A Young Girl’s War Between the Stars

  10

  Dathomir, 42 BBY.

  I closed up the project I was working on with a twist and a quiet click as the case sealed into place. Taking it up, I looked the contraption over. It looked like a blank silver pocket watch attached to a thin chain of the same silvery metal. Clicking the button at the top, the cover opened to reveal the clear face and internal mechanisms. Reaching into it, I fed it a trickle of the Force and activated the battery. Immediately, all four mechanisms inside began ticking away, working in their default configuration.

  Probing the computation orb in my hand, I fed it a simple equation using the Force. It didn’t respond and I sighed, feeling a bit disappointed even though I knew it wasn’t complete. What I could feel off of it said it was working fine and keeping time accurately, ticking away four times over as each individual identical core worked. The problem was that it lacked the ability to interpret the Force at the moment. It could interact with it, given the songsteel it was made of was steeped in the stuff, but it couldn’t actually understand commands being input yet. For that, I needed to learn more about the Force. I could try to brute force it, leaning on the Force the entire time to make the inscriptions necessary to allow it to work, but I’d rather not go about it blindly and risk damaging it and wasting materials. It seemed I would be spending some time in the library once we got back to the temple.

  Slipping the chain around my neck, I dropped the incomplete computation orb down the front of my shirt, feeling the cold metal rest against my chest and quickly warm to my body temperature. A shiver ran through my body and for a moment, I thought it was just a reaction to the cold. However, a moment later, I felt it again—along with a distinct sense of close and sharp danger. Opening my mind a bit, I felt it then—several sources of anger and malice. Directed malice, all pointed my general direction.

  What I was sensing wasn’t the local wildlife, but people. Five, by my count. I was almost certain that they weren’t of the Singing Mountain Clan, but what clan they did belong to didn’t matter, as they clearly intended to do me harm.

  Well, it wasn’t only people. With all of them, I felt other presences. Four somewhat large, roughly dog-sized animal minds that felt twisted to my senses and a large number of much smaller presences. Each one of those creatures felt somehow attached to one of the women present. It felt something vaguely like the Mind Trick, but more complete. Like… a metaphysical hand wrapped around the minds of the creatures and strangling them. As though each woman were actively dominating their mind with the Force.

  With a start, I realized I recognized this feeling—or something like it. Not the technique itself, but the… taste or smell that came with it, in the Force. Perhaps it was just being away from Coruscant and on a planet brimming with the wild Force that was neither inherently light nor dark, but between what I was feeling now and what I remembered of Coruscant and Ilum both, it felt like what the Jedi described as the ‘dark side’ of the Force. Negative and, in this case, inherently wrong—evil, even. Perhaps not the technique itself, but in the application—I wasn’t sure on that part.

  What I was sure of was that I had felt it before. Back on Coruscant, in fact. The Jedi temple had been soaked with it and it wasn’t until sensing it again up close after having been away from it for some time now that I realized that perhaps there was something going on with the temple on Coruscant. It was something to ask master Dooku about. Later. After I escaped my current predicament.

  Grabbing my things, I secured them about my person and shut off the equipment, even as I activated my camouflage formula and suppressed my presence in the Force further. Quietly, I slipped back the way I had come, only to realize that they had already found the entrance and boarded the ship. Three of them entered while one remained at the door and the last… it felt like they were making their way up along the top of the ship, seeking a way down inside from the top.

  I had only two options now. The first, to try and evade confrontation as I was pursued through the ship, find an alternate exit, and then escape into the forest. The second, to take the fight to my pursuers.

  A grin pulled at my lips as I silently moved towards the enemy as they began to spread out, turning the whole scenario on its head as supposed prey became the predator. They had no idea what they were dealing with. I had almost as much experience with the quiet, close in work with a knife or a trench shovel, creeping across enemy lines and through trenches, cutting throats and bashing in heads in the dark as I did flying around and shooting down enemy mages.

  I felt them casting about with the Force in strange ways as they went—like grasping tendrils of Force questing through the dark, touching and examining everything they came across as I felt their intent to search. It felt more primitive in my mind than even the simplest detection formula to ping out and ascertain enemy locations—like most of the local magic, I felt I could do better with a formula. However, after a bit of watching and study, I realized that wasn’t the case. Like radar or sonar, active magical detection formulas sent out a burst of energy and measured a return when they detected anything living, and especially another mage. However, they also alerted anyone getting pinged to an enemy presence.

  These tentacle like protrusions of the Force didn’t do that. In fact, they barely even registered in the Force and their emissions were almost nil—and even felt something like just another current in the Force. With enough observation, I came to realize that they were actually really very stealthy when it came down to it.

  It’s just that they’re coming up against someone with years fighting a war in an active combat zone against multiple enemy mages and expecting them to be just as sneaky as me. When you train to be able to pick up an infiltrating mage by their passive mana signature in your sleep so as to not have to worry about getting your throat cut in the middle of the night, picking up someone using any kind of active formula nearby becomes second nature. My senses are just that much better than what they’re expecting.

  Still, the ‘spell’ they were using wasn’t entirely worthless. I could see ways it could come in handy, especially against something that didn’t show up as a presence in the Force, since they worked off of physical detection—that is, touch. I made a mental note to try and reverse engineer my own version of it later, when I had some time.

  Reaching to the small of my back, I pulled my new knife from its sheath, feeling one of them approaching, along with whatever animal was accompanying them. Slipping into a side room, I leapt and planted myself against the ceiling, using only the tension of my muscles to hold myself up. A clicking of many legs echoed off the walls almost drowning out the quiet footsteps of a humanoid padding through the dark. I slowed my breathing, willing my heart to slow down and not pound quite so loud. They stopped beside the room I was hiding in as they had with every room they’d passed, tendrils of Force slipping inside and feeling over the room. I could faintly see the tendrils as they crept into the room—a faint greenish glow and a presence that looked wispy and almost gaseous. In the dark, it stood out too much, giving away the user’s presence.

  When they found nothing, the unlucky enemies moved on, continuing down the hallway. I silently eased myself down to the floor, creeping out of the room and into the hall behind my pursuer. For just a moment, I shook my head at her sloppy approach. Here she was with a Force technique that could presumably detect people around herself and she couldn’t be bothered to point some of those tendrils behind themselves, leaving her back wide open.

  Unprofessional, I mused, creeping closer. Looking around her, I found the source of the clicking noises. It was a spider, roughly knee high. Obviously alien in biology, but it looked very spider-like, with its eight legs, body shape, and hairy exterior.

  When I was nearly on top of her, I jumped and struck—one hand going over her mouth as I landed in the middle of her back, the other hand driving the knife forward. The woman was dead before it could even become a fight as my blade separated brain from brain stem. She dropped and I shifted my weight, making sure she landed on her face.

  The spider turned as it suddenly found its mind freed. It paused and I felt its insect brain trying to decide if it should attack what looked like prey, or run now that it was free. I made the decision for it with a flick of my wrist, sending the dagger flying and burying it in the spider’s head. It fell, its limbs twitching in death throes.

  I fell still and listened—opening myself a bit more to the Force and my empathic sense. There was no sense that any of them had heard the quiet scuffle or body falling. No sudden sharp emotions. Nothing that would indicate that I had been discovered or that they had detected the death of their friend.

  Feeling them continuing their search, I rolled my hunter over and examined her. She was human, with long, dark hair done in multiple braids and a pale complexion—hidden by the black and white face paint she wore, but I could make it out where the paint had smeared onto the deck when she’d collapsed. She wore an outfit similar to my own, but dyed in black, dark red, and gray. Checking her belt, I found a bag with what I recognized as what the locals used for ‘spell components’ for some of their supposed magic, along with a dagger and a few other odds and ends. Nothing worth keeping, aside from her weapon.

  Still, if this is another clan intruding on the Singing Mountain Clan’s territory, then I should alert Augwynne when I get back.

  With that decided, I grabbed the spell component bag and tied it to my own belt. Hopefully, between the bag and its contents, the description of their clothes, along with the spiders, someone should be able to identify who they were. That finished, I collected both the woman’s knife and my own, then wiped the blood and spider guts off on the woman’s clothes before moving on quickly.

  Coming to an intersection, I took the right path and hurried down it towards my next target. It wasn’t long before I quickly came to another intersection, only to pause as my senses warned me. Looking down to where the Force drew my eyes, I found several strands of spider web across the door. There was a gap in the center that looked just big enough however, so I walked back a few paces before running and diving through it, tucking myself into a roll as I hit the floor on the other side and coming up just short of the webs on the opposite side of the intersection.

  Turning left, I made my way down the corridor, following the line of webs down the center of the floor as they occasionally split off to cover various doors. An idea came to mind and I found another empty room. Slipping between the webs, I pulled my knife out and set up against the ceiling again. Taking a breath, I closed my eyes and reached into the Force. With a flick of the wrist, I sent the dagger I’d looted out of the room and flying down the hall the way I had come. When it came to another door, I jerked it into the web, breaking one of the individual strands near the bottom before jerking the knife back towards me.

  The reaction was immediate, as I felt a sense of hunger from the spider and alarm from the handler, before they both came rushing down the corridor back towards me. I waited and, as soon as the spider rushed by, I launched myself out of the door. The woman had no time to react before I was on her, my knife in the side of her neck and the other flying through the air as the spider turned, only to get skewered.

  After another moment to listen, I checked her over as well and finding nothing of value aside from her knife, I collected the weapon and moved on to the next. As I stalked the third, I couldn’t help but wonder about their not sensing danger in the Force. Was that just something they couldn’t do? Were they too preoccupied keeping their pets on a leash to sense impending death? Or was it that with my Force presence held tightly within my body and as small as I could make it, they just didn’t perceive me until it was too late—the same as slipping up on enemy mages? It would require testing—under conditions I could control and against someone I should expect to be able to sense me. That, or I could ask Augwynne if these were just barely trained initiates. They looked to be in their late teens to mid-twenties, so I supposed that could be the case.

  The third fell as easily as the first two, but this time I caught its spider and instead of killing it, I risked using the Force. Reaching out to it, I gave it the impression that it should run for the exit it had entered from and that it should be very, very afraid of me. It let out a shriek and took off running, following the trail of its webbing back to the exit. I followed close on its heels, disregarding stealth—after all, the guard on the door would be expecting one of their own following.

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  The spider burst out of the hatch and I flung two of the stolen knives I’d been collecting as trophies. I heard a quiet “Huh?” from outside, before reaching out with the Force and jerking the knives back—sending one into her spider and aiming the other for her left lung, just under the heart. There was a sound of surprise, then a thump of metal hitting meat. A feeling of pain and panic welled up from the woman and I ran out of the door, just in time to stop her from shouting as I knocked her to the ground and pinned her down, my own knife to her throat and my hand clamping down on her mouth.

  “Shh,” I whispered, feeling out for the last woman. I felt her some distance away on top of the ship, apparently unaware of what was going on. When I was satisfied, I lifted my hand from my prisoner’s mouth slightly. “Which clan are you with, where did you come from, why are you here?”

  She tried to spit at me, but I covered her mouth, then slapped her across the face for it—leaving behind a smear of her own saliva. Glaring—or no, not glaring. Squinting as she tried to turn her head away from the diffuse light coming in from overhead, she hissed out, “Spiderclan has been watching the Jedi ship for weeks, outsider. Hoping one of you would come along so we could have some fun with a little hunt. We welcome you into the Nightspider cave—you would be a feast for our pets!”

  Well, that answered the who, the why, and where—this ‘Spider clan,’ from a ‘night spider cave,’ and for the purpose of entertaining themselves by hunting and killing anyone unfortunate enough to cross their path. It was utterly senseless, but… I couldn’t say that wasn’t the way of the galaxy in some places. Dathomir wasn’t exactly a beacon of civilized, polite society, after all.

  Putting my knife away, I jerked the one inside her out, making sure to angle it upwards on the pull so it caught her heart. I didn’t have to wait long before she went limp beneath me, passing out from internal blood loss. Collecting another knife, I went after the last one, deciding that I couldn’t just leave her here to harass anyone else who came by.

  Creeping up the exterior of the ship and keeping to the shadows, I eventually spotted a dark form through the snow coming down. As I got closer, I saw that this one was dressed differently—wearing a long, thick black robe over her other garb and wearing some kind of upturned, almost bowl-shaped hat, which dangled cloth with writing on it. She knelt in the center of some sort of depression in the hull surrounded by her spiders on the outermost edges—possibly what had once been a communications array.

  “I wondered when you would come, outsider.”

  I blinked, before understanding dawned. It wasn’t that she didn’t sense me killing the others. She did. She just didn’t care.

  “The Fanged God whispered of your presence. With every death, my sisters told me of you.” Standing, the woman’s presence in the Force became a towering shadow, looming over us. She turned towards me, revealing a woman who looked to be in her forties at a guess. It was hard to tell however, given the way her skin looked… almost eaten away in places. Her eyes were a burning gold that set me on edge. I had only seen eyes that shade two places before—on the brat sent by Being X to kill me and on myself in the mirror when using the Type 95.

  No. There’s no way! He said—! That train of thought came crashing to a halt before it even left the station. Was I really going to trust that lying devil Being X not to go back on his word and find some way of messing with me, even as far as he’d flung me outside of his influence? That was assuming he even had, which would itself mean taking him at his word! I’d been a fool—

  “—they were weak. You are strong. Join the Nightsisters. Swear your loyalty to the Fanged God—”

  My eye twitched at the thought of having anything to do with any supposed ‘gods.’ Reaching down, I pulled my lightsaber off of my belt, hidden as it had been under the cloak I’d worn to ward off the cold and the snow. The woman hissed and recoiled as the thrum of my blade filled the air along with the hissing of snow vaporizing as it hit the blade, the white-silver glow gleaming.

  “Jedi!”

  There was no talking after that. The webs I’d spotted beneath her lit up in a sickly green glow and I reacted. Four knives lifted out of their sheathes on my belt and zipped through the air ahead of me as I approached the woman at a steady walk. She didn’t even bother shielding as she drew up what looked like a mixture between green fire and lightning between her hands and threw it at me.

  Several small, hexagonal shields sprang up between me and the witch, catching the bolt, which dripped something green that hissed and burned where it fell to the ground. I held the shield up, feeling my reserves dropping precipitously as she kept the assault up—splitting my focus between holding the shield, walking, and directing the knives.

  Four of the eight small spiders around her died before she even realized they were my true target and the beam she was trying to hammer me into the ship with abruptly lost strength. By the time she realized what was happening, the other four spiders were dead and she had to drop the bolt entirely to shield as I had the blades loop back around towards her back, allowing me to drop my own shield. They pinged off the green shield and the witch sneered, before pulling a pair of thin, shining swords from the sheathes on her belt—the way they caught the light of my blade and the faint ringing they made as they left their sheathes told me they were probably songsteel.

  “Die Jedi!” the woman roared, throwing herself at me and swinging wildly. For just a moment, I was confused—she wasn’t using any actual form or technique, just a wild swing of the blades. Then, it hit me as my danger sense registered that the blades themselves were deadly dangerous in the Force. It was a feeling I had become intimately familiar with in my time on Dathomir, in fact, and it only came from one source—the rock dragon.

  Poisoned blades. Don’t need any kind of skill if you expect your enemy to die from a scratch, I mused, settling into Form II and meeting her wild attack head on.

  We traded blows back and forth, me testing her defenses as the witch tried to get through my own. When it quickly became apparent that she was outclassed in pure sword skill, she tried a different track. Green lightning arched over and between her blades and I prepared, watching and waiting for my moment to strike.

  A blast of lightning arched towards me and I leapt forward, propelling myself with the Force and a push from a flight formula. At the same time, I closed my eyes and created another hexagonal shield to eat the blast. Green and blue clashed and exploded in a blinding flash and over the roar, I heard the woman yelp in pain.

  Dark clothes. Pale complexions. Spider companions. Lived in a cave. The squinting when I put a prisoner on her back and her hood was pulled back enough that she couldn’t shield her eyes. It was a bit of a gamble that they were light sensitive from too much time in the dark, but a well-reasoned one. And it paid off, as the witch flinched away, bringing her hands up to shield her eyes.

  One good swing took both of her wrists off even as she jerked back, just out of the reach of my saber. Unfortunately for her, not out of the range of the Mage Blade that I had been holding ready, shooting out of the end of the saber and finishing the job. Her head thumped as it hit the deck and rolled in the snow, falling out of her hat and painting the deck red as both head and body bled out.

  I took a moment to catch my breath and assess, making sure no one else was around. Once I was sure I wasn’t still in immediate danger, I shut off my lightsaber and attached it to my belt. Bending down, I began the time honored tradition of looting the dead as I called my knives back to me.

  The two songsteel swords went back in their sheathes—very damned carefully, at that. I would be cleaning them off and replacing the sheathes as soon as possible. Deadly poison was only good circumstantially, and if you ran the risk of killing yourself or an ally with it, it was just better to avoid it entirely.

  The swords themselves were roughly two feet long each—thin, double edged, and somewhat curved. They were more like rapiers than sabers, though without any kind of protection for the hand. Even a cursory examination showed they were fine blades—likely made in the Chu’unthor’s forge, which begged the question of how they’d ended up in an enemy’s hands.

  Tucking them away on my belt, I continued the looting. The only other piece of value was a golden hair ornament in the shape of a triangle with a raised half sphere in its center that had been hidden by the ugly hat. Humming, I chuckled and tucked it away in a pocket. I’d wash it up later and present it to Obi when we got back as a souvenir.

  Once I was sure I had everything I wanted, I made my way back inside the ship. I took a few minutes to throw the swords into the furnace and set it to low, to burn off the poison, while I told the ship to fabricate two new sheathes to fit them.

  While that cooked, I began the process of using the Force to lift and haul the bodies outside to be burned. I didn’t want anyone complaining that I had left corpses to rot inside the ship I wasn’t technically supposed to be in.

  “You’ve been gone a while, padawan,” Dooku mused as I joined him and Augwynne for supper.

  “I’ve been busy,” I nodded, fixing myself a plate. “The metal was difficult to work.”

  “I told you so,” the redhead chuckled.

  “I also ran into some trouble.”

  Dooku raised an eyebrow at that. “What sort of trouble?”

  Pulling out my souvenirs, I laid them out on the table, along with the bag of ‘reagents.’ “A group of five women from a different clan. They had spiders with them that they were using the Force to control. They came with hostile intent and interrogation made it clear that they intended to attack anyone who showed up on sight.”

  “Nightsisters,” Augwynne murmured, perusing the contents of the bag. “The Spiderclan. You’re lucky. If they had captured you, they would have fed you to their pets. Good work,” she looked up and sent me a smile. “That said, it’s worrying that they got this close. I’ll need to speak with the patrols about it.”

  “It can wait until the morning,” Dooku murmured, and Augwynne nodded. “Well? Go on then. Let’s see what you’ve made.”

  Considering for a moment as I chewed my food, I eventually shrugged and used the Force to pull out my lightsaber, which was now slightly more than twice the length it had been. With a pair of twists, the assembly came apart, revealing a pair of near identical sabers and a fist sized metal tube. Along with it came my sheathed knife, replacing the one I had been given for skinning animals—because you never knew when you’d need a piece of sharp metal over a lightsaber or Mage Blade for whatever reason. As I’d had proved for me today, sometimes a knife was just the better choice.

  Moving the tube up in the air, I triggered the internal mechanism and it expanded to the first extension setting, changing it from roughly four inches in length to two feet. A second twist had it extend to four feet, and a third to six. There were still enough sections inside to adjust it out another four feet, but it would be unwieldy and cumbersome for a weapon—but then, if I was having to extend it that far, it would be to use it as a tool. As a weapon, it made an excellent addition to one or both lightsabers, giving me reach that my height and limbs didn’t allow me yet—an advantage that would be invaluable regardless of my size, really. That, and I had gotten used to the reach the poleaxe gave me. Having it on demand would be nice.

  Master Dooku nodded, pulling the staff down and collapsing it back into its compact form. “Impressive. Very light, but strong. Capable of stopping a lightsaber, for a time.” Handing it back, he took up the second lightsaber and examined it. “You incorporated some of the metal into your lightsabers?”

  “I replaced the emitter, emitter matrix, and added an emitter shroud. Songsteel is more heat resistant, so the emitters will last longer and require less maintenance and cleaning to remove carbon scoring,” I explained, taking both sabers back, attaching the extending pole to the end of my primary saber and putting the second saber on my opposite hip.

  “Was that all? Because that was a pretty big chunk of songsteel,” Augwynne sent me a curious look, and I frowned.

  “No,” I confirmed. Reaching up, I grabbed the new necklace around my neck and held up what had taken up the majority of my time in the workshop.

  It was roughly the size of a pocket watch when I’d finished with it—it even looked like one, in fact. Round, with none of the decorative frills and embellishments of previous operation orbs I’d used in the German Empire. The casing, gears, and internal mechanisms were all made of songsteel, aside from the very small battery I’d installed, to keep it going should I stop putting Force into it and keep it from burning Force it had stored to keep running—a battery practically identical to the ones in our lightsabers, save that it was miniaturized. Where in previous computation orbs elinium had been used, I had replaced it with kyber crystal, meticulously shaped to specification by the forge in the Chu’unthor. The ‘glass’ face was actually a thin layer of kyber crystal itself, allowing me to see the mechanisms inside and verify they were moving correctly.

  Carefully pulling it off, I passed it to Augwynne. The redhead turned it over in her hands, before clicking the button on the top and opening the cover. Studying the mechanisms, she looked confused. “What’s it do?”

  “Nothing, yet.” It wasn’t exactly a complaint, but I couldn’t help but feel a bit annoyed. “It’s not finished. When it’s finished, it will be able to do the equations necessary to use more complex formulas.”

  Augwynne blinked, before handing it back. “So, a magical computer.”

  “Yes, actually,” I nodded, snapping the front cover closed.

  The woman huffed and shook her head. “I don’t see how you can dismiss everything we do as just applications of the Force, then turn around and claim that what you intend to do with mathematics is magic.”

  “One requires a level of complexity and precision that the other does not.” Also, one was based off of actual, literal magic learned from my second life, but she didn’t need to know that.

  Augwynne sighed. “For someone so smart, you can be so closed-minded.”

  “Logical,” I countered with a smile. It was a familiar argument. “I prefer verifiable fact to belief. Hard evidence to faith. Mathematics and science to superstition, ritual, and prayer.”

  “If it works,” master Dooku cut in before we could devolve into yet another philosophical argument, “then every Jedi will want one.”

  “They’re welcome to make their own. They’re also welcome to spend years training and learning the math and mental skills necessary. Unfortunately for them, just having a computation orb doesn’t mean you can use formulas. You have to know how to input them, interpret them, and cast them. You also need to be able to split your attention between two to three things at once. It’s not something where you can substitute skill by leaning on the Force for assistance.”

  “Mm. Something I doubt many among the Order have the patience for,” Dooku murmured. As I began putting away my things, including the spoils of war, he said, “I’ve received a transmission.”

  “The council?” I asked, and master Dooku nodded.

  “My… sister,” he admitted, and I raised an eyebrow. “There is a matter on Serenno. She contacted the order for aid and master Sifo-Dyas contacted me. We have a few days to prepare, then we must return to Coruscant where we will meet master Dyas and I will address the Senate to request aid for Serenno. I estimate we will be on Coruscant for perhaps a week before we set off again.”

  Nodding, I looked pointedly at Augwynne and asked, “What about…?”

  The redhead chuckled. “It should be any day now.”

  “Mm,” I murmured, finishing off the last of my meal. Looking to Dooku, I asked, “What happens if the Senate refuses aid?”

  “They are duty bound to provide it.” I sent him a skeptical look and he gave a rueful smile. “But that seems to be a common complaint lately—the Senate not honoring their commitments to protect their member planets from predation. If it comes to that, then the Jedi Council will send someone to Serenno to attempt to negotiate peace. Myself and perhaps one or two other Jedi and their padawans. I would, of course, be including you.”

  Humming, I leaned back in my seat. “Is this a ground conflict or a space conflict?”

  “A little of both. Pirates began raiding Serenno. After which, my younger sister hired Abyssin mercenaries to protect the planet, due to my older brother Ramil’s lack of response. Now, it seems someone has bought out the mercenaries and is attempting a coup of Serenno.”

  “Probably Ramil,” Augwynne pointed out, and when I sent her a questioning look, she shrugged. “Think about it. Who stands to gain the most?”

  “I fear you are likely correct,” Dooku sighed, before sending me a curious look. “Did you have something in mind?”

  “Just a thought,” I shrugged. “Why not hire mercenaries to deal with mercenaries? There’s probably some group out there whose services could be bought and stay bought if it were the Jedi doing the purchasing.”

  Reaching up, Dooku stroked his beard in thought. “You may be correct. I seem to recall that the Mandalorians are in the middle of their own civil war and the Pacifists have requested our aid, which the Council has been in deliberations over for nearly a year. Perhaps we could help each other…”