XX: Getting to Know You
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The red lights in the drop pod brightened suddenly, drawing a gasp from Mei as the interior was thrown into hard edged relief.
“Time!” Ascratus bellowed, deafening in the enclosed space. “Ten seconds! Prepare!”
The Force swelled around the three Jedi and Luke reached out for Face, then Bhindi, then Zev. Before boarding, they agreed on a division: Anakin, between Solidian and Zev, would handle himself and Zev. Mei, between Zev and Bhindi, would handle the latter. Luke, between Bhindi and Face, would handle Face.
But Luke could fly the entire drop pod around at will if he wanted, so bleeding off inertia from three people was nothing. He trusted Anakin and Mei completely. It also wasn’t a bad idea to have insurance, as he gently reached for the other two Jedi, and then the three Astartes as well.
“Time!” Ascratus bellowed again. This time, the neophytes shouted “Five seconds!” along with him.
“We march for Macragge!” Zalthis added.
“Not marching!” Solidian laughed and then everyone’s breath rushed out of them as a Star Destroyer landed on their chests.
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Luke considered the question.
The door opened and Roboute was revealed. It was exactly as Mei, Anakin, Kyp and Tresk reported. Despite him being right there, it wasn’t until he laid eyes on the Primarch that it was like his senses truly opened up. All the time aboard Samothrace today and he felt something like an itch on his scalp or water in his ear. Some kind of something here and there and everywhere. Slippery and elusive, impossible to pin down, until a humble door swung wide and a man too tall to be a man was there.
Luke was not an old man, but he was not a young man either. From the jungles of Dathomir, to the sands of Korriban, the rains of Vjun and the dark underbelly of Coruscant, he had been across the Galaxy again and again. Holocrons of Jedi, Sith, teachings from Force-sects long lost to the world for thousands of years, relics left from forgotten times, cutting-edge alchemies invented by only one mind ever deranged enough to imagine them - Luke had seen them all.
What he saw now was none of that.
Anakin described seeing the Force become physical, real, as real to touch as anything else. Mei said she saw flashes of beast-headed men overlaid, Kyp declared the Primarch the Darkest thing he’d ever witnessed and said nothing else. Tresk said he could barely even focus on him.
Luke could admit that for a moment, it took his breath away.
Not even Palpatine, at Byss, had such a presence. Even all the Fallanassi, together, he knew couldn’t compare.
The reason he couldn’t sense the Primarch properly, why the Jedi on Eboracum couldn’t, he saw immediately.
Whatever interplay of the Force that surrounded, that filled the being that called itself Roboute Guilliman was, it was nothing he had ever seen. Until he laid eyes on him, until Luke could see the originator, the origin and end, it was like trying to describe color to the blind, or count to infinity. The mind didn’t know it.
But then, when he could see-
The first thing he thought of were shatterpoints.
Sometimes Mindoir felt like a lifetime ago, sometimes it felt like yesterday. Touching the jagged and knotted flows of the Force around the Primarch brought him back as if he still was down there in the dark, alone with Kar Vastor. What had he said then? There were no walls to the Force.
If there were no walls, perhaps there could be lenses. He’d seen that too, the way the Force could be prismatised, winnowed out or separated, like oil and water.
He didn’t see the creature-headed man. He didn’t see the Force become real, he didn’t feel Palpatine or Exar Kun or Cronal or Jerec or all the Sith and Sith-adjacent he had faced. He didn’t even feel a twinge of headache. In front of a painting stood a man, a very tall, large, muscular man in a complex draping blue robe. He wore laurels on his brow and sandals on his feet. He had no weapons.
Because he was a weapon.
The Force was alight around him. It wasn’t part of him - no, that wasn’t right. It was, because the Force was in all things (all things but the Yuuzhan Vong, said the whisper), but it wasn’t of him. He didn’t control it. He didn’t command it. Luke felt that immediately, instantly. The way the tides of the Force knotted and wove around Roboute was unconscious, more than unconscious, it merely was, in the way that a stone placed in a river will create an eddy, but you can’t finger the rock to be at fault. In the same way that a mountain blocks the wind, but the mountain doesn’t command the wind to split. It exists and by existence the action is done.
And the raw power that was there. He could imagine the effect it would have. He didn’t have to imagine, it had that effect on him. It should have. He could feel the way the Force brewed into a storm, how the light that always shone fractured into rays of green and red and violet, gamma and infrared and ultraviolet, the way the Force arced close to the Primarch, close enough to touch, span around the event horizon that the Primarch was and was attenuated, accelerated, flung back at the world in washing waves.
Washing waves, unending, and Luke did not endure the waves, he did not fight the waves, he did not see the waves. He was the waves, he was the troughs and crests, he was the water in the sea, and they passed by him even as he knew their passage.
He could imagine the headache Tresk described, the sight Anakin still thought of when his mind wandered, the visions Mei had seen. He could even imagine how, in other times in his life, Luke might have been overwhelmed by the Dark, as Kyp was.
A man in the shape of a shatterpoint, by whose simple act of peering at a painting had Luke blinking away tantalizing hints of a thousand futures offered up in ways he had never felt the Force volunteer.
“I think you’re Roboute Guilliman,” Luke decided. “You’re someone I haven’t met before and I’d like to get to know you.”
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Even braced and ready for it, Zalthis was surprised by the force of the launch. No impellers like a proper drop, but the magi had installed chemical rockets to the outside which gave nearly the same kick. Ascratus was counting aloud, for the benefit of the Republicans, but Zalthis watched the chronograph scroll down in his helm. Thirty seconds. A very low launch, at incredible speeds, right into the jetstream. Solidian whooped beside him.
“We plunge for Macragge!”
Zalthis would have struck him, but for the harness keeping his limbs locked in place.
Master Skywalker’s voice joined the Sergeants, surprisingly strong and steady for a baseline human.
“Mei, Anakin! Get ready!”
Zalthis prepared for the second kick, moments away. Taking a deep breath, filling his blood with oxygen, he clenched his thighs as they had been trained, forcing blood into his torso, into his brain, ready for the shock-
He heard the retrojets fire, felt the pod rumble and roar, but he didn’t even grey out. Completely aware and feeling no more pressure than riding a Thunderhawk, he tried to speak to warn the Sergeant that the retros must have failed, that they were about to land at far too great a speed, that-
The pod jolted and was still. The doors fell open and Zalthis, open mouthed behind his helmet, saw trees, bushes, planting areas. Buildings. A night sky above, filled with stars.
They were on the ground.
Harnesses snapped up, webbing relaxed and unclipped and his training took over, even while he reeled in surprise. From the rack behind him, Zalthis grabbed up his assigned gear, clamping it to magnetic locks. He followed the Sergeant, Solidian at his elbow, bolt pistols up and tracking. Heat signatures indicated the Republicans evacuating the pod as well. Their descent couldn’t be missed, and for all the hope they had that it would be ignored as debris, it couldn’t be ruled out that an investigation could still be sent. They had to get clear, fire the melta charges, wipe out any evidence.
“Solidian! Commercia, left, clear it. Zalthis! Treeline, right. Clear it!”
His brother split left, Zalthis right, and in moments he vaulted over a duracrete retaining wall, crashing into bushes and thorny vines, snapping them against his plate. Movement behind him registered, then a Republican, a man named Veers, joined him as well, ‘macrobinoculars’ hanging from his neck, a shrouded datapad out.
“We’re seven miles south of our target,” Veers spoke over vox, voice distorted. The magi managed to link vox to commlinks, but they claimed temperamental codecs resisted true joining.
“Noted. Solidian?”
“Commercia clear. No thermal, no visual.”
“I don’t sense anyone,” Master Skywalker added. “Mei, Anakin?” The other Jedi confirmed the Master’s assessment and Zalthis ignored the way his gut clenched at their casual employ of witch magics. So the Primarch commanded, so he did. Solidian had argued briefly against it, when they had privacy, in hushed tones.
“I don’t care if it isn’t the Warp, Zal,” his brother whispered, barely audible.
“The Primarch has ordained it.”
Glancing side to side, making sure they were alone in the arming chamber, Solidian leaned closer.
“You know me, Zal, this is not - I don’t really mean this. But if the rumors are true, about the other Legions…”
“Say what you think, Sol.” He hadn’t meant to speak as sharply as he did, but from Solidian’s hurt expression it hadn’t mattered.
“Lorgar commanded his Legion to work with those…those daemons.”
“It’s not the same!”
“Not yet!” Solidian protested. “But we still don’t know how it started. Do we?”
They formed up in the woods, looking a motley group. Ascratus, in his battleplate, far less adorned, without cape or crest. Several large cases were locked to his back, tucked between reactor and armor. Solidian, like Zalthis, in half-plate Scout armor, over blackened fatigues, carrying bolt pistol, rations, ammunition. The ‘Wraiths’, the intelligence officers, in all black body suits with stiffened panels serving as armor across limbs and chest. Webbing on their chests and waists held blaster cells and canteens, map cases and supplies. Master Skywalker and Knight Solo, in the same. Knight Taral, in her own armor, with pale fur decoration darkened by soot.
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They came lightly armed - should open combat break out, their mission had failed already. Each Ultramarine bore a pistol and several pouches of ammo. Enough to eliminate a patrol or two in extremis, though the report of bolt-weapons would be dangerous. A combat blade each rested at their hips, the long, monomolecular knives far more ideal for quiet eliminations.
All took a knee, reducing silhouette, clustered close. Ascratus had the auspex and no better warning could they have for interlopers. He’d trust Martian ingenuity over the local ‘Force’.
Colonel Loran, whom the Republicans called ‘Face’ for some unexplained reason, was the nominal commander here, so Zalthis listened as he spoke.
“Alright. We’re down and not dead, so step one is already an unqualified success.”
“You’re welcome,” Skywalker said, smiling.
“I know it’s only because Wedge isn’t rich enough to bribe you.”
“No, he is, he just didn’t think of it.”
Zalthis watched the interchange, baffled.
“Anyway, we’re here-” Loran unfolded a trifold paper map, pressing it down flat onto the grass. He poked a finger down and Zalthis leaned forward slightly, committing the position to memory. “-so we’re short of our planned landing site. There are branch offices all over, but we want to go straight for the Institute itself. The Celebratus is a lot farther away, but according to the friendliest Director the Institute is a lot more likely to have what we’re looking for.”
Ascratus nodded, peering down at the map. “There is higher elevation along this corridor,” he said, tracing with one armored finger, massive against the map. “It appears to be some form of arboretum or greenway, such as there are in Magna Macragge Civitas. Our cover will be better than in the city streets.”
“Being surrounded by life could confuse any vong bionts too.”
“There is not enough theoretical on their capabilities for a practical, Knight Solo.”
Whatever Solo was going to say was cut off as supersonic booms clapped overhead. Zalthis whipped his head up to peer through the canopy. Ascratus checked his auspex.
“Not enough range,” he growled.
“That’s coralskippers,” Veers sighed. “Shit, Colonel, they’re going to be investigating.” Face swept up the map, tucking it away into an armored case.
“We planned for that too. Sergeant? I think that’s your cue.”
Nodding, Ascratus depressed a rune on his auspex and in a shallow crater, fifty meters away, the drop pod exploded. The Republicans all winced as one.
“Let’s move, people.” Face ordered. They vanished into the dark forest, as smoke climbed toward the cloudless sky.
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Where the hall of statues that Gage had led Luke along was as straight as a laser beam and open to stars above, where Luke and Roboute wandered was winding and cozy. Paintings hung on walls, sculptures sat on plinths, weapons of every kind and more sat on racks or against polished plaques. There were even photographs and holograms, though the latter were blurry and shaky compared to what Luke knew. He saw faces no one in this Galaxy ever had: men, women, children. All human, of every shape and size. There was a crowd filling every corner and every street, packed shoulder to shoulder, screaming out their joy. Here was a platoon of hard eyed men, rifles leaning against their legs, a massive flag held between them.
A force of will kept the Primarch appearing merely as a man. At the corners of his mind Luke could feel the constant pressure of the Force as it churned around the Primarch, pressing in like the deep ocean waters of Dac. Each moment was a form of meditation, flowing with the Force, breathing it in and exhaling.
“I am told you possess particular powers, Luke Skywalker.”
Though he’d tried, the Primarch insisted on using his full name. Although he spoke easily and candidly, he kept an aura of certain formality draped about him like his robes.
“The Force, yes. You’ve surprised me with how much you know about our Galaxy - what do you think of it? Or know of the Force?”
Roboute paused as they meandered, measuring up a strange bejeweled gauntlet, held within a stasis case. It was golden, made like a series of rings that slid over fingers, joined by delicate chains. A single topaz stone filled a setting on the palm.
“I am told it is a power of the mind, not unlike a psychic sense. I profess to know little of the ways of the psyker - that is, was, the realm of other brothers.”
“That’s accurate enough. The Force is an energy that is in all living things, without a beginning or an end. As a teacher of mine described it, it binds us and surrounds us. Some can sense it and touch it, like myself and other Jedi.”
“And your Jedi - they are not the only practitioners in the arts of this ‘Force’?”
Luke thought of all the hidden traditions and lost practices, spread across the stars, and all the years he had spent tracking them down. To sum up the complex tapestry as simply as ‘Jedi are not the only practitioners’ brought a smile to his face and he shook his head in amusement.
“We’re one of many. The most well known, that’s true, but not the only ones.”
Roboute gestured toward another gallery, Luke taking longer strides, though the Primarch made sure to walk in shallow steps. Idly, he wondered what it was like for Imperials to speak with their leader - from what he had seen of all the humans among the Imperium, only the Ultramarines began to match the Primarch in height and size. For Luke, peering up at a conversational partner was a frequent enough occurrence. So many beings in the Galaxy, of so many sizes and shapes - and Luke wasn’t a particular tall man to begin with. He thought of Doctor Oolos, imagining the Ho’Din standing beside the Primarch, easily matching the Imperial in height, if not mass, and suppressed a snort at the mental image. Ism tried to have their meetings about Mara’s illness seated, the Ho’Din a little self conscious of his towering height, but Luke never minded.
“This I have heard. There was an Empire before your Republic, and it is said it was ruled by a wielder of a ‘Dark side’ of your Force.”
“Not my Force, the Force. And…yes. Emperor Palpatine. He was a Sith.”
“Sith, yes, that was the word. Many claims are made of him, many of which stretch belief.”
Curious about this particular angle, as they had only spoken so far in polite and careful framing about the New Republic and the Imperium’s nascent alliance. Speaking of the Emperor always brought his mood down, but in a way, it was heartening to think that the Empire and Palpatine’s predations ended at the edge of the Galaxy. To know that beyond, the shadow of his evil never darkened a doorstep.
“I’m afraid they’re probably true. He did manage to come back to life - a sort of life, at any rate. He wanted to live forever, no matter the price. Sith are afraid at their core. They fear death, just like they fear pain. Jedi - we accept both. It’s all a part of life, as much as it hurts. Palpatine was terrified to die and he was willing to burn the whole Galaxy to avoid it.”
The next gallery was darker, lights muted and atmosphere gloomy. Great tomes were held inside transparisteel boxes and peculiar artifacts and trinkets were kept behind lock and key in reinforced displays.
“All mortals have a fear of death,” Roboute said, leading Luke closer to a particular array of what looked like daggers, of all shapes and sizes. Closer, though his sense of the Force was strained by the presence of the Primarch, he felt a curious sensation of slowing, as if time itself - as if that exactly. Time itself slowed to a crawl, within the cabinet.
“These are held within stasis,” the Primarch said, gesturing carelessly with one massive hand. “In this gallery is collected a great deal of curios from my own galaxy. Tell me more of this Dark side, that the Sith command.”
“It’s not just the Sith.” Luke looked away from the strange lighting in the case, warped and colorless as it was by the stasis field. He weighed what to tell the Primarch, how to phrase it, before jettisoning his concern. Lieutenant Thiel was Force-sensitive and there was no telling how many other Imperials might be. The Lieutenant could be an anomaly and the only one, or it might be revealed the Imperials were like the Ysanna and all latently sensitive. As their ultimate leader, the Primarch had to know the dangers.
“The Dark side is, well, complicated. You’re heard of the purge of the Jedi, by the Emperor?”
“It was one of many things learned from your holonet,” the Primarch allowed.
“So much was lost and I’ve spent my life putting it back together. There are as many theories about the Dark side of the Force as you could imagine. My own masters, Yoda and Obi-wan, taught that the Dark side was a corruption of the Force, some sort of perversion of its will. I’ve met others that believe in a Dark and Light side of the Force. Some say there is no Dark or Light, that the Force just is, and it’s on the wielder what they make of it.”
“Many theoreticals, Luke Skywalker, but it is also no secret that once you stood by the side of this Emperor. Tell me, what do you believe the Dark side of your Force is?”
“Just the Force, Primarch Guilliman. Not mine.”
Marshaling his thoughts, Luke left the Primarch looming by the display of daggers, eyeing other displays and trophies. Most were locked in a form of stasis just like the blades, sealed away in time. All seemed mundane - circlets and crowns, bladed weapons, books, a bloodstained cuirass. But the Force whispered a strange undercurrent here, in this gallery, that it hadn’t elsewhere.
“The Dark side is temptation,” he replied at last. “It’s the easy way. Anger is easy, hatred is simple. It’s giving into your fear and your anger and your hatred and letting it rule you. I don’t know if there really is a Dark side or if it’s all just within us, but I know what the dark is, regardless.”
“You frame it as though it is a choice, then. That it must be chosen by those who fall under its sway.”
He stood over his father, feeling stronger than he ever had, feeling more righteous than he ever had, swinging his ‘saber down again and again and again, beating the red blade aside, hammering Vader into the decking - Luke pulled a long breath and let it out, letting the memory go.
“Always. The dark side is seductive and compelling and full of tricks and guile, but it’s always a choice. Isn’t everything? We can convince ourselves of any truth, if we really want to.”
The Primarch stared off into the distance for a moment, eyes unfocused, and a strange expression stole across his patrician features.
“A painful truth,” he murmured. “Another of your Jedi is known to have fallen to this Dark side as well and caused an unimaginable catastrophe.”
“Kyp,” Luke named the other Master, knowing it was pointless to dissemble. Kyp’s past was no secret, no secret at all, for all that the influence of Exar Kun made extenuating circumstances. “You mean Kyp Durron.”
“A man who, by his own hand, slew a star system.” The Primarch placed a hand on the display of daggers, turning to face Luke completely, the maelstrom of his presence suddenly intensifying and Luke had to take a moment to stabilize, to center himself in the face of it. The man was a living, breathing knot of causality and sometimes it nearly overwhelmed the Jedi. It was potential, limitless potential, held right on the brink of being unleashed. “In the Imperium, he would have been dead long ago.”
“This isn’t your Imperium,” Luke shot back, more harshly than he’d expected. Kyp had made mistakes, which some considered an understatement, but although Luke had said that embracing the dark was always a choice, what was done afterward was…not entirely. Exar Kun had acted through Kyp, driving his actions, clouding his judgment. It was Kyp’s decision to let in the influence of the ancient Sith, and that was his failure, but the destruction of Carida fell on the shoulders of the banished, ancient Lord.
“It is not. This is why I ask this of you in peace and in the interest of learning, Luke Skywalker. In my Imperium, you would have been executed for your parentage as well.”
“The sins of the father, then?”
“The sins of the father.” Roboute agreed without a hint of chagrin, like it was the most reasonable thing among the stars to condemn a child for the action of their parents. “One life against many is not a price the Imperium finds miserly. You think it cruel - I see it on your face. You think it inhumane. I do not disagree, but the world I am from does not have the privilege to be sentimental.”
“If you had your way and I had been killed for my father’s - for Darth Vader’s - acts, then the Empire would still rule the Galaxy and so many more would be dead. Palpatine may have even achieved his goals, from what I could decipher of them, and the Galaxy could even be long dead by now or turned into something horrible. It’s shortsighted and you asked me what the Dark side was - you have your answer.”
Roboute drummed fingers on the stasis case thoughtfully.
“The benefit of hindsight. You know now what your life has led to, but it could not have been known before. You stood by the side of this Palpatine once - what might have happened had you done so in truth, or in perpetuity?”
If the Primarch thought it would be successful as a point, he was mistaken. Luke had faced those demons before, he faced them still, and he always would. He thought of Mara, of Kyp, of Kam. He remembered shutting off his lightsaber and casting it aside. He could still feel the sweat sticking his tunic to his back, smell the cold air and ozone of the Death Star’s throne room. So much younger, so much more innocent, so untrained and untested and uncertain.
“I would have taken my father’s place or stood at his side as a servant of the Emperor. We would have done terrible things. But I didn’t, Primarch Guilliman. I rejected the Dark side then, I rejected it again, and I will reject it until the day I return to the Force. You say it’s the benefit of hindsight, I say that it’s the will of the Force.”