3-28 SPIRIT

You’re back in the Archives, the first time in at least a week.

It’s quiet. A change of pace.

As you’d noted to Master Yoda, the clones in the Halls have been slowly trickling away. Leaving. Disappearing. They’re going back to war. The Jedi as well — the other patients — are recovering. They don’t need the help of a mere Initiate healer. They merely need rest.

What that means is that you now have a bit more time to work with — Master Corr dismissing you earlier and earlier in the day. Your time in the Halls is ending.

Of course, you could still volunteer, but you wouldn’t be doing worthwhile work. Therefore, you’ve decided to better yourself, or at least, expand your knowledge.

You drop into a chair. The stony surface is hard and unyielding to your unpadded posterior, prompting a quiet yelp of pain from you. You bite back your curses, then look around to see if you’ve attracted any embarrassing attention.

None. How fortunate.

You curl up and close your eyes for a moment. Worry blossoms. Irritation follows, then is replaced by guilt and confusion.

Where are they going? Where is he?

You’d returned to the Halls of Healing today, seeking to speak with Tension before moving on to your other duties. You’d entered his room, excited to share yesterday’s news with him, but the clone you’d found was… different.

Two legs gone, first of all. A few fingers too.

Confusion in both of you. Concern between you.

You’d turned and dashed away, searching outwards for your friend. So many like him, but not him. Where? Where?!

Master Corr didn’t know, and neither did any of the MedCorps personnel. You’d returned, defeated, to the confused clone, apologizing for the disturbance and asking if he’d seen anything. His response? Nothing.

Back to war, perhaps? Back to the fight. He’d wanted it. Though that’s how he lost his brothers and nearly his own life, it’s his life. The war. The conflict. His reason for existence.

You’d not finished speaking with him.

You roll about in the chair, trying to find a comfortable position but ultimately failing. You settle for lying on the floor beneath the table instead.

Who were his brothers? He’d only barely begun speaking of them. How can but a few words encapsulate the life of a man? Though replicae, each one of them was an individual. Each one of them had irreplaceable qualities.

Each one of them, a spark of life. Accepted by the Force, if not by Reality or the Warp.

Booted feet pace past your face. Fellow Jedi walk by, the majority of which unaware of your concealed presence. Those that do notice you smirk and smile, remembering their own napping habits in their younger selves.

You stretch out both your limbs and your perception. Metal clinks against metal, wood scrapes against wood. You pull one arm in, then the other. Not enough space down here, really.

The world opens up before you, streams of information spiraling inwards. You, a spider, sitting at the center of your web. Yet, a weaver, you are not. You’re merely the curious window shopper, looking in — or out — and appreciating the goods. You pull things in, inspect, and let go. You do not own.

The stars, for instance. They are not yours! But, the light still shines upon you. The flux of energy impacts you. They smile with you.

Gravity. Forces. Energy. Power.

The same the same the same. All is information within your Sight. Your Vigil is unequivocal; the knowledge bound and kept.

Books. Flimsies and unwritten thoughts. Words and data. It’s all there around you, just as Master Lasah described, but further augmented by your other senses. Emotions and ideas become senseless noise, your focus filtering them out as you sift through the library within which you lie. A world of detail — too much and too little all at once. You struggle, your head filling like an all-too-small jug.

Something bites and tears, ripping away the extraneous. You relax.

Your arm feels empty, like a home vacated. Your head, however, still remains full. The creature is hard at work, clearing the detritus accidentally gathered as you’d swept your fisherman’s net out. You dredged the world, and you’d caught garbage along with the fish. It'll all be released, but you still need to observe your catch, but how so when it's covered in refuse?

Your helper helps while you think and sort.

A few aisles down and one row up. Not high enough that you’d need help to retrieve it. However, you may still need some if your Force Sight doesn’t feel up to reading the whole thing for you.

Another option: the terminal directly above you. Information of the past or information of the present? Both are retained. This is the better option.

The terminal flicks on as you twitch a finger, its screen useless to a girl with an unreal eye. A passerby is startled, then frowns disapprovingly at the child beneath the desk. An unseen smile and a tiny wave and he is mollified. He continues on, dispassionate once again.

Information on the screen. Information in the machine.

You look and fumble. The words take a tumble!

You laugh. A child’s tinny giggle, muffled by the hole you’ve crawled into. You shake the chair as a fellow Initiate jumps in fright and sprints away. A new legend is born!

Disappointment still floods your veins, but you do not fear. A spirit speaks back, its binary haze feeding into your web of knowledge all the same. You ask your questions. It responds.

It sighs a lonely sigh — purely imagined by your delighted mind. O Navigator! O child of Eyes! Pair me with a partner. Information shall be yours if I am appeased!

You kick the table, unimpressed. You’re no priest!

This thing is weak — so very unlike what the Magos described. It’s young. Impertinent. No gravitas or sense of a true self.

However, you do relent. You roll out of your hideaway, then curse as you bump the back of your head into the chair. You crawl out on hands and knees, then stand and dust yourself off.

Leaning over, you rub the edge of your robe against the screen. Dirt smudges. The spirit whines.

You roll your eye, then run off. A minute later, your return from the ‘fresher, a damp napkin in one hand, a dry one in the other. The screen squeaks as you clean it. It sighs as you dry it.

But how to solve its abandonment issue?

You rush off again and find the nearest servitor. No, not a servitor. An unholy abomination! However, you know that this spirit doesn’t care. It’s of this world. It has no prejudices like you. You drag the droid back over and lift it onto the table. You direct it to interface with the terminal, then turn away.

It’s only right to give the two some semblance of privacy, though you feel your mind scarring all the same. This is the libation it wishes for? This… this debasement?

“Are you finished?” you quietly ask a minute later. The droid mutely floats away. The spirit is silent too.

You raise a fist, but pause when the knowledge you need begins to flow. It pools around the machine. You dip a hand in and collect a palmful. You dip the other hand in and a creature gratefully partakes.

You slump into the chair once again. Your mind is already a mess, a fragmented disk of broken pieces. You can’t take too much more at this moment, so you slowly feed yourself as you reform your self.

You blink.

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You stare at the console, but it’s silent. The world is as it was: information stored in neat rows upon shelves. The planet and the stars humming only in the distant background. The web is stripped, a feather duster away at a new task now, its cousin asleep in your arm once again.

That was strange.

A question — “What is the Republic Navy?” — rebounds through your mind. What does it do? How is it formed? What is its past?

Questions. Curious and pertinent questions; mostly answered by an entity unknown.

You lean over and knock on the screen. “Hello?” you say, but it says nothing back. You scootch back in the chair, bringing your knees to your chest. Your tail curls upward and you lean against it, the final segment bending and resting on the top of your head. A vicious needle hangs between your horns, clacking against the edge of your headband.

The Navy…

Reformed over and over again throughout the Republic’s past, its purpose cycled through a barrage of conflict. It’s a tool of negotiation at times. It’s a barricade when things go south. It’s a knife when precise persuasion is required. It’s a club in times of doubt.

What is it to be now?

A hammer, perhaps. A tool and a weapon.

Need it be sharpened? No. Reinforced? Yes.

The Navy is weak at the moment, only now shored up by the sudden arrival of the army’s new assets. Acclamator assault ships stand by. More toys are on the way.

Restructuring is required. The Navy is not just a bottomless well of clones. It’s composed of Republic citizens, each one trained for years. An inrush of manpower is required, both of new volunteers and of voluntolds. The clones — the slaves — fill a role, but they can’t do everything.

It’s not their Republic after all.

The Military Creation Act is pulling in resources. Ships. Conscripts. Production capability. A thousand worlds are to ramp up production of everything. Survival depends on it. Whose survival? Not everybody’s.

Kamino somehow obtained quite a few capital ships. The Acclamators. The new Venators. Commanders of these shall be Republic Navy officers and Jedi.

Several sector fleets are to patrol the Republic’s segmentae. Each defends, supports, and transports a sector army. Many ships and many men will be needed to protect the Republic’s numerous weakpoints, and you’re not sure the Republic has enough.

The Separatists, as the attackers, will choose where they wish to strike. It is the defender’s job to anticipate and react with equivalent force. If need be, Force will do as well.

The trouble is, neither force nor Force is purely on the Republic’s side, and thus intelligence is required in bucketfuls as well. This is mined and supplied by the Navy’s Intelligence agency, obviously. How successful they will be is yet to be seen.

This Navy is still in an alien infancy. It’s been spun around and malformed, then shoved back into the womb. Modifications have been made. Parts are added, redundancies are trimmed back. However, it needs to be birthed early and already ready to fight lest its enemies snip its mother away beforehand.

However, there are people out there buying time. Many star systems have their own defense fleet. Each is pitiful in comparison to what the Separatists can bear against them, but if they can hold out for long enough, the Republic Navy can come to their aid. That’s a big if however.

The Navy’s command structure is unlikely to be shaken too much, despite all the changes around it. Clones may be brought in to shore up deficits in manpower, and Jedi will be placed into leadership positions. While clones will be flooding the ranks, the actual onboard roles won’t be really different than what they are at the moment. They’re just… crew.

What’s strange, and what may be bothersome, is how Jedi may be placed into command positions without adequate training. Naval officers, having gone through academies and schooling, will suddenly find themselves under men and women or whatever who do not have the same experiences or training they underwent.

How will they feel about that?

Your tail taps against your headband once again as you look toward the sky. You stare through the Temple, past the stars of life and towards the stars of light beyond.

So much trouble…

A daunting challenge for those in actual command. Not a problem for you to solve at the moment now.

Ships of all sizes, but all still tiny in comparison to the Doctrine, float through your brain. Dreadnoughts and frigates. Star destroyers and transports. Fighters and bombers. Oh, my my my!

You flick the machine off, then give it a pat on its metaphorical head. Well done little one. That’s enough for today, and maybe for tomorrow too. For now, you have other information to gather, and more skills to practice.

You stand and go, leaving an invisible web behind, to be spun anew in the future. For now, the strands hang empty, that duster having swept everything away.

≡][≡ ⬦⬦⬦ ≡][≡

Movement grounds you.

You’ve found Cho’an again. Or rather, she found you. You’d been sitting in the Initiate’s commons, drunkenly swaying as you’d tried to stabilize your aching head. She’d lifted you up, carrying you in her lengthening arms — human puberty having reared its ugly head and begun stretching her out in the last month. Growth spurts, oh so very enviable!

You’d grown a bit over the last month too, hence your sudden realization of height not too long ago. But Cho’an? She’s like a weed!

You’d begged her to drop you, offering up a practice session as sacrifice. She accepted, though she’d seemed rather concerned about something.

She stumbles, as she ducks, her light grip on your presence faltering in the Force. A training bolt strikes you, sending you cringing away in stinging pain.

She springs back up, stretching to her full height as she blocks the next few attacks. You hide in her shadow, dwarfed as usual.

So unfair.

Cho’an reasserts her grip, her Meditation rising like a song. A melody in your mind. A low lullaby in your heart.

Perhaps you’re not so grounded after all? These vagaries spin you about, or perhaps that’s just Cho’an’s command?

You discover it’s the latter as another bolt is deflected away by an intersecting blade. You step to the side in rapid tempo, Cho’an waving her sword like an excited conductor.

That spirit… that machine spirit. You’d never heard them before. Other-you — your blurred awareness obviously sourced from her — never heard them either, though she'd heard of them. A Magos spoke of them, but what's a Magos? More questions and confusion, but what's important is that you shouldn’t have heard it! So, how did you?

The Force, of course. Any time you come across the unexplained, you simply have to flip a coin. Heads? The Force. Tails? The Warp. It’s only the unlikely edge that represents reality, sandwiched between.

A surprising clarity existed in that conversation, however you would have thought that a spirit within the Jedi Temple wouldn’t have such… proclivities. Peace and asceticism, yes? Debauchery of the omnic kind, no.

You blink once again. You shudder.

Yucky.

You stand to the side and shake your arms. One stings, its inhabitant awakened and unhappy. The other one feels numb, though you could swear you could hear the internal gears clicking steadily away again.

“Xena, are you alright?”

Nod. Nod. Yes. Yes.

“Maybe. Maybe.”

“I think you need some rest.” Cho’an steps forward and takes your hand. She drags you to the edge of the room as you blink and blink and blink.

“I’m fine.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

You shake yourself like a dog, then bend down and take off your mask. Sweat drips off your face as you wipe off the inside of the mask.

“Sorry. Just had a weird… a strange experience.”

“Sorry,” she echoes.

You clarify. “No. From earlier. I talked to a computer in the Archives. Not a droid, but a computer.”

“...You sure you don’t want a nap?”

“I’m sure.”

“Alright.”

Cho’an lets go of your hand and you slow to a stop in the arching corridor. To the rear, the training yard. Fore, far more.

You shuffle to the side to allow some other Initiates to pass, then look back to Cho’an. “I think that went well. Relatively.”

She shakes her head. “I’m not as good as you at it. Not yet.”

“You’re getting there.”

“Not fast enough.”

You nod. The war is here. The Separatists are already moving, from what you have heard. Systems are soon to come under siege, if not already. It’s only been a few days since the real kickoff to the war, and so many people are already suffering.

The GAR, the Grand Army of the Republic, needs to get in gear. That’s why all the clones are being rushed in and out. That’s probably why Tension is gone. You’d already seen clones more injured than him marching away, shepherded by their commanding officers. Why did you not suspect the same would happen to him?

Where is he going though? Hopefully someone patches him up properly before he’s thrown back into the fray. Maybe he’ll get a bionic replacement? Maybe they’ll somehow grow him a new leg?

You look at your own arms, tracing their wakes in the flowing Force.

“Xena?”

You look up again. “Yeah?”

“W-would you mind if I asked Master Lasah to, um…”

She trails off. Her eyes dart to the sides, unable to match your painted stare. Your gut burns for you know what she means to say.

Would Master Lasah take her as an apprentice? Probably. Cho’an is probably her best choice after you. Maybe even before you, now that you think about it.

Cho’an doesn’t come with a Galaxy of confusion behind her; she only has one ahead of her. She’s not got competition seeking her hand too. She’s smart and capable and a wonderful friend! So, why do you even have to think about this?

Possessiveness. Unbecoming of a would-be Jedi.

Jealousy?

You stand stock still as Cho’an nervously awaits your answer. Emotions swirl within you, but you hesitate to look. What would you see?

You make your choice.