Part 2 - Kashyyyk ~ Chapter 4: Surprise Party

In all the time they had fought together, laughed together, unlocked the subtle mysterious of the Force together, shared their loneliness and shame, triumph and happiness, Giddy had often warned Renora about the dangers of thinking. Renora’s chief complaint was that most sentients didn’t seem to do enough thinking. Giddy’s chief complaint was that Renora seemed to do too much.

Hurling towards an avalanche-stricken mountainside at a speed that would’ve put the Millennium Falcon to shame, Renora wasn’t thinking of anything. In fact, she had forsaken all conscious thought the moment she had decided what she was going to do, and willed away all traces of cognizant thinking the moment she decided how she was going to do it. Now she was doing it the way she thought she was going to do it, except now, she wasn’t thinking about the way she was going to do it at all.

Master Giddy always said the Force had a sense of humor. But nobody ever said anything about it being confusing.

Renora threw herself at the quivering mass of pungent soil, ducking into a forward roll and landing prone in the sweet-smelling dirt. Her eyelids fluttered as her concentration shifted into a depth that seemed to reach beyond depth; her breathing slowed and her pulse ceased its artillery barrage in her ears.

Both hands clutched at the slightly moist terrain, but Renora couldn’t feel the grains that rubbed against her palms. She had entered a location beyond all physical feeling, where the perceptions gathered by the physical senses was irrelevant, immaterial. The only relevant entity was the Force. Renora slipped deeper into its embrace.

Giddy dived behind a massive, lichen-dripping tree, felled by the elements ages before the Empire. She squinted at her Padawan with horrified fascination, noting the uncharacteristic calm of Renora’s features, the alarming stillness of her small form. Her eyes were shut gently as if she was in a deep, peaceful sleep, and her mouth was no longer set in its customary, determined, cocky line. And it wasn’t moving at fifty million klicks an hour, for that matter.

Renora let out a low moan, and the ground stopped shaking. Giddy glanced around sharply, half-expecting to see something, but not really certain what it was.

Stillness Plummet erupted.

That was the only way Giddy could think of it: an eruption. It was as if a massive rancor had reached its mighty fist through the center of the cliff face and forced it into the sky, spraying incinerated bits of rock and charred stormtrooper armor throughout the blinding green of Kashyyyk.

Master Gidrea was glad it only lasted a few seconds, because she wasn’t sure she could’ve survived any more than that. She gasped, realizing that she had been holding her breath. Peering out from behind the fallen tree, she blinked against the gritty clouds of ashen dust, then gasped again.

The Imps were gone. Instantly cremated by the eruption. With sickening dismay, Giddy realized that the ground was charred and barren up to about ten meters from where she was crouched, blackened and dead.

Renora was staggering to her feet, shaking her head as if dazed. Gidrea leapt over the foliage and ran to her Padawan, reaching out to steady her.

“Are you alive?” asked Giddy.

“No,” croaked Renora.

“Good. Then maybe you can tell me what the kark you were trying to do.”

“Master,” Renora began, breaking into a fit of deep coughs. “That’s not…that’s not helping anything.”

Giddy smiled. “But it’s not hurting anything, either.”

Renora nodded, gesturing towards the ground. Giddy helped ease her into a sitting position.

“I told you I’d do it someday,” Renora said quietly.

“Do what, Padawan?”

“Kill every single Imp in the galaxy without batting an eye.”

“You didn’t do that,” said Giddy, folding her arms over her chest. “Your eyes were closed.”

The two of them laughed, Renora’s easy laughter broken by another coughing fit.

“Next time try to do it without making a mess,” said Giddy.

“Never criticize anybody else unless you can do better yourself.”

“What holo-show did you snatch that one from?”

“Everything I know, I learned from my one and only Master in the entire galaxy. And Gilligan’s Planet.”

“Oh, that explains everything,” Giddy replied.

“Master, sarcasm doesn’t suit you at all.”

“Then I’ll try to avoid it at all costs.”

“If you do that, I’ll try to avoid you at all costs.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“Yes, I would.” Giddy paused, her brow furrowed in concern. “I was afraid this would happen.”

“What? That I’d try to avoid you at all costs?”

“Stop changing the subject.”

“I wasn’t aware that we were discussing a subject to begin with.”

“We are now.”

“And you call me bossy.”

“It’s my job to be bossy.” Giddy sat down next to her Padawan. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

“I’d like the back story first. What’s with the dark side stuff?”

Giddy sighed, gathering her thoughts. “This is not going to be easy for you to hear, Padawan.”

“Then I need to hear it.”

“I was hoping to avoid telling you for…a while.”

“You did. Now tell me.” Renora smiled slightly to soften her words.

Master Lightsky sighed again. “The Empire came to power about twenty years ago, but Palpatine had been experimenting with the dark side long before that. When he finally had the power and the influence -- and the credits -- to start bringing these experiments to life, he started investing a lot of his time into doing just that. And Palpatine discovered how to create a being who was infused with dark side energy.”

“Oh. Sithspit. Oh no.”

“Oh yes. About seventeen years ago, a batch of clones who were extremely mentally stable but very strong in the Force were produced and readied to be trained for combat. But there was one fatal flaw in all of them: they were not inherently dark side beings.”

Renora nodded. “I read about this. Something having to do with Darth Bane’s ascendancy. All beings have a tendency to gravitate to the dark side or the light.”

“Right, Darth Bane would be a great example. But Palpatine’s clones were inherently light side beings until they came in contact with something that triggered the darkness within them. So Palpatine had all of them destroyed. Well, almost all of them.”

Blinking like she had just stepped into a harsh shaft of pure sunlight, Renora opened and closed her mouth a few times, but nothing came out.

“I knew about the project and went to Coruscant to try and see if I could sabotage it. I took two of my friends, Jedi who survived Order 66. We had hoped to bring back the body of the Emperor. Instead, I brought back a baby.” Giddy chuckled.

“I’m a clone,” said Renora. “A clone.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t earn you any sympathy points, my young Padawan.”

“You of all people should know that I don’t need sympathy points, Master, when I have my insufferable charm.”

The two were silent for a moment.

“Are there more like me?”

“No. They were all destroyed.”

“How many…uh…how…how many…”

“Eleven others.”

Renora nodded.

“Are you all right, Renora?” Giddy asked softly.

“Yes, Master.”

Another silence.

“So what happened back there?” asked Renora.

“The crystal made you draw on the dark side. If you hadn’t used it to kill all those Imps, it would’ve destroyed you from the inside out.”

“Am I in danger?”

Giddy shook her head. “No, the effects have worn off. But that doesn’t mean other things can’t propel you to draw on the dark side. You must be mindful.”

Renora laughed softly. “Mindful of the living Force.”

“And the way the Force is living.”

“It’ll be much easier to get to the purple rock now.”

“It will. Then the only hard part will be figuring out how to destroy it.”

“Can’t we just let Chewbacca stomp on it or something?”

“No, the crystal is unique. The dark side can influence the creation of organic life. In a sense, the rock is organic, because it was formed by the random conversion of DNA from some being in the galaxy.”

“Weird.”

“Weird is a point of view. And according to my point of view, this is weird. All Sith magic is.”

“Then only the person with the matching DNA can destroy it.”

“Right. And the Sith never destroyed him or her because if they did, they’d destroy the crystal. It needs that person’s life energy to exist.”

“He or she must be a really strong person to project such darkness. Do we know who they are?”

“‘We’ being used as a collective pronoun here?”

“‘We’ is always a collective pronoun.”

“You’ve learned well, my young apprentice.”

“Hey, I’m the one who taught you that in the first place.”

“No, we don’t know who it is. But we can find out.”

“So the plan is to grab the crystal, analyze its DNA traces, find the being it matches, persuade them that it’s dangerous, avoid Imp detection, get the DNA holder to destroy it, and be home in time for dinner?”

“Of course not, my very young apprentice. We’ll be home in time for lunch.”