4.04

"This is payback for the Arkanian temple expedition, isn't it?" I asked as the modified YT-1000 flew over a sea of green. "There's nothing here except jungle."

"A contract is a contract," Aurra shot back with a shrug. "You hired me out to that lizard, your father hired me to guard you, this is the compromise."

Unfortunately, she was right about that. It wasn't that a bounty-hunter and assassin of Sing's caliber would have found this mission difficult even before undergoing years of intensive preparation for the Clone Wars. Being the only one I could send to missions too important to mess up though, that created problems. The current goal's nature and Father's insistence I go nowhere without a trusted bodyguard had resulted in wasting time on a trip to a jungle-covered planet where technology had last been seen before the Jedi temple was built. No restaurants, Holonet hubs, or libraries within a Parsec or ten did not a happy city girl make - especially with the number of projects that had to be delayed for this.

"Stop moping and help," Aurra added with a toss of her red ponytail underscoring her own annoyance. "Brat."

Right. As soon as we were back to civilization - or the Smugglers Moon's facsimile thereof - I was having assassin droids built to spec for long-term missions. No more being cooped up on a tiny ship for two weeks going back and forth from the Outer Rim to the Core. At least we'd left Ratty behind, so the trip was a break from intensive economics and galactic politics lessons. With that happy thought in mind, I closed my eyes and fell deeper into meditation.

Jungle worlds were only a little behind ecumenopolises in their presence in the Force; they had a great deal more life, but far fewer sentients to contribute with unusually strong sources - initially. The more saturated a planet was in the Force, the greater its effect on the flora and fauna, with 'impossible' biologies developing alarmingly often. It was the Force that created the 'natural' monsters of the Star Wars universe, from Krayt Dragons and Rancor Beasts to the absurd space slugs. This jungle-covered green world might not rival the Wookie homeworld in the size of its trees or the number of its predators, but it more than made up for it with the vast network of red and black metaphysical scars eerily glowing in my awareness. Like immaterial rivers, the network slowly collected light from the abundance of life around it, carrying it towards a series of nodes suspiciously evenly-spaced across the planet's surface.

From the height of our ship's stratospheric flight, it was clear that the ebbs and flows of energy matched natural-seeming ravines, chasms, paths, even actual rivers crisscrossing the landscape. The planet Mars had a similar network of canals back in my old universe, believed by many radicals and conspiracy-theorists to be made by an alien civilization back when Mars had water. Rather ironically, almost nobody believed this for Seylott, this innocent-seeming jungle world in the Outer Rim. The geography was only natural, they said, the sparse population of Stone Age natives having built their temples on top of existing geography. "They" were dead wrong, of course.

"That clearing over there," I pointed out to Aurra an easily-missed white speck near where some of the strongest flows converged. "That's our target."

Faint flickers of the Force gleamed like distant stars in the verdant ocean below us, the presences of thousands of weak, fading Force Sensitives gathered in small clusters within a few dozen miles of the nexus. Native villages, no doubt. According to the Republic's laographic and genetic research, the Seylott species had been in a slow, terminal decline for tens of thousands of years, their population diminishing from generation to generation, whatever grasp of technology they once had all but gone. Even their genetic code was drifting into non-viable evolutionary paths and in a hundred more generations they'd be all gone. Lacking any other obvious reasons for that, the researchers cited the natives' tendency to construct enormous stone monuments to the point of economic exhaustion, and their use of pewter in everyday life leading to heavy-metal poisoning. That might have been true for several ancient civilizations back on Earth, but in this case, it was more Dark Side corruption rather than any mundane poison. I guess the Rakatan Empire should have foreseen the risks of using an alchemical monster the size of a star destroyer as a terraforming tool, not to mention the widespread Dark Side religion.

"That is no kriffin clearing!" my erstwhile companion shot back as she lowered the ship in the ancient footprint carved into the bedrock by something that made Godzilla look like a gecko. The landing gear touched the ground with a dull thump as she glared at me. "If whatever made this turns up, I don't need to outrun it," she threatened. "I only need to outrun you."

"I'm the boss' daughter," I shot back as we jumped off the access hatch and into the jungle. "Where's my respect?" The only reply was a derisive snort, which underscored my point perfectly.

The jungle's temperature easily rivaled the deserts of Tatooine with its twin suns due to the age and higher output of the local yellow star. My bodyguard was in standard Mandalorian armor, with its bulky environmental systems pushed to the limit to adapt. For my own thinner suit, I'd eschewed the weirdly archaic Star Wars tech in favor of praseodymium-nickel mesh with nano-scale EM generators. Cycling through adiabatic magnetization, isomagnetic enthalpic transfer, adiabatic demagnetization, and isomagnetic entropic transfer, the suit was basically shifting the heat capacity and insulation of the inserts to expel heat with no pumps, turbines, or refrigeration fluid. The hybrid Earth-Star Wars tech was supposed to keep the cortosis/beskar scales of the suit from overheating by repeated blaster hits, but it made for a cool air conditioning too. And the best part? I'd only had to explain the basic principle to Professor Magrody once, and he'd come up with the design himself.

"Target dead ahead," Aurra said over the communicator, sniper rifle raised to firing position. "Zero point seven clicks, male native, unarmed, unaware."

"Ion shot, full charge," I ordered, staring at the megalithic henge before us, the ancient monument easily the size of a football stadium. A monstrous statue of a dragon-like entity with elongated horned head, serpentine neck, clawed limbs, and bulbous body took up most of the interior, rivaling the Statue of Liberty. Between its feet a tiny green-skinned speck lay kneeling, a humanoid looking like a cross of a Tolkien orc and a hairless monkey. Sing's rifle spat an actinic blue flash and the distant figure toppled before it could even notice the attack.

The two of us walked into the ancient temple at a brisk pace, Aurra securing the perimeter and confirming the absence of visitors while I followed the flow of the Force to the temple's center where instead of forming a small nexus as it should have, it simply vanished. There was little evidence for where the energy went, barely a ripple in the Force that I could follow. Maybe an experienced Jedi Master could have done better but I didn't need to; I simply picked up the small idol of a brown stone the native had been praying to. On one hand, this was a horribly disrespectful act towards the natives' cultural and theological identity. On the other, with the deceptively innocent-looking statue of a baby imp absorbing the energy the temple gathered, it was like having a hole in the metaphysical barrel that was the planet. No matter how much Force energy was there, even a tiny leak would eventually drain it all. So taking the thing should allow the native population to start down the road to recovery.

"If that's a dragon egg, I'm throwing it in the incinerator," Aurra threatened with a suspicious glower at the idol in my hand.

"Gharj was a genesplice so it couldn't lay eggs," I informed my companion, simplifying the intricacies of Force Alchemy and not mentioning that if any eggs had existed, an incinerator wouldn't cut it; Gharj had been immune to heat. "Now, let's go see a warlord about a bounty."

xxxx

​

"I got your stolen goods. Do you have my money?" The famous bounty hunter Aurra Sing was unarmed and down to her skintight bodysuit and yet could still stare down an eight-foot-tall four-eyed dragon-man and his goons. The robe-wearing monster had over two feet and three hundred pounds on her and somehow they looked at each other as equals. The Annoo-dat Prime were known for their supernatural strength, reflexes, and speed, superior infravision, snake-like scent tasting, and tendency to be born with a second pair of arms if they felt like it... yet the human assassin was not intimidated in the least. Ashaar Khorda, exiled warlord-king of Annoo and soon to be the destroyer of the foul Republic could respect that.

"I have your money, female," he rasped and handed over a dozen cred-chips of the five-thousand-credit denomination. A single package small enough to sit on the warlord's palm was given in exchange. "Now leave. Let me bask in my imminent triumph." The uppity monkey left without a word, gaining a few more points in Ashaar's esteem. Perhaps he would warn her off the planet before the plan's completion. Or perhaps not; he had yet to decide.

"Fellow exiles!" his voice boomed eerily in the cramped metal chamber deep in Coruscant's undercity. "Today is the day of reckoning! The foul, corrupt, dying Republic that in its greed saw us banished from our rightful place will see what it means to oppose the Warlords of Annoo! Its heart will be shattered, burned to ashes by the fire of the Ancients as we finally take our long-awaited revenge!" He raised the relic of a brown stone the bounty hunter had retrieved and roared. "With this, the Infant of Shaa, we shall be victorious."

"No, you will not," a woman's voice echoed from the mass of sewer pipes overhead, and a split second later another female mammal invaded the warlord's gathering. "By order of the Council and the will of the Force, surrender or face the consequences." The uppity monkey was tall, taller than the assassin had been, with long silver hair, pale skin, milky-white eyes, and a surprisingly regal bearing - for a mammal. She was dressed in flowing white robes with an armored mesh gleaming underneath, her only weapon a meter-long metal rod.

Naturally, every warrior present shot her at once for the insult of her unannounced arrival and the folly of her demands. Except she no longer was where they shot. Moving as fast and as gracefully as an Annoo-dat champion, she leaped among a cluster of warriors and swung her stick in a sweeping blow, not touching any of them. She did not have to; with a snap-hiss as familiar as it was hated, a meter-long blade of bright silver light extended from her weapon, turning a mere stick into a deadly glaive mid-swing; four comrades were bisected, roaring in pain and rage as their fate was sealed.

"Sslay the Jjedi!" Ashaar roared at the unfairness of the battle, his voice reverting to the monstrous hissing of his homeworld. Blasters fired again, fewer but more accurate in the absence of surprise. The foul enforcer of the Republic that had stolen their homeworld from them couldn't dodge them all... but again she didn't have to. Any bolt coming too close was parried both by the shimmering energy blade and the gleaming metal shaft, returned with deadly accuracy to claim the lives of loyal warriors.

Wordlessly roaring still, Ashaar tried to engage the murderer in melee but the bitch ignored him, rolling away from his charge and flourishing her sorcerous weapon in a figure-eight, leaving two more loyal warriors in pieces. He tried to stab her in the back but somehow she was no longer there. A split second later a lance of searing agony went through his back, the glowing white blade coming out of his chest. The great warlord fell to his knees, already dead but for the wailing and the gnashing of teeth.

No, he refused to die a weakling. Forcing his maw shut, he scanned the area with his four eyes, committing the death of his comrades to memory in his final moments. To have come so close only to be foiled by minions of the corrupt Republic yet again. Even their weapon was a lie; the blade was not the silver of purity or the white of the morning sun. No, it was the color of bleached bone, a reaper's tool to claim lives at the command of its dark master...

xxxx

​

I left the chamber behind me dripping blood not my own; not even a lightsaber could cauterize a victim cleaved from head to toes enough to avoid that. That it was a thick greenish-brown instead of flowing crimson changed things not at all. Serifa Altunen's light-glaive felt awkward in my hands, a weapon was unmastered for all my training. The crystal in its heart was not bonded to me and thus would never work as well as a saber of my own creation. In fact, given my relationship with its previous opponent, the crystal might be subtly opposing me even. Was I a Sith, I would have forced my power over the crystal, forging a bond against its consent even as the corruption from such an act turned it blood-red. But I was not a Sith.

In the end, the battle had been won not by my skill with a lightsaber but through my ability with the Force. With an hour to prepare, I'd managed to worm subtle links into the minds of the serpentine warriors, a crude and limited mind-meld. Sharing their intentions and teamwork let me control the fight rather than react to it with just precognition, the occasional direct Mind Trick giving openings exactly when needed. Drawing extra power from the idol had made using those openings without a problem possible.

The "Infant of Shaa" was an artifact that could store large quantities of Force energy - had already stored the equivalent of a small nexus over the millennia. Ashaar Khorda's plan had been to throw it into a major power core on Coruscant, a reactor powerful enough to destroy the artifact and unleash the stored energy all at once. The shockwave would act much like a Thought Bomb, killing all sapients on the planet. Without my interference, Jango Fett, Zam Wessel, and Jedi master Yarael Poof would have killed Khorda and neutralized the artifact - at the cost of Master Poof's life. Aurra taking the bounty to reclaim the idol instead of Fett had left me with a still functional artifact, Poof with his life, and the Council or Palpatine hopefully confused by 'Altunen's' reappearance.

Now, what to do with a powerful Force capacitor already holding a massive charge...