Arc 2 Chapter 14

It was dark, only one moon was in the sky, and Jorel knew tonight he would kill again.

This was war, and in war people died, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. The way the Temple taught it, every death was a tragedy, every life ended a regrettable act, and, while it may be a necessity, it should always be the matter of last recourse.

Except, if you spent even an hour looking into the Archives, it was obvious that the Temple Masters was full of kriffing druk.

Jedi killed. Jedi killed a lot. Jedi killed on most of their missions, often when, if they’d gotten good enough with a few techniques, like the ‘Mind Trick’ that was the primary use of Force Confusion, they could have avoided it entirely.

And that wasn’t even considering that Er’izma was a general, who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds regularly. Jorel had asked his Master, after he was sure the man wouldn’t take offense, how he settled being a military commander with being a Jedi.

The man had laughed, and shaken his head. “Jedi have always been ‘military’, Padawan,” he’d responded. “It is only in the last few centuries that we have pretended not to be. And badly at that.”

That had started a crash-course in Jedi History, the parts that hadn’t been accessible by Initiates in the Temple Archives. Of the Army of Light, that had fought the Brotherhood of Darkness, in the thousand year long New Sith War, that had ended almost a millennia ago, and had led to the Ruusan Reformation. Jorel had known of them, in the abstract, but the Temple Masters had never gone into detail, and he was starting to understand why.

It was a time when Jedi fought as everything from individual actors, like the Jedi did now; to the leaders of strike teams, with a trusted group to support them, as a minority of present day Jedi still did, usually to great effect; to Jedi that controlled battalions, like Er’izma did; to the Jedi that controlled entire armies, the High Council of the time made up of members whom each were in charge of a different aspects of war, such as intelligence gathering, logistics, or entire fronts in the fight against of the Sith.

“But why aren’t we taught this?” the Padawan had asked, confused. The more he learned, the more he realized just how much of the Temple’s wisdom was based on lies. He had frowned, then, mentally amending, No, not lies. They didn’t lie. They just told a small bit of the truth, and acted like there was nothing else out there. And, in some ways, that felt worse.

“Because the Jedi Order wishes to forget its past,” Er’izma had answered easily. “You will find most groups seek to distance themselves from uncomfortable truths and actions, which, justified in the moment, they find uncomfortable in the present, for how can you demonize a group and label them as lesser, putting yourself above them, for something you yourself have done? Many a government formed in bloody revolution, after the years pass, and those that were present can no longer contradict those in charge, pretend their hands were clean, and they were brought to power through the will of the people, instead of the will of the surviving people.”

The Jedi Knight had shook his head. “Death is as much part of the Force as life, just as choking weeds must be removed, for the forest to live. While a forest might burn, there are different varieties of fire. Some cleanse, burning away the detritus, clearing the way for new growth. Some destroy the forest itself, but even then, life may still return in years. An orbital bombardment however, such that turns the surface to glass, kills all life, possibly forever, though, like Tatooine, it may eventually return. Most can determine the difference between the second and third, but many, especially those that fear the fire that burns within themselves, cannot tell the first from the second.”

“Then we’re the ‘cleansing flame’?” Jorel asked skeptically. It was a nice thought, but, when Jorel had fallen to the Dark, that was almost exactly what he’d thought of himself as being.

“We can be,” the centuries old Jedi replied. “Though we could also be the crown fire that burns the forest to the ground, and, if the wood is rotten, that is what is needed. But we must never become the scouring inferno. When we destroy, we must be careful of what we are, and how we do so, for our connection to the Force does not make us more righteous, only stronger, and more capable.”

The dark-skinned man had shaken his head. “Our connection to the Force can allow us greater insight, but the Force is an advisor, to be listened to, and considered, but not to be obeyed. Because, at the end of the day, your actions are your own, and you must live with what you have done. If we must kill, to achieve what we desire, then we do so, knowing what that means. However, killing should never be the end in of itself, nor something to take pleasure in. When you kill, you may take pride in your skill, in the fact that you are making a bad situation better, but never in the act itself. That way lies the Dark.”

On the surface, it was the same as the Temple, saying ‘If you’ll do this you’ll fall’. Below that, though, his Master’s statements couldn’t be more different. The Temple said, ‘Don’t do this’, as if the act itself was the issue. Er’izma, however, said ‘don’t feel this’, or, more specifically, ‘Don’t indulge in feeling this.’

The core of the Mind Shield technique, the way that Jorel had finally understood it, when he’d finally ignored what the Temple Masters said, was to allow feelings to pass by, without letting yourself get caught up in them. Trying to control his feelings completely, trying to stop himself from feeling them in the first place, was impossible, and every failure had driven him further down. It was by not allowing them to dominate his mind that he could find peace.

And he was going to need a good deal of peace for what he was about to do.

Jorel moved through the forest, carefully, allowing the Force to guide his steps to be silent as he crept forward. Hisku and the others followed a good distance behind. When he had secured the back gate, he would click the comlink he had been provided, and they’d move up, allowing him to open the door long enough to smuggle them through.

He moved through the undergrowth, utterly silent, and approached the tree he’d use to leap into the base. A feeling in the Force made him freeze, a faint sensation telling him to move behind a nearby trunk, which he followed.

A moment later, a light shone down, slowly panning across the hidden road that led to the back entrance, covering the forest on either side, and the Padawan’s position. After a few long seconds, it shut off, and the Force gave him the go-ahead to continue moving, the young man making it to the tree, climbing up with ease.

Sitting up on the vital branch, he checked the chrono built into the comlink, seeing that he had several minutes until the main force reached the front entrance. He had asked Stelog why, if they were able to sneak in, they needed Jorel’s team.

The scarred man had chuckled, and told the young Jedi that, with how much they were taking, it didn’t matter if they had orders from the highest Pengalan general herself, the base commander wouldn’t let them leave, as in doing so they would be leaving the base vulnerable to, ironically, attack from the rebels.

So the Padawan closed his eyes, meditating, and reached out in the Force. First, he drew a weak Veil around himself, so that, if any looked his way, they’d see not a person in a mottled dark brown cloak, hiding his armor and letting him blend in, but just an oddly formed part of a tree. After that, he looked outward.

Behind himself, he could easily sense Hisku, like a beacon in the Force. She was worried, and nervous, feeling alone and on edge, but all of that was smothered under a steely determination that wouldn’t be out of place in the Temple, though the strength of her emotions would be unusual there. The other three moved with her, all focused to various amounts, the Devorian woman, Kiri, was at a state of relaxed readiness that felt almost predatory, while the two men, weaker in the force, were harder to read at this distance.

In the other direction was the base, dozens upon dozens of soldiers moving about, though most were asleep in these dark hours of the morning. The guard force stood out awake and aware, though to differing degrees. In the area that Jorel would land two people were waiting, talking, and would need to be dealt with.

Need to be killed.

While Jorel would have preferred to merely knock them unconscious, without the Force, which he wasn’t supposed to have, that would not be reliably possible. Even if he managed it, though, there was a good chance the other members of his team would kill them anyways, to keep them from waking up and attacking his people from the back. He couldn’t even blame them, as, without the Force to guide them, that would be a very real danger.

And while the men and women in front of him weren’t pirates, or slavers, they were working to support the same government that had wanted to destroy Kernast with no warning whatsoever. If they were still willing to support that institution, then, while they weren’t as bad as pirates, they weren’t innocent civilians either. The Padawan knew it would be a slippery slope, redefining what was an ‘acceptable’ target, but he wasn’t lowering it, he was merely defining exactly what that meant to him.

In the distance, he could feel Xatra’s Presence, the Flock’s Lieutenant part of the team that would try and talk their way in.

Checking the chrono, he had five minutes.

Focusing on his landing point, out of sight and hidden behind the wall, both guards needed to be killed before they could raise an alarm. If he were better, he could distract them, cause them to leave, or even paralyze them completely. If he could somehow make himself invisible, like the Force Adepts of Geist Squadron, this would be doable, but, as it was now, he wasn’t sure he could take them both out without them making a sound.

Two minutes.

But, it isn’t making the sound that’s the problem, he thought, reaching out in the Force. It’s being heard by the others.

He’d been practicing with that complex Force technique, and it didn’t have to be perfect, just good enough. Creating it at a distance was a bit harder, far away and unable to see where he was setting it up, like typing on a screen a dozen feet away using long metal rods while blindfolded, but it was possible.

When he was satisfied with what he’d crafted, he looked at the comlink and almost dropped the technique as he was a minute late. Time to move, he thought, keeping the construct with one mental hand, while pulling in the Force with his other, infusing his body with it as he stood, the Veil falling away.

Pulling the long knife from his belt, he flicked on the Vibroblade’s mechanism, the foot-long weapon’s lowest setting creating a buzzing so low it could not be easily heard. Weapon in hand, he dashed down the tree limb, which bent under his steps, creaking dangerously, but before it broke the Padawan leapt, flying over the top of the wall, far enough to hit the edge of a building overlooking it, bending his knees to lessen the impact as much as he could.

Thankfully, the room on the other side of the wall was empty, something he’d checked in the Force, as he wasn’t entirely successful in keeping his landing quiet, but the noise did not reach the two guard below him, insulated as they were. Jorel fell, descending towards one of the unsuspecting guards, and landed on him as he shoved the vibroknife down, cutting the gap between helmet and armored uniform, dragging the blade across the man’s throat as he broke the man’s bones with the impact of his landing.

Even as he touched down in that pseudo alley between building and wall, the other Guard yelled in surprise, but the carrying scream was caught in the sound baffles that surrounded them, insubstantial enough to move through, but solid enough to capture noise. The second man lifted his weapon, an E-5 blaster just like the ones the rebels had stolen, but Jorel was on him before the weapon was even pointed level, another blade across the throat silencing second man, while the severed arteries meant both guards were unconscious in seconds, their deaths coming shortly thereafter, their suffering short.

The twin blooms of Dark spread out in the force, pulling at Jorel, but, oddly enough, less than we he had killed with his lightsaber. It was, however, much messier, blood everywhere, in ways that made the Padawan uncomfortable.

Good. This shouldn’t be comfortable. And the lack of backlash is something to ask Er’izma about later, Jorel thought, letting the sound baffles fall and re-drawing the Veil around him. It wouldn’t hold up that well, the Jedi’s appearance too odd to be easily overlooked, but it was dark, and if it should hold against a passing glance.

Jorel didn’t look back, moving as quickly as he could quietly, jogging down the alley and staying close to the wall, feeling the area around him with the Force. As he closed on the back entrance, the Padawan could sense that there were three guards up in the guard tower that overlooked the back entrance, but one was leaving, heading the Padawan’s way.

The teen leapt up, still below the top of the wall, hanging off a pipe that ran up the building as the third guard moved past him. The Jedi tried to drop down silently behind the man, but not quietly enough, as the soldier turned around, a confused expression on his face.

Leaping forward, into the man, Jorel sliced his throat even as he grabbed the man’s uniformed chest with his free hand. The man’s yell was a sputtering wheeze as he was lowered to the ground, passing out, and Jorel moved forward once more.

Both guards were standing together, overlooking the back entrance, and, even if Jorel threw up another sound baffle, the big red ‘alarm’ button was right there. If he could grab and drag them away, even if they ‘made no noise’, a stray limb could still ruin everything.

If he was as good as Anaïs at making barriers, he might’ve put one over it, but he wasn’t sure if that would be enough. However, misdirection was in his wheelhouse. While he still couldn’t telekinetically move something he couldn’t see, from his vantage point he now had options.

Reaching out in the Force, in the opposite direction as he stood, it only took a second and a careful twist for a door to open in the other direction form him, with enough force to swing out and hit the opposite wall. The entrance into the building sat under a single light which left a pool of illumination all around it, making it doubly conspicuous. He didn’t do it that hard, but it was definitely hard enough to make a sound.

Both Guards turned to look at it, and, when no one came out, they looked at each other. Jorel froze, unsure if that hadn’t been enough, or if that had been too much, but after a muttered conversation, too far away for him to hear, both guards made odd hand gestures. The female guard laughed, while the male one growled, and started to make his way down the tower’s stairs for the open door.

As the leaving guard descended on one side of the guard tower, Jorel ascended the other side, climbing the worn ferrocrete wall, and silently clambering over the right side of the tower’s ledge, while the remaining guard looked over the left.

A grab and slice, and the woman silently died.

Glancing out into the forest, he couldn’t see his team, but clicked his commlink, telling them to move up. It only took a few steps to cross the guardhouse and Jorel leapt off the left side, landing on the last guard, the Padawan’s knees on the man’s back knocking the breath out of him as they both fell halfway into the light surrounding the open doorway. A stab with the Vibroblade, turned up in intensity for just a moment, sliced easily through the man’s spine in a buzzing instant, beheading him.

Again, unlike with a lightsaber, it was just so much more. . . visceral, though the death didn’t call as strongly to the Jedi, but Jorel centered himself in the Force, letting the feelings created by what he had done slide away, focused on his goal. There was still no combat from the other side of the base, but it was only a matter of when, not if. Hesitating, he closed the nearby door, so he didn’t have to explain how he’d opened it in the first place.

In retrospect, he should’ve just thrown a rock, or something.

Climbing the guard tower, four steps at a time, he made it to the top, seeing his team standing in front of the back door. Toggling the commlink, he whispered, “Opening. Be ready,” his voice sounding loud in his own ears and the eerie silence of the night. Waiting a few seconds, the Jedi toggled the doors open, closing them two and a half seconds later, to avoid their use being noticed.

Walking down the stairs, he found the rest of his team gathered around the last, headless guard. Sham and Cen were both staring at it with wide eyes, and Jorel dismissed his Veil, stepping out of the shadows cast by the light, causing them both to jump, lifting their vibroknives and pointing them in his direction.

Hisku was bringing up the back, looking around, not paying the corpse any mind, while Kiri just laughed quietly.

“Not bad, newbie,” the rebel woman commented. “This almost looks professional.”

Unable to resist himself, Jorel asked, whispering, “What should I do better?”

The Devorian woman gestured, “Beheading him like that? Way too showy. But you’re from the circus, so I shouldn’t be surprised you’d make it a spectacle.”

“I just wanted to kill him quickly. To stay quiet,” the Jedi argued, still focused, still feeling what was happening on the other side of the base. He could sense feelings shifting elsewhere, and, before the woman could respond, the sound of blasterfire broke the silence of the night, and the distant blooms of Dark as more people died were, in their own way, even louder than Jorel’s kills, full of pain, betrayal, and anger.

It was his team’s job to take out the power, but according to the maps they’d gotten, the armory was only a few dozen feet away from, and shared a wall with, their target. To keep casualties low, it needed to be taken before the soldiers could wake up, and arm themselves. “Follow me,” Jorel commanded, remembering to pull back on Force Control, now that he had watchers.

Even then, though, he turned up his Vibroblade until it thrummed in his hands, and darted forward with almost supernatural speed. In the quiet night, the sustained sound of his blade would’ve been an alarm all its own, but with an active battle going on up front, it wouldn’t be noticed. Darting through one door, then another, he came across a few soldiers running for the armory and didn’t stop, slicing one in the leg, his fully powered vibroblade cutting through the reinforced uniform the soldier wore with ease, a second in the arm, and the third in the throat, not stopping, trusting the others to take care of the survivors.

Two more rooms, and four more soldiers later, he found the entrance, the guards that were supposed to be protecting it with their backs turned as soldiers started to pour in from the other two entrances into the room, of which the entrance to the armory sat in the back.

In the distance, the sounds of turrets could be heard, the soldiers having gotten them operational, though they weren’t designed to fire inward. That meant the strike team that got in through the front wasn’t being torn apart by them, but it also meant that they couldn’t get support from the others outside.

Confronted with a room full of enemies, Jorel’s first instinct was to go forward with his blade, but not only was it much shorter than his saber, but he wouldn’t be able to block shots with it either. Instead, he ran up to one of the soldiers who was heading for him, the man’s head down as he tried to slip on the protective glove, blaster held under one arm. The Jedi buried his vibroblade in the man’s chest, taking his blaster rifle and flicking it to full auto, opening fire before the corpse hit the ground.

The Jedi let the Force guide his shots, killing the soldiers in front of him with ease, as the others from his team came up behind him, adding their own fire to his even as the soldiers tried to bring their own weapons to bear, or running.

In seconds everyone before them was dead, the soldiers still in the armory having taken cover, and attempting to hold it. Jorel, reaching out in the Force, felt the position of the soldiers in the partially blockaded room, and pulled a little more on Force Control, throwing his now-steaming blaster forward. Pulling the vibroknife from the dead guard’s chest, he leapt forward, chasing the weapon, which struck a soldier that stepped into the armory’s doorway to fire.

The man screamed in pain, falling to the ground as he was burned by the searing hot metal, and Jorel ducked as he ran, another soldier in a side doorway taking a shot at him, the bolt passing inches over his head, as the shooter was gunned down by the Jedi’s team. The Padawan jumped over the screaming man, lashing out with his blade to catch the arm of the soldier that was already turning to shoot him, bone parting as easily as anything else under the Vibroknife’s blade.

Hisku was hot on his heels, and he turned right, throwing himself into the soldiers on one side of the armory, while his partner took the left, the other three coming in while watching their backs. In seconds, their team were the only ones left alive, grabbing heavy ordinance.

The armory was built to be held during an enemy attack, which would normally make it a fallback point, but that also meant it could be easily held against outside attack if infiltrated. The fact that it was in the back-center of the base, right next to the complex’s vital infrastructure, sharing a wall with it, was something that the Jedi was taking full advantage of.

Jorel, Hisku, and Kiri held the doorway while the two other men cleared the wall in question, attaching the breeching charges. “Firing!” one of them yelled, the explosion sounding a moment later, loud enough to leave his ears ringing, and sending up a cloud of dust.

The soldiers outside tried to rush them, but Hisku and Kiri both hurled grenades into them, the feelings of their deaths stacking on top of each other, obscuring Jorel’s ability to sense things in the Force, as it was turned into a fetid swamp of suffering and Darkness.

The Jedi pushed through it, still able to maintain his own techniques, grabbing Hisku and pulling them both back as the other two men moved to take their place, the men turning on the lights they’d strapped to their helmets. Both Sergeant and Padawan ran through the hole in the wall, gunning down the few soldiers still surviving as they started to recover from the unexpected blast. He moved to the doors, locking and sealing them at both entrances. If he used his saber, he could melt the doors shut, but it wasn’t worth it, not for this.

At the same time, Hisku got to work on the power generators. Breaking a power generator was not as easy as just shooting them. Yes, that might work, but it may just as easily set it off like a bomb, which could set off the next one, and so on. Civilian generators were built to not do that, though they sometimes still did, but military grade technology was more powerful, but that was a double-edged sword as they also had less safeties.

However, the Sergeant was good at what she did, and was able to shut off the base’s power, the lights cutting off, only to replaced with red emergency lights, the turrets outside still firing. A moment later, those secondary lights exploded, a power surge overwhelming the circuits, and the emergency defenses that were built into them went quiet as well

Hisku and Jorel both turned on the lights strapped to their chests, to continue working, as she quickly turned the remaining generators into so much fancy scrap, while Jorel prepared for soldiers to breach the doors.

But no one came.

A few minutes later, and Jorel’s attaché finished her work, both of them pulling back to the armory with the others. A mass of blaster-fire came from the area outside, while they stood ready, and their commlink chimed, Stelog’s voice commanding, “Don’t shoot!”

A moment later, the rebels came walking in to the armory, some looking shaken, others excited, several glancing back to the killing-ground Jorel’s team had created, surely having had to walk over several dozen bodies to get inside.

The rebels spread out, and Stelog followed them in, looking around. “Not bad,” he commented to himself, before yelling, “Get the lead out of your shebs and load up, men! Let’s not give these nerf herders time to find their stones and try again!”

The rebels stopped staring and started opening bags, throwing everything they could into them as fast as they could. The cell leader walked over to the Jedi and the Sergeant, shaking his head. “Good job, kid. Thought we’d have to take this the hard way.”

“They’re right next to each other,” the teen shrugged. “Two Hutts, one detonator,” he remarked, getting a laugh from the older man. “There’s still soldiers around?”

“Aye,” Waleye nodded. “But as long as they stay holed up, they aren’t our problem.”

The Jedi sighed, glad that some people would survive this. “Okay. Good,” he replied, then winced, looking up at the man, who’d killed a rebel when he’d balked at fighting, but the Force had remained silent.

The man, indeed, was smiling, eyes focused on the Padawan. “Don’t worry boy. We’re here to take Pengalan back for the people, not kill every poor fool who was tricked into defending the dictators who’ve taken it over.”

“You don’t have to worry ‘bout him being soft,” Kiri added, walking up to the three, carrying a bag full of high explosives. “Kid’s hardcore. Took a Cong’s head off, and wanted to know how he could do it better!”

That got another laugh out of the man, who dropped a firm hand onto the Padawan’s shoulder. “I knew I was right about you, Jorel. I’ve got an eye for potential, and I think you’re gonna go far, here with us. Keep showing this kind of initiative, and you’ll make some powerful friends indeed!”

The Jedi gave the rebel leader a hesitant smile, even as he thought of his Master, the Jedi General who was the one who would decide who was going to win this conflict, in no small part based on what his Padawan found.

Oh, you have no idea.