Author's Notes:

Back in 2005 (Sept) I posted the first of what I called KOTOR Excerpts. I was working on a novel length work based on the game. I had contacted someone linked to LucasArts in the book section, and they were frantic for it. However as I do not have an agent, I could not send it to them directly.

In the game when I played it, the Echani was just a name; no background of the race, nothing beyond the weapons marked as manufactured by them(I know, because about a week after starting my game, I looked them up on Wookiepedia, which had the same dearth of data. So I took it upon myself to create them. When I wrote my own work The Beginning, which spans about four decades of history before the Republic existed, I went so far as to create their homeworld, religion, and even jokingly created a native bird named the Millennium Falcon.

As we all know, Atris in TSL is Echani, and everyone now assumes they all have platinum blond hair. When I wrote this TSL had not come out. As Danika is a redhead, I surmised that there are some racial variations, as we have here on Earth, so she is from another group of people on the same planet with red rather than blond hair. So sue me.

Of course my attempt has been overtaken by events; another author published first. So I posted the book in it's entirety over at Lucasforums under the same screen name. Now I'm letting all of you see it...

Knights of the Old Republic:

Genesis of a Jedi

Archivist's Notes:

Little is known of the past of Padawan Danika Wordweaver. As a Jedi Consular, she spent most of her life traveling and the Jedi Civil War kept her constantly on the move. Her life before the war is only a brief Republic service record before she joined the order.

What was found out before her disappearance and possible death are fragmentary, and the records of this volume came not from those Republic files, or her own words to others, but rather from the two droids that accompanied her during the Sith war, T3M4, and HK47.

Danika was reticent about her past in person, and it wasn't until long after she had left on her last mission that what is now known of her early life came to light.

She had left the droids mentioned above on board her ship the Ebon Hawk which was recovered last year when the Jedi Exile Marai Devos returned from Malachor V. Perhaps she felt through the force that it was soon to be her time to join it as all of us do when we pass on. She and the Ebon Hawk vanished into the depths of space on that mission. Her fate was still a mystery six years later. Yet when I spoke to the droids just last year, they suddenly answered my questions. To quote HK47, it was now time to 'tell this tale'.

As the most recent of the archivists of the Jedi Academy, it fell to me to record for posterity what that luminary accomplished during those hectic years.

What you will read below is a compilation of many people's views of what happened during that time. Danika herself, while reticent with people, was eloquent in speaking of her past when it was recorded by her droids.

Masters Bastila Shan Jolee Bindo, Jedi Knight Juhani and Padawan learner Sasha Ot Sulem of the order, each left personal records of that time.

Carth Onasi, Canderous Ordo Mission Vao Zaalbar and others had already recorded much of what happened during that first fateful mission. I am especially indebted to the late Komad Fortuna, first adviser to the Wookiee of planet Kashyyyk, and Speaker-elect Shasha of Manaan. They gave me information that has never appeared in the records and which truth to be told, would have embarrassed Danika if it were known earlier.

Note: The record of what occurred aboard Leviathan came to us when Leviathan was captured not long before the war ended. No changes have been made in that record. Events from aboard the Star Forge came via survivors' recollections, and the use of Soochir by the members of Ebon Hawk's crew.

Jolan Lasko, Archivist.

A patriot is a person that has found a cause worth fighting for, worth living for, worth dying for, and worth killing for.

The same can be said of the Fanatic.

Memories

I have never understood why the place I came from should be important to those that speak to me. I spent a decade of my life smoothing any accent from my voice, but still everyone asks where I come from as if it delineates who and what I am. Really! Human kind lives of over 70,000 planets, and with the non-human members of the republic, there are over a hundred thousand planets that people can live on.

I think people wonder where you are from so that they can fit you into a neat cubbyhole when dealing with you as a Jedi. They want to know in the hope that with this information, they can predict your actions by what is the norm for your home world.

Yet one of the very first things a Jedi learns is how to set aside her past and what her parents taught her in those brief years before they join the order. That is part of the reason the order usually chooses children between three and eight standard years old for training. Old enough that they can understand speech, yet young enough to have few preconceptions, and almost no prejudices.

In my case as you know, where I was born and where I remember being born are two different things. I have wrestled with that since the War, and finally came to a decision.

I am no longer who I was, so my memories are all I have. I will die true to them.

Very well. Since I will be long dead when this record is released. I will tell you what I remember, HK47. I was born on Deralia, a world still known to 90% of the Republic for it's beautiful beaches and soft gentle rains.

But as the force has both a light and a dark side, so does my home planet. Where I came from on the Equatorial belt, it's known for the varied homicidal wildlife, and the hunters that come from throughout the galaxy to hunt them.

Deralia was settled only because someone was greedy. The Tokara Company survey ship that discovered the planet was supposed to do a survey of the entire planet. Instead they surveyed the Northern Hemisphere, saw the lush islands of what is called the Cerulean Sea, and immediately thought of all the resorts that could be built there.

I have looked at the Republic Colonial Office specifications since then. One year is supposed to be devoted to cataloging all of the life forms present on every landmass above a specific size, and verify that they are not overly dangerous. But five hundred years ago, someone on the ship, or perhaps from the Company itself greased a few palms and registered the planet five months after it's discovery. They sold settlement rights to the Chartered Deralia Company, which opened colonization on the only major continent at the same time that Tokara began construction of the hotels my home-world is best known for.

I also checked the Jedi Archives concerning the now defunct Tokara Company. This wasn't the first or the last planet they had 'forgotten' to check. Their headquarters on Coruscant closed abruptly when someone crashed a cargo ship full of Magnesite on it, blowing it and five square kilometers of the planet to dust.

Obviously an unsatisfied settler.

The colonists that came were the usual crowd, the disgruntled, those wanting more elbowroom, the ones hoping that this would be better than where they were from. There were 150,000 in that first wave.

By the end of the first planetary year (425 standard days) 5,000 remained on the main continent. Most died, for nature has no pity, and a human being is frightfully fragile. About 20,000 of those survivors had taken one look at what they were facing, and wanted no part of it. Those that fled make up the servant class at all of those luxury hotels.

The others stayed. They learned the best way to kill a Thorm, a predator the size of a medium bulk transport. How to keep the herbivore called a Wambor from stepping on your home. A useful skill when dealing with something that Thorm prides hunt.

How to gather Katkin eggs without ending up in the food chain. How to gather the seeds and pollen of the Julot, which has the local nickname of the Harpoon tree.

They thrived by being faster and meaner than any species on the planet. A child isn't even allowed out of the Kraal until she can identify every known danger, and can shoot well. Considering the possible dangers, I discovered that what I learned as a child was more useful in combat than what I learned in Boot Camp later. We're known for being self reliant, and innovative. My mother died before I even knew her. She is just a large face holding me in my memory. Father remarried when I was three.

It wasn't all danger. I remember riding Tirlat, running in the fields of Tuza grain, climbing the Jumja trees to pick a fresh melon. We also raised a few head of Kora, a local herbivore that isn't too large, only five times human size. We also raised Bezek vines that were one of our two primary ways of earning hard credits.

Bezek is classified as a Grade 2 hazardous plant because the pollen is psychoactive, and causes anything with a sense of smell to charge blindly in to get a better sniff. The flowers have poisonous needles which close on anything that enters them. The animals are sucked into the now closing flower, their fluids drained and the husks are expelled to become fertilizer.

There are only three animals that can safely get near a Bezek vine when in flower. The Goothi bird, which fertilizes the seeds, the Wambor, which eats the vine, and is too big to get stung, and man. But only a fool walks outside when the flowers are in bloom without a breather mask.

The nectar is sold to perfumers, who make some of the most sensuous perfumes known to the galaxy. The fruit is pressed for wine considered an aphrodisiac.

But we're best known for the hunting and the guides that take you to your prey. There are over fifty predators, ten herbivores, and sixty varieties of aquatic wildlife classed as Galactic grade game, meaning that when you hunt them, the odds are even as to who gets taken as a trophy even with body armor and military grade heavy weapons.

I think that is why the Jedi didn't discover me earlier. Jedi don't hunt, and view killing as something that sometimes must be done, not something to do for sport. They rarely came to our planet as judge because our local laws are draconian when it comes to crime. We have few if any civil violations because we are taught from birth to be bluntly honest. This may sound odd but survival depends on telling the truth and cooperation. A lie cannot protect you against nature, only a friend can. A man known for being self-serving, or lying doesn't get help when he needs it. There is no colder way to die than to call for help when in need, and not get it.

By the age of five, I was going out on hunts my father led to help with children that some brought with them. Finally as a guide myself.

Most of the children were stuck-up prigs who looked down on me because I didn't know their planets, music, actors, Etc. They had inflated views of their own importance because they did know these things. There were times when I could have been a bit slipshod, and someone would have ended up dead. But even with my irritation with them, I never allowed them to come to harm. They survived to go home, either with the trophy their parent had taken, or, sometimes, with the coffin that held that person's remains.

Some however gave me a deep yearning to go to their home-worlds, to see sunrise on Correl, to watch the waves of Chanderal smash into the cliffs at a speed unrivaled by any flying machine. My father always laughed at that. He hadn't even been as far as our capitol city of Morla.

I was seven when I picked up an unusual hobby. The Echani Sword dance.

An Echani prefect had come along with his children, Bortu and Kalendra. Bortu was three years my senior, Kalendra was 8, a year older than I. They spent a month on the planet hunting, and I was hired to be their companion.

One evening ritual I was entranced by was when they practiced with ritual brands and swords held in both hands. I had learned the use of the Panga, the local bush knife; I had even learned the practical use of one as a weapon. But the way I had learned to use a blade was as dull as a dark room in comparison. It was like comparing dancing and just shuffling your feet.

Bortu was a master with his twin blades, placed in the same sheath, they were drawn, a stud pressed, and there were two separate composite blades. When he practiced, he used a pole with the bark still on it as his target. He would stand before it, then would leap into movement, the blades whipping from all directions, taking strips from the bark without touching the wood beneath.

But Kalendra was magic in comparison. She carried a ritual brand, folded into a single sheath, as were their twin swords. But when drawn, and the stud pressed, it snapped out, making a twin bladed staff. When seen side by side, Bortu's movements could be seen by me to be mechanical. Kalendra danced as if the blade and the target were partners.

I have heard since I left my home that the Echani know nothing of war, that they are dilettantes, their fighters too hard to handle, their energy weapons underpowered, their ships too lightly armored, their swords too difficult to master.

To all their detractors, I say this; their warships are faster and more maneuverable than any in the galaxy. Almost fighters writ huge. Their fighters are like juvenile Tirga needing only a gentle hand to guide them to wonders few craft can achieve. Their hand weapons are light, but the Echani have always believed that a weapon is a needle, not a fire hose. A calm cool shot can kill any enemy with an Echani blaster, and can pick a target small enough that it looks like a miracle.

War was not a bloody bludgeoning struggle to the Echani; it was a game where those who knew the rules won. Pilots are trained to maneuver as violently as possible in simulators, and only those that can do so consistently go on to a real fighter craft. Their ground troops learned to shoot the target, not the landscape.

And the blade...

The blade is taught to all; after all it it part of their religion. But only those who know their own bodies can attain true mastery. They call blade fighting the 'dance of death'.

After watching them for a few days, I asked to try my hand at them. Bortu refused, laughing. He had been practicing since he was six, and still didn't feel he had mastered the twin blades. He didn't expect someone a year older to even scratch the surface.

But that evening, Kalendra drew me outside where no one would watch. "Dance with me." She whispered.

"Dance?" I felt uncomfortable. Dancing was something the old people did, and it was linked to passage rites. She must have seen my thoughts because she laughed a light tingly sound that caused my blood to race a bit.

"If you wish to learn the dance of death, I must see you move. Stand as I stand, move exactly as I do, and I will judge whether you can learn."

She took a stance with one foot advanced, hands even with her waist, and I matched it. "When I move a hand, you must move the opposite. She pushed her right hand forward. I measured the same distance with my left. "Excellent. Once you have the hands down, we shall add the feet. Now begin."

She moved, and I matched her, slowly shifting first one hand then the other out and in, up and down. "Now two hands." She moved one up and out, the other in and down.

She stopped, picking up two Bezek stakes about as tall as we were. Again she began moving, my motions matching. Now I saw the ends of the staffs as blades, my motions intercepting hers. She began moving her feet, stepping right and left in a circle with me at the center. But when I also moved, we became moths circling a central flame.

She began speeding up, and I kept up with her as long as I could. I missed a block, and she tapped my shoulder. She stopped, stepping back, and dropped the staff on the pile.

I was crushed. I had failed. But the next evening she was back. She had trimmed two staffs down, and tarred the ends. "The worst part of learning to sword dance is learning to keep your body out of the way. Every time you see tar on you, picture a wound."

Bortu had decided that he wanted to actually learn to hunt, so he spent most of his time out with the others. That left Kalendra and I alone. During the next weeks we were inseparable. During the day we hiked the nearby hills, where the hunting had cleared the major wildlife, thus limiting our dangers. In the afternoons when it was hot we would go to the soaking pool below the house, and lay back against the bank where it had been tiled, just relaxing in the cool liquid.

In the evenings we practiced the sword dance. I despaired of ever becoming as good as she already was, but she'd hug me laughing, and told me that two years of practice was all she had that I had not.

The time flew by so fast that I suddenly realized one day that her father was due to leave in less than a week. I waited until father and the hunters had left, and took her hand.

"Do you want to see what I do for fun when there are no hunters? Something I have never shown another visitor to this planet?" I whispered. She nodded eagerly. We picked up our side arms and pangas, and I led her through the woods to the Grove.

A few kilometers from the house, there was a clearing large enough to land cargo ships in. No one knows why the trees never grew back. Small herbivores kept the small plants and grasses down until it looked like a manicured lawn, and now it was summer home to the Tirlat herd. I led her to the edge, touched her lips to make sure she would be quiet, and pointed.

At first glance a tirlat is funny. The average adult is about twice the size of a land speeder, with a barrel shaped body wide at the front so that it's mouth can seine in pollen and smaller flying prey, and pointed at the back end. Their stomach acid burns so hot that they have hydrogen left from their diet, and this is stored in the bladders that lay all around their body. They drift along sometimes with the wind, but when they want to move, they have ribbon wings along the sides. They are an anomaly on the planet, totally inoffensive, and nothing on the planet eats them while they are alive. They look like a stiff breeze would kill them, though we have hurricanes that level the forests and I have yet to see a tirlat die of anything but old age.

To ride a tirlat, you have to imitate a Jollo cat, an arboreal predator the size of a human being. A primate, it climbs as fast as a human walks, and runs down branches, dropping on it's prey from above. Not that a hunting Jollo cat would be able to hurt a tirlat. The cat would find that the rubbery skin of even a juvenile was too thick to be penetrated by her claws. The skin was also slick. All a baby tirlat has to do to escape a Jollo cat is fly.

I set my climbing belt for 10 percent gravity, motioned for Kalendra to do likewise, and leaped straight up at the lowest branch five meters above my head. I swarmed up on top, and caught her hand as she followed. We ran along the wide branch to where we were above the manicured land, and I pointed behind us at the tirlat I called Spooky. He got that name because his wings are almost translucent, and he looked like a ghost tirlat compared to the younger ones. Spooky I was told was older than the human settlement on the continent. He was slowly sculling toward us, his wings barely rippling.

I crouched down, uncoiling my climbing line. "When he flies under we drop down." I waved the line, "This goes under his chin, and you sit down or lay down fast." We waited impatiently as he sculled closer. Then he was below us, moving by. I gripped her hand, and as his body began moving below us I said, "Now!" And we dropped together. I flung the line in a practiced motion, making the weighted end spin down and around the neck. I caught the loose end as I dropped down to sit with my legs in front of the wings. "Sit down!" I shouted. Kalendra dropped down behind me, her legs straddling me, her arms around my waist.

It was good she had done so, because the ribbons stiffened into blades, and Spooky tried to escape. The wings came up then down in a powerful thump, and we shot forward. It wasn't fast, even a child's speeder bike is faster, but along with the slick skin, it would have thrown us backward off the body.

I held the line with both hands, and she held onto me. "It's like a swoop bike!" She shouted. I had never even seen a swoop bike before, so I had nothing to compare it to. Then she gave the trilling wail of the Echani war cry. Spooky reacted to this with another thumping sweep of his wings.

We shouted in joy, then first she, then I, then together, we gave another cry, urging the gentle animal to fly even faster. As we flew I showed her how to guide him. Pull on one side, and he would move the opposite direction. Thump his barrel with your feet, and he would climb, though not very high. Lean forward, and he would head down until his belly ruffled the longer grass.

Kalendra leaned into me, her hands pressed against the front of my body, her head turned to lie against my back. "Let's just let it fly for a while. I don't know what I might do if I get more excited." She whispered. We flew along in silence. As our movement and noise died, Spooky went back to rippling his wings. There was silence and peace. There is nothing like it in the galaxy.

Finally I guided him back to the glade. "We have to get off now."

"Must we?"

"He will get sick if we ride him all day. We can come back later in the week." I explained.

"How do we dismount?"

When I say now, tuck and roll backwards." I felt her head nodding against my back. I released the line I held on the left, pulling it up to coil it again. "Ready," I gave one last war cry. "Now!"

As before he snapped his wings straight out, and pounded the air. But without the line, we rolled backwards like a stone down a hill. Two rolls and suddenly we fell toward the ground. Kalendra landed sprawled, and I frantically stiffened my arms so that I landed above her without smashing down on her.

We giggled, looking at each other in the sheer enjoyment of the moment. Then the laughter died as we just drank in each other. Her hand rose, and touched my cheek, a feather touch. I leaned into the hand. She leaned upward, and her lips brushed mine. Her eyes held a sadness I didn't understand.

"If only we had met last year." She whispered. Then she was pushing me aside so she could stand.

The walk home was silent. Her mood had gone from happy to depressed like a light flicking off, and I didn't know why. She wouldn't answer my questions. That evening, we practiced, but I was able to get past her guard easily. She wasn't concentrating.

Instead of going in the house as was usual, she led me to the pool, stripped off her clothes, and slid into the water. I followed her, and when I was seated, she curled up in my lap. We were sitting in reverse of when we had ridden me at the back with my arms around her. She leaned into me, and I held my friend. I felt her jerk, and she turned, burying her face against my chest as she cried. I didn't know what I had done to make her so sad. I asked but she merely shook her head, and held on to me as if I was a lifeline to sanity. "Hold me like you would never let me go." She husked, and we sat there for an hour until finally we had to go in.

The last week was both sublime pleasure and sheer torture for both of us. We didn't want to be parted, but being together was painful for some reason I didn't understand. She was constantly touching my hand, my face. Hugging me just when she was in the mood to hold me. Sometimes when the mood struck us, we would hold each other, our lips brushing each other's faces. I had never known such contentment. We rode the tirlat twice more, and every night after practice, we spent an hour in the pool cuddled.

Finally her father was done with his hunting, and the next day they were going to leave. That night, she drew me outside. I thought we were going to practice, but instead she went to the pool and slid into the water. I followed her, and she cuddled against me again. "I don't want to go." She said, her head against my chest. "I want to stay in this pool, in your arms forever."

"I don't want you to go either." I whispered into her hair. "If only you could stay here."

"But I can't." She sighed. "I must go. But will you promise me something?"

"Anything."

"Promise you won't forget me."

"Never."

She kissed me one last time. The next morning they left, and I spent three days crying. My parents watched me during those days with what I took to be amusement. Later I understood that they knew what I was going through, and their amusement was only the feeling every person has seeing children grow up.

My only real pleasure after she left was the dance.

It wasn't until years later, after I had left my home world that I finally had access to a library computer. When I looked up the Echani, I discovered that their mating rituals are deeply ingrained into their society. A boy can live to adulthood unencumbered, but a girl must be bonded at age thirteen. Nothing can break that life-bond except for death. Nothing is allowed to. When a child is bonded, she leaves her home, and lives with her bond-mate's family until marriage. Their romantic fiction all hinges on people that break their bond to be with another, and the horrible events that ensue.

I discovered that Bortu had not been her brother, he had been her fiance-bond-mate. The man I had thought was her father was actually his.

There is however a self-bond. When the child loves another, or loves an ideal itself. Those Echani that become Jedi claim this. A self-bond has no boundaries, and is considered just as valid as a life-bond.

When someone mentions that an acquaintance is Echani there is a lot of nudging and winking going on. It is assumed because they have no strictures on marriage, that the Echani are lustful beings.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. An Echani wise man once said 'if you lust after a woman today, you are madly in love with the clothes she decided to wear'. They believe not in following sexual desire, but love. To an Echani, sex is no more the be all of love than hair color is the end all of a woman. Love in their eyes is caring about another person so much that their well being is all you worry about. Making sure they never want is more important than your own needs. This extends in family, where children receive what they need whether it be a hug or a spanking. It extends in society by allowing love to flow freely between all.

"If only we had met last year." She had said. She had meant it too. Under their laws, she could have claimed a self-bond to me. She would have left her home and become my what, wife? Lover? Significant Other? The fact that we were of the same sex would not have mattered to her people. Bio-geneticists are able to blend the DNA of any pair of the same species. They could have taken one of our eggs, fertilized it with the DNA of the other, even adjusted it so that we could have male children. We could have borne such children naturally for the Echani feel that all aspects of life both pleasurable and painful are meant to be experienced.

When I'm sad, I can picture us sitting in that same pool, with our children splashing around us, content in all things. But it didn't happen. If she had bonded with me, I wouldn't have become a Jedi. I would not be here now. How much would my life have changed if that had happened?

Not much of what happened in the Galaxy really affected us there. Our fleet was a pair of old Moravian Kontor class gunboats over a century old. Resorts and hunting preserves aren't strategic targets. We knew that the Mandalorian war was happening, but except for a dip in business, we didn't really feel the affects of it. When I had just turned twenty-one, the Sith war began. Again we were not really affected.

In my twenty-third year, my life changed. A Republic officer came to Deralia on a recruiting drive. Along with others he scoured the resorts looking for likely young people. But this one decided to check out the homesteads of the continent as well. It was pure luck. I hadn't found any of the local boys that interested me, and sexual frustration can cause you to make abrupt decisions.

It was the first time someone had actually come to our Kraal that wasn't a neighbor or a hunter. When he arrived, I was sword dancing.

Of course I didn't have a proper Echani ritual brand. They are hand made for the user, and while you can use someone else's it is slightly uncomfortable. But once I had felt comfortable with the idea of an actual blade instead of a tarred stick, I had taken two pangas a section of conduit large enough to slide over the handles, and made a double bladed sword.

When I danced, I was in my own world. Nothing mattered except for the sweep of the blade, the placement of the feet, the click of the blade hitting the pole. I was almost as good now as Kalendra had been when she began teaching me, and I could feel her standing back and watching me with that gentle smile.

I stopped, and began to dismount the panga blades. That was when I heard a gentle clapping sound behind me. I looked over my shoulder at the man in a uniform I didn't know.

"Well danced youngling. You're not a local?"

"Yes I am." I replied.

"Then where did you learn the Echani Sword dance?"

"From a hunter's daughter."

"Ah. May I speak with you?"

My brow rose at that. What might he have to say?

"I have already spoken with your father, as the law requires." I nodded. Except for hunters who didn't seem to care much about any local law the Republic representatives had always been punctilious about obeying them. Of course the first person that abused the trust of his guides and their families could easily find their rifle unloaded when something charged them.

Obviously he was either unmarried, or from a world that didn't accept concubines, slavery, or polygamy. To speak with me without permission could have caused an... accident.

"I am recruiting for the Kolari Sector defense forces."

"For?"

"The majority of the fleet has gone over to the Sith. Soldiers are desperately needed to preserve the Republic-" I raised my hand.

I finished dismantling my weapon, then turned to go up on the verandah. My father was sitting with a hunter and some beaters, talking about the hunt they planned that day. He saw me coming, and raised his hand for silence.

"You spoke with him?" He asked. I nodded. "You going?" I shrugged, then nodded again. His eyes were sad, and he hugged me, something he rarely did. "You be careful. Hear?"

"Like a Bojuum hunt, father."

He smiled. "Tell your mother." He turned to resume his seat and conversation. That was as much of a goodbye as I expected from him. I walked into the house. Mother had a hunting pack already packed, sitting on the kitchen table. She was staring at it as if she was going to cry.

I touched it with my fingers. "Am I that easy to predict?"

To anyone who knows you?" She stood, and with a soft painful cry she hugged me. "Be careful."

"I will."

"Come home." She finished, then she turned and fled the room.

I carried my pack, tossed it in his speeder, then leaned against it until he decided to leave.

The one thing that has bothered me since that time is that I never did go home again. I had promised my stepmother that I would but I never have.

War

When I arrived at the Kolari system, the Jedi Civil War was nearing the end of it's first year. The only major change from when the recruiter had spoken to me was that the Corellians were supplying equipment in return for ground forces. Since the enemy was starting to move toward the sector, the local militias were starting to build up.

I have constantly been berated since I became a Jedi about the military. The Republic doesn't have one per se. Each planet or alliance even corporation has it's own military force, with their own weapons ships and even training. There isn't even a recognized unified Academy, though the Republic Naval Academy is recognized by many. This means every military force has it's own ways of doing things.

But you have to understand that the Republic is a very loose alliance, based primarily on trade and currency. Not a solid Federal union like say the Corellian Trade Alliance. The idea had been considered when the Republic had first been formed 20 millennia ago, but the sheer prospect of trying to assure that the laws are the same from place to place would have been staggering.

A unified military might have made the wars we did face less bloody, but only at the expense of a massive military force that could just as easily be turned on our own people. The Galaxy has over 50 billion stars, and probably as many planets and every one of the 120,000 settled planet said the same thing. Why should we of Deralia pay for a military we only see when we need to actually fight? So they never created a unified Republic Fleet or Republic army.

Also, on a galactic scale even the largest war is a storm seen from a distance for most of us. The only Mandalorians I had seen up until that point had been hunters that came just like any other to test themselves against our game.

But war had come to us here, and the militia was mobilizing.

While we end up fighting together standardization is a joke. No two units from different planets have the same weapons. No two have ships of the same design. Also while the Galaxy is cosmopolitan, the militias are not. Most of the alien races fight in their own units, humans in their own etc.

My first six months was spent in boot camp. You can't just hand the soldiers their blasters armor and swords then send them out to die. Not if you want to have most of them a week from now. Instead you take these raw recruits, and teach them how to use the weapons.

I did rather well. Except for the folding stock the shortened barrel and the option to set it for automatic fire, the blaster rifle I was issued was a Corellian hunting rifle. The pistol was also Corellian, and something I had carried in the field at home. The meter long swords were slightly longer than the panga I had used at home, and made of the same composite. The only difference I saw was that while at home we wore them on the hip, the sheath for a sword was on your back with the handle even with your head.

Our blades had to be made from the composites developed by the Verpine using a thing lattice layer of Mandalorian Beskar iron. Ever since the Jedi had developed the light saber, people had tried and finally found something that would block or at least retard it. A light saber would slide along the blade, nicking but not slicing through it. Our armor used the same kinds of composites, with additional layers to stop or deflect blaster fire damage from flames or cold, even sonic weapons.

But we were happy to have the weapons and armor, because for the first time in fifty years, we faced Dark Jedi along with the Sith.

Over two thousand years ago, a sect of the Jedi had broken away. They had fled the Republic, and joined the Sith.

Originally, the Sith had been a race, a violently xenophobic race. They had attacked the Republic throughout the centuries, and finally had been beaten back to their home world. When the first dark Jedi arrived, there had been bloodshed, but finally the Sith accepted them for their nihilistic view of life in general, and the galaxy in particular. For centuries they had stayed on that planet, but a thousand years ago, they struck out at the galaxy again. So started the first war actually called the Sith war. They were beaten, but every few centuries, they would try yet again.

Maybe that is why a lot of people can't differentiate between Jedi and Sith. Both have abilities that a normal person can not even conceive of. The only difference between them is; are they friendly to you or not? If you have ever had a Jedi adjudicate your case in the other person's favor what do you think?

Much later when I began Jedi training, I learned the main difference is the same as governments or men themselves. Some people revel in the power, and want more. Others make decisions in their lives where they take the easier path rather than doing what has to be done, no matter how hard. Others merely see the galaxy as chaos, and try to impose some sort of order on it.

Like most people then, I looked on the Jedi as odd people with powers I could not match. When I faced my first dark Jedi, they seemed the same. The first Jedi I ever met was Padawan Loras of Beretell. She was assigned to my ship when I left boot camp. She looked about as dangerous as a kitten. Just a short jolly fat woman.

To most boot camp is six months of hell. To me it was home with fifty people living in the same room. The hardship I endured was dealing with fifty people from twenty-seven planets, and forty different sets of rules they had been raised by. It wasn't until the fifth time someone made a sexual overture to me that I finally understood what was being offered. That last was so blatant that I would have had to be mentally deficient to misunderstand. I didn't pair off, though a lot of my classmates did. That just didn't interest me. I passed through basic and the advanced courses with barely a ripple. By the time we were in the last weeks, I was tapped as a rifle instructor.

I graduated and was assigned to fleet operations. I was assigned with those that survived training to the Corellian Frigate Ashtree Corona. The next year was taken up in raids on various Sith controlled worlds. A lot of my classmates died, but somehow I did not. By the end of that year, I was a squad leader. I fought in three fleet actions, including the ambush at Zanebra where Revan fell.

As ground troops we saw little direct action except for boarding actions. During ship to ship actions we were assigned to turbolaser batteries, and kept them operational. At Zanebra, we were one of five ships that were pounding Behemoth, the enemy flagship. Suddenly we were ordered to check fire, and immediately retarget Leviathan, the flagship of the Sith Second column. We pounded her, and would have probably blown her into dust, but suddenly she turned, and to our amazement, fired her entire starboard broadside not at us, but at Behemoth!

Already badly damaged, life pods began spewing away from the crippled ship. Then she exploded. Our scanners were confused for several fatal seconds. Ashtree Corona was the closest ship, and Leviathan concentrated all of her fire on us.

It was like being in a waste can with the gods playing a field hockey with you. I had already been in my suit, and had ducked below the cannon to repair an electronic fault. That saved me when a blast gutted the gun and killed everyone else in the compartment. I tried to contact the bridge but internal communications was out. I finally made my way to rescue workers farther inboard.

For the next hours the crew was busy just trying to save the ship. Of the contingent of fifty ground troopers aboard, I was one of only ten that survived. The crew dragooned those of us that were handy with tools into service. Six including myself were assigned to rescue operations. All scanners were dead. For all we knew, a thousand Sith were coming. But we had our duty. Two of the men I assigned to damage control, finding the pitifully few survivors in the wreckage aboard. The other four came with me. We put on hard suits with thruster packs, and went to see what survivors might be floating past in life pods.

This should have been simple, read a beacon, tractor it in, save a life. But the Sith had taken to dumping pods with thermal detonators or seismic charges rigged to blow. Either would badly damage a ship that tractored it in. So we had to go out and personally check each pod before the boat bay officer would bring them aboard. They simply saw the demographics. It was less expensive in the long run to risk a single trooper that a billion credit ship. Just harder on the troopers.

It was simple, really. Jet up to the transparisteel view port, and look inside. If you see a body, check to see if it is Sith or Republic. If you see no one, set a beacon on it, and an EOD team would disable any traps. If you see a bomb of any kind, you blow it in place. If there is a Republican troop in it, you tag it with a different beacon, and it is towed in ASAP. If it's Sith, and they appeared to be armed, you tapped on the plast, showed them the limpet mine in your other hand, and make a motion to ask if they were going to surrender. If they did, you used the EOD beacon. If not? That was what the mine was for.

This sounds harsh, but some of the Sith weren't in the surrendering mood. If not, we saw no reason to deal with them beyond making sure they passed on. Most of the surviving prisoners I had seen were just as dejected as I would have been in their place.

The battle had run away from us. Though we didn't know it, the battle was over. Leviathan and those ships able to escape had run. Not that we were in much better shape. It had started with forty-five of ours versus forty of theirs. Out of their fleet, only five ships had escaped. Of ours only three were hyper drive capable. There were a dozen hulks that had to be either repaired or destroyed of what both fleets had left. We'd won, but I didn't think we could afford many victories like it.

I was at this for over fifteen hours; my suit was down to the emergency air pack when I called into the ship. "Ashtree Corona this is unit seven. Area appears clear, down to reserve air. Ready to return."

Before Ashtree Corona could answer, a different voice cut in. "Unit seven, this is Endar Spire do not, I repeat, do not return to Ashtree Corona at this time. Sweep your sector again."

"Wait a minute, Endar Spire! These are my people you are risking. What is left out there worth their lives?" Asked Commander Roofan. Our captain Bendar Solo had died with over half our crew.

"Commander, one of the pods from Behemoth contained some of our boarding crew. The Jedi aboard here says General Bastila might be aboard it."

Bastila! I had heard of her, or course. When this ambush had been planned, Bastila was going to use a Jedi power called battle mediation to slip through the defenses of the enemy flagship intending to capture or kill the dark lord Revan.

"Endar Spire, I don't care if my wife, the entire senate and the damn Jedi council is still out there! I can have a fresh troop with full supplies out there in an hour."

"They might not have an hour!"

I looked around. "Ashtree Corona this is unit seven."

"Go seven."

Maybe I can at least localize her pod for a follow on."

There was silence. I hadn't considered that I had just undercut my superior. Bastila was important enough that the Republic had bet 10,000 lives on this attack, and lost most of them. That made her more important than I was. I had made calls like this before since I was made squad leader. Who was more important? In this case, Bastila was.

"Unit seven give fuel state and consumables."

I looked at the read out. Both were in the yellow, but I had seen them as bad before. "Fuel 17%, air four zero minutes." That was bad, but not unrecoverable. I had enough fuel to head out a short distance, at the expense of being plucked out of space like a fly when I came back on a ballistic course.

"Understood Unit Seven. You have permission to make one, I repeat, one check run. Set return alarm for fifteen minutes of air. If you have not found this pod by that time, you will return aboard immediately."

"Understood." I lifted the scan pack, but still there wasn't anything out there according to it. No beacon no loose mass the size of a pod. Only a thick debris field a short distance away. A pod could have been jammed in there, and beacons did fail. I targeted it, and set the thruster pack. My fuel was down to 11 when I pulled up outside of it.

From what I could recognize, I knew this was wreckage from Behemoth. A ship almost five times the size of the Ashtree Corona. I began scanning it item by item, anything big enough to conceal a pod.

Something caught my eye, and I looked toward one of the larger pieces. I could have sworn I saw something there, but there was nothing on the scanner.

The section was three decks through, and an ID marker on one deck said it came from level 4. The decks had been first cut by turbolaser fire, then sheared apart by the explosion. I could see parts of deck three and five from here. And in the middle of that mess was what looked like an undeployed pod! " Have a pod in sight. Going in to check."

I spun in place, and was aiming for the pod when something hit me from behind. I had been so intent on my search I had forgotten to set my proximity alarm. I was slammed forward, spinning helplessly. My systems were going haywire. The thruster pack controls all read dead. I had no maneuvering control.

"Problem." I said. The spin and thrust was throwing me past the hulk, and if I didn't catch something fast I was going to fall forever. The Com officer was shouting questions, but I ignored him. I saw a section of conduit that thrust out like a spear, and I reached for it, putting all of my effort into catching that metal lifeline. I saw it flash by, and closed my eyes.

Suddenly I felt a jerk as if I had been tied by my hand to a landspeeder. The torque almost ripped my arm off. As I slowed, I heard another alarm.

"Wait." I demanded, looking at the display. My air that had been above thirty was dropping like a bomb. "Air tank damaged. Give me quiet." I popped the seals, and the thruster pack spun away. Whatever had hit it had slammed into my back, and either cracked the tank, or popped the seal. If it was the tank, I was already dead. If it were the seal, I might be able to reattach it.

They tell you in suit training that you need two people when reattaching a line seal. I didn't have another person.

I caught the flailing line, and reached back. To picture my problem, visualize a metal pin sticking up just about in the center of your shoulder blades. Now take a tube in your hand, and reach back, and thread that pin into the tube without seeing it, and knowing you only have one chance to do it right. I closed my eyes again. They weren't going to help me if I failed.

There was a click after a moment, and the alarm shut off. I breathed deeply, fighting the panic that had been there. That was why I never used the adrenal stims they issue. I don't like the affect when you come down. "Got it." I reported.

"Give air state."

I opened my eyes. "I have to check the pod first."

"To Pathan's nine hells with the pod!" He almost screamed.

I ignored him. There was a stanchion within reach, and I swung across outside the transparisteel of the door. Through it I could see half a dozen crumpled bodies. On top was a woman in what looked like a Jedi robe. She's here." I tapped the stud on my armband, activating my beacon. I could hear it's siren call. Something still worked. "Home in on my signal."

"Give me your air state!" This time he did scream.

I looked at it, blinked, and looked again. The number refused to get bigger.

"Give me a situation and number. Now!"

"Bad, eight." Eight minutes of life left.

"Bad!" He giggled hysterically. "I would have said that qualified as panic! Give me a moment." I could hear him calling flight quarters to see what could be done. I knocked on the transparisteel, but the woman didn't move.

"Unit seven, uh, Danika. We can get a lander there." I could hear the worry in his voice.

"But?"

"It's going to take at least fifteen minutes."

Even with the air in the suit that left me a full five minutes with no air. I wasn't going back to the ship. I contemplated my death, and for some reason, it didn't bother me. Well whining wouldn't help. "Hurry. I am going to take a nap."

I could see the stars out there, the distant specks of ships and suits. None were close enough to reach me in time. I took my survival line, and threaded it through the stanchion and a convenient handle, then rested against the transparisteel, my face touching it. I darkened the visor. Better they didn't wake up and see a dead woman looking back.

I considered using my pharmacope to check out. When they install them in your suit, they tell you what not to take with what else. For example, number one was a painkiller, and number three a powerful adrenal stim. Together, your heart goes from zero to light speed in about three seconds, and shuts down in four. Painless, or so they say.

No. I would not go out that way. I checked it, and took a double dose of number 7, a basic sleep aid. I closed my eyes, and listened to the soft hiss of the air.

Even with the drug I knew when the air ran out. Aided by the drug, my mind tottered on the brink, then broke away from its foundations. It spun down into the depths like a wheel flying off a child's toy. After a moment, I slid down more easily, sinking into the depths of darkness to come to rest like a stone on the deepest reach of life itself, above the precipice that is death. There was no data coming in any more. I was deaf dumb and blind, and knew death was just a step away. Entirely free of all human concerns, yet alive with a lucidity and coherence.

All notions of mind, all ties of blood and family, all desires of the heart fell away, and I was nothing but that bright spark that was the essence of everything I was. Unable to resist destruction. To be alone in it's own madness of being, motiveless beyond the will to survive. I sank deeper...

I dreamed...

Kalendra landed sprawled, and I frantically stiffened my arms so that I landed above her without smashing down on her.

We giggled, looking at each other in the sheer enjoyment of the moment. Then the laughter died as we just drank in each other. Her hand rose, and touched my cheek, a feather touch. I leaned into the hand. She leaned upward, and her lips brushed mine. Her eyes held a sadness I didn't understand.

Bond with me, she said.

It hadn't been like that. She had already been bonded, she couldn't break that She brushed my lips with hers again, a touch so gentle I thought I imagined it, though a jolt ran through me at the touch.

Join and be one with me. She said.

No, Kalendra hadn't said anything of the sort. She had cried, and spent time touching me as if terrified that I might disappear even as she looked. I tried to move away, but my hands were locked to the ground somehow.

The look in her eyes decided for me. The same look I would have expected if Kalendra had actually done this. Perhaps in death I was getting a chance to walk that other path. To sit on the porch and watch our children grow to maturity. But I was dying anyway, so what was the harm?

I leaned into her kiss, and it became deeper. I felt her arms encircle me, growing tighter and tighter. I wanted to tell her to stop but my lips were locked to hers. I felt the arms tighten even more.

I can't breathe!

I can't br-

-something slammed into my chest like the hammer of the gods. I could feel something being slipped over my mouth, a voice shouting, "Oh no, damn you lived this long, you're going to breathe!'

"Hypox on maximum!"

"Hit her again with the Cardio-stim!"

I felt like I had grabbed a high-tension wire, I flopped like a landed saber-trout.

"Wait. Doctor, I have a pulse!"

"Oh god, she's alive. How long was she anoxic?"

There was a long pause. I wasn't even interested in the answer. "Seven minutes." The person whispered.

"Neuro-stim?"

"At seven."

"Jack it two higher!"

"That won't help!'

"Tell her!"

I felt the bolt again. This time I could see it, a shot of blue electrical energy that danced around my eyes.

"Her body is alive, but there's nothing left upstairs." The first voice, the doctor whispered.

Seven minutes? Of course he was right. I was brain dead, just the ears sending data to a computer that had been severed from the world. As much as I wanted to cry, I knew it wouldn't help. Dead is dead. They might keep my body alive, but only because organs were needed for surgery. I just wanted them to leave me alone. Let me get on with dying.

"How is she?" A woman's voice, a soft alto I had never heard before. Cold and imperious.

"She was anoxic for seven minutes. She isn't going to come back, General."

"That is not acceptable."

"I don't care if it is acceptable to you or not!" He snapped. "This woman has more guts than everyone on this damn ship, and I don't like to have to say it, but she's gone."

Maybe if I opened my eyes, I could at least see who was arguing. Maybe they would leave me in peace if I did. But my lids weighed tons. They kept arguing, screaming at each other like fishwives. Just shut up!

"What?" The woman sounded astonished.

"Gen-"

"Hush!" She demanded.

You want him to shut up, but you won't listen to me? I thought.

"She's there. Somehow, she is still there." I felt something, and after a moment, knew it was a hand on my cheek. Then that voice, so much more tender than before spoke in my ear. "I won't let them turn it off, girl. I owe you too much." I felt the hand move to my forehead. "Sleep and get well."

I felt as if the ship had hit me, driving me into the bed.