Power and Betrayal: Chapter 27

"You?" Dianiss responded. "Teach me something?"

"Do you believe that there is nothing that you do not know? Or is it just that you believe I know nothing that you do not?"

"No . . . I . . . I don't mean it that way." she responded, embarrassed. "I just don't understand HOW when I can't even feel my own body."

Though she couldn't exactly see him, she had this sense that he was shaking his head. "Dear, silly, little girl . . . you have your mind and your will, do you not? With the Force, what need have you for a body?"

He has a point. she thought.

"Tell me, young Jedi, what IS the Force?"

The question sparked Dianiss to think back to when she was a youngling. She was never very good with tests--especially the ones that involved memorization. "It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates--"

"Stop quoting the texts and tell me in your OWN words." he interrupted.

"Okay. All living things create energy, and that energy connects them to one other. Add all that up, and you have the Living Force. It's the existence of life."

"Very good. Go on."

"Since all life is connected, so is all of the instincts and desires and hopes and dreams of all living things. Add all THAT up, and you have the Unifying Force."

"Interesting. Not entirely correct, but interesting."

"So the primary thing that living beings want and need in order to exist and thrive is an orderly, consistent universe with predictable rules about how things will work. The Unifying Force creates and enforces this as things like science and mathematics, the passage of time, even birth and death. The Jedi are able to bend the rules and alter the flow of the Unifying Force, because we do so in harmony with what is in the interests of all life in the galaxy."

"Again, interesting. Oversimplified, but on the right track."

"Most of my training has been in using the Force for healing, which is mostly about giving living cells energy from the Living Force and a kind of instruction on how to use that energy to revitalize and reconstruct themselves--a combination of both aspects of the Force. Since all living things have an instinct to want to survive, the Force allows me to--"

"Stop." he interrupted again.

"What? Why?"

"The Force allows you?!?" There was a certain contempt in his voice when he said this.

"Well, the Unifying Force is the total will of all life in the galaxy. We Jedi are a part of that will and so the Force gives a Jedi the ability to bend or break those rules in order to help enact that will."

"And here we have the root of the problem."

"What do you mean? What problem?"

"There is the will of the Force, but do you not have a will of your own? Separate and distinct?"

"My will is a part of the will of the Force, but a small part. I'm just one of gazillions of living beings."

"And if you and the Force disagree?"

"It's best to follow the will of the Force. Otherwise . . . bad things happen."

"Even if it means your own death?"

"There is no death; there--"

"Did you not say that survival is an instinct in every living being?" he interrupted. His tone was just on the verge of angry.

"Well, sure, every individual living being wants to survive indefinitely, but across the entire galaxy--across ALL living things--death and returning to the Force is an essential part of life. Without death, beings would reproduce forever until the point where there is nothing but suffering for each individual because of overpopulation. And without reproduction, life is stagnant because there is no new life and no change. Living beings as a whole fundamentally don't want either of those things to happen, whether the individuals realize it or not."

"Interesting. Your masters have taught you well."

"The training for healers includes a lot a philosophy about life and death." she said, thinking again back to her early schoolwork as an Initiate. She never did all that well in those classes, but Master Casei had drilled her on some of those fundamentals over and over until she got it.

"Then you should consider this: If all creatures sing out their will together in a grand chorus, there are some who, quite naturally, sing louder than others. An animal sings louder than a tree. A human sings louder than an animal. A Sith . . . or a Jedi, of course . . . sings out the loudest of all."

"I . . . I think I've heard about something like that. I think it was something my parents taught me . . . before...."

"And you, young one, have the ability to sing out with such power and strength that you would not only drown out the voices of all who surround you . . . but could also change your pitch and compel them all to sing in tune WITH YOU. This was the great harmony that we Dread Masters were able to muster, and this is what I must teach you."

Zarvell was on the one hand grateful that the Jedi had allowed him to use an otherwise unused room in the Temple to sleep; but on the other hand wary of how the Jedi Guard--at Master Jethos' direction--had been so emphatic that he stay on the grounds rather than join Kari in the nearby Kalikori village. They were never rude about it, of course, but neither did they go to the trouble of hiding their presence in the Force. There was no mistaking that they were ... if not nearby, then certainly not far away. He had privacy, but was still under guard.

As he prepared to go to bed, he--as was his custom--meditated on the various possible outcomes of everything that had happened so far and what actions he might take that could steer events into other, more useful outcomes. It was a mental exercise he commonly used to prime his brain into pondering the problems subconsciously--often even influencing his own dreams toward that end, too--which in turn often lead to waking up with new mental insights and inspiration.

The main focus of his current mediation, though, was deciding how much he could safely tell Kari about what has happened, and what is still to come.

The chirp of his personal holo-communicator might not have disrupted his meditation if it hadn't been the unique sound of an incoming encrypted call.

He carefully laid his thumb on the button to answer the call, but didn't press it. Instead, he waited a few seconds for the chirp to change into a different pattern, signifying that the DNA scanner hidden in that button had taken and scanned its microscopic sample of skin from his thumb and identified him.

"She will never be a weapon." he said, verifying his passphrase and voice print at the same time.

At that, the call connected, and the holographic image of Agent Violet appeared. She was wearing something that looked like Jedi robes and a headband.

"Guess where I am, Boss!" she said with a certain exuberance.

Well at least she's not leading off with the usual inappropriate innuendo. he thought.

That's when a thought suddenly occurred to him, and he looked again at the call status. This wasn't an inter-stellar connection.

"Are you on-planet?!?" he said, in sudden disbelief.

"HA HA!!! And YOU said it couldn't be done. Tython! Go ahead and say it now. I'm bloody brilliant at this, aren't I? I even laid my own eyes on that enormous floating maths-shape-thing in the lobby!" She was all smiles.

"All right, congratulations." he answered, STILL with the tone of disbelief. "But WHY??? Surely you could have made contact from deep space."

"Of course I could have, but where's the sport in that? It's your own fault, really, for laying down the challenge in the first place. I just needed the right 'in' to get past the local Jedi cops, and an opportunity presented itself. If you hear anyone mention sightings of some bird named 'Ranos' nearby, don't believe them." she said with a self-satisfied wink.

"Well I do hope you have an actual report and didn't just call to gloat."

"Of course I do. What do you take me for? Aegis went to meet the target the other night. Do we have a code-name for him? Anyway, he's since contacted his pet kitten and she came running back to deliver a very interesting package. I haven't confirmed yet, but preliminary evidence is consistent with it being a holocron."

"That's good news. Confirm if you can, but that's not the priority."

"So what is?"

"He's likely to be writing some code to be inserted into the stasis chamber control systems where they are taking Angel. Get access to that code and analyse it so we can confirm that it does what it should, but DO NOT alter it in any way. Given the current situation, it would be disastrous if this program could be connected to me in any way."

"Got it. It shouldn't be too hard to nick, since I'm already here and all. Talk of the town is that the Jedi have a real live Sith Lord in the house as a 'guest'." Violet made quote marks with her fingers as she spoke the last word. "You do make a fine distraction, Love. You can distract me any time."

Ahh, THERE it is. I knew it was just a matter of time....

"Almost." Tangress said, trying to prove to him that she WAS paying attention. "You said 'almost impossible' just now. So there IS an explanation."

"Well, there HAS to be. I can't just dismiss the hard evidence that's right in front of me."

"But you have an idea."

"What I have is insufficient data. I need to rectify that." he answered, looking away from the holocron and fragments for the first time and replacing them on the table.

Kinnan stood and walked over to a storage cupboard built into the wall of his room and took a small fabric-wrapped object from it. When he returned to the table, he unrolled the fabric to reveal a set of precision tools, each held in their own custom-fitted pockets, and removed only the largest of the bunch--a hand-held cutting device. Essentially, it was a tiny lightsaber whose hilt was just a bit larger than a writing stylus and whose blade, when activated, was only a centimeter long and razor-thin--just thick enough to be visible to the naked eye.

"Now I want you to watch as I do this." he said. "I'm recording the data, but it's important that someone else witness this." As he did, he made a series of hand gestures with his left hand in front of his own face--something Tangress recognized as one of the methods he used to control some of the more complicated functions of his implants.

"Okay, . . . sure." she said, with a tone that betrayed that she was not at all sure about what he was going to do.

"I'm going to make a scratch in this fragment. Pay attention to this part of the holocron as I do it." He indicated where he meant by pointing at the spot with the cutting tool.

Tangress watched that part of the holocron as he used the tool to burn a small mark on the fragment. After he finished, she asked "So what does THAT prove?"

"Nothing yet." he said, looking carefully at both holocron and fragment before continuing. "Now I'm going to do the same thing on the holocron itself. Watch the fragment this time."

"Okay, . . . fine." she said in a bored tone.

This time, when he finished, he didn't say a word. Instead, he just went back to looking alternately at the holocron and the fragment as he had done before. "Huh." he finally said, as if the result was unexpected.

"I just made this scratch on the holocron, right?" he asked, pointing at his recent handiwork.

"Yes."

"And this scratch on the fragment is an identical match to it."

"Looks that way."

"But the scratch on the fragment was already there when we started, right?"

"Well, you made THAT one just now." Tangress said, pointing at the very first one he'd done with the tool. She pointed at the second one that matched the one on the holocron and added, "This other one was there before."

"There are TWO scratches on the fragment, right?"

"Yes."

"I'm going to do it again." he said. "Watch it again, just like before."

"Okay, . . . whatever."

Again, Kinnan used the tool to burn another, different scratch on the same part of the holocron.

"Now, again, I just made this second scratch on the holocron."

"Yes."

"And these scratches on the fragment still match the pattern on the holocron."

"Right, except for that extra one you made first."

"But the other scratches on the fragment were both there from the time you came in."

"Duh. I was looking right at it, just like you said."

There was now obvious frustration in Kinnan's face and voice. "This . . . can't be." he said under his breath. He stared at the fragment for a few more moments, all the while making more gestures with his hand that suggested that he was reviewing the visual recordings he'd just made. "One more time." he said, and made a third scratch in the same area of the holocron.

"How many scratches on the holocron?" he asked.

"Three."

"How many on the fragment?"

"Still four, same as before."

Kinnan was staring into space now, completely lost in thought.

Tangress was looking back and forth at the holocron and the fragment she'd been watching. "Okay, I'm lost now. You're using the Force to do this, I can feel that much, but what's the franging point of using the Force to make scratches on a holocron that match the ones on this fragment of yours?" she asked. "Are you trying to learn to be a forger or something?"

"Anya!!!" Dianiss shouted, and ran over to give one of her former masters a hug--one she didn't let go of for a couple of long moments. "It's really . . . REALLY good to see you."

Zarvell smiled and waited for them to finish.

"Father, it's good to see you, too." she said with a smile, and embraced him as well, if not quite so tightly.

Anya noticed that there was a young man there with them, sitting and meditating so deeply that he didn't even react to their arrival at all. He had a Padawan's braid. "Di, who's this?" Anya asked, gesturing toward him.

"This is my Padawan. His name is Kallisson." Dianiss answered.

"You have a Padawan now?"

"My first one, actually. It was . . . an unusual case for sure. He had the misfortune of inheriting something very dark and difficult to control from his mother, and . . . well . . . I was uniquely qualified to teach him how to control it."

Anya stared right through her, sensing that something about what Dianiss had said didn't quite add up. "Another Sith spirit? Like yours?" she asked.

Dianiss smiled a devilish little smile. "No, not like mine." she said with a tilt of her head that tried--but failed--to look innocent. "I can't really introduce you right now, because he has to maintain his concentration. But he's more than just my Padawan." She turned her attention to Zarvell and said, "Father, . . . I'd like you to meet your grandson."

Zarvell quickly realized the implication, but Anya was initially too shocked to think straight. Instead the words just came stammering out. "His . . . so then . . . are you . . . ?"

Dianiss just giggled at how she'd provoked exactly the reaction she was hoping for. "Yes, Anya. He's my son. And he is, as Father would say, extraordinary."

Continue to Chapter 28 . . . .