Power and Betrayal: Chapter 19

"Master Zedemm!!!" Galadina shouted, with a big smile on her face.

Padawan Zedemm, so named because he refused to accept the official title of Jedi Knight, was outside instructing a pair of students in dual-saber dueling techniques. The sound of Dina's voice, one of his most accomplished pupils, brought a slight smile to his face--but her insistence on calling him Master crowded out the smile with an annoyed look that covered the rest of it.

As was his custom, he simply glared at her wordlessly with a raised eyebrow.

"I need a favor." she said. "A BIG one."

"Oh?" he responded, turning back to watch his students. "What sort of favour?"

"It's my lightsaber." she said in an embarrassed voice. "It needs to be repaired, and even with plenty of spare parts, I just couldn't get it working again myself." She began to open up the small bag she was carrying it in to show him.

"I see. So what sort of repa--" The moment he saw the charred remains of Galadina's Truthseeker, he was stunned.

"Can you fix it?" she asked sheepishly.

It took him a few moments of staring at it, mouth agape, before he could answer. When he did, the words just tumbled out all at once. "Just what sort of unmitigated violence have you visited upon this poor unsuspecting marvel of martial engineering that you could have done . . . THIS . . . to it???"

"I had to use it as an electrical conductor."

Even Zedemm's students had stopped their sparring and were watching the two of them as he gingerly tried to open the outer casing to examine the internal components, only to have the casing crack apart in his hands.

"EVERY well-constructed Jedi weapon is shielded, and this one was no exception." He continued examining the exposed components while shaking his head in disbelief. "Even a direct lightning strike wouldn't have done THIS."

"Well, it was lightning, actually . . . but Force-based, not the natural kind."

"THAT doesn't explain.... What are you not telling me?" he asked, giving her that same annoyed look with the raised eyebrow that he'd given her before.

Dina tugged on his arm as a way of signaling him to bend down enough that she could whisper directly in his ear. "It was your sister . . . with help from your late, great grandfather."

Zedemm looked at the burned-out husk of the lightsaber that he'd designed for Galadina many years ago with a newfound perspective. "I see. So there really are no limits with her, are there? Is she all right? I'm aware of the . . . difficulties . . . this sort of thing causes her."

"She's okay . . . aside from the part where they're preparing to put her on trial for being a Sith."

"Yes, I'm aware of that as well. A dreadful thing. If anyone, it is *I* who owe such penance to the Jedi, not she. Is there anything I can do to assist?"

"Actually, your father is here to handle it. And don't say things like that. You're just as much a Jedi as I am, maybe more. But what you CAN do to assist is fix my lightsaber!"

"You mean reconstruct it. As near as I can see, there are precious few components beyond the colour crystal which can be salvaged. This power supply is not an adequate replacement for the original, nor is this a compatible emitter for the Cordus blade. Small wonder that you were having difficulties."

"So let me know when it's ready." she said, walking away.

"I'll remind you that I've not yet agreed to do this."

"Sure you have." she said with a smile, and kept walking.

Kinnan had heard that Dianiss had come back to Tython voluntarily and turned herself in, so he knew he wouldn't have much more time to prepare, since the first proceedings were already scheduled to begin the following morning.

But the curiosity kept nagging at him until he just HAD to take a break and examine the data that Tangress had sent back, claiming that she'd been successful at piecing together the virtual fragments of the Darth Traya holocron into a whole object again when he himself had failed several times over.

As he initially looked at the data, he just shook his head in disbelief. This can't be right.

In a way, it did neatly explain why her reconstruction simulation had succeeded where his several attempts had all failed: Tangress' fully-assembled object was not the holocron of Darth Traya. He had seen the Traya holocron himself on Malachor, and this wasn't it. It was similar, and even looked familiar to him, but it wasn't the same.

In the reconstruction programs that he'd designed, he had included information about the expected shape and size of the reassembled holocron, and that information constrained the results that the algorithm could produce. It should have made the process complete more quickly, since the computer could eliminate partial results that deviated too far from what was already known about the end result.

Tangress, having never seen the original, built no such constraints into the program that she'd run, and even though her program had taken much longer to complete, it successfully rebuilt the fragments into this similar, but different shape.

This makes no sense. How is this even possible?

It almost made him sorry he looked at it, because now his curiosity was even more piqued than before. He desperately wanted to spend more time analyzing her results, but knew it would have to wait until later.

Since turning herself in on the space station, Dianiss had not been permitted to set foot on Tython itself, but was instead immediately shuttled to a Detention Facility on one of Tython's moons, Bogan. There, she was escorted to a room and left in isolation with a few provisions and basic amenities. It was fairly spacious, at least as jail cells went, but completely primitive except for the handful of droids who were there to see to her basic needs and the holo-communicator built into the floor in one corner of the room. With it, she could receive calls, but not make them.

Security was light, but not without reason. First, she HAD turned herself in voluntarily and was being cooperative--Zarvell had impressed upon her the importance of doing this. Second, as near as she could tell, she was the only living thing on Bogan for hundreds of kilometers other than plant-life, so there really wasn't anything or anyone there that needed to be protected from her, nor was there anywhere else on the moon's surface for her to have any reason to go to except right here where she already was.

No one was permitted contact with her except via holo, and Kari had wasted no time in using it to check in on her from Scoundrel's Vacation.

"Hi Annie!" Kari said, obviously happy to have gotten in touch. The images of both her and Zarvell appeared above the holo-emitter.

"Hi Kari! Hi, Daddy!" Dianiss responded with a smile, then added, "Where's Dina?" She was equally happy, if not more so, to hear from them after being here all by herself for a while. It hadn't really been THAT long, but Dianiss was not the type who liked to be alone.

"She already went down to the planet ahead of us." Kari answered. "I guess she had things to do and people to meet, what with being a big-shot High Council Jedi Master and all now. But I'm more worried about YOU. They said they took you to Bogan! Are you okay over there?"

"I'm fine. They brought me a few personal items and a change of clothes that I had stored at the Temple, plus some food that..." Dianiss made the sort of face one makes in the presence of a foul odor. "...I'm sure it's very nutritious. It's peaceful here, though. I can walk outside. The view of Ashla from here is amazing!"

"Yeah, their orbits put them pretty close to each other for the next couple of days." Kari observed.

"The weird part is how quiet it is here--like, deep space quiet. Kind of eerie, actually, but at least it's still better than having to wear the cuffs. Those things were making me feel a little woozy."

"Oh." Kari responded, then suddenly realized the implication of what Dianiss had just said. "OH! Ziveri'Sinya?"

Dianiss nodded her head. "They suppress ME, but not so much HIM. It throws the . . . I guess you might call it the 'balance of power' . . . between him and me out of whack. But I'm better now."

"Well," Zarvell interjected, "I'd advise you to get a good night's sleep. The trial is scheduled to begin tomorrow morning, and the Council of Reconciliation has already appointed a Master Justice . . ." Zarvell paused to look at a datapad before adding, "...a Master Gwyniss Jethos. Do you know her?"

Dianiss didn't say anything, but even through the translucent-blue holo image, Kari and Zarvell could see her slump over a bit as if she'd been punched in the gut and begin rubbing her forehead.

"I'll take that as a yes." Zarvell eventually responded.

Dianiss nodded. "Yes. I know her. She's one of the top Jedi Diplomats now, but she's also a teacher of Jedi healing, and a VERY strict one."

"Oh, I used to HATE her." Kari interjected. "She was always shooing me off the Temple grounds like she thought I was some kind of spy from the Dark Council."

"When I was a Padawan," Dianiss continued, "...she was always polite to me, but at the same time, she was always really cold and aloof to me--made it clear that she didn't think I belonged in the Jedi Order. Nothing I ever did was good enough for her."

"I'm sure you're just exaggerating." Zarvell said, with skepticism.

"No . . . actually I'm not. After I passed my trials, Master Casei came to congratulate me and made a remark about how Master Gwyniss had been wrong about me. When I pressed her about what she meant, she admitted to me that Master Gwyniss had argued strongly against adopting Zed and me into the Jedi Order after we'd been brought here from Voss.  And apparently she's still never changed her mind about that, even after all this time."

"I see." Zarvell said. "Then we shall have to tread carefully. Still . . . try to get some sleep. Even if you'll be little more than a spectator, it's still important that you make a good impression."

After her brief visit with Zedemm, Galadina had been excited to find out that Kendsel--the closest thing she had to a best friend--was actually also here on Tython.

But that excitement had been utterly deflated when she'd met with Master Annanya and heard about what had happened to him. Now, entering the room and visiting him for the first time, she wasn't even sure what to think.

"He's mostly incoherent." Anya had said. "But one of the few clear things we've heard him say is asking for you. I'll leave you two alone." And with that, Anya left, taking Colonel Corvioch with her.

When she entered, she wasn't sure how to react. It was hard for her to find him this way, lying on his side, almost in a fetal position, shaking every so often in a way that suggested being frightened rather than being cold.

His presence in the Force was scattered, like that of someone who's asleep and experiencing a nightmare. The difference, in this case, was that there was definitely something powerful afflicting him.

No . . . torturing him. The nightmare just kept playing, repeating over and over again, and his mind couldn't escape it.

It surprised her to hear him, in the midst of his quiet mumbling, say "Dina?" very clearly.

"I'm here, Ken." she answered. As she knelt by his side and took his hand in hers, he seemed to relax a bit . . . and calm down a bit.

She felt grateful that being there with him was helping to soothe his spirit, especially since she was completely convinced that what he was going through was ultimately her fault. He'd always been gifted at seeing shatterpoints and always been especially attuned to things that involved her. And knowing what she'd done on Malachor, and what she and Lord Zarvell were still planning to do . . . the complexity of it all must have been too much.

In an ironic way, it was encouraging. It probably meant that it was going to work...all of it. But at the same time, if that weren't the case, then maybe poor Kendsel wouldn't have had to have been subjected to this.

Or, it could also mean that Kendsel was already suffering as a consequence of some part of it going wrong.

"I know that you're seeing something . . . I've experienced it too. Parts of it, anyway." she whispered to him.

She reached out in the Force to touch his mind and connect with him on a deep, spiritual level. She could feel that he welcomed her presence . . . had even been anticipating it . . . hoping for her to come.

As she did, the cacophony of feelings and images came tumbling down on her like a tidal wave.

It didn't make much sense at first . . . jumbles of memories that weren't her own--and weren't his either. She'd experienced shatterpoints through him in this way a few times before, but this was radically different. Normally, there would always be some unique, fixed time and place that anchored it all together. That which comes before the moment is vague, but becomes clearer as the moment approaches. After that moment, there would be the simultaneous existence of an astronomical number of possible futures--possible results that would come, depending on what action was taken in that one special moment.

But there was no such singular moment of focus. Instead, something that seemed like a shatterpoint moment would shift and bend, move forward and backward in time, and cause ripples in possible future events that cascaded into . . . she wasn't even sure what to call it. The best thing she could come up with was cracks, or maybe wounds in the Force.

But the will of the Force was there, powerful and strong. It was the ultimate source of all such insights. She tried to take in the 'big picture', for lack of a better term, of this maelstrom of images, and realized something horrible. There was a future off in the distance, one that was almost inevitable, that was utterly, completely black. It seemed too much to contemplate, but it was as if the entire galaxy had been rendered completely lifeless. And absent that life, the Force itself . . . was gone.

But there was hope, however slim, and the Force was trying to show her the way. In order to avoid this catastrophe, the Force was being made to accept being seriously wounded in order to prevent all life--and by extension, the Force itself--from being destroyed. The path to do this would be dangerous and difficult. There were thousands of otherwise-minor shatterpoints involved and any one of them, improperly navigated, could end up dooming the galaxy to the void. Even if properly navigated, some absolutely horrible atrocities would still have to be endured.

She experienced a moment from her own future, and it immediately left a powerful impression on her. She walks on the surface of a planet. She had been there only days before and it had been a thriving metropolis with billions of people. But now, in this moment, it is barren. An entire planet once full of life is rendered gray, dead, and lifeless.

Lifeless, down to the smallest microbe.

But the most horrible thing about it was that when she tried to trace backward through these images to a time and place where it could be prevented, there was no shatterpoint. There was no way to prevent it. An entire world would perish in an instant and it was absolutely, mathematically, certain to happen because events that had already occurred had set this possible future in stone.

And at the same time, that horrific distant future where the entire galaxy had gone completely dark held that same sense of already being set in stone because any opportunities to prevent it had already come and gone. None remained.

It's no wonder this is torturing him. she thought. All life in the galaxy is crying out to prevent this catastrophe, and won't stop.

Yet, somehow, there was still a tiny, . . . strange, . . . glimmer of hope.

She left the memory of the dead planet to step back and take in the grand tableau of time as it appeared here, and discovered that the dead planet upon which she walked in her memory of the future wasn't even the first to suffer this fate. There was another, and just like the one she would walk on, this other planet's fate was also already sealed and completely unavoidable. In fact, it seemed to have suffered this same fate hundreds of years before.

The answer was somewhere in between. Those two planets were connected.

In fact, the answer, she was certain, was in the maelstrom of shifting moments of key importance--the shatterpoint that refused to be a single point.

She examined it as best she could. It was chaotic, even fluid. It was almost impossible to understand any of it.

Almost.

There was something there that was familiar. Actually, no, it was more like the opposite of familiar.

There was a moment. It was a moment when she was on Malachor. But then, she wasn't. In this moment, the whole of the universe existed, except it was without her. She remembered with a shiver how the Sith's barrier had, to her senses, made the entire universe disappear. But here, it was the opposite. It was SHE who had disappeared, cut off from everything around her. When she returned, she was no longer the same person.

There was another moment nearby, one that was very similar, yet distinct. She was there, a part of the living universe, and then suddenly she was gone. Again, she returned, but was not the same.

And then there was yet another moment, much like the first two. As before, she was there, and suddenly she wasn't. Unlike the other two moments, she returned unchanged, except that she had been touched by something very powerful, and very much a creation of the dark side.

She tried to trace a path in her mind of how she got from one moment to the next, and found that she could not. In fact, because of the swirling, changing nature of these memories, she couldn't even pin down what had already happened, what was still to come, and which was which. The more she tried to follow it, the more difficult it became, even becoming painful to concentrate on it.

She felt Kendsel's presence there connected to her, also trying to make sense of it all with her--even trying, unsuccessfully, to guide her--and he was feeling that same pain even more intensely.

Rather than continue to add to his pain, she instead tried to examine something else that piqued her curiosity: this powerful, dark something that she had been touched by (or would be touched by, it was hard to be sure).

This, of all the things she experienced here, was the one thing that made a little bit of sense--mostly because she believed that she'd already gotten a glimpse of it--or the effects of it at least--herself.

That it was powerful and created by dark side sorcery was obvious. The remarkable thing was that this . . . she didn't know what to call it exactly . . . this technique carried with it the potential to cause very serious damage to the Force itself. It was an abomination of the sort that the Force refuses to allow, no matter how powerful the practitioner.

And yet, as she investigated it more closely, she suddenly came to a shocking realization.

Though it wasn't performed by her personally, it was something that SHE had created--or perhaps it was more correct to say the she had CAUSED it to be created.

But, despite the damage it could and probably would cause to the Force, it was something that the Force itself wanted her to create.

As she experienced this sense of desperate longing from the will of the Force, the maelstrom of thoughts and feelings and memories and light and darkness dissolved away for one brief moment, revealing the closest thing to a true shatterpoint within the very deepest center of everything that existed. It wasn't a time or a place. It was a thing.

It was a holocron.

But it wasn't that simple: it was a holocron that didn't exist.

As quickly as the maelstrom had receded, it all returned again in a giant wave of chaos, surrounding her (and Kendsel) and defying any attempt to scrutinize any one part of it in detail.

But that quick flash of meaning was just enough that she started to understand.

There was a holocron, and despite the fact that it didn't exist, it had somehow become the single most important thing in the entire universe, and the Force was trying to show them how to make it exist, even though the path it showed was incomprehensibly complex.

Slowly, she allowed herself to drift away from these chaotic memories and from Kendsel's mind, returning to just being . . . herself again.

Still holding his hand in hers, she felt terrible grief over what she'd just experienced. "I'm so sorry, Ken." she said quietly. "I had no idea the stakes were so high. Try to rest. I'm going to do everything I can to fix this as soon as I can."

As she released his hand, she could feel him tense up and moan as if in pain. Even though she could release herself from the chaos and horror of his visions, he remained trapped in them.

"It's okay. I'm still here." she reassured him.

She didn't know what she could do for him in the long run besides see this whole thing through. But in the short term, she did know of ONE thing she could do.

She stood briefly and then sat down on the edge of the bed next to him. Staying close to him, she gently removed her belt and boots and laid them on the floor. Then she loosened and removed her Miraluka mask--which for her was just a pair of metal plates that covered her vestigial eye-sockets--and placed them next to her belt.

"I'm not going anywhere." she said softly to him. "But I do need to you to move over a little."

Slowly, he rolled over onto his back, allowing her to get under the covers next to him and lie down with her arm over his chest, holding his hand, with her head resting on his shoulder. Even though the infirmary bed was not very wide, Dina was short and slim enough that she didn't take up much space.

And there with her lying next to him, comforting him, he soon drifted off into the first restful sleep he'd had since before the confrontation with Rasmus Blys. In a matter of minutes, Dina was also sound asleep next to him.

Continue to Chapter 20 . . . .