V: Something New
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Before he had come to Yavin, his fear - and hope - had been that the Force would remain ever elusive, flighty before his fingers, and never come to heel as it appeared to for the Jedi. In the days he spent in study, at the behest of his Lord, as he prodded for knowledge from Rubio, as he clumsily followed 'practices' that beggared belief for their brevity and ephemerality, a part of Aeonid remained confident that this Force was say, some misunderstood deviation of genetics. Perhaps some oblique form of warpcraft that Tylos was yet to decipher. Perhaps that moment of peculiar sight that he had been granted but once after Luke Skywalker had dropped his revelation with all the subtlety of a superheavy shell was a trick. Some machination by the Jedi, some lingering warp-taint from Calth yet to be excised -
It was faintly humorous, in a backhanded sort of way, that but weeks ago Aeonid had both hoped - and feared - that the Force would remain ever beyond his touch.
Now, there was no way to shut it away.
With word from Temerity relayed swiftly to Masters Solusar, Cilghal, Streen and Katarn, the Praxeum erupted into last-minute disordered activity not unlike that of a kicked over hive of communalist formids. The young trainees wore expressions of fear and disquiet, the elder Jedi far more stoic miens and the youths that blurred the line between child and adult aped their Masters with the sort of intensity only the young could find.
And Aeonid felt every scrap of it. He felt the tears of Chitter, whose delicate frame was huddled in a seat aboard one of the Praxeum's many shuttles. Salty tears slid down her long snout, but wiped away by Moolu Hashkiss, a serpentine Sluissi that Chitter named best friend. The female Vor was alight with a melange of emotions and thoughts. She was loud, loud enough that Aeonid was sure other Jedi sensed her. Her stomach twisted in sudden, bald recognition that all of this was real, that their lives were truly in danger, that the Praxeum itself might not last. Beneath it she buried self-recrimination and guilt, spawned by her secret homesickness that bloomed uneasy tones of happiness that she might go home sooner than later.
Which in turn only redoubled the spiral of the Vor's mental state, as the child then felt her friend's embrace and wondered how truly awful she might be, to think at a time like this, of going home.
There, Thann Mithric and Yaqeel Saav'etu spoke in low tones, agreeing that Anakin Solo would slay all the vong, most surely, and then this will all seem entirely silly. Silly and pointless indeed, to be so dramatic, so fearful, when the young hero was here along with Master Katarn. And Aeonid sensed their truer thoughts, that lingered beneath each careless word, as the Falleen and Bothan repeated the names of the fallen, over and over. Miko Reglia. Wurth Skidder. Daeshara'cor. Markre Medjev. Dorsk 82. Swilja Fenn.
There, Niko Ush and Mariel Ush were inseparable, even as they helped Janis Tytoris to buckle into a little bucket seat sized for beings the size of the young Mriss.
There, the Brizzit twins, Izzuviz and Zzivzu coaxed along Ina Maseel, Tiu Zax and Bazel Warv, putting on brave faces - such as that might mean, considering the compound eyes and manibles that marked out their insectoid physiology - even while they exuded invisible pheromone clouds of anxiety and worry.
Kyle, as Master Katarn insisted on being called, had placed this curse on his head. Kyle had taken Master Skywalker's observations, he had taken Aeonid's problems, and he had slotted the disparate pieces together and revealed the completed puzzle. With his tutelage, day by day, the Force came clearer and clearer to his touch. When Kyle led Aeonid in Matukai forms, the two of them in jungle clearings and moving through sharp martial pacings that melded together constrained violence with strangely artful motion, the Force seemed to swell between the trees.
When they jogged through the grander temple complex, along paths kept clear by passage of beings and by droid alike, as the humid air of the moon filled his deep lungs again and again, the Force seemed to slide deeper into his body, as if he breathed in and exhaled the extrasensory power.
When Yavin rose full and fulminous, storms wracking its bloated crimson body, when Aeonid held hand-polished stones of his own artifice in the air about him with only the extension and touch of his mind, the Force hummed within his enhanced bones.
Kyle told him that his progress was impressive, most impressive, on par easily with some of the most talented savants of the Order. That his draw upon the energies of the Force was subtle and directed, that his precise direction was commendable, and that he had rarely seen a Jedi - a Force-sensitive, Katarn corrected himself - with so easy a command of empathics.
Empathics.
The spheres of Jedi powers were many and overlapped greatly, as reflected in his extensive notation. Telekinetics, biokinetics, empathics, telepathics, precognetics, and more, all branches of esoteria that the Force could be channeled along to achieve some ends. He described the utilization of Master Skywalker in their original duel to be thus: biokinetic enhancement of neuromuscular transmission, of twitch-reaction (and Aeonid theorized, at length, that perhaps the Force, if it were capable of replicating mundane effects such as known generation of lightning, then perhaps a suitably talented Jedi might - and he stressed the emphasis upon 'might' - trigger neurons through infusions of Force-derived electrical signals, and thus bypass entirely the necessary and biological delay of transmission through the body).
Further biokinetic enhancement of the musculoskeletal, to match strength against the genebred physiology of an Astartes. Telepathic outreach to skim impressions and steal technique and form from the opponent. Precognitive determination of moments into the future, which Rubio, quite unfortunately, was able to confirm was not impossible, given examples from the Corvidae cult of the XVth. Telekinetics as well, to manipulate the body, to add power to strikes and leaps both.
Much of these branches conjoined and morphed and bred new possibilities. The ways of the Jedi, as each of the Masters at the Praxeum were quick to stress, were ever-open to learning, interpretation and experimentation. Each Jedi might find their own niche within the greater tapestry of possibility, and in so doing, refine their own particular talents all the better.
Streen, who like Kyle, eschewed the honorific of Master, admitted to an aptitude for weather and atmospherics. Master Horn famously excelled at the alteration of foreign minds, at the expense of little to no capacity for telekinesis.
Aeonid's expectations of polymathy, quite rudely, were dashed upon the ice of Yavin 8.
Now he lived with the consequences, as he continually repaired and restored the mental walls meant to keep out the permanent chatter of other minds about him.
Another teaching, graciously taught by Master Tionne and Cilghal.
Learning mental discipline from a piscine being, by this point, did not even merit a spot among the most implausible events to have occurred in the past several weeks.
Little Jysella Horn broke down in a fountain of tears, despite her elder brother's best attempts to soothe her. The girl's wails, brought on by stress and confusion and her own Jedi senses of the others around her, rang through the Praxeum's hangar and out of the wide open doors.
Aeonid exhaled a sigh.
The girl managed a few more swallowed sobs, knuckling at her eyes and he sensed her study Valin Horn while the boy crouched anxiously by her side. Her greatest stress shone terribly clearly - not her fear of the coming invaders, but that Valin Horn, her brother and to whom she looked up to so much, seemed afraid. And if he was afraid -
The redirection was simple. A simple bending of a vector, a statement which was not a lie - but was not an entire truth - and the girl reframed what she saw.
Aeonid sensed relief from a few of the other trainees, then a warm wash of gratitude from the female Solusar.
The muscle beneath his left eye twitched once, twice. Anyone with eyes could find the theoretical for what upset the girl.
He glanced to the others, to his Astartes where they clustered near him, performing final inspections of wargear, both their own and their brother's. Solidian, with his back to Zalthis, spun easily the barrels of an uncommon blaster the young man had found somewhere. There was quite a tale there, Aeonid knew, from just emotions and tangled thoughts Solidian shone with each time he looked at his weapon. Behind him, Zalthis flipped shut a small access panel on Solidian's suit's reactor, then playfully shoved the other Astartes forward a step.
'Clear, Sol. Running at optimal.'
'Gratitude, Zal.'
Aeonid studied them both. Neophytes only a short time ago, their Carapaces surely had only fully settled after deployment to Fondor. Younger than most Ultramarine neophytes ever were for full ascension, though their service spoke for itself. Sergeant Ascratus' last assessment, penned verbally during the infiltration of Obroa-skai, vouched for both. Aeonid knew the honored Sergeant in passing, but his reputation meant he had little reason to deny the recommendation.
The XIIIth needed new blood - fresh, tried and proven blood. Even if they appeared so incredibly youthful, behind the thin veneer of transhuman elevation.
'Alebmos', Aeonid said and the Lexicanium nodded in acknowledgement. 'The Primarch repealed the Edict. There are no tools left off the table.'
The psyked nodded again, the motion rattling ritual beads and clattering totems of carven wood and bone, rustling his blue-white woven sashes and corded leather thongs about his plate.
Totemic. Ritualistic. Feral. Irrational.
Aeonid exhaled a long-suffering sigh.
Irrational.
He admonished a warpspawn girl that she may not use Legion supply to wage a one-child war against xenos invading a temple-world. He did so with his mind.
Irrational.
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It took under an hour to bundle all the kids onto transports. There were still a lot of crates left unloaded, but all the most important and irreplaceable relics were loaded up too. Anakin had figured they'd all pack into a freighter or two - which wouldn't be comfortable at all - and blast for Temerity. Master Katarn shot down that immediately. Mostly because they would be shot down, also probably immediately. Hyperspace wasn't an option, since the Vong could switch their dovin basals to interdiction before they even got out of Yavin 4's atmosphere. Running for Temerity wasn't an option either, because of how outnumbered they were.
The Yuuzhan Vong weren't here in 'strength', but they still had enough. Two of their cruiser analogues, along with a squadron of supporting corvettes. That meant at least a half dozen squadrons of coralskippers, plus whatever gunship analogues the vong could carry.
Even with Rogue Squadron and the Tierfan Aces, they'd be hard pressed to keep ahead of that many 'skips, let alone the capitals with them.
So they had to wait for Temerity to run interference. According to Aeonid, the destroyer was about ten hours away. Anakin watched the sun slipping lower toward the horizon, worrying his lower lip with his teeth. Ten hours was a long, long time. Bad memories of Dantooine and that long night tried to rise up, but he pushed them away.
Master Katarn also pointed out that trying to evacuate everyone on one freighter was just asking for the whole future of the Jedi Order to be wiped out by a single unlucky magma missile. Grim, but Anakin couldn't disagree with that.
So they split up the kids. Celestial Dancer, a YT-2000, had some of the most precious relics, like holocrons and old datacores, since it was the newest and best protected of the transports. Kam and Tionne would be flying that one, with twelve of the kids. Cilghal would be on Peckhum's freighter, Thunderbolt, along with six of the trainees. Then Kyle would fly Dalliance, the YT-1210 with eight kids, Streen would take Celador Sash, a LH series freighter with four kids, and finally Anakin planned to fly out Lady Starstorm, the old YV-100 with Tahiri and Master Ikrit. Spreading out all the Jedi meant that if the worst happened, it wouldn't be the worst.
Not that it would. With this many Masters, they'd all make it out, no problem. Kyle was an old hand at running blockades and even if Anakin wasn't on the level of his sister, he knew he could make even an old freighter dance.
And they'd have Aeonid and his squad in their Thunderhawk and Storm Eagle to run defense, plus Temerity and their own squadrons.
As long as they survived the night.
So they gathered on the landing pad, surrounded by freighters whining to life and going through preflight. Fiver was already ready to go, Anakin's XJ hot and hovering on repulsors. The astromech was also going to remote pilot all six of the Praxeum's Z-95s. Fiver wouldn't be able to do much with the six of them, outside of synching up fire and keeping the Headhunters in rigid formation, but, well, every bit counted. Even if it was just to draw fire for just a moment.
Master Katarn stood with his arms folded, exuding calm intensity. Aeonid, in his armor again for the first time since he'd arrived at the Praxeum, loomed next to the duellist. Slightly behind him were the new arrivals - Zal, Sol, Tercinax, Varien and Amalius. Ikrit bounded up, lightly landing on Anakin's shoulder and briefly rubbing his cheek against Anakin's. Tahiri surreptitiously wiggled her hand into his, intertwining their fingers. Her skin was cool and he felt the fluttering pounding of her heart.
There was a small but noticeable space between Aeonid and his squad and the Lexicanium Alebmos, leaving the 'psyker' a little distant.
"We'll send the transports down into the caves," Master Katarn was saying. "This whole plateau is criss-crossed with them. There's openings big enough to fit an Action IV - we won't have any trouble stashing the freighters down there."
Aeonid nodded.
"The Temple cannot be held, but we may use it as a lure."
"My thoughts exactly, Aeonid. The vong aren't here yet, so if we're lucky, they'll think that we're all holed up inside." Kyle gestured toward the other shuttles. "Those will help sell the lie too."
"Then we cannot allow the vong to realize the truth," Zal added. "We must keep their eye on the Temple and the Temple alone."
"We've got Asp droids, Marksman remotes, PKs - I can rig them up with blasters. They probably won't hit a thing but it'll keep the vong ducking." Anakin offered.
Several of the Astartes' faces darkened and brows furrowed. Right, droids.
"Acceptable." Aeonid drummed armored fingers on the crown of his helmet, maglocked to his hip. "We begin at the Temple, then withdraw into the jungle when we must."
"We can plan to rendezvous at some of the other ruins if we get split up," Anakin considered the Blueleaf temple, or even the one the vong biot had been slumbering in. There were so many scattered around the complex that they could play whack-a-gizka and lead the vong on pointless chases.
"The vong might even think that we hid the trainees in other temples too, when that happens. Then they'll have to stop to search each and every one." Kyle slowly nodded as he spoke, his resolve firming further. "This…will work. It'll be a long night for us, but," the Jedi Master wryly smiled. "I think we're all very used to that. Even you, Tahiri."
Next to him, his best friend preened a little at the attention.
"Thanks for not sending me off with the kids," she said with a smile.
Kyle laughed.
"Oh, I know you too well, Tahiri. It'll make all of our lives easier if we weren't worrying when you were going to show up after sneaking away." He cracked his knuckles, one after another. "Let's get to it then, the vong won't wait for us."
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"I speak for the Commander Harmae. He commands in the name of the most potent and cunning Supreme Commander Malik Carr, who conquers half your heathen galaxy. The Jeedai are to surrender and in showing willing and appropriate submission, will not be slain as a sickened nek might be. You will be taught of the True Path, of the Gods that you most grievously deny. The salvation of your souls is our gift to you, though it is assuredly a gift you do not deserve. Be glad! The Children of Yun-Yuuzhan are generous indeed."
The vong came down in gunships and landers, just black silhouettes against the swollen sun hugging the horizon. Heat shimmer rising from the jungle smeared and made the shapes hazy and ephemeral, like monsters crawling out of dreams in the falling twilight. They came down in an encircling pattern, surrounding the Great Temple. The Jedi watched shapes of warriors and skittering chazrach lope through the jungle, just glimpses and flashes of movement, relayed to holograms from the Astartes' helms.
Large creatures shoved through the underbrush, young Massassi trees waving and shaking. Nothing quite the size of a rakamat at least, thank the Force. He'd come face to face with one once and Anakin was not eager to repeat that experience.
A small platoon of warriors exited the jungle, striding fearlessly out into the clearing of the Great Temple. The amount of scars and tattoos on their leader's visible face marked him out as obviously the one in charge, confirmed when he opened his mouth to speak the ultimatum.
Generous indeed, Anakin seethed. Generous indeed. Did they offer Dorsk this? Swilja? What about Wurth Skidder and Miko, who'd been killed in captivity? He glared gigawatt turbolasers at the vong commander. 'Harmae' was infuriatingly confident, arms folded across his vonduun plate. A small biot, furred and with far too many limbs wrapped around his shoulders with its blunt, triangular head elevated to just below Harmae's face. Large, batlike ears canted back toward the vong's mouth, and the biot's own maw was distended and yawning as it shouted back the Commander's words.
"Can you give us some time to discuss it?" Master Katarn shouted back, from his position several stories up the ziggurat. Droids were scattered across balconies clumsily holding blasters while slapdash turrets beeped and pinged and scanned for targets. The outer temple might be climbed, with great difficulty, but the only real egress was the hangar and grand entrance itself. Shutters could be closed, lowering down enormous slabs of Massassi stone from hidden pockets to seal off openings between each tier. Naga Sadow had been paranoid in the design of these temples, expecting them to be besieged.
A hundred and more meters away and peering up at them, Harmae's teeth glinted as he bared them in a grin or grimace.
"You may not, Jeedai. You will answer me now and do not play for time."
"I have a shot," Aeonid murmured, bolter shouldered and aimed.
"No," Kyle muttered back. "We won't stoop to their level. We'll kill him later, face-to-face."
Anakin shivered at the cold flatness of Master Katarn's tone. A far cry from the companionable, friendly blademaster who had trained Anakin and many of the younger Jedi, always quick with a wry joke and reassurance. The stormtrooper and rebel agent Kyle had been wormed through the Jedi he had become, pushed back up to the surface.
"There's little reason to match dishonor with honor," Aeonid retorted, but lowered his bolter.
"There really is," Kyle muttered, low and barely audible. Then, louder, projecting his voice with the Force: "Alright, 'Commander'. Not now, not ever. You want Jedi? Come and get them."
Below, the vong Commander shallowly inclined his head, spinning on his heel and stomping back toward the edge of the jungle, cloak swirling behind him. His cadre of honor guard followed. Aeonid swelled with an urge to violence - so sudden and so bright that Anakin almost cried out - but the Astartes turned away also, following Kyle back into the Temple, his bolter returned to his hip.
"Anakin," Kyle called to him. "Activate the droids. How long do you think until they come for us?"
Taken aback a little at his opinion being asked for by Master Katarn, Anakin took a moment to consider. On Dantooine, the Shai warriors came nonstop and instantly, as soon as they made landfall. It was a nonstop gauntlet of vong warriors and chazrach, unceasing, but without that much rhyme or reason for how they came for him and the refugees. Ithor was different and more organized, with the vong landing at key points on the herdship. Then Obroa-skai was sort of a mix of the two, with the vong attacking them seemingly at random, until they realized at the end that it had all been ways to get the measure of the strike team before the hammer came down.
This 'Commander Harmae' served Malik Carr, who had overseen Obroa-skai, but also the sneak attack on Eboracum and the Exile's flagship.
So Anakin erred on the side of expecting a little bit more tactical acumen.
"If I had to guess, thirty minutes at most. I'll bet the Commander wants to do one last briefing and then have them attack all sides of the Temple at once."
Kyle hummed and Anakin sensed Aeonid's agreement.
"That's my thought too. Malik Carr's people seem smarter than Shedao Shai's, so let's not underestimate them. They can climb the sides, but the only way in is up at the Grand Audience Chamber at the pinnacle, and there's droids up there to shoot down at them. So they'll want to take the hangar, which will funnel them in."
"Thus the deployment of the Tarantula," Aeonid agreed. "A shame we had not brought another, though it was serendipitous that Amalius had seen fit to store one away."
"Thank him for me," Kyle said. "I'm worried about fliers, though. We can hold out against a ground attack, but if they bring in gunships…"
"We could end up pincered, trapped between assaults from above and below."
Aeonid voiced Anakin's own fear. Seven Astartes, two Jedi Masters, a Knight and a trainee, all to hold out against who knows how many vong.
"There's always the caverns," Anakin said, mostly to assure himself. "As long as we can keep the turbolifts, we can retreat down there and then, well, we can go anywhere."
"While also revealing the caves to the vong," Kyle warned. "Last thing we want is for them to get the bright idea to start poking around for other caves and tunnels."
"Needs will must. I will instruct Tercinax to arrange krak charges around the turbolifts. If - or when - we flee the Temple, we may collapse the exit behind us."
"Best we can hope for." Kyle clapped Anakin on the shoulder. "Go find Tahiri and Master Ikrit. Aeonid and I have a few last things to discuss. Boring stuff."
He knew a friendly dismissal when he heard it. Even with all he'd done - they still looked at him and saw a kid. There was nothing for it. Anakin nodded, reaching out and finding the friendly chatter of Tahiri next to the calm and centered peace of Master Ikrit. Without saying goodbye, Anakin turned on his heel and left Kyle and Aeonid behind, feeling - or perhaps imagining - their eyes on his retreating back.
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He found them both down in the hangar. The evening's humid air wafted in through the broad entrance, a wide slot that revealed the distant edge of the jungle. The whole scene was sort of beautiful. The trees glowed in the low-angle sunlight, golden-red from the sun and Yavin's own light. Though the vong had landed, there were still swooping shapes of crepuscular hunters awing in the sky, fearless of the interlopers. Anakin let the turbolift hiss closed behind him, quietly striding toward the mental presence and silhouettes of his best friend and his mentor.
The leftover shuttles and other vehicles had been brought back into the hangar, arranged to make bulwarks and barricades and leave the outer landing pad open, making it a killing ground for the vong to cross. Along with supply crates, tool chests and shipping containers that once brought foodstuffs, the hangar was a maze of switchback pathways and dead ends. The Astartes' 'Tarantula' turret was set up on top of a stack of crates, giving it clear shots over most of the hangar and most of the outer tarmac. Zal said it was, in essence, two big bolters strapped together with way, way too much ammo.
He'd seen what those bolters could do on Obroa-skai. The vong were in for a shock.
Coming up behind Tahiri and Ikrit, his friend turned to say something to the Kushiban and Anakin found himself stopped in his tracks.
The sunset glow, backlighting her, caught her hair and made it glow like the deep Tatooine desert. Something tightened in his chest and Anakin took a moment to catch his breath.
She noticed him, of course.
"Anakin! About time!"
"Hey-" He coughed, cleared his throat. "Hi Tahiri. Master Ikrit."
"Anakin," the Kushiban greeted. "I sensed your dialogue. The Yuuzhan Vong asked for our surrender, then?"
Tahiri snorted out a laugh.
"Oh yeah, surrender. Sure. I bet they really thought that would happen."
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"I worry, my students. The vong are showing greater interest in Jedi each passing day. We have caught the eye of their wicked warmaster and now they wish for us to surrender."
"They even say that we wouldn't be hurt, just 'educated' in whatever their crazy religion is."
"Graver still," Ikrit shook his head sadly. "The Jedi have always attracted attention from the evil and devious, and always do they want to turn us to their cruel ways. It is a form of victory. The Sith feared and hated the Jedi, but the Sith also always aimed to twist Jedi to the dark side. That way, they can prove that their way is right, and that they are more mighty than the Jedi."
"The vong can't really think that any Jedi is going to go 'oh, sure, I definitely understand why we should sacrifice people to your evil gods', can then?"
"Never underestimate the zeal of the faithful," Ikrit warned. "That misstep has been the downfall of many Jedi."
"Well, they definitely underestimate us." Tahiri patted next to where she sat, on the hard surface of a pressed cast-plast box. Anakin delicately sat down, feeling strangely aware of the placement of his arms and legs. Tahiri thumped heavily against his side, sighing loud and going boneless enough that he had to stabilize himself with a momentarily pull of telekinesis.
"Oof, Tahiri," he said drily.
Then he noticed Ikrit watching them both closely, his fur rippling between red-tipped ochre and serene, sunny yellow.
"Master?"
"You two," the Kushiban said softly. The old Master's presence swelled with love, pride, so much so that Anakin sucked in a shaky gasp. Tahiri sniffed. "My students. You have always made me so proud, and look where you are. Brave Jedi, ready to defend the ones they love without reservation."
"It's what Jedi do," Tahiri managed to say, weakly, her voice watery. Anakin slid an arm around her slender shoulders. Ikrit shook his head, ears flopping.
"It's so much more. You are the start of something new. From the moment I awoke to see your faces, I knew you both would be so much more."
Something about Ikrit's tone sparked alarm klaxons in the back of Anakin's mind.
"Master Ikrit…have you had a vision?"
"A feeling, Anakin. A certainty. Watching you grow, watching you face trials far beyond what young Jedi should…it is a feeling, Anakin."
He didn't know what to say - and by the feelings churning from Tahiri, neither did she - so the three lapsed into silence for a time.
Something more. Something new.
A large part of Anakin preened under his Master's praise. Another part, lingering, holding onto his thoughts with tight fingers, muttered about how of course Anakin had something else to inherit. Something else to live up to. Something else to be.
He put it aside.
"What do you mean, something new? Master Ikrit?"
The Kushiban shook himself from the reverie he'd slipped into. His bright, wide eyes blinked a few times, tinging silver instead of green.
"My Order is long gone. Young Master Skywalker has started the first stones, tumbling down the mountain. His Order - your Order - is altogether new for the Jedi. Luke began it, but you - Anakin, Tahiri - you two I sense will continue his great experiment long into the future. I don't need to be a seer to see that the future holds much for you both, through good times and bad."
Ikrit winked.
"A new Jedi Order, written each new day. Your signatures will be great indeed on it."
"No pressure," Tahiri sighed.
"No pressure," Ikrit agreed, twitching his tail back and forth in the way Anakin knew meant amusement. "Simply the life of a Jedi."
The three spoke longer, veering away from grand pronouncements, instead into simple conversation like they'd shared in years past. Wondering if Sannah was driving Cilghal crazy. What pranks Valin might be trying to play, bored as he surely was. Wondering what it will be like on the Exile's ship - and then Anakin answering as best he can from his stay on Samothrace. Then meandering into discussing - and debating - the merits of the Exiles. Ikrit remained cautious, skeptical, while Tahiri oddly poked and prodded at everything Anakin said.
They'd come around, soon. Very soon. He checked his chrono, seeing only ten, fifteen minutes had passed. Still no signs of the vong, not yet.
He broadened his sense, feeling the flaming presence of the Astartes around the Temple. Varien and Amalius were at the pinnacle of the Temple, watching approaches with long-range and slender barreled bolters Anakin hadn't seen before. Tercinax worked at the back of the hangar, wiring up blocky explosives around the turbolift and at the secret entrances to the caves beneath the Temple that Anakin had pointed out. Aeonid and Master Katarn, both presences dampened, were finally making for the hangar themselves.
And Zal and Sol, the two Anakin knew best of the Exiles, were making their way down as well, from the Audience Chamber and the two Astartes up there.
Through Anakin, Tahiri sensed the young Astartes coming too and immediately, he felt her mood sour slightly, a discordant tone trembling in her mood.
Something was up there, but there wasn't time for it. They could talk later. It was probably disconcerting to see Astartes in their full armor and how they seemed to radiate an aura of deadly purpose, quite unlike Aeonid in his Jedi robes. Anakin could understand that.
"Ah," Ikrit said, tone grim. "Now it begins."
Anakin jerked his head around, squinting, peering out toward the distant jungle -
Movement. Motion. Chazrach, warriors. Far distant, just doll-like shapes, but loping along.
Inhale. Exhale. He stood. Tahiri rose with him.
"Let's do this," Anakin said.
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Like always, the chazrach were sent in first. The reptoids scrabbled forward, dashing on all fours or sprinting along on short legs. No bugs. No plasma.
The Commander had said they wanted surrender.
Solidian's rotary cannon roared, blitzing glaringly bright crimson hyphens of energy back and forth, back and forth, hosing out at the reptoids. They toppled, they tumbled backwards, they fall spasming and howling.
But not many. Not as many as Anakin would have expected. He had his own blaster too, squeezing off careful shots like his father had taught him. Squeeze the trigger, don't pull it. Sometimes, a blaster bolt would glance off a chazrach. Sometimes one would be knocked off its feet, then scramble back up again. And they moved intelligently. Not just howling and running straight for the Temple, but weaving side to side.
Before Anakin could call out the oddity of the chazrach being hardier, his comm popped and Zalthis' voice came through. The young Astartes was prone atop a Lambda shuttle, bolter put aside, instead firing off precise shots from an E11 borrowed from the Praxeum's supply.
"They wear armor."
Anakin swore.
"Crab armor?"
"It appears similar, though it is only a plate over the chest."
"I'll aim for the legs, then," Sol grunted, more blaster bolts scything out from his position. The Tarantula turret remained silent - no sense wasting bolt shells on the reptoids, not when who knew how many warriors there might be.
"The vong continue to innovate," Aeonid observed, also over the comm. The Praxeum's hangar was massive, taking up the entire ground floor of the Temple and close to a square kilometer of total space. Vast and echoing, high ceilinged, with so much space, everyone had to be spread out. Zalthis had his Lambda shuttle. Solidian made a gunnery nest atop a pile of crates. Alebmos waiting in the wings, while Aeonid and Master Katarn were closest to the broad hangar entrance, warded on one side by one of the inner loadbearing walls of the temple.
"No fliers as yet," assured Varien.
"Keep us apprised," Aeonid responded.
The sun had just sunk over the horizon, leaving only the planetglow from Yavin to illuminate the moon. All the lights in the hangar were shut off, to keep the defenders hidden, but flashes of blasterfire kept ruining Anakin's night vision.
"It's going to be hard to see them when Yavin's down too."
Of all the luck, tonight would be a true night, with the gas giant out of view as well. The darkest possible on the jungle moon.
"Can't even use the Force for the big guys," Tahiri griped.
"At least they'll have as hard a time seeing us too," Anakin scratched his head a moment. "Wait, there should be some macrobinoculars around here somewhere. Night vision ones too, probably."
Tahiri patted Anakin on the back.
"I'll go look. I think I know where some are." She whirled off in a cloud of blonde hair, sprinting away on bare feet. He returned his attention to the squads of chazrach and swore. More than a few were lugging along tall clamshell shaped objects, taller than a chazrach and three times as wide. Sol's blaster pinged and glanced off them, bolts cleanly ricocheting away to hiss into the tarmac or slap into unfortunate chazrach to the sides.
Cover.
"Bolters," Aeonid called. "Shatter them." There was a pause, the spitting weight of fire from Sol vanishing, emboldening the chazrach. Anakin tried to keep them wary, not even bothering to aim precisely but instead send as many shots downrange as he could, but there were dozens of the reptoids. Master Katarn added his own, but -
Bolt rounds thumped with the double-concussion Anakin had learned well. One of the clamshell barricades shattered into shards, the chazrach carrying it toppling as the shrapnel ripped into them.
Where were the warriors? The reptoids, even with their new armor and the barricades, were barely halfway across the tarmac. They still had an easy thirty meters left before reaching even the entrance of the hangar itself. Still no bugs, not even thudbugs, which didn't necessarily kill. Razor bugs, sure, but thuds? Anakin had the bruised bones to prove that.
What was their plan? No fliers still, so no gunships, plus Varien would have warned if the vong started trying to ascend the sides of the ziggurat…
The Great Temple of Yavin 4 was arranged as a star. The main structure itself was an octagon with three main massive steps, each containing the inner levels of the Temple. At the very peak was the boxy Audience Chamber, but at each corner of the octagon were the distinctive stepped facades that ran from the ground all the way to the very peak of the structure. These projected from the inner octagon of the Temple quite some distance - creating wedge-shaped spaces at the footprint of the ziggurat. Case in point, the Temple's hangar opened out into one of these 'wedges', hemmed in on either side by the projected 'rays' of the Temple's stepped facades.
And the size of these structures meant that from inside the hangar, they blocked out a serious amount of view of the surrounding jungle.
"Master Katarn!" Anakin called, hurriedly activating his comlink. "The warriors - they could come from the sides! Around the steps!"
He felt Kyle's dawning realization.
"Varien, Amalius, any sign of vong warriors moving? To either side of the hangar?"
There was a pause, then -
"I do not believe so. But from this vantage, with the jungle - I cannot be certain. Yuuzhan Vong armor has proven to confound auspex at times."
"Probably the mineral layers, like how it reflects blasters," Master Katarn added. "Keep watch."
"As you will, Master Jedi."
Tahiri slid back next to Anakin, handing him a pair of goggles.
"Found 'em," she said with a grin.
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Anakin's gut proved right. They had a moment of warning from Varien, who managed to see movement, but not heat signatures, as vong warriors loped from the jungle, using the distraction of the chazrach to make for the temple's stepped rays. Amalius and Varien harassed them with long-distance shots, but their rifles were not made for suppressing fire.
"A warning - some moved slower and seemed more massive."
Aeonid's displeasure was tangible.
"Terminator variant," the Captain declared.
For the first time since the assault began - which Anakin checked his chrono and was shocked to see that barely twenty minutes had passed - though time did flow like sludge in battle - Alebmos spoke up.
"Perhaps it is time I lent my own aid."
Not a moment too soon. Warrior shouts split the air, and from either flank tall, rangy shapes of Yuuzhan Vong came into view. Through his night-vision macrobinoculars, they were ghostly shapes. And sure enough: some were way bulkier and more massive than any Anakin had seen, with high gorgets that covered half of their helmets and thick, overlapping armor plates that made them look like mutant and oversized deep ocean crustaceans.
The chazrach reeled back, clustering to clamshell barricades they'd managed to anchor to the landing pad. A dozen, two dozen vong warriors revealed themselves. Even more.
One raised his hands, cupping them before his helm.
"One chance, Jeedai! Surrender!"
Tahiri loudly laughed back.
"Bolters," Aeonid ordered.
"Allow me," Alebmos insisted.
The Lexicanium strode out, carefree and confident. Anakin watched him, eyes narrowed. Even a Jedi like his Uncle would be hard-pressed to take on two - no, three dozen warriors like this. Anakin certainly couldn't. If they came on, one, maybe two a time? Then, maybe. But all at once?
Carefully, Anakin placed aside his blaster. No good against vong, especially not with their 'terminator' guys. His lightsaber came to his hand and he felt Tahiri unhooking her own. Beside them, Ikrit had one paw over a smaller silver cylinder - his own lightsaber, one that Anakin rarely ever saw. Anakin let out a breath, tensing. Ready. If it came to blows, he would be at the Astartes' side in moments.
"You parlay? Surrender?" the vong who spoke first spoke again, his Basic crude and heavily accented.
"I offer compliments of the XIIIth and Vth."
Sudden wind whipped through the hangar. Every hair on Anakin's body stood on end and he shivered. The Force winced. Alebmos - no, Khotta, now - raised both arms. Papers pasted along his limbs lit suddenly with violet-black light. Tahiri groaned beside him. Ikrit tensed. Anakin watched.
It was like that time on Eboracum. That moment when -
Alebmos spoke words that poked at his inner ear and helices of darklight whirled around both limbs, out-thrust. Bolts of feathered, purple lightning lashed forward, eager, seeking, hungry and Anakin reeled, seeing the world doubled for a moment -
And the Yuuzhan Vong's advanced stuttered. Warriors paused, peered down at themselves. Confusion, visible, swept the vong. Heads turned, looked to compatriots, then down at the molten, steaming surface of the landing pad. Chazrach smoked and twitched in rictus of death. Beside Anakin, Ikrit hissed and fluffed his fur, eyes narrowing. Tahiri gasped.
Not a single piece of Yuuzhan Vong armor was even scorched.
Anakin felt Kotta's shock, even through the Lexicanium's dampened aura in the Force. Slowly, he lowered his arms.
"Alebmos!" Aeonid barked. "What is this?"
"Pariah…" the Lexicanium said slowly.
"Repeat the last," Varien hissed.
"They are blanks. Pariah."
If Alebmos' shock was tangible, Aeonid's was like a thunderclap.
"You are certain? Certain?"
The vong warriors, unscathed, withdrew, retreating back to the protection of the Temple's rays or the clamshell barricade biots. At least they were as uncertain as the Astartes were. None of it made sense to Anakin. Whatever lightning Alebmos conjured, it had freely arced between chazrach like they were magnets. But it slithered past and grounded away from every single warrior.
Pariah? Blank?
"Positive, Captain. I…they cannot be sensed, but I had not suspected…"
Shouts and orders resounded beyond the hangar, but it was clear that despite no casualties among the warriors, that this assault had been blunted. Anakin watched surviving chazrach retreat, watched motion in the distant, dark jungle.
"I think we all need to know what's going on," Master Katarn said. "We have a break, let's not waste it."
Anakin spared another glance at the dead chazrach, still smoking from Alebmos' lightning. Lightning. Rather vividly, stories of Exar Kun's wicked powers that forced Uncle Luke from his very body ran through Anakin's mind. Yeah. They definitely needed to know what was going on.
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Alebmos, helm removed, looked troubled. His lined, weathered face was crumpled into an expression of confusion and deep thought. Aeonid, in what Anakin was realizing was his usual pose, stood with arms folded and jaw set. Zal and Sol perched beside Anakin and Tahiri, the hum of their power armor making his teeth itch. Kyle had one foot up on a charging pack, resting his forearms on his knee. Ikrit's absence was conspicuous - the Kushiban said something about keeping watch over the jungle as he padded away to a far corner of the hangar.
Kyle spoke up first, carefully calm.
"So. What was that, why didn't it work, and why do you look like someone just slapped your kid?"
"Alebmos is a psyker-"
"I can explain, Captain."
Aeonid studied Alebmos, then shrugged his massive pauldrons.
"I incanted-" Aeonid visibly grimaced at the word "-warp lightning. A practice known to many in the Librarius, it is one of the simplest and most efficient shapings of the Warp to slay an enemy. You saw the efficacy against the chazrach. Such should have been the fate of the vong warriors as well."
"But it wasn't, and you said they were - what was it -"
"Pariah," Tahiri helpfully added. Anakin bumped her with his elbow.
"Right. Pariah."
Alebmos slowly nodded.
"I spoke too swiftly. Pariah is…a more loaded word than I should use. Instead, I name them blanks." The psyker rubbed at his chin, then tugged on his oiled beard with armored fingers. "The warp is similar, in some veins, to the Force. Those of more theatrical bent might say that 'all beings with souls have a presence in the Warp'. From my study, I should say instead that the Warp is accessible to all beings of higher order cognition."
"'The Force is created by all living things; it surrounds us and penetrates us, binds the galaxy together.' I see."
"But you can use it as a weapon." Anakin uneasily mentioned. "To directly kill."
Of all the ways the Force could be perverted, twisted in darker ways, it was always to cause harm. The Force was life, just as Kyle Katarn said. To use something that grew and strengthened so much from life to cause suffering at one's own selfish command…
"The Warp is the Warp." Alebmos studied the Jedi present, then his dark eyes flicked toward Ikrit's distant form. "Now perhaps you understand our caution better. The Empyrean lies athwart the material. There are few ways in which shaping the Warp is not hazardous to life."
Alebmos cleared his throat, a sound something like several tonnes of gravel being smashed.
"However, we stray aside the problem. There is a phenomenon known as 'blanks'. These are beings of sufficient cognition that they ought be able to access the Warp, but appear both to the energies of the warp and those who can direct it, to be…absent." He gestured beyond the hangar, toward the charred corpses of chazrach. "As you can see, the energies of the warp are avoidant of blanks."
"Sounds like another point toward the Force and your Warp being the same thing."
Anakin found himself shaking his head, even before Master Katarn was finished.
"No, I still don't think so. What Alebmos - uhm, or Khotta? - did, we all felt how that wasn't the Force. Master Katarn, you've been around plenty of dark side powers, I'm sure it didn't remind you of any."
Rubbing at his neck, the Master had to agree.
"The look of it…yes, like you noted. But the feeling? I don't know if I can describe what that felt like, but I've been around Force lightning and that…wasn't it."
"This changes nothing at all," Aeonid declared. "Unfortunate as it is that Alebmos cannot snap his fingers and defeat the vong for us, we were not reliant on such a theoretical in the first place. The plan remains: continue to occupy the vong until we must flee into the caves, then strike where they are weak until morning. Matters of metaphysics may wait until we are away from this moon."
The Lexicanium rose to his feet, gently touching at totems and scripts festooning his plate.
"Perhaps I cannot snap my fingers directly, Captain, but I was never particularly talented in the cruder, more direct applications of the Empyrean." Self-satisfied pride swelled from the Lexicanium as Anakin probed at Alebmos' strange presence in the Force. "I was and have always been a far greater talent at workings."
"Again, you've lost me."
"Me too," Tahiri muttered after Master Katarn.
"Meteorological reports, I believe, indicate a monsoon some two hundred kilometers to the southwest?"
Kyle stared at Alebmos.
Actually, they all did.
The Lexicanium rolled his neck, popping muscles. "Warp-lightning may not find the vong," he said with a vicious sort of pleasure, "but natural lightning? That should be something else entirely."
"You can do that?"
Jedi could do anything, really - as Master Yoda said, size really did matter not, but to pull an entire monsoon across so many miles? It stretched belief, but at the same time, hadn't Dorsk 81 flung Pellaeon's fleet across millions of kilometers of space, though at the cost of his own life? Tales of ancient Jedi told stories of them moving whole worlds, according to legend. Even his own Uncle had done things Anakin barely found believable. Acts that were just too large to fit into his mind, to feel out the scale of. It was one thing to crumple an AT-AT with telekinesis and a scowl, but something else to tug on the workings of the world like that. Uncomfortably, it reminded him of the sheer, unadulterated power so eagerly at his fingertips at Centerpoint.
"I can. You will see why the path that I follow is called Stormsinger."
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Well into the monsoon season, the jungle moon of Yavin churned with grand storms that rolled off the hot, shallow seas. Few true mountain ranges made it easy for swelling stormfronts to churn and grow with power, dumping inches and inches of rain across much of the moon. Floods rendered some vast spans of the jungle - equivalent to entire continents on other worlds - inundated under many feet of water. In the alternating cycle of wet and dry, 'dry' merely meant that such vast floods did not occur.
The Great Temple of Naga Sadow, now the Praxeum of the Jedi Order, stood tall atop the Ershan Ridge, a broad plateau scattered with dozens of temple sites from the age of antiquity. Close enough to the coast of one of the many shallow seas, on clear days and from the highest point of the Temple, the glittering waters could just barely be sighted on the far horizon. Two hundred kilometers south and to the west, a vast storm brewed over the steaming cauldron of the sea, leeching up heat from the drenched and humid air, billowing and swelling, piling thunderous, fulminous clouds high into the stratosphere. Left alone, the grand storm would swell yet further, until it spanned the entire sea, before slowly easing inland, unleashing its potent fury over weeks.
This would not be its fate.
The storm was needed elsewhere.
Winds whipped. Branches creaked, ancient Massassi trees groaned and swayed. Bloated clouds, bade to miserly clutch their burdens, sped to the command of a mortal mind.
True night settled fully across the moon.