Troublemakers: Part 1 - Tansarii Point Station - Chapter 3: The Fading Darkness

When the darkness dissipated, and the wounded haze cleared from her misted vision, the first thing Renora noticed was that she was still alive. The next thing she noticed was that being alive hurt. She groaned softly, clawing the grass with a pain-clenched hand.

“Did you make it?” Giddy’s voice crackled through the comlink.

“No,” grunted Renora, struggling to roll over onto her back.

“I always knew you’d be one of those Force ghosts who never shut up.”

“You shouldn’t talk about yourself that way,” Renora muttered, trying to pull herself into a sitting position but falling back against the densely packed earth.

“My hearing still works just fine.”

Propping herself up with her good arm, Renora shook her head to clear it, face reddening with the small exertion. Her deep, inquisitive brown eyes suddenly widened almost comically, the redness in her face fading with the surge of a white pallor.

“What…What the…How did…” she stuttered, sitting upright.

“Didn’t I tell you not to complain about something unless you can do better?” Gidrea asked wryly.

“Yeah,” Renora strained through gritted teeth, easing herself up until she was standing on two wobbly legs.

“Then you shouldn’t complain about people who can’t communicate properly.”

“You think I’m a poor communicator? I thought you knew me better than that.” The Tanc Mites still lurked in their epic ugliness everywhere she looked, but with one subtle difference compared to her last memory of them. While Renora was very much alive and in very much pain, the Tanc mites’ condition was directly reversed.

They felt much less pain than she did, because each and every one of those insectile monstrosities was dead.

“Better than you know yourself, perhaps,” said Master Lightsky. Her voice was very soft.

Renora looked around her, turning in slow circles to take in everything from as many vantage points as she could. Stretching her awareness through the Force, Renora touched each life form as gently as possible, nudging the oversized insects with a tender trace of Force energy. She moved past their primitive, predatory impulses and into the portion of their brains that regulated life, consciousness. She checked for the delicate but powerful synapses that fired continuously to create life. They were silent. She cast her awareness into the small, simple hearts that pumped alien blood through the insects’ veins. They were silent.

The Tanc mites were dead. Gone. Renora gasped.

“Padawan,” said Gidrea, her voice an odd mixture of compassion and authority that Renora had heard from her Master only a few times before. “Padawan.”

“I’m still here, Master,” bit Renora, her response sharper than she had intended.

“Come to the hangar bay.”

“Yes, Master.”

=========================

“I thought you told me that bravery was for people who prefer dying heroically over living heroically,” said Renora, looking at the small ship behind her Master’s robed figure.

“Yes, I did,” said Gidrea, pulling her hood forward. “But knowing you, I’m going to regret that in a moment.”

Renora gave her Master her patented “Who, me?” look, and folded her arms over her chest. “You came in that?” she asked, pointing at the broken-down, rust-streaked craft.

“No, I walked,” Giddy answered.

“No wonder it took you so long to get here,” said Renora, stifling a grin. “But if you came in that thing, you’re braver than I thought.”

“If I’ve ever done anything in my life to convince you that I’m brave, then I’m a worse example for you than I thought.”

Renora laughed, but her Master could tell that it was forced. Her apprentice was badly injured, and it wasn’t just her wrenched shoulder, cracked skull, and numerous cuts and abrasions that ran across her arms and legs--she was afraid. More afraid than Giddy had ever seen her.

“Let’s get you inside the ship,” she said. Renora nodded gratefully and followed Gidrea up the boarding ramp.

=========================

A ration pack and a short dip in a bacta tank later, Renora lounged in one of the surprisingly comfortable seats in the back of the small med bay. A new, refreshingly clean robe was draped over the back of her chair, and she was reading from a handheld data pad. Although her head still pounded slightly, the situation seemed to have improved. But she was still shaken. Renora shuddered as Giddy entered the room and took a seat across from her apprentice.

“I heard that during the Clone Wars, Master Kenobi went through fourteen robes in three years,” said Renora.

“I had nothing to do with it,” Gidrea laughed.

“Oh, sure,” Renora grinned evilly.

“Is that you’re way of thanking me for the new robe?”

“Possibly.”

“Whoever taught you manners should be impaled on the end of a lightsaber.”

“Do you want to do it, or should I?” They both laughed.

“I always thought that if the Jedi just got rid of those robes, it would make things a lot easier.”

“The robe is part of the look,” said Renora. “Part of what makes a Jedi who she is. It’s all about humility, something I know all about.” She tried to smile but failed. Gidrea didn’t need the Force to tell her that her apprentice was deeply troubled. She tapped her booted heal against the floor in the uncomfortable silence that followed.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I can’t read minds,” Giddy said finally.

Renora stared at the scuffed floor below her boots. “Then how’d you know I was disappointed?”

Gidrea was silent, waiting.

Heaving a deep sigh, Renora raised her head slowly, as if all the burdens she was forced to bear since Gidrea found her as a young child, always in hiding but never in fear, had finally caught up to her. She seemed older, and infinitely more tired, than someone of her years.

“I think I touched the dark side today, Master.”

Gidrea nodded.

“I guess I was…too set on the goal. I forget to concentrate on the means. I looked around…and they were all dead.” She laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “All the bugs.”

“I sent you on this mission because you needed to learn that taking a life -- even as small and ugly a life as a Tanc mite’s -- disrupts the balance of the Force. Do not become so preoccupied with what you’ve set out to do that you forget what it means to be a Jedi.”

“I’m guessing it’s not the robe,” said Renora, a ghost of her familiar, easy smile playing across her face. “But the Sith wear robes, too, Master.”

Renora leapt backwards, almost toppling over the wide-backed chair, as Gidrea thrust her blue blade in front of her apprentice’s face.

“What was that for?” asked Renora, right hand clutching her lightsaber. “It’s amazing I’ve kept my sense of good humor after being around you for so long.” She straightened her tunic indignantly. “And I haven’t lost any arms.”

“If I were a Sith,” said Gidrea, “I would try to kill you right now. Even though I’m tempted to do that anyway, I won’t, since some of what Yoda taught me did manage to sink in a little bit, unfortunately. But a Sith would focus only on the goal, and see that scaring you half to death is the quickest way to get you to understand what I’m trying to tell you. I focus on the method, and see that the quickest way isn’t always the best way.” She shut down her lightsaber and clipped it to her belt.

“So does that mean I get to live?” asked Renora, easing herself back into the chair.

“This time.”

“You know, I think I like you better when we’re separated by half a dozen light-years of vacuum.”

“I’ll remember that next time you’re in a room full of carnivorous bugs.”

Renora nodded. “Where are we off to now?”

“To visit an old friend.”

“Didn’t you say that last time?”

“Am I going to regret it?”

“I’m just not so sure I can survive any more visits from old friends.”

Dark business

Ganumedis felt as if he ran into a wall – if that wall would be moving at high speed towards him and, worse, would be invisible. As he struggled to get some air into his lungs and get up from the stain-ridden pavement, a figure emerged from the shadows and loomed over him.

A shock went through him, followed by a desperate fear, as Ganumedis recognized the man.

Count Dooku.

“So that’s what the infamous Ganumedis Moonshade looks like when he’s slammed to the floor by the Force,” Dooku spoke, his dark timbre filling the narrow, deserted street. “Do you realize who you’ve just killed?”

Ganumedis had trouble formulating his reply. “What – I never – killed?!”

“I know you’re supposed to pretend you have no idea what I’m talking about, that you don’t know anyone had been killed, and that you’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Dooku said impatiently, “but really. Did you think you could deceive me?”

Managing to stand up, ready to make a run for it if an opportunity presented itself, Ganumedis slowly recovered his wits. “Certainly I did not wish to deceive the esteemed lord Dooku. I had no idea my target would be of any importance to such a great man as yourself.”

“She was not,” Dooku said offhandedly, “but our scheduled meeting was supposed to get me close to that annoying Skywalker kid.”

“I humbly apologize, my lord,” Ganumedis said with a bow. He hated the next part. “If there is some way I can recompensate you for this...”

Dooku frowned and narrowed his eyes. “What do you suggest?”

“Well... A man of my profession may be able to attend to certain matters that the leader of the Seperatists is too busy to deal with. Cleaning up the trash, so to speak.” He looked up expectantly. Ganumedis had tried to avoid getting caught up with politics, but this might just work out better than he had expected. Perhaps he could become the Dark Lord’s personal assassin.

Count Dooku paused for a moment, and said, “I accept your offer. This is what I want you to do...”

***

Killing Jedi is not hard, Ganumedis thought while searching for his target. It’s just a matter of disrupting their tranquility by randomly killing their companions. And of course, staying very, very far away from their cursed lightsabers.

Using the enhanced telescopic sight on his sniper rifle, the assassin quickly found his target. General Skywalker and his Togruta apprentice appeared to be discussing their assault strategies with the commanders of their clone troops.

Ganumedis was impressed by the qualities of his newly acquired rifle. Count Dooku must have realized his skills and had gladly donated the sophisticated weapon to the assassin, after an easy job to assess his abilities and trustworthiness. It was the weapon Ganumedis Moonshade had been working for these last years – and now it was his as a gift.

No more struggling for credits, he thought joyfully. This job is so much better than being a hitman for lowly thugs. This will be the day that my career finally takes off. I just might become more infamous than creepy Aurra Sing.

Don’t get ahead of yourself, thought Ganumedis. First I have to complete my current assignment. To kill Commander Skywalker – the Hero With No Fear.

Remembering his own advice, he pointed the crosshair of his sniper telescope at the clone commander that stood next to Skywalker and Tano. Like some of the other troopers, the commander had his helm under his arm and appeared to be joking with the two Jedi.

The crosshair closed over the forehead of the clone soldier. Ganumedis’ finger trembled only slightly as he held it against the trigger.

In his head, he replayed his plan; first the clone, then the apprentice, and when the emotions explode within him, the assassin would kill Skywalker.

Steadying his breathing and his trembling finger, Ganumedis relaxed and enjoyed the quiet moments before the slaughter.

Now, he thought.

A boot kicked Ganumedis’ face hard before he could pull the trigger. The assassin fell sidewards, reeling with the impact, and the telescope buried itself in his eye. Pain shot through him and he screamed.

“That was not necessary, soldier,” a stern male voice said with a hint of amusement. Opening his eyes – one of them seeing only flashes of white – Ganumedis instantly recognized the man as General Kenobi. He was surrounded by a squad of clone troopers, weapons pointed at the terrified would-be killer.

“Sorry, General,” said the clone soldier next to the overwhelmed Ganumedis. “I figured that blasting the cursed bastard through the head would have been worse.”

“True,” replied the famous Jedi.

“I’m so glad you’ve stopped me,” Ganumedis lied, trembling. “Count Dooku forced me to try and kill General Skywalker. I swear I tried to resist, but what can a man of my limited skills do when confronted by a Jedi? Particularly when he threatened to kill my family...” He didn’t know if it would work, but he was willing to go far to save his own skin.

And besides, the Republic would at least keep him alive. He wasn’t so sure about Dooku.

“What family?” another voice came from the other side. “You mean the poor parents you killed barehandedly?” Ganumedis was surprised to see General Skywalker himself walk into the circle of soldiers. How could he have gotten here this quickly?

A coldness filled his heart. Dooku set me up, he realized. But why –

All other thoughts left him, for the explosives hidden in the advanced sniper rifle that Dooku had given him, detonated at that instant. Ganumedis Moonshade, the assassin with more skill in reputation than in actual killing, was disintegrated on the spot.

Some distance away, Asajj Ventress grimaced. She let the remote control fall to the floor. It was hard to see through the smoke, but it appeared the explosion had killed only the annoying killer and one or two clones. Skywalker and Kenobi appeared unharmed.

Next time, she promised.

With a sigh, the bald Dark Jedi fired up the engines of her starfighter and flew away.

The Event

Every hundred years or so, an event occurs.

I used to think of an “event” as something you scrawl in the little blank spots on your calendar, so the accusatory stare of those maddeningly perfect squares would be blinded by personal demand. I used to think of an “event” as something you dash out with illegible candor in the obnoxious white corners of a sheet of paper, only to forget, an hour later, what was so important that you had to violate such purity. An event was something you talked yourself into, tried to talk yourself out of, suffered through, and pretended to enjoy. It was familiar, it was amusing, and it was normal.

But that’s not an event. That’s an occasion. Our species just loves to punctuate our existence with concave imprints of satisfaction that we call “occasions.” It makes us feel worthy of engraving our footprints into the stones of time, and gives us the illusion that our 0.213019231 seconds on this planet have actually meant something.

Then an event happens, and we all wake up. Or we all fall into the dreamless, underwater sleep of someone gone mad. Everything slows, including our memories and the memories of them, and time itself seems to morph into something otherworldly and irrelevant. Nothing is as it was before, but everything is the same. Only we’ve changed.

The funny thing about an event is, when it’s all finally over, memory and motivation blur and kick into a kind of frenzied chaos, perhaps trying to make up for lost time. Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing on the day of the event, and it becomes the source of some sort of odd pride to have watched the proceedings unfold in real time – as they were occurring, as the suffering was dealt.

After that’s over, the event mutates from a rallying cry and a pity party favor to a taboo of simply unimaginable proportions, where it seems as if it’s forbidden even to think about the occurrence, for fear of appearing unsympathetic, or even worse, unpatriotic. With the geyser of emotional response that clustered at first sight of the event crushed beneath a layer of inexplicable silence, impotent rage mounts and stirs beneath civilization’s enforced quiet.

No one can withstand the noxious, overpowering fumes that are popular revolt. This white-hot fury grabs us, smacks us around, and propels us into some kind of brainless conflict that everyone gets tired of, sooner or later, and we’re all back to being heroic zombies once again.

Each generation has one. In fact, some speculate that a generation, as a concept, actually begins when one of these events occurs. And each generation loves to talk about it. In fact, some speculate that the amount of talking each generation does in regards to their event is directly proportional to their age, and inversely proportional to the age of the next generation.

However, once in a very, very, very great while – a while so great that the mathematicians wince at the very mention of it – an event occurs with such abject juiciness and destruction and horror that we just can’t talk about it. It’s not that we’re too stunned to play the matching game involving words and emotions; we love to express things in terms we can comprehend, even if the concept can’t be comprehended, and the words are incomprehensible. The reason we can’t talk about it is that there’s no one left to do the talking.

No one expects one of those biggies to happen in their lifetime. I think back to when I was a kid, all the times I sat around the Com-Set terrifying myself with tales of alien invasion and life on Earth and the twisted creatures of pure, unharnessed evil that lived within the recesses of the bitter blue of that planet. One time in particular, when I was only about fifty or sixty years old, I stayed up a few hours later than I should have, when the really good stuff was on. I remember it so well because it was then that I first experienced the true horror of the imagination, and an infinitely small glance at the harbingers of death, constructs of pure, liberated horror, from the confines of the blue planet: pale creatures with long, thin arms, vile, irregular growths springing from the tops of their heads, gaping, cavernous mouths and tiny chins. The worst of all were the eyes: small and resonating with a pitiless, soul-sucking screech, a reflection of the deepest nightmares of the soul.

When word of the contact first reached me, I didn’t believe it. Nobody ever believes this kind of stuff when they first hear it. We wait and wonder all our lives about when they’re coming, what they look like, what they’ll do, and when push finally comes to shove, nobody wants to be bothered. We’re afraid to embrace everything that ever mattered to us and everything we claim to stand for. We’re afraid of what will happen. We’re afraid that we might be able to understand and accept the consequences of our own actions.

After some amount of prodding and cajoling that later gave way to threats and counterfeit promises, freshly minted on the assembly line that we know so euphemistically as business, my manager persuaded me to go out and cover the occasion. At that time, it was not yet an event. It was an obstacle, a barrier between me and my peaceful solitude, a general pain in the brain. Eventually, I decided to just go ahead and do it, and my unenthusiastic acceptance soon turned into a sort of joyfully vicious desire to prove that everyone on the planet had drank from the cup of idiocy except me.

When I got there, I saw how much of an event it truly was. At least, somebody seemed to think so. There were hover-tanks crawling with infantry soldiers bearing viciously sophisticated Oxmer-Strang 117’s, and the heavy air crackled with the sharp tang of ozone produced by the aircraft overhead. Harried officers with rumpled uniforms grasped their heads in the pure anguish erupting from the volcanic incompetence of their underlings, shouting into their coms with mounting fury and reddening faces. Their eyes shown with that age-old combination of fear, pride, and uncertainty that somehow transforms itself into the magnificent seizure called “glory.” It was all so clichéd that I didn’t know what to do with it. Actually, I didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

I could hardly hear the rasping of my ragged breath or the fierce, insistent thudding of my twin hearts against my ear drums, but I recognized the familiar fear produced only by the unfamiliar. It was like I was in a holodrama that was so bad and so true that I just wanted to change the channel. But I was completely powerless to do so. I was stuck here in the middle of structured chaos, and it scared the hell out of me.

So I stood there for a couple of minutes, not really sure what I was not really sure about, until something the professionals like to call “professionalism” started to kick in and I decided to take the cue and start moving.

Besides the fact that this was definitely not normal, there was something different about the whole thing that didn’t really dawn on me until days after the contact. When the brain is overwhelmed by the facets of its own debilitating logic, the subconscious hijacks the whole operation and tries to run with it. I must have subliminally picked up the oddity, the wrongness that seemed to surge through the particles of the air like some tangible, untamable force. I just didn’t know what it was.

Now I do.

We did a lot of waiting that day. And then we waited the next day. Then we waited for two more days. I was camped outside the projected landing site during that time that was somehow less than real. Most of my free hours were spent in a tent or in my ground-car, reading and rereading the dispatch received from our proposed visitors, as well as the various, inevitable interpretations being spouted by everyone and their mothers.

Our top scientists finally stopped tripping over themselves and the luminous splendor produced by their invulnerable, scientifically methodical eminence long enough to decode what the aliens were saying. Well, they got the words right, but not the message. I guess they get credit for trying, but I hope they’ll excuse me if I don’t give it to them. I still have a copy of the thing in my pocket. It goes like this:

[Transmission frequency: 018219284/B8]
[Encryption frequency: 00212]
[Date received: 22/4/4887]
[Begin transmission.]

Greetings from the citizens of Earth! For centuries we have awaited the moment that would allow us to communicate with and befriend the beings of another planet, to share our light and our lives with them, and behold the wonders of their own culture. Part of the beauty of being alive is sharing our differences and marveling in our similarities.

We on Earth believe that each creature created by God is valuable and serves a purpose. We live by that ideal, and we take what is granted to us by our Creator to lead us to an existence of liberty and freedom. That is why it moved us to discover that you embody the principles of peace and freedom with a passion to mach our own, when you sent your ambassador to our planet to lead us to your marvelous civilization.

We will be arriving on the planet Jantoris in one week’s time. Our group of scientists, historians, and scholars look forward to the opportunity to share with you.

[End transmission.]
[Date accessed: 22/5/4887]
[Decryption frequency: 21200]
[Transmission frequency: 018219284/B8]

And that was that. And that seemed fine, and would’ve been fine, if not for the fact that we never sent any ambassadors to Earth. We’d given up on the prospect of life on Earth a few hundred centuries ago. We never told them the name of our planet or where we live or what we have to share. All of the transmissions we’ve tried to tightbeam the planet over the years have gone unanswered and presumably unnoticed. Likewise, we’d never received any transmissions from the planet, let alone one that could be run through a decryption machine and allowed to drizzle out to the public in less than twenty-seven hours.

This was worse than madness. Madness, at least, had a definite cause, a tangible premise. This was a random act of terrifying benevolence that nobody knew what to do with, not intellectually and not emotionally. Intellectually, there could be no logical response, because there was really nothing to respond to. Emotionally, we hovered between the nauseating, liquid shock that reaches a tentacle up through the muscles in your face right after they yell “Surprise!” at your birthday party, and total, utter, inexpressible fear.

Five days after the transmission from Earth, they came.

It was right out of a holodrama, plucked from the fevered imagination of
some useless dreamer and laid before us with a stupid grin. They came in their spaceship, a small, shiny affair that looked like it had been spit upon with the dry, heated discharge of a thousand politicians. I was expecting some blue-clad astronaut to walk stiffly down an ascending ramp, globular helmet in one hand and laser gun in the other. Actually, that was the only part of the whole thing that didn’t suffer a cliché.

There was a ramp, and there were humans striding down in deafening silence that resonated within the concrete and echoed against my ribcage. Beside me, a young soldier with terror-hollowed eyes slid his sixth finger toward the trigger of his OS-117, prompting a tensely muttered “Steady, steady” from his sergeant. The sight of the spaceship molding his face into an almost comic grimace, the young man nodded.

By now, the figures had made their way down the ramp, and stood in a neat line in front of their small craft. I was crouched behind a rear wheel of my ground-car, feeling giddily safe despite the fact that anybody within a 100-klick radius of me could probably blow me to bits without a word. Or a thought.

The Earthlings were dressed in simple brown robes that looked as though they were sewn from the rough, tangled sacks that some peasant girl would toss in the dirt. The robes concealed their vacant eyes, but shamelessly displayed their tiny chins and cruel mouths. I shuddered, covering my mouth with my hand and shutting my eyes.

I wish I would’ve covered my ears. Maybe I could sleep at night if I would’ve. I doubt it. My nightmares have never had such bitter inspiration.

They began to sing. I didn’t understand their language, but I didn’t need to. I could comprehend the words, I could feel them, touch them as they brushed against the tips of something I know I’ve always had, but never knew about. They sang, and they sang, and I listened and I felt.

—light, sweeping and bare, the honesty and purity of liberated thought, the transparent darkness of indestructible enlightenment—

—light and the joy of its glow, the birth and the death of worlds, of men, of love and fury, of pain and casual slaughter, no more—

—from the light they came, and the light took them—

—the seeds of conscious thought, and selfish thought, and autonomous thought were the seeds of death, and pain, and the light of darkness—

—bound together as one, the light, the light!—

—sing of the light, rejoice in the light, embrace the light and the light will become not of this world, but of your world—

—gone are the agonies and eerie solitude of the one thought—

—gone are the tears—

—gone is the pain—

—the death is gone—

—the man is many—

Then they killed them. The clueless officers who yelled orders to their equally clueless subordinates, the nervous young man with his finger raking across the trigger of his weapon, the sergeant who had called him to restrain his bloodlust, while trembling with the same, hastily-concealed fear, the reporters with their greedy eyes, the politicians with their outstretched hands, and the crowds who had gathered at the gates, always wanting something, always using any event or any occasion as an opportunity for more, more. They killed them all, and destroyed their instruments of war, and didn’t even move from where they were standing. They killed them all, and destroyed their insignificant thoughts, their small, dumb personal quests, their crazy fantasies and weird, half-formed illusions, and didn’t even remove the hoods that covered their eyes.

Those things, those monsters, those humans killed the unnamed bastards I used to pass on the streets, the faces I knew but never knew, and never wanted to give a second glance, except to make sure they weren’t after my wallet. They crushed the markets with their swindlers and the banks with their moneylenders. They murdered the men at the corners who sold you stims and spice.

Those things, those monsters, those humans leveled the Temple of Artinopio, a monument to some war that happened a thousand years ago, which ended when one side won and the other side lost, and some beings died and some beings lived. They decimated the Caves of Xinvo, where a mythological goddess with an unoriginally unpronounceable name supposedly descended from the heavens and fell into a sleep-beyond-sleep, and she dreamed of what were to become the Jantoris, a magnificent and altogether backward society of murderers and lovers. The writings of some of the most brilliant and most depraved minds that ever existed were reduced to dust by these things who spoke of liberty and purpose. And the humans never even read them before they passed this most critical judgment.

I spend the days where I find myself when I wake up. I spend the nights where I planted myself in the daylight. I don’t think about fighting back, but that’ll come. It always does. We never learn. We never learn.

They let me live. They want me to live. They want me around as an example of what it’s like to be lost, forgotten, abandoned. Confused.

They want peace. They want compassion. The preservation of life. The beauty of the natural way. The holy light of forgiveness.

I don’t give a damn about life. I just want to choose how I die.

Then I’ll know that I’ve lived.

Then I’ll find true beauty.