Grim Tidings/Part 6

"So I finally get to be part of this?" Narasi asked.

Tirien rolled his eyes. "You say 'finally' like we've been at this for months, Narasi."

"Just saying, Master, I feel special being brought into the secret Jedi Knight knowledge circle."

They sat in a triangle on the deck of the Second Chance ' s hold. After snatching a few hours of sleep, they had split up to walk through Life Point by day, each strategizing and using the stroll as a form of Moving Meditation. Narasi had gained no insights, though she had found an exotic pet emporium at which she had bought a dozen different greens and fruits to tempt Gizmo. The gizka was asleep in the nest Narasi had made him in one of the Second Chance ' s storage cabinets, a pile of shredded lettuce around his wide mouth. Tirien had been less than thrilled with the stop, but he had let it go—probably because he had come up with no strategy himself, Narasi thought.

Of course, Narasi had also stopped for a juice. Sipping it at an outdoor café, she had composed a beacon message to Aldayr and wondered what it would be like if he was sitting in the chair opposite her, enjoying the beautiful day. But Tirien didn't need to know that.

"A few moments of altus sopor?" Slejux suggested. "It's been a stressful day, and we should be at peace before we begin."

Even accounting for his distinctly atypical biology and mannerisms, Narasi would never have guessed Slejux was stressed if he hadn't told her. Then again, maybe the slight tension in Tirien's voice and the tightness at the corners of his eyes wouldn't have registered with someone who didn't know him so well.

They all fell silent, eyes closed as they focused on the Force, the here-and-now rather than the impending crisis tomorrow. Narasi admired her master's ability to center himself; she knew how the potential loss of innocent lives weighed on him, especially when they were going into the morning without a plan, but he could breathe out his trepidation and sink into the cool calm of the Force's flow. Narasi felt more like a stick protruding from the river; she could feel the current parting around her, and sometimes it would tug her the way it wanted to go, but her fears kept her from being pulled down the stream.

She was not afraid for herself; she was confident that even adult Zygerrians were no match for her with lightsaber in hand, and she could think of few safer places to be than between Tirien Kal-Di and Slejux Nissatak. But Tirien was right: one wrong move could prompt the slavers to slaughter the Carosites in retaliation, and she had seen enough of them in one day to appreciate how ill-prepared they were to fight back or even defend themselves. She had no issue killing slavers, but she did not want innocent blood on her hands. She had coaxed her master into coming here, and it hadn't been a trap, but if their presence turned Life Point into a bloodbath…

Let go, Tirien's mind tugged on hers. What will be, will be.

Narasi tried to follow his mental guidance, using him as an anchor. The Force had brought them here; she had no doubt of that. If she followed the Force, then she could protect the Carosites without second guessing herself. That fear on the surface of her mind, that image of herself atop a mound of dead civilians with their blood caked beneath her claws, shrank away.

But she was not without fear.

They could not be sure the slavers were Zygerrians, but the evidence suggested they were. Narasi wouldn't hesitate to kill her own people if she had to—because they're not my people, she thought—but when her mental stick broke away from the mud and flowed down the current of the Force, she saw the deeper danger. She remembered fighting the slaver on Wayland when hunting Darth Alecto, how she had hacked him in half. When she had escaped Kai Latra's prison cell on Vjun, she had downed all her Ugnaught guards, but the Zygerrian she had slain, burning out his throat with his own shock whip.

She hated what they did. She hated them—hated them for every cold sneer or hurtful word thrown her way since she was a child, because the Zygerrian slavers were at the root of it all. And every time she struck one of them down, it felt like striking back at the whole, evil culture of the Slave Empire that had shadowed her entire life. Tirien had told her she was a Jedi who happens to be a Zygerrian, not a Zygerrian who happens to be a Jedi, but no Jedi robes would ever change what she was; being a Jedi defined her, but being a Zygerrian dogged her every step.

She shivered; the Force's current had turned cold around her. She knew she had to be better than this, to kill because it was needed to protect others, not because she wanted to punish evildoers for their evil, and certainly not from some misplaced sense of retribution. She knew it, and yet the thought of cutting the hand or the head off a slaver with a shock whip gave her an instinctive thrill that made her shiver in anticipation and shudder in shame at once.

She remembered the buzz-crack of shock whips, iron hands holding her little shoulders in place so she had to watch, the nauseating screams…

Tirien reached out to touch her, not with his hand but his mind, and Narasi latched onto that contact; it was a buoy cast into the raging current of the Force, and she could cling to it and keep her head above water. She held herself up until the waters eased and she could breathe again. She didn't know how to put her gratitude into words, but she reached back and felt Tirien's understanding.

You're grateful, her subconscious whispered, but you won't tell him…

Narasi forced her eyes open before she had really returned to the mundane, and for a split second a strange vision confronted her. She could see with her eyes, but her mind was still half in meditation, and the Force painted a second layer, like projecting a holo of a thing onto the thing itself. Slejux was surrounded by a warm aura; Narasi thought of a comfortable nook she could curl up in with a databook, or a warm meadow under the light of a golden star, its flowers and ferns a soft cushion. Tirien was cool light, sunshine on a snowy forest; there was grandeur and beauty there, but also hidden depths into which only the unwary would go unprepared. And there was power in both of them—deep, contained, but capable of things both great and terrible if unleashed.

Narasi thought she knew Tirien better than any Jedi, and that she knew Slejux pretty well, but this was a new side of them. She had always respected their skills and achievements, but she understood in a new way why their fellow Jedi thought them destined for great things—and why people said their enemies feared them.

As quickly as it came, it was gone; Narasi's mind returned firmly to the Second Chance, and Slejux and Tirien were just themselves again. But that second layer was burned into her mind like an afterimage of the Force; she wondered if she would ever see them quite the same way.

Tirien stirred, opening his yellow eyes as if nothing had happened, and Slejux brushed his hands together in that way that stimulated his cilia and pulled his mind out of scattered focus to a single point. Narasi wished Zygerrians had some equivalent ability.

"Ready?" Tirien asked.

After a moment Narasi recognized he was talking to her. "Oh, yeah. Good to go, Master."

He studied her without replying, but Slejux extended a hand. The strangely shaped holocron on the deck in their midst glowed green as it hummed to life, and one of the hexagonal faces opened into six little triangles. The crystals inside produced a stream of data that resolved itself into a holo, and Narasi stared.

It was a slug. Tirien looked respectful and attentive, so Narasi hesitated to point it out, but there was no getting around the fact that it was a slug. A fat slug, too, with bulbous eyes and a mouth half as wide as it was long.

Tirien bowed his head. "Master Kwhuel, this is my Padawan, Narasi Rican."

The holo-slug rotated, fixing those enormous eyes on her; Narasi leaned back on reflex as it stuck out a tongue that just kept coming and coming. There was a strange, low whine, and then a digitized voice said, "Hello, Narasi Rican. I am Jedi Master Kwhuel."

"Um…hi."

Narasi saw at once that Tirien had hoped for something better than that, but she couldn't focus on him for long; the holocron's bizarre projection captivated her. There was another whine, like a bass stereo turned all the way up with no music playing, and the voice said, "It is apparent to me you have never before encountered a Wol Cabasshite, Narasi Rican."

"Uh, no, I haven't…Master," she tacked on. "That's what you are?"

"An intriguing question." Narasi was more intrigued by the way Kwhuel produced a voice without moving his lips, but she forced herself to pay attention to the words. "Am I Wol Cabasshite? Are you Zygerrian, or are you Narasi Rican?"

"I…" The question, cutting so close to her own recent thoughts, made her voice harder than she meant it as she answered, "I'm Narasi."

"Then you are not Zygerrian?"

She blinked. "It's what I am, but not who I am."

Tirien nodded, but the Wol Cabasshite Jedi did not move. "Is it part of who you are? Would you be who you are if you were Human or Pantoran, Melitto or Wol Cabasshite?"

Narasi had no easy answer for that. She hoped she would still be a Jedi no matter what she was, though she had trouble envisioning herself as a warrior if she was an armless, legless slug. But as she thought of her hatred for Zygerrian slavers and their whole empire…if she wasn't a Zygerrian, would she feel that way? Certainly she would still loathe them, as Tirien and Slejux did, but with that kind of passion? And without that animating distaste, would that change her?

And if she hadn't been rejected by a host of sentient beings across the galaxy, met with scorn or terror when she so much as met their gazes, would she still be who she was? Would she have been happier that way, without the instinct to put up her guard around strangers until she was certain she could let it down? Or, if everyone had accepted her without a thought, would her bond with Tirien have been nothing special?

She was silent so long she was sure Master Kwhuel knew the answer. "Being a Zygerrian has shaped some of my experiences, and they've shaped me."

"As being a Wol Cabasshite shaped me, in life," the simulacrum concurred. "And yet it was, in the end, only a facet of my being. Experiences can affect thoughts, but it is the thought that shapes the being, and the being that governs thought.  So whence come our true selves?"

Narasi was starting to get a headache.

"Forgive me for interjecting, Master," Tirien said, "but we need your guidance—lives are in danger."

The slug—no, Narasi told herself, Wol Cabasshite, stop thinking slug—turned to face Tirien. "Speak then, young Jedi."

Tirien summarized the situation; Slejux and Narasi chimed in now and then. When they were done, the simulacrum said, "Beings as inclined to action as you are surely need no guidance from me on battle."

"There are so many unknowns, Master," Slejux said, "that we don't know how to proceed."

The holo faced him in turn. "You presume, but do not know, that this attack is coming?"

"Yes, Master."

"And you presume, but do not know, that the Zygerrians will be responsible?"

"Correct."

"And you do not know where they will land or how they will conduct their assault if and when they do?"

"No."

"Then of what use can this holocron's wisdom be? What purpose is served by creating a plan without adequate knowledge of the facts?  If you believe that a power exists within the light that will enable you to overwhelm an army under any conceivable set of facts, you are mistaken."

Tirien and Slejux said nothing, so Narasi asked, "Do you have any advice?"

"Are not all pieces of advice to Jedi but a thousand facets of the same gem? Rely upon the Force and let it guide you in right action.  If any tactic, strategy, or plan is not an evolution of that core truth, discard it at once and begin again at the beginning."

"Thank you, Master," Slejux said. The Wol Cabasshite withdrew his long tongue, and Slejux powered down the holocron.

"Well, that was enlightening," Narasi grumbled.

"He's not wrong," Tirien pointed out. "If we aren't centered in the Force, we'll err."

"But being centered by itself isn't an answer to the problem," Narasi argued. "And Zygerrians could still capture a really centered…a really…"

Tirien narrowed his eyes. "Either you've just become centered and found the plan…"

"It's not a good plan," Narasi hedged. "Definitely a bad Plan Aurek. Probably a pretty bad Plan Besh, too.  But if we need a backup…I'd say it's a solid Plan Osk.  Maybe even a halfway decent Plan Nern."

Tirien looked at Slejux; half a second later, Slejux looked at Tirien, though Narasi thought it was more out of solidarity than to aid his cilia in perceiving Tirien. Without looking at her, Slejux said, "An assessment calculated to engender confidence in the fainthearted if ever I have heard one."

Narasi told them her plan. When she was done, she asked, "So, did I engender confidence? Are you feeling…uh…conscioushearted?"

"'Halehearted', perhaps," Slejux suggested.

"I feel that 'halfway decent' was generous," Tirien said.

"It's better than nothing?" Narasi offered.

"…I can go as far as 'it's better than standing back and watching the Carosites be enslaved'."

"I'll take it!" Narasi got to her feet with a smirk. "I'll prep a couple extra days' worth of food for Gizmo while you two try to come up with something better."

She felt confident, though; scared, but confident. In the end, Master Kwhuel's subtle wisdom and Narasi's plan really just boiled down to two more facets of Kenza's.