IN THE SHADOW OF THE MANDALORE
A look at SCI-FI Friday and into the world that is STAR WARS. It's 2300 years BBY, there's an unsteady truce, and a young Acolyte is trying to make a name for himself.
Setti Hassdruba A Miraluka Jedi
CHAPTER FIVE (part One)
THE TRAIL BEGINS
WITH THE PAST
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He was a Miraluka first, and a Jedi only by tradition. Setti Hassdruba didn’t feel as if he’d been drawn into the Order when he was a young man — mine was a life chosen, as so many liked to claim — as he’d always felt this life had been thrust upon him. It was expected of him, one could say. He’d been born into the Force and trained from birth, like every other Force Sensitive Miraluka, but not every Miraluka wanted to joined the Order. He’d never been given that choice. His family fought against Naga Sadow during the Great Hyperspace War five thousand years ago, and had helped shape the Jedi Order.
During the years of The Long Exile, it may as well have been the story of his own family, he thought, sensing the irony. His family’s history stretched back more than five hundred generations. His grandsires had served as Grand Masters — almost a score of his ancestors — and if Setti felt his place as Grand Master was more in keeping with the family tradition rather than his own abilities, well, with age comes wisdom and the realization that the Grand Master’s position was not an honor frivolously bestowed. It wasn’t the political appointment he’d assumed it was in his youth. The politics of the job was more of a supplementary result of the Order being inextricably part of the Republic.
He entered the Council Chambers on Taris and sat in the chair reserved for the Grand Master. It was a comfortable fit, he thought, spinning the chair around so that he could stare out of the large floor-to-ceiling windows. Lowering the cowl of his robe, he ran a gnarly hand through his long, white hair. It wasn’t as dark as it once was, but at least he still had it, he thought, thinking about the receding hairline his father had while he was still a young man. Remembering how his uncles teased his father brought a smile to his lips.
Putting his feet up, he accepted a cup of Golani tea from a service droid, letting his mind free itself from the clutter of the long trip. Coruscant had its comforts as much as it had its problems, and it felt good to get away from it once in a while. He’d forgotten how much freedom space travel allowed a man. Had he known thirteen years ago what it meant being Grand Master, he might’ve relinquished the honor to someone else and traveled the Outer Rim as a Rogue Jedi. He sometimes envied others for the freedom they held on to.
His old Padawan had held onto her freedom selfishly.
There was so much that needed to be done, and so many details needing his attention. Sometimes, he thought it was too much for just one man, and then he’d remind himself that the Jedi Council was there to help. There were no wars for him to conduct, and no invasion fleets to ward off. But there was the False War — The War That Was No War — a war which had been going on for more than two hundred years. There had always been pockets of activity over the years, and he supposed there always would be. It sat like a weight on a man’s soul to think that the Sith had won the war and forced the Treaty of Coruscant on the Senate, all but destroying the Jedi Order — so much so that now they controlled more than half the Galaxy and were always looking to take more.
But the Jedi had returned.
For what little that’s worth.
All the same, it felt good to have a moment alone he thought, as he took the data pad a proto-droid held out to him. He looked at the droid staring back at him with its bright, illumined discs for eyes as if it was expecting a reply, and glanced down at the pad again.
Just when I think it can’t get any worse, it does.
“Are you expecting an immediate response?”
“What other determined response would there be, Grand Master?”
“What if you tell them you found me napping and didn’t wish to disturb me?”
“But that would be incorrect, Grand Master, as I’m communicating with you right now. You have the message.”
Setti sighed. “Yes. I do, don’t I? Why don’t you tell this Senator — what’s his name?...Theophrasta Elan…,” he read off the data pad. “Tell him that I’ll call him after I’ve gathered all the facts. Then, and only then, will I determine what course of action needs to be taken.”
“Yes, Grand Master.”
He sat back in his chair gazing out at the urban landscape where it spread out before him. The towering super-structures stood up as if they were bas-relief sculptures. The subtle grey detailing of the different buildings helped him determine distance and space — the degrees of grey telling him where the sky met the horizon, and the clouds met the sky.
Taris skyline before the Jedi Civil War.
Born not just sightless, but without eyes, Miraluka were empowered with Force Sight from birth. Everything Setti saw was a negative inversion of vision from what he understood it to be for other Species. There were no vibrant colours in his spectrum; he distinguished his surroundings through the subtleties of grey and sepia emanating from everything around him, both physical and inanimate. There’d been moments in his life when he’d wondered what it would’ve been like to have been born sighted — like others species — to have real eyes; to weep real tears. But then, how could he explain the delicate shades and shapes of different worlds as he saw them?
One has to accept what the gods give you, his mother told him when he was a child, and though he might not have understood what she meant at the time, he thought he did now. That’s because age gives a man the luxury of experience — it introduces him to different perspectives in art and culture — and brings an understanding of life in its many guises. It’s easy to understand why Force-sensitive beings were thought of as gods by the ancients on distant worlds. Seeing the world with no sight makes for a different perspective I’m sure, but there’s something about the concept of colour that fascinates me.
Drinking his tea, he let his mind search the Force, seeking out a disturbance he hadn’t felt in years. No, not a disturbance, he thought, more of an agitation. It was like the mild ripple of an ocean wave against a distant shore — indiscernible but for the relentless lapping on the beach.
He blew on his tea. Living with the Force had taught him patience. He knew if he searched long enough he’d eventually find whatever it was that touched him when he’d first arrived. He knew what it was he was searching for; the data-pad had shown him that much.
He turned his attention back to the city, watching as mammoth cranes and their robotic extensions scaled the sides of stratoscrapers as if they were a slow moving growth. He asked himself if it was wrong to think of progress as a disease? The rebuilding of Taris had been going on for more than sixteen hundred years, and would probably continue for another five hundred. It was more than simple progress for the Tarisians: it was a matter of survival. He’d seen other planets die slow, wasting deaths for countless reasons, but Taris, though it’s growth was slow, plodding, and methodical, had been given a second chance.
And why shouldn’t they rebuild it, he thought? Taris’s population had fallen to less than six billion after the Sith invasion more than a millennium ago; more than thirty billion beings had died during the planet’s bombardment at the hands of Darth Malak during what they were calling The Jedi Civil War.
Those numbers seem incomprehensible; unfathomable even.
The Sith left the sky a poisoned, sulphurous monochrome, with sibilant gas clouds that dropped acid rain as a by-product. A man didn’t go outside without his re-breather, and so most of the population retreated to glassed-in Stratas, rebuilding, restructuring, and reforming themselves, as much as the city. At least there, the air was clearer; it might be stagnant, recycled air, but a man didn’t need a re-breather on the lower Levels like he did outside.
At present, according to the latest Galactic census, the population was close to sixty billion — more than it’d ever been in the past. Setti adjusted his dalath — the loose fitting ornamental headband he wore across his empty sockets — as he thought of what the past had to offer the present, if not a promise of the future.
Offer’s probably not the right word. If there’s anything Tarisians need to learn about the past, it’s acceptance, and maybe a little forgiveness, he told himself.
Taris wasn’t the first world to fall to the Sith — and it wouldn’t be the last he was certain. It was one of the sad realities of life he wanted to say, but to whom? Who was listening to what the Jedi had to say these days? There was no incoming intel from spy networks along the borders; the Bothans and the entire Bothawui System were under Sith control. There was no way of knowing what the Dark Lords of the Sith Council were planning. The fact the drone satellites were active again was disturbing, but discovering there was a Sith presence on the planet, was even more so.
There’s never just the one thing with them, is there? There’s always a threat of something more permanent with the Sith.
He’d never come across a living member of the Sith Council — and because of that fact he felt they were more than elusive; he found them mysterious in their obscurity; indefinable in their abstracts, and cloaked in vagaries. At one time, the Jedi had numbered in the hundreds of thousands, ranging from one end of the Galaxy to the other. But those days were a memory now. The Sith had seen to that.
Now, we’re less than ten thousand.
As he looked out over the city drinking the last of his Golani tea, he saw a smear of dark smoke on the horizon and looked back down at the data pad. There was a new note to go along with the report of the drones.
At first count there were ten thousand civilian injuries, with an estimated three thousand dead, but he knew those numbers were sure to climb. It was the vessel’s name that caught his attention. The name of the downed civilian vessel was Archangel.
Fitt owns that ship.
Fitt’s name was well known to the Jedi Council — not because of his shipping line, or the Guild he helped create — but as a collector of Sith artefacts and ancient holocrons.
Setti didn’t believe in coincidence; not when those coincidences involved a Sith and a collector of Sith artefacts.
And not when that man’s son is a Jedi Padawan...
One Sith is all it takes.
One Sith is all it takes…