Tales of Denon: Blank Shard/story text

Blank Shard

Denon Iseno Sector Inner Rim 24 BBY

“That was DPDF,” Anej’s hand descended from his right ear and he turned back to face the Jedi. The screen above his right eye continued to flash and flicker, a composite stream of information vying for his attention and providing constant updates on this particular crisis. “They’ve authorized immediate destruction of the vessel, but the destruct code has to be input manually.”

Shakvail’s brow narrowed at this, and her eyes fixated on the holoviewer. Grainy and skewed by distance, the image was one of absolute chaos. The remains of an aged bulk freighter, in high atmospheric orbit, were surrounded by two lines, one a solid red demarcating its previous motions, the second a bright, dashed, blinking projection of slow, inevitable descent onto the planet’s surface. The freighter was a dead, ravaged thing, its massive cargo bays lying rent and open to space by internal explosions.

A halo of carnage surrounded the stricken spacecraft, and the vessel was itself the cause. Those vast holds had spilled out hundreds of tons of unfinished transparisteel plates. Now they clung to the path of their birth-carrier by the dictate of the laws of physics, a school of invisible razor-fish.

No pilot could brave that barrier of blades.

“Could a droid input the code?” Shakvail asked the soldier.

His eyes widened, and the screen on his faced rapidly transitioned through many colors. “Yes, though it would require a unit with a physical grasping appendage.”

“Master Vikken, get your men to find a droid that could make it through open space from within the inner edge of the cloud and trigger the self-destruct,” the Jedi’s attention returned to the Crisis Center operations officer. Her voice had shifted into one of absolute command, a trick of training and the Force that was essential to Jedi operations.

Vikken did not protest, he simply nodded and began to shout commands into one of the ring of audio pickups at his station. Silently Shakvail blessed the Force for arranging this particular incident during the shift of this effective, competent, and unquestioning sentient. If there was any one droid on the planet that could perform this task, he would find it, and fast.

“How will you get a droid there?” this intruding voice belonged to milquetoast Environment Minister Rena Savell, a woman to whom Shakvail charitably applied reasonable talent for organization and bureaucracy management. Strength in a crisis was not, regrettably, among her traits. “Are you going to fly through that?”

This was not the first, and certainly would not be the last, time in her life that Shakvail found the stereotype of all Jedi as pilots extraordinaire to be frightfully limiting. It had gotten her involved in this whole mess in the first place, something that was, she was not too proud to privately admit, wholly outside her depth. “I’m barely qualified to pilot a starfighter,” she corrected, though quietly, in the hope no one would overhear. “We shall have to find another to attempt that particular maneuver.”

She pivoted back to Anej, and desperately hoped he was readying her looks correctly.

There was a shot of warm support in the Force, and the soldier straightened up. He performed that little military trick to appear tall, powerful, and in command; it was similar to the Jedi method, though it pulled on different emotional triggers. “Getting a starfighter in close remains our best option. The debris cloud has a minimum distance from the ship’s hull of roughly fifty meters. A freely operating droid should be able to bridge that gap. We simply need to get to that distance.” He paused briefly; twitches in his face revealed the muscular-motion commands that controlled his eyepiece. “DPDF is moving the frigate Aberdeen into position over the vagrant. They’ve put a live-fire plan into place for 1345.”

“So we have three hours,” Shakvail recognized.

“Wouldn’t blasting the ship work fine?” Rena protested. Her politician’s mindset was quick to seize on a seemingly ideal solution.

“Bombardment would destroy upwards of ninety percent of the debris,” Anej noted, voice icily calm. “But the rest would be dispersed and thrown off course, leading to unpredictable impacts. Some would also be highly energized by the ionization of the atmosphere, drastically increasing their damage. Also, no live-fire operation achieves total target saturation. There will be misses, meaning full strength turbolaser blasts would hit the structures below.”

“We’ll evacuate the area as a precaution,” Vikken’s voice intruded. The crisis manager had not looked away from his screens and coms for a second. “Have the fleet send over the plan right away; every minute counts to get people out.”

Shakvail caught the tightened muscles on the officer’s grizzled face, and the grim look in his eyes. The Force expanded this, one more step. She turned to Rena, seizing on the opportunity. “Minister,” she began, doing her utmost to control her emotions and sound sincere, even flattering. “The fleet is likely to resist sharing its combat plans with a civilian agency. It is imperative that cooperation be maximized with all possible speed. Your voice is the only one that can make that happen.”

It took a moment for the implications to translate through the political calculus that controlled this woman’s existence, but on a planet with five hundred billion inhabitants, it was impossible for the truly incompetent to rise to high office. Time converted into casualties, into people, into voters, and the switch clicked over in the bureaucrat’s mind. “Master Vikken, I will be in your office, contact me with everything you need.”

The pronouncement won a quiet smile from the career man, and Shakvail knew she’d won a round against the faceless entropic malaise of inefficiency, inertia and ideology that was the true enemy this day.

“Anej, what are our chances of getting a starfighter within fifty meters?” the Jedi demanded when the minister retired behind the office door. “Give me your best guess.”

“Starfighters aren’t my thing,” he protested, but caught the look on her face and forged ahead in spite of this hesitancy. “But the DPDF isn’t even contemplating it. They gave us the code in the hope we could find some way around the manual requirement, some civilian work around.”

Shakvail did not need to look at Vikken; the Force told her that avenue was completely closed.

“So…” she considered; feelings trembled and bleakness settled in her. “This operation is dangerous enough that none of the navy’s glory boys want a shot at it.”

“It could be impossible-“ Anej stopped as the Jedi fixed him with a glare. She didn’t even need to say it. He amended quickly. “I mean, in the technical sense. The maneuvering might be beyond the capability of any fighter we could use.”

That was a viable question, one Shakvail acknowledged.

“I’ll find out,” Anej’s eyepiece whirled.

Shakvail turned back to the holo. It did seem unbelievable, the idea that anyone, anything, could fly through that storm of flat knives, but she was convinced it was possible. Her eyes drifted wide, vision expanded, and in the blurry half sight as the orbs crawled to the edge of her teardrop sockets she knew it must be possible.

Possible, however, was only the first step. Three other realities were required. First a plan, second a starfighter, and finally a pilot willing to dare what brave and talented young men in Denon’s defense force would not.

That was wrong, the Jedi realized in the next moment. It was only two things. The pilot, if they could be found, would have the ship needed. Placing anyone in an unfamiliar conveyance for this mission would be madness.

“Shakvail,” Anej’s voice cut into our reverie. “I’ve got a Professor Laytain on the com.”

“Who’s that?”

“Head of the space aviation department at Avastas University,” the soldier replied absently, listening to another conversation at the same time. Anej took a datapad and put it next to the holo feed, establishing a transmission line. “Hold on, I’m bringing up a link now.”

Several long, tense, seconds of silence followed.

Shakvail tapped her own comlink, pulling her transceiver into the transmission.

“Theoretically…yes…yes…I do believe it can be done…” the professor had a warbled, high-pitched voice, and spoke heavily accented Basic. He obviously wasn’t human, but the speech patterns were not familiar. The Jedi suspected some kind of avian. “A highly maneuverable interceptor could survive a full-speed pass.” Laytain continued. “The pilot would only have to make a handful of evasions, enough that they would maintain operational control until they were clear.”

“That would mean precise timing,” Anej interjected. “We’d have to launch the droid independently.”

“Simple,” Laytain’s voice whined. “Use remote signal flare launching, slave the targeting computer to the flight plan. The target zone should by a good fifty meters wide, so high accuracy is not required.”

“Professor, you have two hours to develop a plan and all possible contingencies,” Shakvail cut off the discussion. “This mission launches in three.” Muting the comlink, she turned quickly to Anej. “Make sure the minister calls him to ensure enthusiasm if necessary.” She had no time to bother with exhortations to duty, the only encouragement a Jedi possessed. Rena could provide those, or offer other, less savory but often more effective, inducements as needed.

The soldier sent out the relevant instructions swiftly, and then crouched down beside Shakvail, looking at the holo. “So…” he began carefully. “We need someone to fly into that?”

“Pretty much,” the Jedi smiled wickedly, trying to spin the inherent absurdity as a positive.

“Never the easy jobs, is it?” half-mockingly, Anej chuckled a little. “Well, the fleet’s out, but there’s plenty of freelancers on Denon, plus whomever’s in orbit. We need the best pilot on the planet, shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

It was the obvious choice; find the very best, but Shakvail hesitated. “When the first solution to a problem is the most obvious, look again,” her master, Z’meer, had taught her. “Make certain you have not been deceived; do not let the simple solution chose itself, or you may find the solution you devise does not fit the true problem before you.”

She looked at the holo, eyes narrowing, trying to image that cloud of nigh-transparent shards, the shattered vessel, the complicated three-dimensional patterns, and then slashing through them at the full speed of a combat starfighter.

Shakvail had taken piloting classes, had sat in simulators, and had watched innumerable historical holos of Jedi piloting in warfare. This matched nothing from those experiences.

“No…” she whispered.

“No what?” Anej knew her looks, and he leaned in now, listening closely.

“Not the best pilot,” the Jedi reasoned. “This is not a task for standard piloting; this is something even a novice pilot would be taught never to do. The best pilot, no matter how skilled, will face this task through the prism of their doubts, their fear.” Shakvail straightened up, staring at the image. “We need to find a pilot who can do this specific task,” she pointed at the debris field. “Full speed, unflinching, making only the necessary corrections even as they progressively slide further and further from control.”

“Can anyone do that?” Anej was a pilot, skilled behind the stick on an airspeeder, and the doubt he revealed in the Force was troubling.

Someone could, Shakvail was sure; the Force stretched out before her, offering muddy possibilities, probabilities. She could not read the future in the way of some Jedi, but she could feel impressions, a greater outside voice coupled to her intuition. It could be done, there was a method. So she let her eyes fall closed, her mind sliding free and plumbing the depths of memory, letting the Force brush against the conceptions of piloting dwelling within her mind.

“Master Tiin could do it,” the Jedi whispered, as the horn-bearing head of the Council’s resident piloting ace floated up in her consciousness. “But not Master Plo…or Master Gallia.”

The answer lay in those words, she was sure. Three beings, the most famous of the Order’s starfighter pilots and only one could succeed at this mission. She had to find the difference between Saesee Tiin and other aces. The Force, frustratingly, offered no help.

When insight failed, Shakvail fell back on analysis. “Saesee Tiin, Plo Koon, Adi Gallia,” she mumbled. “What are the primary differences?” Without bothering to look, she was conscious of Anej’s gaze upon her. The soldier was surely taking her words and plugging them through that wondrous eyepiece, chopping and sorting through the security network that was only one step away from being an extension of his brain.

“Reflexes, no. Skill in the Force, no. Sensory perception, no-wait…” Shakvail paused, and she held her mind at the edge of reason, waiting and stopping until the right synapses fired and the connection she needed was triggered at last. “Extra-sensory perception!”

“Meaning?” it was a response common from the ever-practical Anej when Shakvail engaged in rhetorical leaps, but the Jedi did not begrudge it.

“Master Tiin is Iktotchi, a species with natural precognitive abilities,” she turned back to the holo, and shot her hand in a single chop through the visual, sending error static scattering in all directions. “A single full-speed pass,” the Jedi continued. “All instinct, not reasoning. Some kind of innate ability to manage this sort of chaotic pattern is the necessary difference. We need an ace pilot with that ability.”

“Alright,” Anej took a deep breath. “But, unless Master Saesee Tiin can get here in…” his eyes shifted as he glanced back to the eyescreen. “One hour and fifty-seven minutes, we need to identify and recruit someone locally with those abilities. How do we do that?”

Above all his many skills, it was that sort of practical, grounded progression analysis that Shakvail most valued from Anej. Clenching her hands together she considered, trying to determine a method. It occurred to her that rounding up the best pilot, as the soldier had initially suggested would have been easy-just take the top ten competitive fliers on the planet and offer any volunteer a hundred thousand credits and a chance to play the hero. Finding an unknown pilot who met this rather vague criterion she’d just developed and convincing them to supply their services would prove considerably more challenging.

“Any suggestions?” she asked somewhat sheepishly.

“Have Rena run a media burst soliciting volunteers,” he offered, voice flat.

“But that’ll net thousands!” Shakvail protested. Denon, like any highly populated planet, had no shortage of glory-hounds.

“So eliminate them,” the soldier’s voice was hard. “You said ‘innate’ traits, right? You’re the sentientologist, develop a database matching program and eliminate everyone who doesn’t fit the profile.”

It sounded workable, in a crude and brute-force manner, but she could look at the clock too, and it seemed time was the true taskmaster now. “That’s likely to make a lot of those refused very angry.”

Anej shrugged. “Claim the Force inspired your choice. Everyone’ll believe it.”

“That would be a terrible misuse of-“ Shakvail stopped as she saw the look in Anej’s eyes. He didn’t need to say it; she would never make him. She would not trade lives against Jedi pride.

“Get Rena to make the announcement,” she told him. “I’ll develop the query.”

“On it.”

Shakvail found an empty seat among the crisis personnel and pulled out her datapad, patching it into the private species database embedded within Krare. The bodiless droid brain was five-hundred kilometers distant, sitting on the shelf in her barren apartment, but it was still the best and closest resource.

She took a handful of breaths to pass through a Jedi focusing exercise, blotting out the chatter and ringing of the crisis personnel desperately coordinating the evacuation that she was giving everything to render irrelevant.

Then she got to work.

Ten minutes later she stood up and stared directly at Anej. The solider, seated in front of his terminal and tapping out commands, felt her presence and turned toward her.

“How many volunteers do we have?” the Jedi demanded.

“The announcement went out seven minutes ago,” the soldier responded, staring at the screen. “We already had five thousand and rising. Approach rate analysis suggests a final number at four times that.”

“Run the program anyway,” Shakvail pressed the transmit function. “We’ll run it again in five minutes, and five minutes after that, we can’t wait any longer.”

“Probably right,” the soldier’s hands knocked hard against the keys, including an aesthetic flourish when he slammed down the final input command.

It was a momentary absurdity that brought a brief smile to the Jedi’s face. “How are we doing?” she asked. The data set was small, the parameters limited, it should sort almost instantly.

“Looks like your criteria pulls about one in a thousand possibilities,” he instinctively inched closer to the screen. “The rest are rejected, accept for two unknowns.”

Shakvail moved to dismiss that possibility. She was not interested in working with the kind of egotist who hid their identity to the point of concealing species from all inquiries, but something stopped her. A second thought impelled a different possibility. This was Denon, she was not on tiny Outer Rim colonies anymore, a true unknown was not impossible. After all, wasn’t she one herself?

“Forward the positives and the unknowns.”

“Will do,” Anej agreed. “I’ll interlace this to update continuously too,” he added with a wicked smile.

Ignoring the barb, for the Jedi knew the soldier loved to needle her about his superior computing skills, Shakvail turned to the data. Six candidates, then seven, and three unknowns; she brought them all up in one display.

Two Iktotchi, unsurprisingly, led the way. The others included a Glymphid, a Yaka cyborg, and three species the Jedi had never seen before. Staring at the biographies supplied, it appeared the Glymphid was probably the best candidate, a veteran of asteroid races, but none of the choices felt right. The unknowns were initially as expected, two men and a woman in masks, baring elaborate aliases. There was no inspiration from the Force for those either.

Then a new unknown materialized on the screen.

It was a female face, but strange. Outwardly human-shaped, it was oddly smoothed, stilted, as if digitally altered, or a face carved in soft stone. Pale yellow eyes devoid of features stared out beneath a complex design of long blond hair wrapped in braids and framing buns.

This was a Near-human of some kind, Shakvail was certain, but the precise species was not one she knew. Apparently neither did the database. Curiosity got the better of the Jedi then, and she pulled up the biographical data.

Lachis Colethen was the name of this mysterious pilot. The species box read a single, short word: Fornorae. Her query had tagged it with a question symbol indicating no existing match. The woman was apparently a true unknown.

Something sparked in the back of her mind. Whether it was the Force, simple curiosity, or visual fascination she could not have said, but she scrolled down to the rest of the biographical data. This Lachis was a freelance pilot, intrasystem escort work, with a record that was…

“Not kriffing possible,” Anej, reading over the Jedi’s shoulder, spat. “Two-dozen live-fire missions in a Dagger? Double-ace?”

“You think this is fake?” Shakvail did not share the view; something about that empty face projected a fearsome honesty.

“How many pilots survive that many combat missions? In a fighter without shields?”

It was a fair point, Shakvail could not discount the judgment entirely, but it simply did not feel right to her. “Contact this Lachis anyway,” she tapped the screen, shifting back to the composite shot. “And these two,” she noted the Glymphid and a four-eyed winged insectoid. “I’ll make a decision in person.” She bit back a sigh. If she knew the Force better, trusted it more, such proximity would probably not matter. Her master could have picked the best choice from those images alone. She was costing time, and time meant lives.

Anej grunted, clearly still skeptical. “Well, it’s the right fighter anyway. The Dagger’s probably the best thing on the market for this kind of insanity.”

The soldier turned back to the coms, and Shakvail was suddenly, oddly, left with nothing to do but stare at the holo for a moment, watching the freighter descend. Closer and closer it came to the towering skyscrapers of the planet, cycling through the atmosphere in ever-tighter bands. The Jedi stared. An errant thought struck her. There was a message buried in that image, some special meaning she was meant to discern.

Then Vikken spun about and asked her a question regarding the evacuation, and the concept was banished from her mind, subordinated beneath the needs of the crisis.

Jedi though she was, Shakvail was not trained in large-scale crisis management. This did not matter to anyone else. The Order’s reputation was too overwhelming, everyone wanted her help. It was simply the way of things; if some terrible, unanticipated wrong arose, ask a Jedi for help. Knowing this, resigned to it, she struggled to channel her talents where they were best utilized, leaning on the Force’s insights into others to smooth egos, prompt decision-making, and assign the right person to each of the ten thousand tasks evacuating even a small portion of one of Denon’s thousand Districts required.

Immersed in these demands, Shakvai did not even consider the arriving pilots until Anej interrupted.

“Shakvail, your unknown is here,” he needled, but with good humor.

“Let’s go,” she returned the gesture, glad to be freed from the chains of bureaucracy for at least a few moments.

The Jedi tightened with anticipation during the turbolift ride. The rooftop landing pad of the Planetary Crisis Center was nothing special. Open to the winds and the bleak industrial cityscape of the planet, it sheltered nothing and illuminated everything in stark, sterile gray. It was a pitiless, exposed vision, typical of Denon’s merciless statistics.

The Dagger stood out vividly against the hazing backdrop. Tri-winged with a conical transparisteel cockpit, it sported a bright purple paint job. Blade-shaped wings took that color and stained it bloody, a triple knife that had just plunged into some vast beast of ancient heritage. No smooth styling for this vessel, no iconography of noble aeronautical heritage; Seinar had birthed a sleek, deadly instrument of modern warfare, nothing more or less.

The pilot leaned against the cockpit, sheltered from the wind and holding her helmet in hand. Shakvail studied her as they approached. Her heartbeat quickened, eyes sharp, hot on the scent of a new species once more.

Lachis, for the woman clearly matched her holoimage, was instantly recognizable. Blessed with her own unusual physical traits, the Jedi knew she pulled human eyes as she passed, but this woman must have her beaten. Clad only in a ribbed off-white flight suit form-fitted to the skin and leaving nothing to the imagination. The pilot displayed a lithe, sensual figure most would have sworn only Twi’leks possessed.

Her face was a two-toned mask; there was simply no other possible description. Though Lachis turned as they approached, no muscle movement, no shift of the eyes, no motion of any kind displayed on her face at all. White from the hairline to the bridge of the nose, a pale hint of yellow below, and crafted as the finest porcelain glaze, she presented an image of serenity caught and frozen in time, unapproachable, beyond the ken of mortals. Vacant yellow eyes and wrapped, bound, and immobilized pristine blond locks wrapped by a double-ring braid only reinforced the image of a mannequin brought to life.

Silence stretched between them beneath the wings of that deadly spacecraft, Fornorae and Safol, staring at each other, lost in emptiness.

It was Anej, clearing his throat audibly, who broke the silence. “Lachis Colethen?” he inquired pointedly. Shakvail’s right eye drifted up, catching a blurry image of her companion from the corners. He was visibly stiff, his face pointed up toward the fighter cockpit.

The Jedi found this forcible display of gentlemanly restraint endearingly amusing, and filed it away. He deserved to be called on it, later.

The Fornorae turned her head slightly, her body unmoving, and nodded once, a single, terse motion. Face frozen, it was odd, robotic even, to look upon. If Shakvail could not feel the energy of this woman in the Force, tightly focused and oddly dispassionate, she might have thought the pilot some strange form of new droid.

“You have volunteered to attempt the manual self-destruct of the rogue freighter Tidestar of Iseno?” Anej confirmed. Coiled energy wound tight in his presence. It demanded an outlet.

“Yes,” Lachis’ voice was a thin, weak thing, muffled and slightly slurred. Shakvail, observing carefully, saw the Fornorae’s mouth opened not even a finger’s width, and she could feel the energy required for even this.

“You are aware of the extreme level of risk this mission entails?”

The Fornorae nodded again.

Anej would have tolerated, expected even, such terse, perfunctory responses from a fellow soldier, a fleet officer, or even one of Denon’s variable law enforcement agencies. Shakvail had seen the value he placed on efficiency. So too that he did not easily trust those with only civilian credentials.

“Your piloting record is exemplary, but what qualifications do you have for this specific objective?” suspicion had crept openly into the soldier’s tone.

Her face did not, could not, betray any sign, but Shakvail caught a spike of…something in the Force at this near accusation. Anger, pride, offense, she could not tell. Blank faces had shaped a mind separated enough from the human baseline that she dared not assume.

“Hazards fill the sky, to live is to avoid them,” more words revealed the true slurring of Lachis’ voice, and the effort it took for her to speak in a tongue the Jedi saw now was ill-suited to her vocal apparatus. The truth lay in the Force. She was not talking; rather screaming to make herself heard.

Shakvail jumped in, knowing she must change the path ahead before Anej turned to inquisitor. “An odd response, but true, your skills are not misrepresented.” That was certain as stone. Strange this pilot might be by human standards, but she was open and honest, the mask hid feelings, but not truth. “But why volunteer? I must be frank, the risk level is extreme. Money? Heroism?”

“It is my fate.”

Four words, completely without the slightest emotional shift in the Force, left the Jedi numb. The iced certainty radiating from the pilot was unstoppable. And it was incomprehensible.

Shakvail didn’t try. “At the essence of sentientology is the understanding that the most important features are the ones you cannot understand, the differences in mind-set that defy comprehension across species. Seek to know and comprehend, not to bridge the unbridgeable gap.” A man with a list of letters after his name that stretched to a full sentence had told her that in her initiate years, and she had held it close ever since.

“Perhaps it is,” the Jedi answered carefully. “I believe your purpose here, but there is one matter that stands before us. Skill will not accomplish this alone, an innate measure of talent is required, a certain set of species traits.” She paused, choosing each word delicately. “Your species is not in any reference I have access to, so I am uncertain the profile fits.”

Yellow eyes, featureless and empty, turned on her. Shakvail met them head-on. She faced a blue-black swirl in the mirror each day, this was nothing.

“Jedi? Yes?” Lachis asked, wavering in the Force.

“I am a Jedi Knight.”

The pilot tossed her helmet.

Shakvail caught the bulky thing, widely spaced to accommodate that gorgeous hair, with casual ease.

“Throw,” Lachis slurred. “Try to hit.”

On its face it was an absurd notion, but that mask made all requests equally serious, and the Fornorae was a rock in the Force.

Drawing deep, for she would not make such a test idly, Shakvail gathered her energy, strengthening muscles and nerves.

She spun around in a rapid rotation. Her left arm curled out and down, and the helmet shot free, aimed low to clip the knees at great speed.

Striking snake-fast the Fornorae flowed, right leg snap-kicked, and in a blur the air rang as the helm was struck aside, bouncing along the roof with the ring of plastoid on duracrete.

“What just happened?” Anej spoke into the resounding silence once the headgear rolled to a stop.

“She proved her point,” Shakvail was smiling. “Only another Jedi should be able to block a Force-enhanced throw. Most humans and aliens cannot adjust rapidly enough; the thought process takes to long.”

“Think? No, know,” Lachis supplied. From even such limited words the Jedi could divine much.

“Some kind of advanced neural patterning,” she guessed. Regrettably there was no time to research further. She focused on Lachis. “Is your fighter ready?”

“Only need to refuel,” the Fornorae kept her use of language conservative, saving her energy.

“Anej-“

“Already on it,” the soldier replied with surprising cheer. “Also, word from Vikken; Arakyd’s got a prototype messenger model that fits the mission requirements. It’s on the way.”

“Then we need to see if the professor has a flight plan.” It was the obvious next step. “Lachis, if you could come with me?” she turned to the Fornorae. “Last chance to refuse, once we enter that turbolift, you’re committed.”

“My skills match this task,” she spoke slowly, almost shaking, a visceral struggle to express her meaning articulately. “Never has my fate been so clear. I will not turn away.” The slurring, muffled sound was still difficult to understand, audibly, but commitment shone through the Force. The Jedi doubted nothing.

This infusion of confidence would not last very long.

“The key, and I cannot stress this enough, is that deviation from the primary path of more than one percent increases the risk of sustaining a catastrophic collision by a factor of two, and rises at an exponential rate for each percentage point of further deviation. Adjustments must be minimal, absolutely minimal, or destruction is inevitable!” Laytain’s exhortation rose to a screech. The professor, an elderly Calibops experiencing significant feather loss in his twilight years, had been blessed with a vast catalogue of adjectives when it came to describing all possible scenarios for failure. Somehow he was able to do this while still conveying immeasurable enthusiasm towards conducting the mission.

Anej had quietly wondered, when the professor’s end of the link was muted, just what sort of medication the avian might be taking.

While the Jedi would never have audibly agreed with that assessment, she would readily admit that the alien conformed to several stereotypes about elderly academics.

Colorful warbling aside, the plan appeared sound, if almost scandalously risky. Anej, with typical military ruthlessness, had suggested the mission had a fifty-fifty chance of success, and a seventy-five percent chance of getting Lachis killed.

The Fornorae pilot had responded to that comment with a disinterested shrug.

It was not that she was unafraid, no, Shakvial could sense the fear. The difference was response, reaction. Lachis was resigned to the possibility of death, able to make the fatalistic calculation that it was worth risking one life to save ten thousand others without the irrationality of the typical human mindset.

The Jedi found it fascinating.

“It seems like we’re ready to go then, as much as we can be. Ship’s loaded; droid’s online; all links are established. The Aberdeen is in holding, standing by to clean-up any stray pieces that don’t get vaporized. The evacuation is in the final stage,” Anej’s summary moved quickly, propelled by the urgency of strain upon them all. The soldier turned to their volunteer. “It’s in your hands from here Lachis. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

With that simple answer, the pilot turned to go and meet her fate.

Shakvail stared at the white flight suit, and paused. She felt disconnected, emptied of purpose in this moment, and that was wrong. Her part was not done. The Force had brought a Jedi into this matter, but what had she done yet?

It was Lachis’ day to play the hero, she knew that, but there was something else at the back of her neck. Something she could not let go.

“Wait,” Shakvail interjected, striding over to the pilot. Lachis turned to face her, blank-eyed mask staring back.

Moving with swift assurance, Shakvail pressed suddenly close to the Fornorae, bringing their bodies together so her forehead brushed against the pilot’s. The skin was unexpectedly warm, despite the frozen appearance. Exhaling once, the Jedi felt the Force between them and grasped its energy, pulling and prodding on the flow just so; an insurance against the future.

“This way, you will hear my voice high in the sky,” the Jedi explained. More than that, truthfully, but Lachis did not need to know the full scope of the telepathic bond she had just created. She hoped it would not be necessary.

“I’m going,” the Fornorae woman whispered, and she pulled her blast shield down over her face, buckled down and stepped into the turbolift.

Shakvail and Anej stood together watching the floor level indicators rise for a time; before they returned to the crisis center’s holos and screens.

“Master Jedi,” Vikken interrupted Shakvail first. “Your operation is going ahead?”

“Yes, Lachis is launching now, she’ll be in position in ten minutes.”

“That’s going to be cutting it pretty close,” the manager’s expression tinged to shadow. “They’ll start firing in twenty-five.”

“Actual operational time is only five minutes,” Anej interjected, though his words were taught, grim. “And the real hard part is going to be twenty seconds or less.”

“If this doesn’t work, I’m not going to get all my people out in time before they shoot,” the administrator’s true concerns came out now. “Everyone believes it will.”

Shakvail bit back a sigh and met the man’s eyes. The tyranny of expectations had been visited on her once more. There was no good answer for them. Master Yoda was fond of saying ‘there is no try.’ The phrase was common enough it had made it into multiple holofilms. She hated that perception. A Jedi could find success, or not, in the Force, but reality could not be bent to that process. Sometimes you had to hedge on the statistics.

“Get your people out when necessary,” she told Vikken, meeting his cold gaze with her own iron. “As far as your protocols are concerned, our operation does not exist, am I understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” stern to her face, there was relief in the Force.

“I’m going to set up final coordination,” Anej spoke quietly from the Jedi’s right. “You’d better talk to the Minister.”

“Thank you Lieutenant,” she didn’t really want to speak to Rena, but anything was better than standing idle now.

It took a few minutes to brief the minister, who mercifully declined to watch the operation unfold in real time. Relying on the politician’s instinct, she was simultaneously drafting statements for success or failure.

When Shakvail returned, all the screens were setup; a three-dimensional tableau in the cold blue of moving holo. One tiny little purple dot hovered on the edge of the storm-cloud field of translucent razor-blades and ravaged starship hull. It looked so small and helpless, yet the hopes of thousands rested upon the small starfighter and the one sentient being within.

“Final check, repeat final check,” Anej sat before that display, eyepiece flickering, headset mounted. “Telemetry shows all green, plan window is in place and synced, countdown at one minute. Opaque,” this was Lachis’ call-sign. “Do you copy?”

“Receiving, all channels,” the pilot confirmed. If she felt nervous tension, it was absent from her voice, but there was a ball of emotion, wound tight, in the back of Shakvail’s mind.

“Copy that,” the soldier replied. “We have you locked in to the ready station, velocity matches projections. Operations window is functional. Any problems?”

“None.”

“Ionization level looks good, the professor picked the right spot,” Anej confirmed, as Shakvail watched readings on the hollow.

A new image appeared on screen, blank and empty space, with a stream of lights beyond. Myriad and numerous, few were stars. The vast shipping of the Denon system marched onward, endless, around this terrible accident. Industry could not be halted for tragedy. The dank and feral cloud of freed glassy blades hovering in the distance was revealed as nothing but a vague, spotty haze on the panel, backed by a lumpy gray blob.

The in-flight camera proved somewhat less revealing than hoped.

“Twenty seconds,” Anej’s voice had slipped into a monotone routine, the precise, highly engineered voice given to men trained to command world-killing weaponry and orchestrate the flow of planetary energy grids. “Final go-no-go check.”

“Go,” Lachis was without hesitation.

“Confirmed, Operation Clearsteel is a go.”

Shakvail’s head whipped around, to spot a smirking grin on Anej’s face. That was the name he’d come up with? Sometimes she despaired of understanding humanity.

“Ten seconds, all clocks synced,” the soldier continued, face reverting to stone. “AS-M11A active. Prepare for full-throttle acceleration on my mark.”

The corner mission clock expanded to the center of the screen, pale, naked numbers taking over all.

“Five…four…three…two…one…mark!”

The Dagger shot forward.

Moving at the maximum thrust her muscled little ship could provide, Shakvail watched as Lachis banked into a slow, steady arc, pulling into the form that would pass her through a single shot in front of the derelict freighter.

One pass, maximum speed, directly across the bow; the shortest, quickest, most obstacle free option.

Still all but impossible.

“Pathways matching,” Anej updated. “No issues. We’ll be coming up on the target zone soon. Auto-release is synched and good to go, just keep the line and stay whole Opaque. We’ve got the rest.”

Feeling the Fornorae’s presence distantly, Shakvail could not tell if she found the soldier’s remarks comforting or not. Her mind was remote, still, and chilled. While not frozen as her face was, her personality seemed reserved, restrained. Not merely an evolved trait, it was almost conscious, a stoic goal.

The Jedi stared out at that pilot’s view camera feed. She tapped into it, pulled it up and through her. Her gaze drifted, eyes flying apart, heading to the pointed edges of the teardrops, letting the Force pass over and fill in for the senses. She felt the slap of synthetic straps against flesh, the creak of metal in the near-vacuum of the uppermost reaches of the atmosphere, and the distant wind of Denon’s sun upon the back of the engine.

Most of all, she was subsumed beneath the pressure of the moment, of the grand, shattered thing waiting in front, and its razor-finned school of guardians.

Time dilated, and the stars streaked out, there was only the ship, the path, and space itself.

Anej’s voice intruded, but distantly, as a barely remembered recollection of some, distant, unimportant concern.

“Debris field coming up, ten seconds.”

Speed made a lie of perspective. The hulk of the freighter was barely differentiated, blocky granular image yet resolving into sharp internal lines, when they were upon it.

The sky was no longer empty.

Transparisteel, all but invisible in the blackness of space, they could be seen only in silhouette, when caressed by reflected light from the planet below or wreckage behind. The first piece flashed by, mere meters from the Dagger’s wingtips, without any warning.

Another came, a flash of yellow on an edge, spinning.

Shakvail sensed it too late, but somehow Lachis saw, and the stick shifted.

It passed away down and below.

The Jedi’s mind unlocked, her rational senses unable to keep up. The Force took over, and something else, embedded deep in the base of her Safol skull. Higher functions shifted away, nerves linked elsewhere, and a processing center connected to sensory perception bypassing reasoning. Hormones flooded her system, and primal focus flooded every pore and receptor.

The Breaker Trance had begun.

Lachis dodged again, and a third time. The Dagger spun, rotating on its axis at maddening speed. The Fornorae clenched against the stick with all her strength, struggling to hold the line, to keep the application of thrusters straight.

Transparisteel was everywhere now, and every direction a source of peril. Into the heart of the death cloud they charged; blasted onward, headed for the objective.

“Tolerances holding…” a voice, friendly but no longer recognizable, intruded. “Target zone approaching…”

A piece of transparent glass crossed in front of the cockpit, screaming downward. The Dagger passed through it fractions of a second later. Prediction was impossible, adjustment unfathomable. Randomness now ruled.

“Target…hit! Droid away!” there was joy some place far beyond, somewhere outside this madness of shards and spacecraft in the blackness.

The words had not even faded when a block cut across their trajectory.

Lachis adjusted, but not enough.

Transparisteel struck the left wing.

Unimpeded, it sheared straight through.

Dagger starfighter plunged on a new pathway.

“Tolerances exceeded! Outside the plan!”

The Fornorae wrestled her craft onto a line, never stopping, but more pieces now and the starfighter corkscrewed erratically, tumbling. Full control was impossible.

Lachis hauled on the stick, fighting her wounded vessel, throwing thrusters back and forth.

Another shard slashed across, ripping a line through the fuselage, and warning lights splashed across the HUD.

The Fornorae fought for control, to fly out.

Out…out…out! Something cried in Shakvail’s mind, and she saw it. All froze in space, stopped and perfect, rendered in the still image of all-seeing sight. Human reasoning could not grasp that, but the primitive, reptilian understanding of the Breaker Trance needed it not. It pulled the Force and took the way to escape, nothing more.

“There!” the word ripped from Shakvail’s throat, and through space and time they flew into the mind of the pilot.

Fornorae consciousness, attuned to movement, pulled the vector from the language, and turned it into direction.

The corkscrew pulled around. Lachis ceased fighting and embraced it. A mad spin enveloped the Dagger. Tighter, ever tighter, they whirled.

Shards struck the wings, cleaving free the ends, hacking the fuselage, but the engine no longer mattered, the spars were shields. There was no piloting; there was only mathematics. The unparalleled power of the laws of motion and that most basic of all physical forces, the binder of things.

Gravity.

At the edge of the debris field there was one last obstacle.

Invisible lance, it came from the front, head-on, to spear their crippled blade and scissor through.

In the last moment the friction of the air, light of ionization, caressed it for a split second.

Too close to dodge; powerless to move her fighter. Lachis threw her body sideways in the cockpit. Flesh strained against straps. Muscles howled.

It crashed against that little cone, transparisteel upon transparisteel.

The cockpit buckled, caved, then shattered.

Clear plate careened away, tearing free the last of the top wing at the base.

Fragments of transparent metal spun through the decompressed open cockpit. All on the left side of the Fornorae they penetrated flight suit and flesh.

Pain spiked in all senses.

Shakvail, her unconscious calling on the Force, was picked up and thrown across the room by an invisible hand. She struck hard against the wall, the breath torn from her lungs.

“Shakvail!” Anej was there in moments.

Aid… she gasped for air, imparting the words silently. Get aid…Lachis…lives…

The lieutenant’s eyes went wide. In the Force, the words had reached him.

“Aberdeen!” she heard him shout into his headset. “Our pilot is alive, immediate rescue is the number one priority!”

Lying on the floor, bruised, drained, and sapped of energy, Shakvail’s eyes drifted to the screen on the other side. There the holo floated. The ship and its cloud of deadly invisible spawn, the little purple dot gone now.

Then the clock rose up again, the stark and simple letters, digital constructions formed of identical lines, took over. The demarcation flowed downward, ten seconds, then five, and then zero.

The freighter exploded. A massive shockwave shook the holo. The image crackled, went static, and wiped.

When it resumed there was nothing, no vessel, no transparisteel; only empty space.

Unencumbered by feelings or distractions, the little droid had carried its cargo forward while they spun. Knowing it was sacrificed for the sake of organic lives; it had delivered the code without hesitating, and made success a reality.

A moment later the crisis center personnel caught up with it. A wild cheer broke out.

Drawing on the emotional strength of these men Shakvail was able to pry her body free from the wall; with the help of an arm from Anej, she stoodd up again.

The lieutenant insisted on an immediate emergency scan, using the little medpac in her belt. When it was done the soldier smiled.

“What?” Shakvail managed. She could not share in his glee, not yet.

“You’re fine, no permanent damage,” he chuckled a little. “And a shuttle from Aberdeen got Lachis. She’s going to need a few days in a bacta tank, but she’ll make it.”

“You are a sly and manipulative man Lieutenant,” Shakvail groused, smiling back.

“Not really,” he grumbled. “But I’m learning.”

Too tired to contest the implications of that remark, the Jedi eased into her chair instead. “Just tell Rena I’m severely exhausted and in no condition to meet with the press. She can have her fun instead.”

“They’ll be after you tomorrow.”

“By tomorrow this’ll be an afterthought,” Shakvail replied cynically. “We are on Denon, after all.”

“Yes, yes we are,” he didn’t like admitting that, she knew, but he would anyway. “I’ll brief the minister.” He rose to go.

It unfolded just as the Jedi predicted. The Environment Minister gave a stirring interview praising the dedication of her crisis management team, and the valor of their citizen volunteer Lachis Colethen. The contributions of the Jedi Shakvail, and a certain lieutenant of the Denon Planetary Defense Force, were mentioned in passing, as ‘excellent logistical and organizational support.’

By the next day the news had moved on, coverage shifting to a brutal, and escalating, syndicate war in the District 378.

Jedi do not forget so easily as the news media of ecumenopoli, and Shakvail was present, along with Anej, when Lachis emerged from bacta treatment.

The Fornorae’s already thin frame seemed shrunken, a true waif, but her face was unchanged as ever. Shakvail was deeply conscious that the pilot, as she spent a day of recovery in observation, had no other visitors.

“Jedi, soldier,” Lachis sat up when they entered her hospital room. “Welcome.”

“Good to see you.”

“Glad you’re better.”

This drew nods from the pilot.

“I’ve watched the operational video a dozen times,” Anej began. “Damndest piloting I ever saw. Sorry I ever doubted.”

“You should not be,” the soft, slurred voice was weak, but the Fornorae’s resolve strong. “You were correct soldier.” Lachis’ head turned to Shakvail. “You saved me, I heard your voice. Without it, death my fate, with it, I live. You have bound my fate to yours.”

Shakvail took an involuntary step back. “I was just doing my duty.”

“And I was fulfilling my fate,” Lachis answered, as if this were a complete explanation in and of itself. “But you may need a pilot again, and I will serve should you call.”

“I see,” the Jedi had no idea what else to say. Part of her was glad, but another part fearful. She was silent a moment, considering.

“About the piloting bit,” Anej interjected. He passed a datacard over to the Fornorae, tucking it into her left hand. “I’m afraid your fighter’s a total loss, but the Tidestar of Iseno’s insurance company has agreed to pay full freight on a new one, plus all your medical expenses, and a vessel disposal fee of ten thousand credits. There’s also the hundred thousand the Environment Ministry owes you. The card there tells you how to collect.”

“Thank you,” she nodded to the lieutenant. It was obvious that money had not been the Fornorae’s motive, but the compensation was the least she was owed.

What her motive had truly been Shakvail could not say, and there she found her answer. The species was foreign to the galaxy, and the Jedi could not let it remain so. One day the Jedi would need to understand this people. She must prepare the way. That was reason enough to keep the pilot close.

She pulled her datapad, and quickly transmitted a preset sequence to the datacard Anej had provided. “That’s my contact information. I’ll call you if I need a pilot, but only if you will if you need a Jedi.”

“As fate wills.”

Cryptic to the last; it was enough.



Digital constructions, creations of moving electrons, particles, and the electromagnetic spectrum, news reports could penetrate to places never intended by their broadcasters. Pulled down lines converted from other purposes, compelled by an overriding, all-consuming will, energy was bent toward the deliverance of certain information.

So it was that the news report of Rena Savell’s primary interview on the Freight-Shard Terrorist Bombing, as the media had termed it, projected onto a blank wall in a deep layer of the Bedrock, where the night was eternal.

A single figure watched the report carefully, studying the principle footage of the space operation several times. Finished, it was all dismissed with a wave of the hand.

The report was tedium, the absurd creation of a sensationalist media designed to promote viewers and sell advertising. It was so much droning compared to the slightest bit of true revelation, but it was still important.

The test was complete, and now the figure standing in darkness understood its outcome. Suspicion was confirmed. Visions supported by evidence impossible to doubt.

Jedi.

A single word, a simple, pointless word drawn from a past those who used it could not even properly remember. That was as it should be, though not enough. Even the echo must be removed, obscured, and erased. All would crumble away.

But this Jedi represented a problem.

Catalyst.

That was the Jedi; a seed crystal, the shining base of a web of gleaming lines, crisscrossing Denon. This test had formed one such line, minor, irrelevant, but a test, matching what had been shown.

The figure’s face formed into a scowl, unseen in the darkness, but conveyed menace all the same.

A web of light, stretching across this planet, embracing it, grasping and holding back the well of darkness.

The Jedi could make it come to pass.

It must not come to pass, would not, could not.

The inevitable must progress unimpeded.

The solution, presented to the one who stood in the darkest depths, was simple. Remove the Jedi; remove the problem.

It would occur. Only the means was in question.

Darkness swirled upon the wall, possibilities were considered.

Soon.