The Liberator/Part 32

6 Days Before the Occupation of Milagro

As he paused, letting his mechanized breath whirr in and puff out, the medical droid urged, "One hundred and thirty-seven additional steps and you will achieve a new personal record, sir."

He allowed himself a chuffing laugh, careful not to indulge too much and let it become a cough. "Yet another monumental victory to add to my legend."

"A campaign is more easily won with a thousand small victories than a thousand concessions to defeat, sir."

He eyed the machine. "Are you a battle droid now too?"

"My service aboard Republic naval craft prior to my purchase by the Corellian Defense Force provided me with an expanded understanding of the tactical consequences of my rehabilitative efforts on behalf of servicebeings."

"And of sentient metaphor, apparently. Very well, machine, let us continue."

He resisted the urge to lean on the Force; its power was always at hand, but by masking his weaknesses with the Force, he would never know what he could do alone. And so he plodded on, one laborious step after another, one maddening piece of "encouragement" from the droid after another, until a Corellian in scrubs approached.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, sir, but General Darakhan would like to see you."

The patient stopped. "Would he indeed?"

He chuckled, allowing it to carry on into laughter until his lungs seized and he started coughing. Both the Corellian and the droid approached to help, but he waved them off, leaning on a support bar nearby until he mastered himself, smoothing the spasms out with the Force. When he could draw a deep breath and expel it without so much as a tremble, he straightened himself and nodded. "How very thoughtful. By all means, show him in."

Sure enough, the Corellian tech returned with Mali Darakhan a moment later. The young Jedi Knight had not changed much in a year—a little burlier, perhaps, and a bit more tension around his eyes, but both boded well. Extra strength never went amiss with Form V, and a commander should always have some tension to keep him sharp; a commander too relaxed was a commander who was missing something.

Darakhan bowed. "Master."

"And so the legend descends to the level of mortals for a visit. You honor me, General."

The Corellian Knight sighed, but let it go. "You look well, Master."

Sil Kadych stared in blank disbelief, and after a second Darakhan winced. "You look better than the last time I saw you?"

Sil rasped a laugh. "Now that, Darakhan, I believe."

He waved a hand and a pair of chairs drifted over. Taking one seat, he gestured Darakhan into the other. "To what do I owe the honor?"

Mali clasped one fist with the other hand. "We're going back to Milagro, Master."

Milagro…Sil controlled a tic that might have betrayed him. His Umbaran telepathy fed him images from Darakhan's mind, a fleet of respectable size and Republic design. "In force, I see. So you've not come to recruit me this time around?"

Mali blinked. "Can…do you want to come, Master?"

Kadych rolled his eyes. "Do I look to you to be in any condition to fight even that jumped-up bureaucrat Karzded, let alone a real Sith?"

"How bad is it, Master?"

Sil sat back in his chair, tapping the plate over his sternum. "My lungs are replacements—cybernetics, not transplants. My kidneys are artificial as well, though not as self-sufficient; I need to supplement them with dialysis now and then.  And of course my muscles and bones didn't take too well to Darth Hokhtan's Force lightning."

Sil Kadych was a Jedi Master, and he had long since reconciled himself to reality. Neither did he hate Darth Hokhtan; hatred stepped from the penumbra between light and darkness all the way into the night, and it was the indulgence of lesser men. But remembering the fire and smoke in the crumbling Parliament chamber, and the searing torture of the Sith Lord's electric fury, set Kadych's teeth grinding and sent a sympathetic shiver of remembrance down his partially-fused spine.

"Can you get more cybernetic support for it? Aldayr has a cybernetic arm, and he's doing pretty well with it…"

"Because your Padawan's arm was forcibly removed, and he had no choice," Sil reminded him. "The Force is more than flesh, but it still requires the body to exist. If I wished, perhaps I could have my brain implanted in a cybernetic body, some droid shell so advanced and powerful that none but the best duelists could ever hope to match me.  It wouldn't rival my old skill, to be sure, but it would be more than enough for most enemies…except that I could only achieve such a state at the sacrifice of my connection to the Force.  The Force is what makes us Jedi, Darakhan, not swinging a lightsaber; better a cripple in the embrace of the Force than the deadliest swordsman in the galaxy without it."

"Is that why you're working on walking?"

"Saw that, did you?" Sil gave the medical droid a glower. "Yes, you'd be amazed how challenging something as straightforward as walking can be when you've sustained the right injury."

"Can the Force be of any help, Master?"

Mali looked torn, and in his mind Sil saw the Knight was seeking the right solution. "Ah yes, medical droids and professional physicians and even Jedi healers have bent all their collective knowledge and experience to the case and produced only this semifunctional shell of a Jedi, but that is because Mali Darakhan has not yet seen fit to grace me with his presence! But never fear, for Mali Darakhan is here now, and he'll have the solution, just give him a moment or two."

Mali's shoulders slumped and he closed his eyes. "I'm sorry, Master. I'm just—"

"—trying to help." Sil studied him without a change of expression, but he did not press the young man further. Darakhan needed to be made aware of his flaws to grow, and the best way to help a Knight confront a flaw was often to hold it up before his face so it could no longer be ignored or denied, but it would not do for Mali's confidence to suffer with some misplaced guilt over Sil's injuries, especially with a return to Milagro in store. "What has become of me is no fault of yours, Darakhan."

"My mission, Master."

"My decision, Darakhan," Sil retorted. "My duel, my inattention. Learn from them, if you can, and become a better warrior for them, but a Jedi Knight does not dwell, particularly on those things which are beyond remedy.  And to answer your question…"

Sil focused, calling on the Force until it flowed through him, every nerve in his body singing with its energy. He rose, smooth and graceful, and sauntered around the droid, even throwing in a little spin on the ball of one foot before he returned to his chair and sat. He was careful to lay his arms lazily on the chair and settle into an upright posture before he released the Force and his whole body trembled from strain.

Mali's mouth hung open. "I…Master, that was incredible. What happened to being hurt?"

"Nothing is beyond the Force, Darakhan."

"But if you can—"

"Because it's exhausting," Sil interrupted, seeing the question forming in Mali's mind. "Because having to bend all of—forgive my immodesty for the sake of candor—my considerable power to the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other is both physically wearying and mentally wearisome. And because it demands such concentration that I'm barely capable of anything else while I'm doing it."

"You mean dueling?"

"Certainly that's a memory," Sil concurred. For a moment he remembered what he had been, the skills he had once been able to bring to bear against the Sith, such that the dark side itself seemed to give way before him, and grief and loss threatened to shame him. Then he mastered himself and said, "But even something so apparently simple as conversing while walking risks a stumble at any second."

"Is that why you're still here, Master? Trying to get better?"

"To the extent that I can. Your Corellian friends have been very accommodating, of course, but even the Force and technology together can not work miracles." Mali nodded but said nothing, his eyes far away, and after a moment Sil narrowed his. "And you, Darakhan? You're enlightened enough now to understand that I'll be of no use to you in combat, and if you'd come merely to wish me well, you'd have done it months ago.  So why are you here?"

Mali looked up with a thoughtful frown. "Maybe you can't get right out onto the front lines, Master, but you still have your mind. You could advise a campaign, or hell, you could go back to the Crescentia.  I'm sure they've missed you."

"Don't think Multiqi hasn't asked. Repeatedly, incorrigible thing." Sil snorted, though in truth he missed his friend, and it felt like a betrayal to deny him again and again. But that was not a dilemma to share with Darakhan. "But the Order has sufficient Jedi that it doesn't need to accommodate a cripple simply for the sake of demonstrating its values, especially on the Crescentia. They can speak of mobile learning opportunities and diverse experiences for young Jedi all they want, but I suspect you understand the truth as well as I do, Darakhan—the praxeum ships are mobile command centers for an Order too strained and fractured for central control to suffice.  The fault lines are showing; the praxeum ships help stitch them together before they widen into canyons, but the war front is no place for a Jedi Master who's little more than a keen mind in a broken body."

Sil could sense Mali's unease. "Aren't we taught that we're more than crude matter, Master? That that mind is more important than the body that supports it?"

"Too true, but people need visible heroes and encouragement. Multiqi gave me to understand your friend Kal-Di learn that lesson on Pantora some months ago.  No, let young Jedi and soldiers be encouraged by abler men.  And if they're truly bereft without my wisdom, I'm only a holo away."

"Well, what about Coruscant?" Mali retorted. "Nobody's fighting a war there, and there's a vacancy on the High Council—"

Sil caught a flicker in Mali's mind, confirmation of a rumor that had reached even him. "Assuming Gavhys Narfulk isn't seated on that august body?" He rasped a chuckle as Mali cleared this throat. "Would you condemn me to that circle of bureaucrats and administrators, Darakhan? Shadows and silence, whatever did I do to you that you should hate me so?"

Mali smiled despite himself; it was just a little thing, but Sil favored him with a slim, leonine smile back. "Anything to get another Guardian on, Master?"

Sil snorted. "A more compelling argument than many, I admit. Perhaps some day, when I've healed further—or if I can heal no further, and all I'm fit for is sitting around and bestowing tasks on abler Jedi." Sil steepled his fingers. "But you've ignored my question, Darakhan—why are you here?"

Mali took his time replying, and Sil used the opportunity to survey the surface of the Corellian's thoughts. He saw the gist of Mali's battle plan and nodded silent approval, but when Mali still said nothing, Sil said, "You can't possibly be worried about Karzded; that fool is no match for you. You have an impressive force at your back, and Gasald won't abandon Allanteen to face you—certainly not in time, anyway.  What, then?"

"It's…a huge undertaking, Master. I can win the battle, and I expect I will, but the peace…"

"You're a warrior, not a bureaucrat," Sil said. "Help Milagro build a government of its own—if the Resistance has survived, I'm sure its leaders will have the popular support needed to see it through until you can have real elections or get a governor appointed. They don't need you to handle every little detail of government, so don't try.  What they can't do is defeat the Sith head-on, and that is where you come in.  Manage the locals as well as you can and help them get to the end that supports the Republic best."

"It's their planet, Master."

"It's our war," Sil countered, sharply enough that he coughed. Mali half-rose as if to aid him, but Sil waved him down. When he had steadied his breathing, "Yes, you must not view them merely as materiel in support of a larger campaign; they're beings, and part of the Force. But this business of Milagro's independence in the modern galaxy is a fiction—one from which they need to awaken.  Worlds are independent only so long as the Republic or the Sith factions will it; better they be within the Republic, where their rights will be respected, than with the Sith, where they live on the whim of Karzded and men like him."

Mali sighed, and Sil pressed, "Kill Karzded and his minions, destroy the occupying army, and hold Milagro until the Republic can drive another battle line to you and expand the campaign."

"Until it does, we'll be alone on an island," Mali noted.

"In the end, every commander is alone," Sil replied. "But you have the Force, and that connects you with every Jedi now living, and all those who have died, and those who are yet to be born. This war is the Force, Darakhan; the soldiers and ships and blasters and worlds and even Jedi are only expressions of the real war, the one that we alone can see, and that we alone have the burden of fighting.  Use the Force and serve it, Mali; everything else is artifice."

Mali took it in for a moment, and Sil was pleased to sense him reflecting on the notion sincerely. Then he bowed his head. "Thank you, Master. Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Give my thanks to the Diktat for his continuing hospitality," Sil said. "And should you happen to encounter those two little Jedi who destroyed Darth Vandak, give them my warmest of embraces."

Mali smirked as he rose. "Can I just hug them, Master? If I tell them it's from you, it'll just confuse them."

"Heh heh heh." Sil chuckled slowly enough to not cough this time. "May the Force be with you, Darakhan. Go forth and conquer."