[i]”Questions are more true than answers. This is the beginning of wisdom.”[/i] [color=4BD5EE][b]That Which Binds I[/b][/color] [color=E5B13A][b]The [i]Aundus-Valay[/i], Above Zetrea[/b][/color] [color=f7941d][b]Outer Rim[/b][/color] [i]Beads of perspiration swam across the young boy's dark brown skin, catching the light of the rising sun and glowing with a golden aura. His eyes were shut tight and his breathing heavy. In the distance – beyond the veranda upon which he sat with his legs folded beneath him – the treetops swayed and a chorus of alien avians chirped and whirred, greeting the coming of the day. Despite his concentration he could not shut these things out. They rose around him and barraged his mind, pulling his thoughts to a thousand places each time he became aware of the world, unable to maintain his focus. Finally, he let go and opened his eyes. “Master,” he began, “What is the Force?” Across the veranda his teacher opened her eyes – their dazzling sapphire catching his breath, as they always did – and smiled. “The Force is all around us, Jata. It is all life, all things.” “But what is it made of? Can I touch it? Taste it?” “You cannot touch what has no form,” Terzeh'halam laughed, raising her arms above her head in a luxurious stretch. She rose from where she'd sat and came over to her pupil, settling down beside him. “But that doesn't make sense. You keep saying it's all life, and that it's all things, and that it guides us and has a will of its own. It has to have … I don't know. A body? A brain?” Her hand, a paler shade of blue than her eyes but no less dazzling, ruffled the thick curls of his hair. “You must let go of these notions, Jata. It is not a sentient as we perceive sentients to be. It is not corporeal because a corporeal form would be of no use to it. It does not live, though it is made of life.” The Padawan shook his head. “Still doesn't make sense. The Force can't have a will if it isn't sentient. You keep telling me that gods do not exist but you keep talking about the Force like it's a god.” “No, Jata. Not a god. Not divine, not exactly. It is a presence, a connective energy that suffuses the galaxy. It has many sides and those sides have many sides, turning endlessly from one to the other. I have spoken to you of the Light and the Dark, of the balance that is struck between them. These are of the Force but not; they would not exist if we did not exist. Reflections of those who are connected to it.” Her lips curled into a soft smile. “It is the spirit of the galaxy, and as it connects us, so too do we connect it, an infinite system of links, a grand and endless chain.” Kujata sighed. His teacher removed her hand from his head and clasped it to her other, folding them in her lap. Around them the wind rose, catching their simple clothes and seeping through the coarse fabric to cool them against the burgeoning day. “It surrounds us,” Terzeh said, gentle as the wind around them. “and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together. It is born of all life, as we are born of it. We serve it and it guides us, and in its Light we-” One of her eyes cracked open a hair, seeking out her young apprentice. The boy finally let out the snicker and snort he'd been holding in. Terzeh frowned at him. “It … it penetrates us,” he explained, giggling. That earned him a smack.[/i] [center]****[/center] Zeti Trankan danced the swords, and she did it with a fury unrestrained. All before her was drenched in red and soaked in the splattering mist of those who dared stand in the way; she was a whirlwind of carnage that swept through the halls of the [i]Aundus-Valay[/i] like some sort of divine retribution. Where once-rational thought had pulsed within her mind there was numbness, a moment caught in carbonite. Where once there had been intent, there was only instinct. Behind her a salvo of blaster fire rained outwards towards those too distant for her blades to reach, precision shots that never once grazed her, for she and the squad were as one, all swept up in the battle lust and the flow of the galaxy's beating heart. Each step forward was as one unit, and though others around her fell to the enemy's scattered return fire she emerged each time unscathed, dancing through it and over the dead as if they simply weren't there. In her mind she saw again and again the death of that nameless Zetrean soldier. A slip, and a fall, and the cruelness of life. She did not believe in destiny, nor any of the forces that the galaxy attributed to higher planes. She did not believe that all things happened for a reason or that all things followed a master plan. What happened, happened, and as much of one's life as possible should be lived wide awake, lived fully and under one's own power. The Mandalorians knew better than most that life is what one makes of it. That each moment you fight, each battle you win, is one more accomplishment. One more badge of merit to wear on the march towards the grave. All beings die, but they can die with purpose. They can die with honor. There is no higher honor than combat. No finer display of the power one can wield over their own life than their actions and reflexes on the battlefield. To have that taken away, wrenched completely from her grasp just as she joined the fray – it was worse than anything she'd ever imagined was possible. The coldness in her gut would not abate. There was no way to undo what had been done. No way to go back and fix what was broken. Her first kill was an accident, was the simple idiocy of another being. There was no honor. There was no glory in that. Only shame. Her first kill and she had failed her family completely. She had failed herself, her father, and Mandalore all. No matter how much she fought … no matter how many battles she won … that scar would never, ever heal. Galling. Embarrassing. Unfair. Horrifying. It tore at her like the dark heart of a black hole, devouring every ounce of light in her until there was nothing left. She could feel it all slipping away, could feel the impending doom that bore down upon her. As soon as the battle ended there would be a reckoning. She would have to face her brothers and sisters and she would know humiliation. A humiliation that would live with her for the rest of her days. So she danced the swords and kept ahead of the pack. She put aside her blaster and leapt into the melee because in doing so she could keep fighting, could prolong the inevitable. She could soak those green slashes on her armor in the blood of the Zetreans and bury them deep, hide them from the world, because she did not deserve even the mark of a recruit. One mistake and she was tainted. Her father – how could she face him now? Somewhere behind her his overcharged blaster roared again and again, flashing out and blowing apart enemies and barricades alike, his daughter easily stepping past and slipping beneath each salvo, dreading the moment that the dance came to an end, because she could not bear it. She could not turn back to him. She had to keep fighting, keep moving forward. Another of her fellow recruits fell beside her, a smoking hole in his armor where the plates had failed to ablate the energy of a blaster bolt. She had known him all her life, remembered much about him, had once harbored feelings for him in a fit of whimsy – and now he was dead, and she was jealous of him, for he had died with honor. Heat soaked her cheeks and she dared not stop the dance to wipe those streaks of water away. She pressed onwards, hopping over a pair of white-clad Zetrean troopers to fall into a third, lancing her blades through his armor, the vibroswords practically laughing as they deftly seared through with almost no resistance. Ancient though they may have been, the relics in her hands had never once failed her. It was only she who had failed. Zeti roared as she pulled her blades from the dying trooper and whipped them to either side to clean them, then pointed them towards the next batch of troopers who even now scrambled to take up positions at the far end of the alley they'd advanced into. Overhead the klaxons still raged and the emergency lights still bathed the ship in their nightmarish glow. A halo of crimson fire thundered past her as she raced forward, twisting out of the way as one of the Zetreans sighted her through his scope and depressed the firing pin. Instinct drove her and she trusted it implicitly now, lost in the moment, caught up in the waves of combat that pushed her onward, side-stepping the blast with ease. Ducking as she slipped beneath a collapsing bulkhead that shattered from the blast of an errant grenade, she slid the rest of the distance and rose from her crouch into a frenzy of sword strikes, laying waste to the trio of defenders who stood no chance against a Mandalorian in close combat, even one as green as she. But it wasn't enough. Still it wasn't enough! She needed more victories, more honor; she had to try to bury the sin deeper, to push down that moment, to try to wash it away … Zeti plunged her swords into one of the Zetreans at her feet, freeing her hands for just a moment. She tugged her helmet from its mounting and cast it aside, then unclasped the armor plates from her arms to leave only the black pressure suit sleeves as a defensive layer. A fan of tangled, sweat-soaked hair swept out behind her as she shook her head. [i]Honor is life,[/i] she thought, her mind still alight with static and that one single moment, over and over and over again. [i]For with no honor one may as well be dead.[/i] The swords fell once more into her hands, and she staggered onwards once again, plunging into the glory of war to push back the moment she'd lose everything that ever mattered. [center]****[/center] The turbolift sealed behind them just as a salvo of blaster bolts raced across the hall, splattering viciously against the plasteel and sending up waves of smoke in their wake. Kujata slammed against the far side of the lift as his small companion lurched forward to do the same, dragging his massive blaster rifle behind him as he did so. The last sight they caught of the enemy was one of furious outrage – not that Kujata and his companion had survived, but that they had turned tail and fled. Even now, as they rose up through the decks and put distance between themselves and the ones who had come for their blood, Kujata could feel their emotions in a brutal tangle, a web of primal joy and immense anger, that chemical flood of the hunter denied their prey. It was dizzying, nauseating … that they could kill so easily, so fervently, and be themselves horrified when others refused to do the same. All around him he could feel the edges of that tangle spreading out, sinking deep into the ship. A darkness in it. A deep vertigo that came from brushing his mind against it, from reaching out through the Force to try to understand it. This was something strange, something on a scale he hadn't felt since … since the war. Since the coming of the Sith and the horrors they trailed in their wake. But above that, above the mantle of shadows that gathered and the echoes of screams through the unifying Force that bound him to the fates of all those who lived and died around him, he sensed no true malice. Nothing of those who bore claim to evil, to darkness incarnate. Of those who took to heart the lessons and values of an enlightened civilization and tore them apart, inverted them, and turned them to the service of annihilation. These people clad in their strange armor, who sang their battle songs in a language he had never before encountered … they did not feel to him to be '[i]evil[/i]' as he'd been taught it, as he had found and hunted it in decades past. It was new in that respect, but achingly familiar in its execution. Oh, but he knew full well the siren call that languished in the wake of so much death. It pulled at him even as he rose above it, slithering deep into him, into the thoughts and dreams that dwelt beneath the surface of his mind. A taste familiar, but of a time long ago. Agony rode waves of the Force through the [i]Aundus-Valay[/i], voices crying out only to be silenced, cut short before their natural time, an affront to that which he believed to be the Light. This roared and gnashed and stank of the Dark, but without a hand to guide it, without intent. Rather, it felt like a [i]consequence[/i]. As if the echoes of their carnage were cast from a stone that was itself, somehow, an echo. An act that resounded forwards from a time long ago, flung from hands long since withered to dust. One more link in an infinite chain, the sigil of causality writ deep in its ceaseless motion. [i]What does that even mean?[/i] he mused, surprised at the thought that had come to him. [i]What am I trying to say?[/i] And, perhaps more dizzyingly: [i]From whence did that image come?[/i] It hadn't felt like his own thought. “I thought we were headed for the escape pods,” Kujata said at length, pushing the chaos of thoughts and memories from his mind. The diminutive Jawa beside him shook his head, snickering. “Leej did not lie! Leej merely … desires bigger pod for making escape. Cannot find any craft fit for him in lower decks, kindly Jedi, and must set sights higher. Know perfect vessel.” “So you felt the need to risk our lives by sprinting across a wide-open slaughterhouse?” “Knew Jedi would protect!” he chittered, blinking his luminous eyes rapidly. “Jedi keeps word, does he not? Besides, would use grand mystic lightsaber to protect Leej, if worse becomes much worse!” The weapon of a Jedi Knight. Easy to unveil when it's all fun and games, when the swinging of the blade bears no echoes of its own. It could be a tremendous plaything – though Terzeh would have vehemently disagreed – and made for an equally tremendous deterrent. It was a symbol of the Order and a symbol of what they stood for, a weapon of a civilized people in a civilized organization spouting civilized philosophies, in service to what they claimed to be a higher power. Not a god, but the next best thing. But wasn't that utterly paradoxical? The symbol of an order of serenity and tranquility, whose very code decried the unveiling of anger … represented by a weapon used to kill. And the lives these weapons of light had taken – across the decades, across centuries, from the time their progenitor was first called to life. A staggering body count. An impossible weight. How fickle the Force was, how hypocritical its mask of the Light, to demand of them peace but allow them to wield its power to kill. If he'd believed in any divine powers – or that the Force itself truly had a will of its own – he would have known them to have a sense of humor as dark and unrelenting as anything he'd ever dreamt of. And worse. How close to the edge would he fall if he ignited that blade with an intent to kill again? How much more suffering could he bear to cause with it, should the time once again fall upon him? His hands – shaking now – were still stained with a coat of blood that would never come clean. Years could pass, and had passed, and the slickness of it faded, but he could still feel it there. Could still sense the wounds his own actions had opened in the flow of life around him. Cruel was the Force. Cold. To gift its children with the ability to feel the connectedness of life around them – to be part of a greater whole and to drink deep of its power – but to be cursed with the task of defending it and taking lives from that very same whole. Another wave of nausea shook him. A great many deaths sent another pulsing echo through the Force. Close by, very close. Not below, but above. Kujata and his errant companion rose from the nightmare of the lower decks into a fresher, cleaner, much more opulent sort of hell. Great. “Leej,” he said, touching his fingers to the coldness of the hilt at his side. “Why did you have to pick me for your schemes? Would have been so much easier for me if you'd grabbed someone else.” The Jawa – caught in the midst of checking the leads of his blaster rifle's energy cell for dust and grime – paused. He blinked his luminous topaz eyes upwards at the Jedi for a moment, then nodded. “Because was easy mark. Obvious outsider, big fancy coat, big time business connection. For hours looked for chump who Leej could fleece! Then voice in Leej's mind says 'Leej, this kindly sentient is sucker you are looking for!' and so stalked you to garden.” A surprisingly large amount of good will radiated off the tiny being. Maybe a hint of smug self-satisfaction. Kujata didn't try to dig deeper. He was content with that, with knowing it was just blind chance. The galaxy liked to pull these surprises on him, on everyone. Just the luck of the draw. Well, that luck had put him in a position where a life depended on him. Maybe not an innocent life – the Jawa had done the bare minimum to ensure his unconscious friend's safety when they'd departed the cantina, and would likely still try to sell Kujata back to the Temple once they were free of this mess – but an honest one. Mostly honest. Sort of. At least the Jawa wasn't running around killing anyone. Ah well. Time to choose. How far would he go to save Leej's life? Or his own? Surrounded by this much death, by this much hate … how far did he dare push himself? Would death be preferable to … to a [i]fall[/i]? So much weight rested on that word. So much horror. A steep path it was, and one most could never claw their way back from. And in this sort of place, with lives on the line and the smell of blood in the air, and adrenaline pumping through the bloodstream, and that voice in the back of his mind urging him on, to just one more hunt, one more kill – it would be so easy to let go. It was beyond difficult to maintain a Jedi calm when the whole world burned. Would he kill again, would he draw his blade and risk everything to save the life of a being who probably had no real concern for Kujata? [i]We don't get to make that judgment call,[/i] Terzeh would have said. [i]We are not the arbiters of justice, nor the final law of what is right and what is wrong. We are defenders. We protect. That is the lightest and the heaviest of our burdens, and it will always come at a tremendous cost. A sacrifice is not a sacrifice if there is no consequence to the choice.[/i] In that moment he would have given anything to see her again. To hold her in his arms and hear her voice, to have her wisdom at his side. But the dead live on only in memory. “Get that blaster ready, my friend,” he said, reaching out through the Force to seek what lay in store for them. “I have a feeling you're going to need it here in a moment.” He didn't have to touch the Jawa's mind nor peek within the hood to the see the feral grin the being flashed. “Oh, weapon is always ready, kindly Jedi. Kneecaps and groins of all enemies everywhere will rue arrogance of attacking fine upstanding Leej. Will learn that price is steep indeed.” The Jedi Knight laughed despite himself. As the turbolift slowed to a stop he swore he could almost hear the rattling of chains, but it was banished the moment the doors slid open. He drew the saber at his side and thumbed it on, bathing the chamber in its light. Showtime. [center]****[/center] Searing heat surged through molten durasteel as the final bulkhead door buckled and exploded outward, crashing into plaza's expansive marble tiles. They shattered with a tremendous crack, signaling the first salvo of blaster fire from the defenders across the way. They'd gathered to themselves a series of barricades hewn from toppled pillars and shattered cafe furniture in the vain hope that it would slow the advance of an enemy force they could not bring themselves to fight in an open arena. Through the breach came a wall of white-clad Zetrean troopers, soaking up most of the opening blasts without so much as a twitch, their bloodless bodies discarded moments later as the Mandalorians stormed through in force. No demands for surrender. No pleas for the defenders to lay down their arms. This was not a war of conquest; it was simply a war. Conquest was incidental. This was not about dominance. This was about glory. At the head of the defensive line that held the plaza – a plaza which had once entertained only the most important and affluent sentients aboard the luxury cruiser – was a being of extraordinary courage. A woman who under different circumstances might very well have come to appreciate the life offered by her enemy; a woman who had fought all her life and known little else. When the Mandalorians unleashed hell upon the defenders she did not cower, nor duck low. Instead, she barked commands to her troops to return fire to buy her cover. She snatched up a plasteel tabletop and used it as a makeshift shield, rapidly crossing the plaza's splintered tiles, her arms torn to shreds where the shield did not hold. But still she ran, until at last she had met the enemy in person. She did not drop the shield. It slammed into the first of the Mandalorians who stepped close, and swung it about madly to keep them at a distance once the armored foe fell. No words were exchanged, not even when the shield fell apart and she took a bolt to the chest. No words needed to be exchanged. Instead, she let her deeds speak for her – at her waist flashed the lights of a half-dozen thermal detonators, activated just before her mad dash. One of the Mandalorians closest to her leapt to her fallen body and struggled to unhook her belt. As he fumbled with the clasp the blades of the Mirialan in their midst slipped in and sliced the stretched leather clean apart, and moments later the belt was hurtling back towards the defenders. But they'd already begun to scatter to the turbolifts that lined the far side of the plaza, abandoning their post to take full advantage of the time their commander had bought them. The belt of suicide bombs exploded with an immense buckling shockwave, ripping across the frescoed ceiling high above, tearing the overhead lights from their mountings and plunging most of the plaza into darkness. Only fires lit by blaster shots still cast their fearful light into the yawning chamber – a vast hollow that even now filled with the sound of grinding metal, twisting and bending where the detonators had warped their structural integrity. A few more exchanges of rifle fire burnt lightning flashes of ruby and emerald into the growing darkness, but it was over quickly. Those who had not escaped into the turbolifts put up virtually no resistance; the fight had gone out of them. These were the children of a life of luxury, not of conflict. They did not have what it took to truly live. Finally free of the heat of battle, Zeti Trankan came to a halt at the edge of the abyss, seeking someone, anyone, she could race to. Another life to take. Another chance to prove herself, to strip herself of the shame. But there was nothing. Nothing left. Just the hungry dark that spread out beyond her boots. A hand fell on her shoulder and she reacted swiftly, twisting round and slashing savagely with her swords, but a strong strike numbed her arms and she lost control of the blades before they could meet flesh or armor. A guttural cry escaped her as she tried to break free of the gauntlets that snapped down over her wrists but she could not, could not get away, could not get free … Until she heard at last the soothing words of the man who held her. Clad in crimson armor, soaked in blood, his bald head and long scar fading into focus. Oleg. Tears welled up in her eyes as she struggled to find the words to say, an explanation for the depth of her failure, for the immensity of the shame she had brought upon herself and the man before her … But he simply nodded. He put a hand on her cheek and nodded, then pressed his forehead to hers for a moment before releasing her from his grasp. “Rest a moment,” he said. “You've done well, Soldier.” And it felt as if all the darkness fell away. She was dizzy, and the world swam around her, but she kept her balance and held firm against the flood of exhaustion which now began to rise. As she gathered up her blades and began wiping them clean, her father turned to what remained of their company. He tapped out a series of commands on the device strapped over the bracer on his right arm, calling up a miniscule holomap of the [i]Aundus[/i]. A few more clicks at the keys on the device two main paths lit up in red, spinning outwards from their present location high in the upper decks of the ship. “Two objectives, two teams,” the Rally Master began, drawing his soldiers in closer. “Ahead of us lie the diplomatic hangars, and to the left a turbolift to the command deck and the bridge. Soldier Ducar, I assume you still have the-” The red mane of Soldier Ducar framed a big grin. The Mandalorian held up a melted chain, an identity tag dangling from its length. “Still fresh, Rally Master.” Oleg Trankan nodded. “Ducar leads the hangar team. I'll take the command deck.” His daughter looked up suddenly, unsure. It was if a sound … but there was nothing. Her mind was playing tricks on her. An aftershock of the adrenaline, the fading of combat chemicals. She sheathed her blades and fell in with the rest of the team as her father pointed out roughly half the remaining squad to follow Ducar. He seemed to hesitate for a moment when he laid eyes on her, as if unsure what to do with her. The old fear returned, stronger than before, the falling of a curtain … but his expression lightened and he raised his fingers to gesture for her to join him. At that moment she felt it again, that strange sensation. A far-off song, perhaps, like something once forgotten that wouldn't quite come into focus. A single chime echoed in the empty plaza. To a one, the Mandalorians raised their weapons in the direction of the sound, aiming toward the turbolift at the far end of the plaza as it slid into position. At that distance – and with the immense weight of darkness that filled the chamber – it was difficult to tell which of the doors was about to open. Until the one in the middle unsealed and cast its pallid light into the plaza. A pallid light which moments later was punctured by a brilliant scarlet blaze and the unmistakable snap-hiss of a lightsaber coming to life. The Mandalorians did not hesitate for even a second. They unleashed hell.