Chapter Sixteen

Anaïs blinked blearily as a cup of caf was shoved into her hands by her master, along with the statement, “You can nap on the ship, but I need you to make sure you’ve gotten everything, and you can’t do that asleep.”

She accepted it, taking a sip, her nose wrinkling at the bitter beverage. She’d never had it before leaving the Temple, but as part of her master’s normalization training, or, as he’d put it, ‘How not to out yourself in four minutes as a monk’, she’d had to at least get used to it a little.

She didn’t really enjoy the artificial wakefulness it instilled, though had been told that higher end versions were much more natural in their effects. Her question of ‘Then why can’t we use that’, had been answered with ‘outing yourself as rich is almost as bad as outing yourself as sheltered, now drink.’

Cheating a little, using a bastardized version of Tutaminis, the Jedi technique that let one dissipate the energy of flames, or even blaster bolts, she forcibly cooled the drink to let her slug it all back in one go. The first time she’d done so in front of her master she’d frozen, the Temple teachers having informed her how the techniques that she was being taught were perfected by a long lines of Jedi Masters, but Master Lucian had just chuckled, nodded, and gone back to what he’d been doing.

Drinking the vile, near chemical concoction, and eating the ration bar she’d been tossed, she looked around, to realize how much the space had changed, even since last night. The numerous crates, a previous fixture of the main hall, were gone, though she could spot a couple in rooms down a hall. The meditation space had been cleared, and even the seating area, where he’d set up a holoprojector to have her familiarize herself with ‘Republic culture’ which was quite a bit cruder than she’d been led to believe, was missing.

The fact that Jedi were always depicted as distant figures, either solving things instantly, or making everything worse by their actions but thinking themselves just and righteous before leaving and making the protagonists to pick up the pieces, annoyed her. Respect and fear were the two constants of their appearances, as the Jedi showed off powers that weren’t possible, like jumping a hundred feet in the air, read minds like datapads, or turning invisib. . . okay, the examples in holodramas were shown to have powers that most Jedi didn’t have, her master notwithstanding.

Now, though, the area looked almost. . . military. There were positions where someone could take cover, metal on the previously exposed cabling, even the odd device on the ceiling, which her Master steadfastly refused to explain but kept out the Dark Side, now housed in a shroud of durasteel. “Did you do all this last night?” she asked, looking around as her Master walked in and out, carrying things around, pulling out an actual heavy repeating blaster of all things and setting it up, pointed towards the entrance. All of the defenses were pointed that way, actually, as if worried what might come down the elevator.

“And this morning. Don’t know why though. Crinking Force,” he grumbled, metal strips shifting, tearing, and interweaving seemingly on their own to secure the weapon. “But I’ll need it to be like this the next time I’m here, probably, so now it is.”

That was another thing she had to get used to in a hurry. Ever since last night, Master Lucian had seemed, not really angry, just annoyed at, of all things, the Force itself. “But,” she finally pointed out, having come to a realization last night as she tried to get to sleep but only now getting the chance to ask, “you said the feelings one gets from the Force is a reflection of what you want to happen. So shouldn’t you be happy you’re receiving direction to assist you in achieving that?”

The slim man paused, nodding, as he sighed. “In theory, yes, but just because you know that by suffering you will achieve your ends, it doesn’t make the suffering any less. And what I want is. . . complicated, Padawan. The Force sets you on a path, but not necessarily the only path, something that took me a few centuries to understand. And sometimes. . . sometimes it would be kinder to take the long way.” He shook his head, “But are you packed?”

She tapped the belt pouch containing her lightsaber, and where the emberdrake talon hung on her neck. “I only own two things, Master.”

He looked at her, before shaking his head once more, muttering, “Right, Temple Initiate.” The way he put it sounded like an insult, but with an odd fondness underlying it, and before she could reply, he gestured to the repulsorlift trolly, loaded with boxes. “Take that to the ship, I’ll clean up here and meet you there.”

She nodded, moving the cargo up, the transfer between Force-shielded sanctuary and Dark Side tainted planetoid barely noticeable to her nowadays. Trying to unload the trolly, she found they were a great deal heavier than they looked, par for the course with her Master, and focused on maintaining Force Control to strengthen her body, allowing enhanced muscles to move the tightly packed crates.

She was almost done when Lucian arrived, stopping at a hidden panel and powering down the complex, coming aboard and tossing her a bag. “Your clothes,” he told her, and she blushed, having forgotten about taking them, some part of her still not thinking of the outfits she’d been given on Fabrin as ‘hers’.

In minutes, they were lifting off of the planet, and she could spot the blue shapes of ember drakes on the distant horizon. It felt odd, that she somewhat regretted leaving the place behind. Her time wasn’t exactly happy, but it had been. . . productive, in a way that only her early days in the Temple had been before.

However, she was a Jedi, and while she resisted the urge to shut out the emotions, as the Temple instructors had instructed, she acknowledged them, understood why she was feeling them, and let them flow past her, like water in a shower.

Joining Lucian on the bridge, they were on their way to the north-western part of the system, to get away from the gravity wells and make a clean hyperspace jump. Her master merely nodded to her, as he stared at the navcomputer display, as if trying to divine secrets from a crystal ball, like the Force-sensitive fortune teller in that holodrama she rather enjoyed.

“So, where are we going next?” she asked, getting a grunt of annoyance from him.

“Ultimately, no idea. For now, Adin, but that place is competently run, so I doubt we’re doing more than making a pitstop,” he said, fingers dancing over the console, manually putting in the astrogation information, handling the calculations it should’ve taken a dedicated droid to compute and looking bored by it. “And, we’re off,” he declared, activating the hyperdrive, a momentary backwards push as the stars streaked to lines, before the shifting, swirling tunnel of hyperspace replaced it.

He sighed, leaning back in his chair, “Alright, something you’re eventually going to have to learn, Padawan, is how to plan around the Force. You never have to, but more often than not, listening to it helps. There are some high level Dark Side techniques that can mimic the call of the Force, leading you astray, but they’re always tainted, even if only a little. Recognizing those corrupted thoughts is step one in learning to avoid them, which is something you’ve got an acceptable foundation in.”

“Really?” she asked, perking up. Master Lucian was sparse with praise, complimenting her, but he never said she had enough to-

“Really,” he nodded in affirmation. “You’re now at base Padawan level, on par with someone else who has just been selected by a Master, at least by the standards I was raised to match.”

And there it was, she thought. “Oh.”

“Oh?” he echoed, smiling. “Did you think you’d somehow reached a Knight’s level in a few short months of training?” She had, and he read her embarrassment, laughing, “These skills take time and effort, Padawan. Did you think a pep talk, a few training sessions, and some progress meant you were done?”

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“Not done,” she argued, pausing. “Um, Master Lucian?”

“Hmmm?” he replied, watching her bemusedly.

“What level, at least in that skill, would you say, for example, Master Halrol is at?” she inquired with forced casualness. The standards he held were. . . extreme, but if she had a comparioson, she could work backwards to figure out where she was by the standards of everyone that wasn’t a centuries old master of the Force.

The Jedi Master got up, stretching. “Do not measure yourself by others, Padawan,” he chided. “Go take a nap, or meditate, or whatever else you want. In four hours, we’ll start your training again. You’ve been developing power, but we can practice your fine point control while we travel.”

She sighed, having expected that. “Yes, Master.”

Lucian paused at the doorway, “And as to you other question, I’d put Hali at about mid.”

“Mid-master?” Anaïs clarified, getting a snort from the man.

“Really, Apprentice?” he asked incredulously. Shaking his head, he left, calling over his shoulder, “The poor fool hasn’t dealt with so much as a whiff of true Dark in decades, and it shows. No, I’d rate him at mid-Padawan.”

“Oh. Oh no,” Lucian muttered to himself, once more looking over the Navcomputer as he put in the coordinates manually. “Stupid, omniscenent, too clever for its own good, Nerf-herder! Why do we need to go this way?”

“Um, Master?” Anaïs asked, concerned, not having actually seen him this upset before, but. . . “Are you. . . are you insulting the Force?”

“It knows what it did,” the Jedi Master informed her primly, even as the ship, re-cloaked after their stop for supplies, went to the northern edge of the Adin system. “Can we go a different way?” he asked, but not her, and she felt the barest ripple in his Force presence, even pulled in and hidden as it was, a distant storm instead of the all-encompass tempest it could be. “Fine,” he sighed, hitting the button to start the hyperdrive, the stars streaking once more.

Not knowing what had him so worried, she pulled up the star charts, and tried to plot their jump, only to find that not only were they, once again, not using any charted route, but more than that she found that there was nothing in the direction they were going.

Oh, there was, eventually, but was this another hidden planet, like Uphrades? That one hadn’t been hidden, just forgotten, but she had no idea where they were going, but her master obviously did.

“Master Lucian?” she prodded, the man practically glaring at the computer. It was times like this that she could forget how old he truly was, and he seemed more a newly minted Knight, only a few years older than herself, then a centuries old Jedi Master.

“Okay, Padawan, time to shift the lesson plan up a little,” he sighed, standing and walking out of the bridge. “We’ve got a couple hours before this can go wrong, so there’s time, but not enough to put it off.”

Following him to the galley, he got to work making lunch, tea already steeping when she sat down. “All right, what do you know about Interplanetary Force Dispursement?” he asked.

“I know those are all words,” Anaïs replied, having absolutely no clue what he was talking about..

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he sighed. “Okay, you know how everything has a bit of Force to it. Living things have more, but even rocks have a Force Presence, and those of us strong in the Force have it most of all,” he explained, motioning between Master and Padawan, waiting for her to nod. “That means even a barren, lifeless rock that’s never had a single living thing visit it has a Force Presence. Theoretically. Visiting it to observe it would change things, so there’s no way to actually know.”

He paused, shrugged, and continued his explanation, “On the other end, those who have trained, and are strong, can feel each other even at interplanetary distances, or even from several light years away. Once you factor in Force Bonds, it gets even easier. Out there in the Void, in null-space, in whatever you want to call it, there is nothing. There is still the Force, but it is thin, a few inches deep as opposed to the lakes of most planets, or the sentinel tidal waves that are Jedi, and other strong Force users.”

“All right,” she nodded, fitting that in with what she’d been taught. It actually worked well, both with her old lessons, and the ones from her master, which often clashed. “So, it will be harder to use the Force out there?”

“No, in many ways it’ll be easier, and that’s the problem,” Master Lucian disagreed. “And no, you won’t have to worry about damaging the ship, you just won’t have to push through the. . . inertia of others in the Force. No, the problem is that you’ll go from a beacon in the Force, easily detected from several hundred clicks, to a star shining brightly in the dark seen from interstellar distances. And there are things that take exception to that. Things that are in the Void because they don’t like the Force.”

What he was saying. . . “But, the Force is in all living things,” she objected. “How can something not like the Force?”

“One thing you’ll learn, if you survive long enough, which you hopefully will, is that superlatives like ‘all’, or ‘never’, or ‘only’, are more suggestions than rules,” he advised. “Ninety nine point nine nine, and maybe a few more nines after that, percent of living things ‘like’ the Force. Some repel it, stupid tree lizards, some don’t exist in it, that wasn’t fun either, and some things actively hate it. Thankfully, they’re rarer than an original thought in the Temple, but odds mean nothing to Jedi as the Force actively pushes us into situations, rendering statistical modelling moot. Trust me, I spent over a decade trying to account for it.”

Learning from her Master, Anaïs had found, involved following the important bits, while still somewhat remembering the other things he’d said, as there was a good chance it was all important, and he’d consider off-handedly referring to such things as ‘mentioning it’ if it were to suddenly become relevant. For this, though, her response was, “So the things that hate the Force. They live out between stars? So they might attack the ship?”

“No, Padawan, they might attack us,” he corrected, and likely read her confusion, either in her face or in her Force presence. “This particular brand of nastiness doesn’t physically effect matter under a certain degree of Force Presence, so the ship might as well not exist, but anything living does, and us most of all. However, this cuts both ways,” he grinned, before shaking his head, growing serious once more.

“Now, you’re nowhere near ready for some of the offensive uses, as that’s very much a Knight-level skill, but you have a particular talent for the most important technique used when dealing with them,” he informed her.

It took her a moment, before her eyes widened in realization. “Force Barrier! I could stop them, and it’s made of the Force, so they’d hate it!”

“Burns them like fire,” her Master agreed, “though only if they touch it directly, and they have to physically break through it to get past it. So, if you hear shrieking, put up a full body bubble, just like you trained. You can create an air-mesh, but only one, and, this is the most important part, you do not drop it until the shrieking stops.”

He looked her in the eye, dead serious. “I don’t care what you hear, I don’t care what you see, I don’t care what you feel like is happening, you do not drop the barrier until the shrieking stops. I don’t care if Master Yoda and I both burst into the room, bleeding and dying, begging for you to let us in, or to heal us, you keep it up. They can’t control the shrieking, so they can’t stop it, but from when it starts, you have ten seconds to throw up your defenses. I don’t care if you’re asleep, or on your way somewhere, or naked and showering in the fresher, you have ten seconds and you do not stop until it’s over. Do you understand me?”

“I. . . yes, yes, I do,” she replied, a little shaken by the sudden intensity in his gaze and Force Presence. “Wait, they can use illusions? How, if they hate the Force?”

“Most can’t, but the really nasty ones can, and I lost a few Force Sensitives I was. . . watching that way, along with the supposed Knight with them,” he told her grimacing at the memory. “They stay out of the main hyperspace lanes, too much Force Presence from all the traffic, but on the backwater routes you get them sometimes, and where we’re going. . . I’d say a one in five chance we find at least one, but, again, probability means nothing to the Force.”

Master Lucian took a sip of his tea. “That means, until I say otherwise, no Force training, no mental resistance training, and no hard physical training. I should be able to handle it, but this’ll be good practice for awaiting conflict, and I’m not going to risk you against something you might not be able to handle. And if, for whatever reason, you’re somewhere I’m not around, wait it out. Being around a Jedi using the Force, especially one of our power, is like being around an unshielded power core. They can do it for short times, but even if they have a bit of distance, enough time and they start to burn regardless.”

“So, no training? That’s going to take some getting used to,” she laughed, trying to make light of the situation.

“I never said that,” her Master smiled, sitting back and relaxing, though she could still feel an undercurrent of worry in his Presence. It was a subtle thing, not showing on his face at all, but just a hint through the Bond they shared. “That just means we’re going to shift to something more intellectual. Now, it’s more the Little One’s specialty than mine, but what do you know about ‘Forensic Accounting’?”

“I know that those are both words?” she offered. “And I’m probably going to hate it?”

“Probably,” he agreed, calling a datapad over to his hand. “Force knows I do.”

Anaïs groaned, hoping the monster attack could happen already, and save her from whatever new skill her Master was going to force into her skull this time.