided. She would merely safe-keep the weapon and return it at first opportunity. Until then…

 

Her finger found the ignition switch, a little round protrusion on the side of the hilt, and pressed it to give life to a brilliant bronze blade. Armiena regarded the white-hot core of the blade and held her left hand close to the edge of the unshrouded emitter.

 

“I hope you understand,” she whispered to The Force alone. “Emily Zsahra.”

[ObliviousKnight]

“Finished?”

 

“Bit of polishing work left, but everything is functional.”

 

Closing down the lightsaber and attaching it to a clip on her belt, Armiena took a few wobbly steps towards McShipface’s mess. The scent of something processed and peppery was guiding her to the promise of sustenance, and she found her mother closing the clamshell casing around yet another programming spike. Armiena wearily took a place at her mother’s side at the plasteel table and waited for the dehydration-induced shakiness to subside.

 

Her mother wordlessly offered a mug of caf and a bowl of some unidentifiable porridge. Armiena glanced down skeptically--some pitiful green vegetables and chunks of processed meat were floating around in the cream-colored slurry. It looked like something that the worst of the supply-starved mess hauls in the Rebel Alliance would have served--not this new Rebel Alliance, but from the bad old days when the entire operation seemed to be held together by hope and duct tape. Still, the sensation of warmth and the peppery smell were vaguely comforting, and constructing a lightsaber was draining work, so she dug in.

 

“It’s something I learned to make during a stint on Taanab. Quite invigorating after pulling a night watch.” As though prying classified information from her daughter was casual breakfast conversation, she sipped at a mug and continued. “What will you do next?”

 

“Back…” Armiena swallowed back an indecently large spoonful of porridge. “Back into the field. Recruitment, insurgency, sabotage, fieldcraft; just like old times. Wherever Genesis is now, I won’t be able to help him.”

 

“He’s a decent young man. But he’s not you.”

 

“No. He’s not a soldier. Never will be. I need to accept that.” There was an uncomfortable pause as Armiena reflected for a moment on a potential failing in her teaching. “There’s… something that I’ve been getting nervous about. I’ve been feeling a… quickening in The Force. Something is coming, something big. I”m sure you’ve felt it?”

 

“Something has indeed escalated. I’ve been asked to consult on a matter in the Rim.” The Draygo matriarch sipped at her tea with a casual air. “I felt that it would be advisable to visit for a few days before I embark. I have a peculiar feeling about this mission.”

 

Draygo’s set down her spoon and stared. Had her mouth not been stuffed with half-chewed porridge and a massed of minced meat, her mouth would have been agape in horror. The ancient Miraluka was actually smiling at what seemed to be her encroaching mortality. Reading her daughter’s eyes, Misal’s smile faded and her expression grew more serious.

 

“No. I’d prefer not to think about it. I’ll find out when the moment arrives. For now, I’d like to spend a short time with my admirable daughter, and perhaps embarrass my adorable grandson if those creatures don’t whisk him off to another engagement in your war. We so rarely have a chance to enjoy a normal moment.”

 

For a moment, Armiena’s pale-green gaze shifted past the midnight robes to view a collection of data-spikes dangling from a chain, almost like the keys to an expensive landspeeder. She tore her eyes away. Something about the moment--something about every moment, in the last several months felt irrevocable, as though precious moments were slipping away. There were few enough people from her past as well.

 

“This is good, isn’t it?” Asked the black-clad Miraluka.

 

The younger Draygo just looked at her mother for a second. The cloth, as usual, betrayed little expression, but she understood her mother well enough. It was not a peaceful death that she would have preferred. For her, it would be out in the field, her feet in boots, her enemies wasting their final breaths to curse her name. Quietly wasting in a sterile medcenter bubble would have been undignified, and more importantly, contrary to her wishes.

 

“Yes, It is.”

 

_______

 

Armiena had had few private moments alone since elevating to the rank of Jedi Grandmaster. It was an unwelcome aspect to the task with which she was familiar; the time of the Grandmaster was so valuable that it could rarely be spent on family or personal trivialities. In this case, the time had been wholly wasted. Armiena and her mother discussed nothing of significant importance. No great mysteries of The Force were unraveled. No crucial strategies were discussed. It was two women sitting with warm, caffeinated beverages, chatting about worthless gossip and personal relations, occasionally dipping into technical minutiae.

 

It was one of the most rewarding conversations that she had ever had with her mother. But it was soon over and Draygo was faced with her duties as Jedi Grandmaster. There was a revolution to fight.

 

Armiena re-entered the Rebel Headquarters, making her way to the marine proving grounds. This was a noisy, utilitarian sector of the base, constructed almost entirely of spartan steel and plastoid alloys. It needed to be, as this sector housed the base’s firing ranges, Its portable corridors were continually rearranged, based on the needs of the marines using it, to simulate a variety of potential facilities that they might assault; from planetary barracks to light cruisers to the engineering spaces aboard Kyber-class Star Destroyers and larger ships. Draygo watched from an overhead balcony as a platoon of Imperial stormtroopers--or whatever the grey-clad, plastoid-armored shock troopers called themselves now--breached the corridors of a Carrack-class Light Cruiser and assaulted the bridge. To most, the continual whine of blaster fire, grenades, alarm klaxons, glaring lights, and muffled commands was an assault on the senses. Armiena had the trigger-calluses on her fingers and the scars from blaster creases to hint at her experience in these matters, however. To her, the din was just tactical data.

 

The course’s current configuration was of little importance. More important was the noise, activity--and the distraction that they might pose to a novice Jedi Padawan. Tobias Vos was busy preparing for their mission, but to her recollection the Kiffar had two Padawans: that massive Trandoshan she had briefly seen and a Zabrak that had passed her notice. 

One of the Jedi clerics had been shadowing Armiena’s footsteps ever since the veteran Jedi had disembarked from her freighter. Waving the cream-colored Caamasi over, the Jedi Grandmaster asked him to locate Vos’ Padawans, and to guide the two to her location if they were not otherwise preoccupied.
 

[ObliviousKnight]

As was tradition, Misal had intercepted the transmission from Draygo’s Padawan. Unlike most of those other observances, the message had been dutifully relayed from her comlink to her archives aboard Shippy McShipface, where the elderly Miraluka was dutifully cleaning the connections of her prosthetic arm. It was a familiar routine, gently scraping away at the alloy leads with a stiff fabric brush, but the routine was comforting when faced with what seemed likely to be the last significant deployment of her life. If she survived, then the rest of her life would likely be… epilogue. Perhaps there would be a short amount of time left to enjoy her duties and privileges as the matriarch of the Draygo-Darkfire clan. 

 

Her lips curled downwards as an unmistakable tremor shuddered through The Force.

 

She had never taken advantage of her rights to embarrass her grandson and his consorts. That would be something to look forward to.

 

An old ache voicing itself at the motion, Misal rose to her feet and returned to the freighter’s cockpit. There was a message from her daughter’s Padawan. Leaning on the twin pilots’ seats to take the pressure off her old bones, the Miraluka listened to what she presumed to be a private message. Her lips parted in a disgusted sneer as she listened. That stupid boy. Fine young man or not, his departure from the Order--from her daughter--by means of a time-delayed HoloNet transmission was reprehensible and cowardly. It was unbecoming of a Jedi, and more importantly unbecoming of anyone that her daughter cared for.

 

The stump that ended her right arm began to curl as she attempted to clench a fist that was not there. The child had requested that Armiena not attempt to follow him. The Draygo matriarch knew that her daughter would honor that request--likely justifying that decision with an excuse about needing to put the needs of the galaxy before her own--but Misal was not bound by any such request, nor would she have honored it. Her anger for the moment causing the ache in her joints to be an unwelcome memory, Misal began to pace the corridors of McShipface. Where to begin? Where to begin? Stormhelm would have several hours of lead, and unlike her grandson, his name was not nearly as notorious. He could easily travel anonymously.

 

There was the pontite crystal. The two Jedi had traveled for months with it in their company. They had shattered it to construct lightsabers, and the gemstone had been soaking in their combined Force presences. 

 

The Miraluka glided in her ebon robes towards her daughter’s quarters. It was a sad, small, utilitarian room--no momentos unlike her room on Ghost Breath, just a few changes of clothing and some scattered datapads. There weren’t even sheets over the cot, and Misal realized with a pang that her daughter probably still wasn’t able to sleep on a proper bed. Her hands rifled through the brown and grey cloaks and withdrew a small leather pouch. She squeezed the little bag--there were still a few shards remaining. Misal sat on her daughter’s unused cot and lowered her face to the closed pouch.

 

The Miraluka forced herself away from dwelling on her momentary rage. The moment required her attention, not her self-indulgence. Breathing deeply, she let her senses pass from her surroundings and into the memories held by those crystals…

________

 

Still within the Rebel Alliance’s Marine Proving Grounds, Armiena rose to her feet. The veteran Master had somehow dozed off while meditating and had been roused by the buzzing of her comlink. She listened, her expression shifting from annoyance at the urgency of the young Togruta clerical, to confusion, to well-disguised horror.

 

“On my way. Try to keep the sentinels from leaving. No,don’t contact the Rebel Alliance, I’ll handle this myself. Have the chosen a representative, someone that I can talk to?”

It was a rare occasion that caused a Jedi Grandmaster to run, and several Rebel soldiers found themselves staring as Draygo sprinted in the general direction of the arms warehouses in the vicinity of The Red and Black.

Edited February 1, 2021 by ObliviousKnight

[ObliviousKnight]

“One more time, Baakua, just the facts.” Draygo took the opportunity to catch her breath after having sprinted several kilometers to the distant arms warehouses that stored the vast arsenals held by the Rebel Alliance. No fewer than thirty battle droids had circled around the Jedi, observing them through glowing eyes that were just barely visible through armored slats.

 

“Right, so, the previous Grandmaster--Master Alluyen--commissioned an order of droids of about one million units. The Peth-Osk is on the dataslate. Manufacturer’s brochure suggest that they have a wide variety of capabilities, frontline combat, peacekeeping, law enforcement and security, even some minor first aid capabilities. Everything went as scheduled with Mechis III, except our techs claim that their combat subroutines have been corrupted.”

 

“Irrevocably?”

 

“Most likely. They say that, uh… self-diagnostics and, fractal, mutations, might help them regenerate their… asynchronous callbacks to their combat protocols? But they sounded skeptical. I was kinda getting the impression that they think the droids are a loss. Broken. Kaput. Sabotaged, even. The techs and Mechis were using a lotta big words when they were talking, but they’re claiming that since the droids were sabotaged on our watch, warranty is void, no obligation to update firmware or perform further maintenance, get your lawyers involved if you want your credits back.”

 

Draygo glanced through the specifications of the droids on a dataslate that Baakua had offered her, ignoring the aide as she attempted to translate the reports from the engineers. The droids were not remarkable in their capabilities, nor were their equipped weapons or armor, but at least they wouldn’t be a mob of mumbling idiots like the mainline units deployed by the Trade Federation. A set of holoprints suggested an unusual degree of dexterity in their hands and feet for a battle droid, with surprisingly long, slender fingers. That was an oddly feminine touch for a droid with a torso carapace composed of a solid brick of plastoid alloy. What concerned her, however, was their communications capabilities. Their primary transmitters were low-powered, likely designed for transmitting tactical data to nearby units, but they were equipped with a secondary HoloNet transceiver, albeit one with impractically low bandwidth.

 

The Jedi Ace suppressed a shiver when she considered the implications of such a device. It was a device with low bandwidth, but theoretically infinite range and was exceptionally difficult to intercept. Tactical data could never be transmitted through these devices, not even intelligence holos or even detailed reports. Only brief, encrypted bursts of data could be processed by such a transceiver. Those were encrypted orders, passcodes to manually activate behavioral protocols--optimistically speaking, that would be a shutdown sequence.

 

Hypothetically, a single person could take control of the entire army of droids, all million-strong of them. Draygo could very easily imagine circumstances in which she would be thanking the unknown third-party of droids that had sabotaged these droids.

 

“Thank you, Baakua, you can stop trying to speak technobabble. I’ll take it from here.” Draygo smiled, trying to disguise the fact that her runaway imagination had caused her to pale. Once the Togruta had fled, Armiena stepped into the middle of the circle of battle droids and kept her hands clear of the twin lightsabers on her belt. Dimly glowing eyes squinted at her from thirty expressionless plastoid faces, waiting for… Draygo was uncertain whether they were waiting for commands or for an impulse to act. The engineering reports claimed that they were likely still programmed to obey commands from the Jedi Order and that no hidden subroutines had been inserted for an assassination attempt. “Sentinels, my name is Armiena Draygo. I am Grandmaster of the Jedi Order.”

 

There was no clack of plastoid limbs seizing weapons. The droids stood almost motionless--one of the squinting faces shifted its weight to better view the veteran Jedi.

 

At least there would not be an assassination attempt. That was a promising start.

[ObliviousKnight]

Armiena had expected these droids to be chatty--maybe not as bad as the typical protocol droid or one of the useless B1-series, but there was not even so much as a confirmation or utterance of “roger roger.” Those expressionless faces just stared at her through their sunken chestplates. The veteran Jedi reached to the Force, and felt a slight tremor between the horde of battle droids--it was steady and ceaseless, likely a transmission. Most likely the droids were constantly sharing tactical data between themselves, possibly audio or visual data. But there was something else, some gossamer connection between the droids.

 

“I understand that you were created to serve the Jedi Order as front-line soldiers. I can’t compel you to do that--not because your programming was sabotaged, but because I wouldn’t force any sapient being to fight and die against their will.” Hands on her hips, Draygo turned about, searching the droids for any flicker of reaction. The hem of her brown robes snagged on one of the droids’ armored feet. There might have been a barely audible beep from the droids.

 

“But if we’re going to have a chance of overthrowing the Sith Empire, we’re going to need all available hands. Even pacifists who refuse to raise a blaster in anger will be valuable. I’d like to invite you to assist the Jedi Order. We’ll have need of your services--construction, logistics, even spare computational cycles. In the meantime, you’ll be able to complete self-diagnostics and we’ll be able to find out what was done to you.”

 

There was another one of those tinny beeps. Draygo counted a minute between each of the sounds--perhaps it was a running indicator.

 

Only one of the droids spoke, the grey Sentinel that stood directly before the gaze of the Jedi Master. A rumbling baritone voice issued from a speaker that was buried somewhere in the droid’s sunken neck, not exactly unpleasant to listen to, but the droid’s inhuman appearance gave the rumble an intimidating quality. “Awaiting assignment, Grandmaster.”

 

“Wonderful. There are two flashpoints that need steady hands, and not being susceptible to contagions will be… useful. Sync your comms to me,” Armiena held up a disc from her belt . “And I’ll send you tactical data for your first mission.”

 

____

 

Two hours later, a transport packed to the bulkheads with Sentinel droids--nearly two thousand mechanical souls--departed The Red and Black, and vanished into hyperspace.

 

[ObliviousKnight]

It was a few hours later that Armiena was able to tear herself away from the throng of attention-seekers--some of whom actually did have emergencies that needed her attention--and return to her ship. She found the old freighter empty. A lap around the living spaces aboard the ship discovered that her mother had left, leaving only a shakily-scrawled note that contained only a comlink frequency and well-wishes. That was not surprising; her mother was prone to coming and going without ceremony, but this time there was a sense of finality to her visit.

 

As her pale-green eyes scanned the square of paper and committed the numbers to memory, her mind kept wandering to the possibility that this was the last time that she would ever see him again.

 

The veteran Jedi wandered, half-aware, towards McShipface’s cockpit, tearing the square of paper into scrap and swallowing the ragged fragments one piece at a time. It was there that Armiena found that there was a message from her Padawan. She opened the message with mild concern--none of the Jedi dispatched to Chandrila had sent a thorough status report--and her stomach dropped further when closer examination of the message revealed that it hadn’t been sent from Chandrila, but Nar Shaddaa.

 

Though silent, the message struck with all the thunder and confusion of an ambush in the middle of a minefield. She didn’t know what to do. She wanted to scream, sob, and storm out of her ship to hunt down her Padawan all at the same time. That was an impossibility, of course. There was no opportunity for self-indulgence and personal satisfaction, especially that as stupid as forcing the harrowing life of a Jedi on an unwilling apprentice. Mostly, she just wanted to see her former student and listen to that speech he had prepared for her benefit.

 

Armiena held her face in her hands and just stared into her palms for a few minutes. This also explained her mother’s absence. She’d left to pursue the boy. After a long hesitation, the Jedi Master sent a brief message to the frequency that her mother had left.

 

Please respect his wishes. Do not pursue him.

 

[ObliviousKnight]

Draygo woke with a start and a snort. Dataslates fell from her desk as she pushed herself away from her desk, and she rubbed at a series of ridges burrowed into her cheek from falling asleep on the pile of tablets. She had collapsed from exhaustion after poring over intelligence reports for two days.

 

There could be no time to dwell. This was more than making excuses along the lines of “necessities of the war effort”: the Rebel Alliance was at a severe backfoot after the loss of Fondor and Mon Calamari. Predictably, the Kuati nobility had displayed their predilection for governments even more depraved than their ancient class privileges. Without the gain of a new array of shipyards, it was possible that the entire venture of the Rebel Alliance would simply wither and die from sheer attrition. This state of affairs was not quite as dire as it might have seemed, however. Though Mon Calamari was a loss whose value that could not be easily calculated, there were several ostensibly neutral systems that had been reliable allies of the Galactic Republic in the past. Certainly, they had been treated as hunting grounds for the more imaginative Sith Lords.

 

Gaining access to those was likely to be contingent on their success at Fondor and Kuat. Admiral Slaughter might have been an uncompromising, merciless butcher of an officer, but he was at least well-suited to the cold-hearted task of subjugating a hostile world--and Kuat, at least, was far from a Sith-dominated planet.

 

Her hand groped for a mug of caf. She glared down. empty. She was going to need to banish the sleep-haze--and indulge her addiction--before meeting with Tobias Vos and embarking on their mission. A visit to the commissary and two cups of twice-brewed caf took care of that, and she soon boarded his repainted YT-2000 freighter with an extra pair of mugs for the benefit of the Jedi Master and his Padawan. She banged on the side of the boarding ramp, instinctively making her way towards the common room in the familiar Corellian layout. There she found the Kiffar, who was poring over civilian clothing--not unarmored Jedi robes, but fabric trousers and a tunic--and of all things, a thin vest made of some kind of cheap faux-leather.

 

“People… really wear this kind of clothing?” She asked of Vos, gauging the thin vest with a skeptical eye. “I mean, the fit isn’t bad, but that faux-leather will provide absolutely no protection against blaster fire… and… haven’t these people heard about layering?”

 

[ObliviousKnight]

“Thank you, but I can’t drink.” THere was just the barest emphasis on the can’t in Draygo’s polite abstention from Vos’ offer, and a twitch of her left eye. It was possible that he had heard some of the rumors about the Jedi Grandmaster when she was younger--somewhat overfond of good food and drink, seemed to have smuggled a small stash into every significant Jedi outpost in the Core… disappeared and reportedly had some significant difficulties after the Third Death Star. 

 

An intelligent person probably would have put the breezy rebuttal and the almost-wink together to arrive at an uncomfortable conclusion of what these difficulties might have been.

 

She leaned against the opposite wall and folded her arms.

 

“In this case I suspect you’re correct. I’d rather the Sith not divert their resources to the planet until it is thoroughly prepared. I’m distracted by…” She forced her attention away from the departure of her Padawan. “Well, Borleias is practically home to me. I met my master there, spent more time on that planet than any other, I even worked the refugee camps after Coruscant fell. On that note, some of the people that my Padawan and I healed were veterans from the Galactic Alliance. They might be useful. But bringing the war back home will feel…”

 

There was a pause as she searched for the words. Somewhere in The Red and Black, there was a team of combat engineers assembling parts and equipment to service a squadron of starfighters and maintain a small listening post. On her own ship there was a chain of programming spikes that were vital to hijacking the world’s Holonet network and her insurance policy of several satchel charges. She had determined that her second home was ripe for infiltration, and chaos would be unleashed upon it the moment she gave the word.

 

“...very peculiar.”

[ObliviousKnight]

“So one thing that I’ll grant to the Sith Empire,” Armiena took an obnoxiously loud slurp of caf and glanced down appreciatively. The beverage still tasted of chemicals and mediocrity, but at least it wasn’t watered down mediocrity. “They were quick with reconstruction once they managed to dislodge the Mandalorians. Almost as responsive as we were the last time that Faust visited Coruscant. It wasn’t just rebuilding, but atmospheric scrubbers, the works…”

 

The comlink on her hip glowed momentarily and vibrated. Even as she continued, the disc continued to pulse insistently. “But Hesperidium is a mess. Its orbit stabilized, but… no one is returning home there without significant intervention. The collision shook something loose in its plate tectonics that won’t settle naturally for several centuries. Significant debris ring surrounding both Coruscant and Hesper. Most of what was above Coruscant burns up on re-entry, most of what won’t gets diverted by tugs, the rest… not pleasant.”

 

The veteran Jedi paused to take another irritatingly loud slurp of her caf. “Can’t help but wonder if either the Foundation--Survivor’s Foundation, I mean--or AgriCorps would like a challenge. But… no, I think it will be a while before we see Coruscant again. The strategic goal is to riddle the Core with so many security holes that we will be able to operate with impunity, bring in some of our allies from the bad old days. Some of our hyperspace routes from the Old Republic never got cracked by Palpatine, but we’ll need control over certain systems to move about. Once we can operate in the Core without the Sith being able to challenge us effectively… oh, what is it? Come!”

 

At that moment, one of the Alliance engineers took that opportunity to knock loudly on the ship’s boarding ramp, sending a metallic clang into the ship. “For you, Grandmaster,” the Gotal said, presenting a maintenance jumpsuit for her inspection.

 

Draygo took a moment to regard the garment with a kind of horrified admiration. Woven of a cheap, synthetic blend of plastics and traditional fibers, the blue jumpsuit seemed deliberately designed to not hint at any potentially flattering lines of its wearer’s anatomy. Several stubborn stains had already been inflicted on the legs--oil, caf, and what looked like some greasy mixture from a street food vendor’s menu that was only known by the mysterious term “white sauce”. Several patches had been sewn into its sleeves and an identification tag featuring a blurry, unflattering picture from twenty years ago--it looked like she still had yet to obliterate some of the weight from her pregnancy--had already been clipped to the breast pocket. The engineer had even prepared a cheap helmet and toolbelt.

 

“It’s horrible. I hate it. It’s perfect.” Armiena sniffed the sleeve. The caf stain was fresh. “Is your team ready?”

 

“Ready to load up. We’re all waiting on the deck.” The Gotal coughed. “Local Holonet transceivers are serviced by Core Dynamics. Their internal security is heavy stuff, biometrics and retinal scans, standard for a HoloNet facility but nothing imaginative.”

 

“That won’t be a problem. Vos,” Draygo glanced back to her fellow Jedi Master. “If you could summon your Padawan, I think we’re ready.”

 

[ObliviousKnight]

An informal cavalcade of sapients and equipment began to proceed up the boarding ramp of Vos’ corellian freighter. At first, it was merely a number of rucksacks, small arms, and a chain of dataspikes that was handed directly to the veteran Jedi. Eventually, some truly massive equipment was ferried into the ship: sacks of powdered permacrete and unset polymer, coils of refueling lines and crates of innumerable electronics components that would eventually become sensor arrays and comms towers. A GNK-series power droid eventually came wobbling up the ramp and a small speeder bike was eventually hauled into the cargo hold. Draygo bobbed her head as she received the dataspikes and placed a hand on a massive shoulder that was carelessly slinging a rucksack that had been taken from her ship.

 

“Careful with that one. It has about ten kilos of nergon-14.” The scruff of the black-furred Togorian rose in startlement and the feline carefully slung the satchel charges over his shoulders. 

 

Armiena just shrugged and tossed a miniature holoprojector onto the floor between them. A blue-light hologram bloomed before them: a topographical representation of a sizeable region of Borleias. It was notably flat. “This… is the Juanthir Peninsula. About ten klicks to the south is the old Dojo. All indications of its staff are that the Sith never launched an attack against it and it might be a viable source for scavenging… but it’s been some time. This clearing you see is the Survivor’s Foundation refugee camp. We will not be landing there.”

 

The hologram shifted approximately five hundred kilometers away: a much more rocky, hilly region. Little red splotches periodically denoted caverns, some charted, some present only as 2D specks.  “Here is the Erciyes Highlands. Rocky, lots of wooded valleys that will make for candidate sites for a starfighter base, lots of caves in those hills that we can use for temporary storage. An Imperial--”

 

“Sith,” interrupted a clipped Coruscanti accent, somewhere in the cargo hold.

 

“Thank you. A Sith task force could probe the region for days and not find a starfighter base. Captain, I’ll leave the construction of the facility to you. Vos, I understand that you have some less-than-legal friends operating in the region whose help we’ll need; supplies in, recruits out, bonuses for solid intel, that sort of thing. I’ll count on your discretion in handling the negotiations... just as long as they're on our side." Armiena nodded to her fellow Jedi Master. 

 

Once again, the view of the holoprojector shifted to that of a familiar cityspace: spires and kilometers of residential blocks, it was the capital city of Borleias. "My target is Sihnon. There’s a HoloNet transceiver facility there that serves the entire Pyria system. These…” She jingled the ring of dataspikes. “Have all the programs I’ll need to subvert its security protocols and forward any traffic it handles to our intelligence lads. If this goes well, we’ll gain a base for operations in the Core that will be excruciating for the E… Sith to root out. I’ll take the helm. Questions? You have two minutes before lift-off.”

 

Matching action to words, Draygo spun on a heel and followed the familiar floorplan of a Corellian-built freighter to the cockpit. There was a moment of hesitation as the veteran Jedi realized that she had never flown a YT-2000, but a space-pale hand rose to the ceiling and blindly touched the familiar buttons and switches of its ignition panels. It was almost identical to the other Corellian freighters she had flown. Smiling, Armiena proceeded through the routine of the steel saucer's pre-flight checks. It would not be long before the ship lifted off and catapulted them into hyperspace.

 

[ObliviousKnight]

The initial shock of the attack had ended and Misal Draygo was no longer paralyzed with indecision. However, in some corner of her mind that had been suppressed into silence by the wracking pain, the elderly Miraluka understood that it was absolutely essential that she not move--that she allowed herself to be operated on and maintained by the young Jedi, to be forced into a stupor until proper medical facilities could be reached. However, decades of training had given the operative some ability to subconsciously register that something had changed and survival required her consciousness.

 

Misal stirred, but feebly. Significant pain came with even this foggy form of consciousness and she shivered. Her senses tried to make sense of the drastic change in their surroundings: not blind darkness, but garish and glaring and overwhelming brightness of color and shared sapient sensation, so much that entry to this world was disorienting. A few seconds passed in which the Miraluka merely drew breath and allowed herself to be lifted onto a cot.

 

The world was Nar Shaddaa. Of course. That was where Genesis had left the Jedi.

“Genesis--you won’t….” Weak coughs wracked her body and one of the medics forced a breath mask back onto her face. Misal made a rude gesture and managed a single word before a clean-smelling gas began to seep into her lungs and steal away her consciousness. “Borleias.”

[ObliviousKnight]

Some time later, the YT-2000 freighter Prism settled on the landing pads surrounding The Red and Black. The Jedi Grandmaster had spent almost the entire journey in meditation, looking towards The Force for guidance--anything, a whisper of advice, a vision of a planet, a scent of foliage, a starfield… All she felt was the weight of a rifle in her hands, the smell of blood in the air, and the acrid tang of blaster oxidation on her tongue. And… ropes, all around her. They didn’t bind her, but they spread over every surface and threatened to tangle her ankles as she fought. 

 

This was possibly the most vague that The Force had ever been for her. Once she heard the urgent klaxon that signalled their proximity to Nar Shaddaa, Armiena rose from her feet and blinked away the sleep sand.

 

“I hope I will see you soon,” Draygo rasped through a dehydrated throat as she departed the Corellian freighter. “The Force be with you.”

 

Not quite certain of where to go, the Jedi Grandmaster took a few deep breaths and followed The Force. It led her to her own ship. She glanced from side to side at the top of the boarding ramp. The Force offered her no destination. Under these circumstances, her typical course of action were to wander towards her forge, gather some coils of fiber and ingots of steel, and set to work. That was exactly what Armiena chose, allowing her own sense of inspiration and The Force guide her to next creation...

 

[ObliviousKnight]

Two hours later, Armiena’s work was completed and the Jedi Grandmaster lifted her face from a cloud of metallic dust and shavings. In this instance, she reflected that “work” was perhaps an apt descriptor, for no one would have thought of this inelegant, artless, pragmatic jury-rig of a grenade as a creation of art. The baradium core of a dismantled thermal detonator sat besides her like a malevolently glowing, imperceptibly radioactive paperweight; its thin aluminium shell was thoroughly pockmarked with liquid cable extruders; its payload had been replaced by an amalgamation of a liquid cable reservoir and pulsed energy projectile cell.

 

If the Jedi Ace had rewired the weapon correctly, it would be a chaotic weapon to deploy in combat, simultaneously threatening to blind, stun, and entangle its victims in cords. Though the name would never be spoken, dubbing the crude little jury-rig a Haywire grenade seemed an appropriate moniker.

 

However, kitbashing together grenades and being closer to her mother was never the intention for her return to Nar Shaddaa. The Red and Black was a nerve center for the Rebel Alliance, and such had access to some of the best communication facilities in the galaxy. Upon closing down the forges aboard McShipface, Draygo ventured into one of the briefing amphitheatres and evicted a pair of starfighter pilots who were detailing some maneuver at the battle of Fondor. As entertaining as the orange- and black-clad pilots were in discussing their exploits, even throwing in crude hand motions to detail their maneuvers and making laser blast sounds with their mouths, communicating with a small army of automated walkers took priority.

 

A holoprojection of the galaxy, detailed with pips indicating likely flashpoints and the locations of her Wolf Spiders, bloomed to life in the center of the briefing room.  At the moment, those droids were all localized around Borleias, Corellia, Nar Shaddaa, and Ossus, congregated in small groups or even pairs. After years of war, only forty of the droids remained--thirty-eight, if she excluded Saladin and her own walker. Draygo opened a transmission over the droids’ dedicated hive commcluster.

 

“My friends, I need you to resupply and redeploy.” Draygo spoke to the thirty-eight highly-attentive droids that had been monitoring this channel. “I am… afraid for the galaxy. I fear that the Sith have grown weary of wasting their efforts against the Galactic Core and are attempting an invasion against softer targets. I need you to redeploy to the Outer Rim and harden them.”

 

The list of destinations included a number of vital and obscure planets in the Outer Rim: Naboo, Sullust, Felucia, Kessel, and Arkanis. Eight walkers per world would not be sufficient to hold them against invasion--but if ordered to attack, they could bite hard.

 

The Jedi Grandmaster closed the communique without waiting to be deafened by the over-enthusiastic responses from the Wolf Spider. Armiena shifted towards an old journal that laid besides her. This handwritten… tome was not quite the right word to describe the article, for it was merely a set of observations by a long-dead Jedi, but it was part of the exceedingly scarce collections that the Archives had maintained from the Jedi Order just prior to its extermination at the hands of Palpatine. With solemn reverence, Armiena delicately pried apart the yellowed pages of flimsi--and smiled with gratitude at the realization that this dead Jedi Master had written his observations with a clear, crisp hand.

 

“I could scarcely keep pace. Determining where his blade would fall next was an impossibility. That was not unusual, for Master Windu had long made deadly use of Juyo--even against these pitiful battle droids. Always on the attack, always pushing deeper into their ranks--advance whenever possible, evade when needed, block only when absolutely critical. That was a hallmark of the Form, and being surrounded by an inferior force was a premier exhibition of its capabilities. But there was something different.

 

I sensed the Dark Side gathering around Master Windu. That is a poor description--I sensed it flow through and out of his presence, as though he acknowledged its touch, allowed it to move through him, and moved past it without him or it affecting the other. He may not have even been consciously aware of what was happening to him, for his eyes were utterly focused on the next step, his blade always in motion to strike down the next droid. He might have actually been smiling (I jest, for I do not recall seeing Master Windu ever smiling, not once, not in my entire life). It certainly seemed that he was enjoying the fight, even though the two of us were surrounded and barely enduring the waves of thousands of droids against our position.

 

It was a terrible sight, but also a beautiful one. One can marvel at the sudden destruction wrought by a tornado even while evacuating from its path. Or admire the ferocity of a vaapad… and be grateful that you’re at the opposite end of two centimeters of transparisteel. There may be something more to this technique that Master Windu has developed--its teaching is highly restricted, for even he has acknowledged how dangerous it might be--but it is intriguing how a Jedi Master of such a fraught history, hailing from a vicious world, and bearing such a challenging temperament has managed to touch the Dark Side without being lost to it. Or perhaps I have made an incorrect assumption. Perhaps this is merely a darkness that he has carried all his life, that he has always been touching, and he merely allows it to vent a little pressure?”

 

[ObliviousKnight]

Within the recesses of Shippy McShipface, Draygo meditated.

 

When the Jedi Grandmaster had visited Dantooine with her Padawan, she had encountered something unusual. It was the remains of an old battlefield; almost certainly from the tail-end of the Clone War. That wasn’t unusual, as the fighting had metastasized all over the Outer Rim and Dantooine had seen a major conflict between the Grand Army of the Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems. There had even been a Jedi commanding them. Records from that time were always sketchy due to Palpatine’s extermination of the Jedi Order and partial success in obliterating its history, but some of the eyewitnesses reported that the Jedi was a Korun wielding a purple lightsaber. That would have been Mace Windu.

 

That husk of the seismic tank she had encountered on the plans, picked apart by scavengers to its barest scaffolding, must have been one of the vehicles crippled during that battle. The vivisected corpse of the B2-series Battle Droid, still glaring lifelessly at one of the walls in her ship’s cargo hold, was likely one of his victims. No shrapnel or vibroblade could have bisected the droid through its midsection so cleanly.

 

She had encountered something unusual at that muddy battlefield. Even through the faint residues of animalistic terror and purpose that tended to echo at major battlefields, there was something else. It wasn’t the typical determination and focus that Jedi left in their wake, but… glee. Not happiness or sadistic joy at the slaughter, but satisfaction and uncomplicated enjoyment of the battle--almost as though it was simply a strenuous physical exercise. There was also a vague impression of darkness--but not the stain that lingered after a slaughter by a Sith Lord.

 

That was very interesting.

 

That would also have to wait, for an insistent chime had been buzzing at her hip for some time. Blinking rapidly, the Jedi Grandmaster read the message with only half her attention. And then she reread it. And again to confirm that the text was not a hallucination wrought by sleep deprivation.

 

Thirty seconds later, the veteran Jedi came running down the boarding ramp of McShipface in a flurry of brown robes, attracting a number of comments from Rebel soldiers observing on the unfortunate omen of watching a Jedi Grandmaster sprint through a military base. Shortly later, the Jedi Grandmaster returned the opposite direction, huffing and puffing and looking somewhat nauseous under the burden of an ysalamir harness. By the time she had returned to her ship, a team of technicians were crawling over the ancient, boxy freighter, refueling the Barloz-class freighter and loading a Jedi Ace starfighter into its cargo hold. Armiena waved off the attentions of the technicians. 

 

“Not needed! That’s enough! Just refuel her!” She shouted at the hangar crew, who began to reluctantly climb down from the long-overdue refurbishment. The ship didn’t need to survive contact with the Chaos Gods. It just needed to get her to the system.

 

Several minutes later, that ship jumped into hyperspace to meet what seemed an uncertain fate.

 

[ObliviousKnight]

...says to place her in a chair and to allow her to wake on her own. She tends to get violent when startled. Lose the blanket.

 

Much like how one felt clothing as it was donned, Draygo felt the presence of her own body: goosebumps rising with the thrill of an adrenaline rush, a pressing weight on her chest--searing cold that swept through her breastbone.

 

And of immediate significance, the fact that she once again had legs.

 

She gasped cool air into her lungs and her pale-green eyes shot open. Instincts of self-defense compelled her body into motion before conscious thought had an opportunity to take note of her surroundings and guide her actions. She kicked out, flinging a small blanket into the face of a Bothan medtech. He gave a yelp of surprise amid the clatter of falling instruments as he gripped a tray for balance.

 

And then thought had a chance to assert itself. A familiar voice over the overhead speakers suggested that Draygo had been revived at the Alliance base on Nar Shaddaa. The clean, brown robe; the crisp, excessively dry air; the sterile, plasticky garb of the medtechs; all confirmed that she had been recently cloned and her body transported to the recovery ward until flash-learning and the Force-enabled mechanisms of the Jedis cloning apparatus had brought her back to her body.

 

She glanced about wildly. No mud, no rain, no pain--every familiar scar was present, everything was as she was only thirty minutes ago--excluding for her lightsabers, of course. “What the kriff?”

 

_______________

 

A few hours later, Draygo had claimed one of the unused briefing rooms to privately review the more critical reports that had reached her; the Rebel Alliance and Jedi had liberated Mon Calamari, but Naboo had been lost--pulverized by the Sith Empire. Contact lost with Sullust. A distress call from Jedha. Until only a few hours ago, the Grandmaster wasn’t even aware that anyone was still alive on that moon.

 

In the central holographic pit of the briefing room, a suit of plastoid armor cast a man-shaped shadow over the image of the galaxy. It wasn’t the grey clamshell of an Imperial stormtrooper, but the crimson plates of an Imperial Knight’s cuirass and pauldrons. Armor not being standard-issue among the Jedi Order and stormtrooper plate optimized for protection over flexibility, the cuirass would at least provide a useful foundation for her plans. She dragged it towards her and cast a skeptical eye over the armor. The breastplate was at least suitably cast for a woman of her stature--the curvature of the bust and hips was actually somewhat flattering, as though it was designed for court functions as well as combat. That certainly explained the absurd Imperial sigils on the gauntlets and pauldrons, to say nothing of the waxy polish that caused the galactic holomap to reflect on the plastoid like a mirror.

 

It would be a useful foundation, nothing more. A more complete set of armor, forged months in the future--perhaps years--would call for a visit to her forges on Phu. That visit would result in a concave plastoid honeycomb reinforced with a molecular sintering of phrikite alloy, an armored skirt, complete integration with the Jedi Council’s virtual chamber. And wireless access to the HoloNet--that was indispensable.

 

She glanced down at a circuit board below her, around it situated a small collection of capacitors, motion sensors, and superconductive plates of ultrachrome. A larger power cell had already been connected to the circuitry, ready to be rigged to the fingertips of the gauntlets.

 

The other piece of equipment that she had misappropriated from the arsenals of the Imperial Knights was a stokhli spray stick. A meter long and more than twice the weight of a blaster, it would make for an awkward weapon for a Jedi. However, the staff-like weapon was optimized to incapacitate big game at a safe distance; a significant portion of that bulk was occupied by pressure chambers and an oversized focusing nozzle. None of those features were required for point-blank range. Miniaturized versions of that equipment--not dissimilar to hyposprays for subdermal medications--would be sufficient for a range of thirty meters or less.

 

Draygo took a sip of cold caf and grimaced. This first incarnation of the armor would need to be crude. Time had become more precious still, and she could not afford the luxury of spending days completing fine finishes on a suit of plastoid.

 

She began by placing her hands on the suit’s pauldrons and calling to The Force. Breathing deeply, Draygo reached for a power cable from which she had stripped the shielding. The Force shielding her from the vast amount of energy that flowed through the cable, she allowed her body to act as a conduit into the plastoid plate. The pauldrons and gauntlets soon began to warm and deform; the Imperial sigils melted away to conform with the curves of the armor. A brief treatment with a foul-smelling solvent caused the crimson paint to evaporate into acrid mist--only the featureless grey of raw plastoid remained. She breathed deeply despite the fumes, peeling apart the plates with her bare hands to reroute superconducting fibers through the armor’s systems.

 

Armiena next reached for the gauntlets and placed them with their palms facing upwards, and sprinkled a few of the scraps of ultrachrome into their palms. Linking fingers with the gauntlets as though holding hands with another sapient, she allowed that vast store of energy to flow directly into the superconductive metal. Though enormously heat-resistive, the scraps soon glowed red, then white--then began to sag and melt into a puddle of lightsaber-resistive metal. Draygo allowed this puddle to spread over the fingers of the gauntlets and into the wrists. That conductive metal would be critical for allowing the charge from the power cell to course through any dispensed stokhli spray.

 

The rest was merely a matter of routing wires and programming the motion detectors, a routine task that lasted only an hour. After uploading the firmware, the armor was complete--imperfect, as her touch had left finger-sized divots in the pauldrons and gauntlets--and functional. Upon registering a specific gesture, the magazine of stokhli spray in the vambraces would dispense, coating a target up to thirty meters away in the viscous mist. A mere touch of the hardening jelly would transfer a vast amount of energy into the target, potentially incapacitating them.

 

It was crude, ugly, and an unfinished prototype, but it was at least functional. Her equipment completed, Draygo began to transmissions to the other Jedi Temples throughout the galaxy The Sith were on the move again, and a disaster would befall the galaxy if the Jedi could not retaliate against their offensive.