Chapter Forty One

While padawan Zule Xiss was grateful for Master Glaive taking her on, she could have wished that he was a somewhat gentler soul, let alone a gentler teacher. She bowed profusely to the man Master Glaive had brushed aside as the two of them had exited the passenger ship the two of them had taken to their latest mission. This would be her fourth with Master Glaive, and he had yet to finish the mission without rubbing someone, other than those involved in the actual, dispute the wrong way. It's almost a talent.

"Of course we do not have baggage you fool! We are Jedi, attachments to material things like that are beneath us." The large, powerfully built human male said, shaking his head.

Shaking her head Zule followed her Master. I know I'm the lucky to have gotten a Master so quick, especially with so many of the rest of the clan not having done so, but even so... In fact her friend Wulo was being considered to be sent to the Agricultural Corps. It was only Master Yoda and Master Mace having begun to revamp that process and the fact that he was the second best of all of them all, of the clan anyway, at teaching the shield technique that he hadn't already been sent there.

Master Glaive had taken her on with extreme reluctance. He was not one of those who looked on her and the others of the Clan askance for their skills, or their more emotional ways of acting at times. But he was a very abrasive sort of person, demanding, brusque, argumentative and what he called forthright, but which Zule knew was simply rude at times.

On the other hand, he is a Guardian, and that makes him perfect for me in many ways, Zule thought, following him quickly now. And it could certainly be worse. I could be Alecto, stuck back in the Temple until another Master wishes to take him on, or Aayla right now. I don't know enough about her mission, but I know it was something she was chosen for because of her race, and that can't be good.

The two Jedi or as Master Glaive would put it the Jedi Master and the padawan, "you are not a full Jedi yet young one", exited the spaceport terminal out into a large sprawling cityscape, one with a truly bizarre mix of architecture from what Zule could see. Half of the buildings were square and constructed of ferro-crete and steel, others were even larger, obviously factories. A third of the remaining buildings were housing districts, built along the same utilitarian lines. Another third were light and airy in nature, looking almost like trees made of steel and metal. And then there were domes, small ones scattered around the larger buildings, sometimes growing up out of them or from the sides.

The city was a very odd place, an almost exact mirror of the entire planet which was dominated by the humans who'd come to colonize this planet during the Colonization Era.

However, there had been a native species already, and another race had been forced to evacuate to this one due to a natural disaster on their homeland a few years into the human's inhabitation of it. The Pekun'ar were a race that looked as if they had evolved along similar lines as the Toydarians, except they were more resembled little flying monkeys with membrane wings. They were highly intelligent, completely pacifistic, and excellent workers hence why the humans of this planet had welcomed them with open arms.

The original inhabitants of the planet, a lizard like species called the Deshlon, were not so welcoming. For one thing, the Pekun'ari were simply better at most of the jobs the Deshlons did, and got on famously with the local humans. Whereas the Deshloni, had tried to make war with the human colonists several times after initially welcoming them with open arms thanks to the humans' higher level of technology. It didn't help matters that the Deshlon believed the Pekun'ars were amazingly good eating.

A smack to the back of the head woke Zule from her musings, and she turned quickly bowing to her Master before pulling out their Council papers, holding them out over the reader while her Master grumbled about her absentmindedness. "There's a time and place for meditation, walking is not it." Then he went back to another particular gripe of his. "You would think that the lightsaber would be enough of a mark of the Jedi, as well as our clothing!"

"Don't a few bounty hunters also have lightsabers Master?" Zule asked almost absentmindedly, her eyes flicking over to a Pekun'ar who was flying by.

"Bah!" said Master Glaive, shaking his head. "They might own them, but they do not wear them padawan, that would be an amazingly bad idea for them. Even if the Senate is so blind that they allow the bounty hunters Guild to operate as it does with little oversite."

He frowned looking down at her from his towering height of nearly 8 feet, all of it muscle. Zule in contrast was a regularly sized woman for her race, slightly shorter than most human women of her age, but extremely well formed thanks to her Jedi training and her own inclination to physical fitness. I understand why the bounty hunters would be on your mind given what happened to your clan mate," he said bluntly, "but you must put it out of your mind. Jedi cannot allow emotions or attachments to impede their connection with the Force. Remember that. There is no emotion there is peace."

"There is no ignorance there is knowledge," Zule quoting the next passage of the Jedi Oath, shaking her head internally. Like many a Jedi Master Glaive looked at her and the others askance for having come out and stated unequivocally at one time or another that they would be taking the Old Oath rather than the new. "Understood Master."

The man nodded brusquely at her and moved off into the city. Zule sent an apologetic bow towards the next few people he pushed out of his way before following him.

They were here to hunt down and either apprehend or exterminate a terrorist cell of Deshloni who had turned cannibal eating not only the Pekun'ars but a few of their own species. They were supposedly druggies, some kind of new drug had gotten into this system and the Jedi Order wanted the pipeline to said drug found and shot down with extreme prejudice given what the drug did to the minds of the people who were foolish enough to try it.

A few hours later, the two of them had canvassed the city, found a rooftop to use as a base of operations, and begun to dig into the local underground. Master Glaive was actually quite proficient at this. Take away his giant lightsaber and changes clothing, and he could quite easily pass as a bouncer looking for work, using his Force telepathy to fog men's minds when they looked at his face. Zule too could handle herself in this kind of environment, changing her skin tone due to one of the techniques Harry had taught them all, and if she put on an outfit could look like a glimmer girl, a bad to the bone space pirate, or a down on her luck street rat if she added a change of breast size to the disguise. Zule was, despite the Order's injunctions against it, rather proud of that. S she was the only one who could do that particular trick, something that had irritated Aayla a time or two, until her own natural size caught up with Zule's.

Why have my thoughts kept turning to Aayla these past few days? Zule thought to herself as she moved through a bar, her arms holding a full tray of drinks. This particular bar was frequented by all three species prevalent on the planet, as well as a few offworlders, and was one of many the two Jedi had sensed might be connected to the local crime scene. Is the Force trying to tell me something? If it is, I could wish it was clearer in its message.

Of course, these days the Force really wasn't being clear with anyone. A lot of the older Masters had begun to talk about it: the Force was becoming Dark. There was nothing behind it, but it was no longer a mere suggestion felt only by the most powerful and learned Masters, nearly every Master in the Order could feel it. A lot of them Zule knew had begun to look at the Clan even more askance than before, as if their techniques had led to this imbalance. But there was no clear indication of that, and their proponents were quick to shoot that idea down, especially those Jedi whose lives had been saved by the shield technique or any of the others.

She paused, a strain of conversation hitting her heightened hearing from a group heading into the back of the restaurant. She quickly cast a few Force techniques over herself, muffling her steps and covering herself in a notice-me-not as Harry and Mistress Lily had put it, though the Jedi simply called it Force Cloak. Zule had used the Jedi version, and felt it was better if you were on the move and especially moving quickly or in a crowd, but Mistress Lily's version was better if you had to be silent and were sneaking around. With the two techniques covering her Zule moved quickly in the direction of the voices, pausing next to the door and enhancing her hearing further.

"The next shipment will be here in two days! If the Peregrine isn't prepared to move on its way, we'll have to immediately turn the shipment back. Didn't you hear? There are two Jedi on the planet! They will ruin everything, they always do, and I won't take the fall from them or the higher ups for your incompetence."

"Calm yourssself," said a noticeably reptilian voice. It sounded odd to Zule's ears beyond the sibilant hiss, metallic almost, grating. "Your backers will be able to send the rest of the shipment on as long as we get our cut. The Peregrine will be ready before their ship arrives, and you'll be able to transship the load immediately at our facility. The local Skynet operators are still in our pocket, never fear."

"You've already had your cut. You had your cut last month." The first voice again, only this time, the heat it had contained was gone, replaced by cold anger. "This is a fiscal operation Kruger, it isn't just to feed your own habit. If you can't keep control you're of no use to our employers. And if you start skimming off the top, we'll cut you off entirely."

There was a sound of several people moving quickly, and a thrumming noise Zule realized was the sound of several blaster rifles being powered up as one. "I do not think sssso," said the metallic reptilian voice. "We will have our sssshare of every sssshipment that comes through Jago, or you will be sent to your higher-upssss in piecesssss."

"This, you…." The first voice stuttered now, its anger overcome by shock. "You can't think you'll get away with this! You don't know who you're screwing with!?"

"We have a very good idea. Perhaps it is you who does not know who you are dealing with. Your higher upssss seem to not undersssstand they need ussss jusssst assss much as we now need XGrim. They need to learn thissss, and you will deliver this messsssage. But, we don't need your guardssss to deliver said message, and I'm getting peckisssh. Boysss?"

Zule paused, her hands dropping down to her side, where two lightsabers sat, hidden in a pair of pouches she covered every morning with a specific notice-me-not, one of the spells she had been able to modify far more than the rest of the clan. The lightsabers were both shotos, short swords with blue blades. The crystals inside them came from a crystal cave master Giiett had taken her and Aayla to when they had advanced to the point of creating their own lightsabers.

He had been on the rotation to oversee such, but Zule had her doubts about that. She felt his taking them personally like that had been his way of thanking them for teaching him the Shield spell which had saved his life against the Yinchorri a bare few weeks before. Her crystals had been normal for the most part, though somewhat more perfect in their natural state than most. Aayla's had not been, they looked normal and they were physically perfect, with no flaw in them. But when they were used to power her lightsabers, they showed an extremely odd light purple color.

Again my thoughts go to Aayla! I definitely will have to meditate on her after this mission is over. And possibly get in touch with Harry too if I can. If Aayla is in danger, he needs to know.

That her own Master and most of the Jedi Order would look askance at that very idea one of their number would need to be informed of danger to another was something that Zule thought and dismissed within a millisecond. There were just some things that were more important than the Orders rather silly rules.

But speaking of them, Zule thought, activating lightsabers. What would my two friends do in this situation? She thought about that for a few moments, as the' discussion' inside the room went on, then pulled out her twin lightsabers from their pouch, activating them quickly and slicing the door into pieces before racing inside, her earlier techniques fading quickly overcome by her movement. She hastily through one hand forward, a shield going on around the three individuals at one end of the room, as several Deshloni fired on them before pausing in shock when her Force Shield took the blaster bolts.

Zule shouted aloud "don't fire! It won't be able to…" A bare millisecond later she groaned as one of the security guards ignored her shouting and fired from inside the shield. The bolts bounced as she knew it would have from the inside, the Clan had tested that one out while on the Explorer, killing him and his partner and wounding their principle.

Behind her she felt Master Glaive arrived, but she was already too busy, her lightsabers flashing into a modified Shien defense, battering the blaster bolts all around her back towards her attackers. Then Zule halted in place, reaching out with the Force wrenching at half of them, hurling them backwards as hard as she could. They fell broken and bleeding, and then her Master was there, cutting down three of them in quick succession, his lightsaber's green plasma blade burning straight through them without any effort. The fight went out of the others at that, and they tried to run past the Jedi or surrender.

"Good work," Glaive said grudgingly as they looked around the remains of the room, spotting a Deshloni hiding behind a desk to one side of the room. The Deshlon in question had a missing jaw replaced by crude cybernetics. And in the center of the room behind Zule's shield there was a single human in a somewhat decent suit lying on the ground his thigh burned.

"Thank you Master," Zule said, quickly informing him of all that she had overheard as she let the shield technique, wavering on her feet for a moment as the drain from it hit her. Deactivating her lightsabers she moved to rip off a piece of one of the local's clothing, moving to kneel beside the human's thigh and trying to staunch the bleeding.

She wasn't a Healer, nor was her Master, although his personal healing abilities were quite high. Healing another person however was something Glaive simply could not do.

He did however have extremely good Force Precognition, and when the human tried to pull out a small holdout blaster Glaive's lightsaber cleaved it in two right above the other man's fingers. Glaive smiled down at the other man, but it wasn't a kind expression. It was a shark-like expression on his normal grim countenance, and he leaned forward deliberately intimidating the smaller man. "Trying to take my padawan hostage is not the best way to get on my good side. Now, why don't you tell me all about this new drug…"