Survivors of the Jedi Purge (epic)
The morning dawned red, which excited the villagers. Serena Laran finished tying her long red hair back and pulled her robe on over her long tunic as she tried to listen to the chatter outside the door. Feeling anxious, she tugged at her obi, trying to settle her emotions. A Jedi feels... nothing. Or, at least, doesn't feel worried. The Jedi Knight tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
A white helmeted trooper poked his head in. "Ready miss?"
She drew her lightsaber to her with the Force, and clipped it to a ring hidden cleverly on her wide cloth belt. "Certainly Captain Kata. We have a lot of work to do today."
"Yes." He backed away and held the door for her. Serena ducked under the lintel and looked up at the blood red sunrise. Villagers were clustered in groups around the hut that housed her. As the Republic's emmissary to the Outer Rim world, Serena stood tall, but she felt unsure of herself. At twenty-four she had matured beyond feeling like an awkward teenager, but all these people were depending on her.
She had a simple mission - to survey the damage wrought by a space battle over the planet, and supervise the doling out of relief supplies. The Republic had lent a squad of Clonetroopers to assist her. The area affected was small, but the people there had been devestated. They all looked to her to save them - but she was only one girl.
Back ramrod straight, she held herself with almost a regal bearing, cool green eyes betraying nothing of her feelings. "What is it they are saying, Captain?"
The trooper didn't move. "Red dawn. They fear it means more death."
Serena mentally sighed, motioning over the translator droid that had been assigned to her. "Tell them that the war is over here. I heard last night that General Kenobi himself was searching out General Greivous. There will be no more battles in the skies over this planet. The Republic is very close to victory."
Five hours later the villagers were distributing a crate of emergency foodstuffs as Captain Kata and Serena trekked into the forest in search of an even more remote village rumored to have been completely wiped out by a strange sickness that came out of dust. It sounded like a ship's reactor might have fallen into the middle of it, and the Jedi couldn't leave without making sure the rumor wasn't true. And, if it were true, she would have to make things right.
Captain Kata held a branch back so it wouldn't fly into her face, and Serena climbed up the hill slightly behind him. "We should be there soon - Jorna said it wasn't more than a three hour hike."
"If it is the site of a reactor breach, the dust cloud should have been visible when we arrived." Kata turned his expressionless mask towards the Jedi.
She chuckled a bit, pulling a leaf from her ponytail. "So, my good captain, you doubt the story the villagers told us?"
The trooper might have shrugged, but with all the armor it was hard to tell. "A sickness may have many causes, Jedi."
"Indeed. Which is why we are traveling to see exactly what it is we're dealing with." They topped the ridge, and looked down into a densely forested valley. "There..." Serena pointed toward the far western side where a thin trickle of dark smoke drifted lazily into the air.
"I see it. Doesn't look like enough for a whole village."
"Could be hidden in the trees. It looks dense there." Serena swiveled around, looking back the way they'd come. The horizon was layered with smog, the consequence of a Trade Federation Droid Control Ship crashing into a mountainside. It was also the reason for the bright colors in the sunrise. "Don't you think so, Captain?"
The Jedi Knight looked forward again, studying the trickle of smoke in the distance. "Certainly doesn't look like a reactor meltdown. Captain Kata? Shall we?" She smiled, looking over at the trooper who had his back half turned to her. For a moment it looked like he was recieving a message, and then he turned towards her.
He shot her high in the chest, the smell of burnt linen scorching her nostrils as her robe smoldered around the hole the blaster bolt made in her skin. The Jedi Knight gasped in a ragged breath of fire as her eyes widened in shock. Captain Kata leveled his blaster rifle at her again, black and white gloved hands tightening on the trigger. The Force gave her no warning, and she could feel no malice in his thoughts or actions. She felt a numbness spreading from the initial fire and pain of the wound. Her arms and legs didn't seem to work, and she wobbled as her good arm brushed ineptly against her lightsaber.
Serena fell off the ridge, tumbling down the steep incline into the valley, Kata's second shot booming in her ears. Elsewhere, the Emperor cackled as Order 66 was executed with extreme prejudice.
Clea and the Purge - Pt 1.
Clea approached the Temple on foot, her steps lagging and reluctant. Street rats weren't normally seen this high up on Corescant, but she was a rarity - a successful street rat. Her career was fairly under way as a singer, and she'd be off planet on tour soon. There was only one small matter to clear up..............
Why she'd been left for dead in the first place............
She no longer gave a frell why nobody had rescued her. They were Jedi, for Ghu's sake. Jedi didn't care, from what she'd seen at the lower levels. Jedi were above caring, the smug ..........
She cut her thoughts short. Several years spent surviving on Corescant's lower levels had honed her survival instincts. She'd worn dark clothes, unlike her flamboyant stage self, for this trip. Now it served her in good stead as she dodged into shadow and hid there thinking, "I'm not here...... You can't see me...... I'm not here......You can't see me...... I'm not here.............." as calmly as she could. It was a prayer that she had learned, living down in the depths.
The dark-clad man at the head of the Clone Troopers did not glance in her direction as he led them across the plaza and up the steps, but she shivered as though a cold wind had come her way. His face was familiar to her; but like most of her past it only brushed her face with the promise of memory, and then flitted away.
She didn't wonder about the Clone Trooper Legion following the man until she heard shots being fired within the Jedi Temple, and felt something - impossibly - die within her.
Clea and the Purge - Pt 2.
The shooting receded into the distance before she moved. At first she could hear the sound of blaster bolts being somehow - impossibly - deflected, their regular cadence disrupted. The disruptions grew fewer, then ceased. And she knew, somehow, that people had died, their defenses not designed for betrayal, nor from an attack from within, led by a man many of them trusted like a Master.
Who the dying people were, she did not know at first. Compelled by an urge she could not name, she finally crept up the stairs. She kept to the shadows, a habit of Coriscant-Under. She had crossed the first broad hallway when she saw the first body.
Familiar with dead people from her home turf, she did not mistake him for the bundle of clothes others might have initially thought. His Jedi robes were stained with his own blood, centered on a large blaster hole in his back. There would be, Clea knew, an even larger hole where the charge had exited him in the front. She had not needed to turn him over to check, yet somehow she did - and gasped to see a face familiar from a dream. A friend, she had felt in the dream. It saddened her that she did not remember his name. Gently she closed his eyes.
There were others - familiar, half-familiar, unfamiliar - that she saw as she drifted deeper into the Temple, called into peril by something she could not name. Faces familiar from crumbs and scraps of memory. Some seemed to be friends, others acquaintances or rivals. All were dressed in Jedi robes, since the Temple was not generally frequented by outsiders at this late hour.
She paused, hidden in a shadow, as a squad of Clone Troopers bustled past. "You do not see me," she gently whispered, and they passed. The late hour - and yet she had been sure she could enter - and not be turned away. The thought chilled her, and a second shock arrived as she realized that she herself had sent the Clone Troopers on their way.
The first small child came as another shock, deep within the Temple. A young Twi'lek, he was curled on his side in a chair as if asleep. She cautiously crept near him. As she got closer, she suddenly gagged. Half of his face was gone, smashed to a bloody pulp by an impact with the chair's arm. She closed her eyes, swallowing hard.
Her head snapped around as she heard several small children scream, and she went running without thinking in their direction. A lightsaber flew from by its dead owner's side, and she accepted it into hers without question, as she passed silently running. The screams stopped, abruptly, and she jerked to a halt, suddenly and uncomfortably aware of the unfamiliar weapon in her hand. Finally, she shrugged. A weapon was a weapon, and she tucked it into her belt-sash.
She came on the group of young ones in a few minutes. The area looked like a dormitory, and a bloodbath. Recently slaughtered, their bodies still bled from dying hearts. She checked them all, unable to believe the evidence that someone - armed with a LIGHTSABER - had killed children. A few of them had been simply picked up, their small brains dashed out against the wall. One small blond girl, her hair neatly braided, had apparently had those braids used as a sling. One had ripped loose before her skull had been crushed, and lay on the floor, kicked next to her body.
She found the small boy behind several larger children. His muffled whimpers of pain drew her like a magnet. She moved his friends' bodies, hoping that he - at least - had been spared fatal damage. It was a vain hope, and she could only hold his hand, whispering comfort to him, until he died. When she stood up, her face was grim, and she drew her blaster and her holdout.
Someone, she decided, would pay for these children's deaths.
Clea and the Purge - Pt 3.
Like a cos-cricket in a book stack, Clea crept forward. Hardened to the sights of Corescant-Under she was but this slaughter sickened her. The bodies were piled in clusters and groups, some with their wounds still smouldering.
By now she had reached the Atrium, and the Hall of a Thousand Waterfalls. The flower scent could not disguise the smell of burned flesh, nor the waterfalls the sound of blaster rifles echoing there. Small bodies bobbed in the decorative pond, and down the winding stream. The water was reddened, washing around the reeds on the edges, thinning and bleeding downstream.
Picking her way cautiously forward, Clea heard a faint gasp. A small head had just poked its way up in the reeds. The young girl looked around warily, then started to ease her way out of the water. She was bleeding from a blaster hole in her right shoulder. She froze as she saw Clea, and tried to akwardly ignight a lightsaber lefthandedly. It showered sparks, and did not switch on.
"It's O.K." said Clea softly. "I'm a friend."
Clea and the Purge - Pt 4.
The girl studied her for a moment. Clea's nerves shivered at the impact of those dark, untrusting eyes, old in such a young face. Finally, she nodded. "I don't know why you've come back, after being gone for so long, but I won't turn down any help right now. They shot Master Tyrsus, and tried to kill me." With her left arm, the child pointed at the body of an older man, holes blown in him from blaster-rifle fire.
"You know me?" Clea started to say, then stopped, hearing the rattle of approaching booted feet. "C'mon!" she whispered urgently to the girl. They raced for the cover of a clump of trees and bushes, sliding on their stomachs underneath the arching boughs of the nearest just as a squad of Clones marched into the area.
The girl, Clea noted, was silent as they quickly wiggled deeper in the bushes.
They had almost passed the grating before it registered. Extending her arm, Clea stopped the girl, silently. She pointed at the grate. The girl shrugged, and indicated the lock. Clea grinned at her, and pulled out her 'pick kit. Within minutes, the grate was silently open, its hinges oiled for silent movement. She motioned the girl to go first, then slid in the tube after. Turning on the ladder, she quickly closed the grate, and went down to meet the intersecting tunnel.
Small cleaning droids skittered past them quietly as they walked down the bending tunnel warily, Clea's blaster at ready. When they had gone far enough, the girl motioned to the lightsaber stuck in Clea's belt. "Why don't you use that?" she asked.
"I don't know how," said Clea simply.
The girl stared at her in open disbelief, then asked, "May I use it then?"
"Yeah," said Clea. "I don't know how to use this Jedi stuff."
The girl looked at her and snorted. "Nice try, Jedi Knight," she said sarcastically. Clea looked at her. "Yeah, YOU!" the girl snarled.
Clea's hand shot out, gripping the girl's uninjured shoulder, tightening. "You know me," she stated through clenched teeth.
"Damn straight......." snarled the girl back.
The sound of booted feet behind them broke the deadlock, and they hurried off again, each with her own thoughts, searching for an exit.