ED : Chapter 36: Decisions, Decisions II
A desperation made worse by the fact that Jedi Knight Bultar Swan was Knight Tutso Mara's very-against-the-Jedi Code lover.
Tutso had been my first, and remained my best friend in the Temple. If there was anything I could do to prevent his and Bultar's story from ending in tears, I was going to do it, period.
...
Yaddle was beside me by the time I finished saying "hurt." She stood with eyes closed and her tiny, three-fingered hands pressed tight to the intervening rocks.
A half-dozen expressions flitting across, then disappearing from her lightly wrinkled green features in the next few seconds. Until she finally reported.
"Her energy, I recognize. Jedi Swan, this is. Grave, her injuries are. Deep within the healing-trance, she lies. Yet something more, I sense."
Jerking her hands from the rock-pile as if they'd suddenly grown red-hot, I could sense the deep and abiding sadness coming off the Jedi Master in waves as easily as I could see the couple of tears she swiftly blinked away. Yaddle's voice was somber, low, and yet very controlled, as she declared.
"One with the Force, Knight Nacanas Tassu has become. The last of his energy, to the stability of Jedi Swan's trance, he gave."
For one moment, the ever compassionate Jedi bowed her head in respect. Then she looked at me with a troubled expression, and explained "Alone, on her rescue, must you labor. Stopped, the stone mites still must be.
Their extermination, I cannot abandon. If a path to her, you make. Assistance, I can then offer. If contravention of the mission, assistance would not constitute."
I didn't want to believe what I was hearing. If I thought about the situation as if I were an emotionless robot entirely lacking a soul, then I could see Yaddle's point.
In the dim recesses of my memory, I could hear Mister Fucking Spock. Declaring with all the cold utility of pure logic "The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."
I wanted to demand her help, or at least make some grim, dramatic, and ultimately idiotic declaration about how I wouldn't forgive her if Swan died because she prioritized the mission.
Even knowing one good Jedi had already died trying to prevent the death of another. What stopped me from doing something so self-defeating and asinine were two things.
The first being the same cold calculus presently dictating Yaddle's present course of action.
The sort of icy reasoning telling me alienating one of my most powerful allies only decreased my chances of stopping Palpatine from ravaging the entire galaxy.
That would have been enough to keep me in line, but it wouldn't have preserved the affection and abiding respect I'd long held for Yaddle. Not if my best friend's lady died because I had to go it alone in trying to rescue her.
What did that was the realization that, by all rights, the Jedi Master should be ordering me to continue with the stone mite extermination.
If the Tynnan Government Building collapsed, Yaddle would be the one the High Council held responsible for decreasing the extermination-resources by 50% for the sake of maybe saving one Jedi Knight.
Chancellor Organa was trying to keep the Loyalists and Secessionists from turning the Secessionist Crisis into an outright shooting war the Republic was much more poorly prepared for than the Secessionists as we spoke.
Anger at the situation flooded through me, but I retained the presence of mind to realize that soft spot for me or not, Yaddle would rat me out to the High Council if I tried to resort to the Dark Side for the oomph to get through the ten or fifteen tons of compacted duracrete in my way.
Which was such a bunch of B.S, given that the Master of the Order, High Councilor Depa Billaba, and soon-to-be Master Siri Tachi were all using the Dark Side each and every damned day.
As a non-member of the Windu Club, I didn't get a spiffy Dark Side Dispensantion decoder-ring, of course.
A hundred pound chunk of duracrete was compacted to powder as I stared at the collapse. When another seventy-five or eighty pound chunk was turned to dust as I clenched my fist, I stopped and took several deep breaths.
Defying the sense of urgency beating at me, because I just couldn't.
"You start reaching for the Dark Side for the best of reasons. You'll keep reaching for good reasons. Until your each and every response to adversity becomes reaching for the Dark Side. You know this, so breathe and work the problem."
Watching more duracrete settle down atop the couple hundred pounds of the stuff I'd crushed with a not-inconsequential expenditure of energy, I realized there was no way I could brute-force this.
While moving the ten of fifteen tons presently in my path was doable in an incremental manner, I wasn't simply obstructed by ten or fifteen tons.
When I crushed or removed a given quantity of duracrete, more stone fell down from the compromised tunnel ceiling to take it's place. A single glance made the idea of digging with my own hands laughable if telekinesis wasn't proving effective. Leaving what other options, exactly?
I looked around the chamber and frowned intently as I worked the problem.
Ventress hadn't been able to collapse the tunnel we'd entered by, because she hadn't considered the possibility of needing to.
She'd collapsed the other three tunnels to try and stop us from reaching all the places where stone mites had been released down here.
Yaddle had already finished driving the rest of the stone mites in the other half of this chamber into a hibernation from which they'd never awaken with Morichro, and now she was jumping over the inert pair of-
Droids. A grin widened on my face, as I pulled out Slicer-R1 my dragonfly-nautilus droid. Quickly, I dashed to the presently-inert IG-100s.
I had the tool-kit from the bottom of my pack out even as I slid to my knees before the first Magna-Guard. Flipping the droid with the Force to reveal the back of it's skull, I commanded Slicer-R1 to interface with the offline droid.
Peeling the phrik-cortosis service panel open, I didn't even pause over the obvious revelation that my extra power-cells weren't strictly compatible with an entirely different classification of droid.
I was Anakin Skywalker, mechanical genius. These otherwise substantial difficulties simply meant I'd be forced to cannibalize ion-blasted Magna-Guard #2, plus Yaddle-dismembered IG-100 #3 for the parts to recondition ion-blasted IG-100-#1.
While my fingers flew over the improvisations required to recharge the IG-100's dead power-cell with my power-cells, Slicer-R1 was hard at work running a low-grade current from it's own power-cell into the Magna-Guard's main processor.
Once it had the primary CPU sequestered, it began running top-tier subversion sub-routines I had bartered for with a Mirialan slicer from Coruscant's Under-City. The Mirialan had been happy to provide me with some of her best work.
After I'd made it clear to her rather obsessive ex-boyfriend Larissaina was now under the protection of a Jedi who considered a broken hand reasonable recompense for the black eye and split lip said Twi'lek mongrel had given her. Now, we were going to see if her work outshone whatever technician the Geonosians employed to program these damned things.
Hands continuing to dance over the connections I was wiring as Slicer-R1 continued to report "Working .. Working .. Working."
I suppressed the desire to crow with triumph as my improvised power-cell recharging device began feeding the power it drained from my spare cells smoothly into the only structurally intact power-cell remaining among the three ex-Jedi-killers.
It's cobbled-together readout showing 80%-88.5%-96.25%-98%, then the device gave up the ghost as the two power-cells ran dry. It's insufficiently insulated wiring half-melting, half igniting, as I quickly tossed the thing.
"Firewalls successfully breached, previous biometric profiles wiped, preexisting directory of behavioral objectives truncated. Proffer new voice sample and prepare for replacement biometric-scan in three, two, one" Slicer-R1's tinny voice reported.
The intact Magna-Guard sat up and pointed it's right arm at me as if it were going to activate it's concealed blaster-mounting and kill me.
The only thing which prevented me from getting quite a scare was the Force's calm quiescence during this admittedly troubling visual.
A blue laser-light effect fanned over my head and shoulders, as the Magna-Guard spoke in a voice which made Slicer-R1's vocal routine seem state-of-the art.
"Priority User: Biometric profile established. Please provide voice sample for security-redundancy." The droid's demand was as flat as it was perfunctory, but my smartass streak couldn't be denied in my moment of triumph.
"My name is Anakin Skywalker, and I'm the Jedi who just droid-napped you" I sassed the impassive killing machine.
"State current tactical objective" IG-100-#1's monotone replied. The hulking droid having sat up meanwhile. It's menacing red photoreceptors scanning the area, before eventually fixing on me.
"Search and rescue, IG-100. The southernmost tunnel from your present position has collapsed. Preventing me from reaching an allied unit in need of medical attention.
You are the only viable means of shifting the duracrete available. Comply" I ordered the droid. Keeping it simple, because it was running on only the most elementary portions of it's CPU.
"Unit IG-100-009 is not optimized for construction, demolition, or search-and-rescue functions. Error #321-031, Applicable command sub-directory not found.
Routing verbal command to motive-basic subroutine.
Working .. Working .. Complying" IG-100-009 eventually agreed. It's clambering to it's feet lacked the fluid grace the synthetic Jedi-killers had all possessed previously, but I wasn't looking for a sparring partner.
I just needed those strong, strong arms, and that untiring back to move stone as swiftly and efficiently as possible.
...
Hey guys can you throw some power stones to Elevate the ranking.
=========================
if you want to read ahead of the public release you can go to p@treon :
p@treon.com/Rage_moon