Chapter 56: ED : Chapter 54: Fighting Fate II
Yoda's voice lost what little warmth it had left, as he responded "Above the needs of the individual, the needs of the community are placed. Resourceful, the Senator is, you say. If this is true, without us, Amidala may yet find success."
...
His handsome features made harsh by consternation, Mace tried a different tack. "I'm owed favors by some highly capable people who don't belong to the Order. Several of them are beings I would trust with an Initiate's life. Let me reach out to and persuade one of them to act as the Senator's bodyguard."
"No." Yoda said simply, but with real resolve. His eyes widened fractionally when he saw the other Jedi Master bristle and stiffen, then appeared to think better of such a peremptory refusal.
"The veil of the Dark Side, the Crystal has parted. Warnings of disaster, in it, I have seen. The war we may well begin, if to Cato Nemoidia, a Jedi we now send. Against this war, always Padme Amidala strives. On her behalf, begin it, never would she ask.
In her courage and resourcefulness, we should trust." Yoda's voice sounded simultaneously sad and hopeful, with a tinge of admiration as he said all this.
I didn't care in the slightest. Looking into my former Master's lined, weathered, yet still hale and handsome features, I had only one question. "You knew I was going to find out about this one way or another. Did you come to defuse an explosive, or help me do the right thing, Master?"
"They call us Jedi Guardians for a reason, Anakin." The reply was simple and to the point, but the small smile of solidarity which accompanied it soon faded.
Replaced by an expression of guarded concern, as Dark Woman continued "Master Yoda's Far Sight remains more than formidable while he continues to hold the Kaiburr Crystal, and his precognition is every bit it's match.
There won't be any hiding our intent to interfere with the High Council's will, and they could easily expel us for doing this. You ready to accept that as a possible consequence of our choice?"
I shrugged with a casualness I didn't feel, as I wheeled and started marching in the direction of my quarters to collect all the equipment and the "someone" I'd need for the small war which might break out on Cato Neomoidia.
Calling back over my shoulder in a voice tightly controlled to keep the anger trying to turn my blood to fire in my veins out of it.
"Padme Amidala was one of those leading the counter-protests before the very steps of the Temple when word of Sifo-Dyas's actions broke on HoloNet News! If the Grandmaster would have me believe being a Jedi is about standing by as those who uphold us in our duty are cut down, then he can have my resignation and lightsaber.
I'll just build a better one with a crystal from Mestare, and go see if Masters Dooku, Sifo-Dyas, and Bnar have a Chosen One-shaped niche in their organization."
I could feel the disquiet in my Master as she glided along quickly in my way for a change, but I could also sense the resolve which had been kindled and that now roared as an open flame within her.
A belief the Jedi should in part be about nurturing a protecting the "great lights of each generation" had been a central tenet of Dark Woman's teachings the entire time I'd known her.
Generally, I'd found when centralized doctrine ran counter to her teachings, doctrine didn't tend to rate much consideration. Her true superior was and always had been the Living Force.
Put another way, Dark Woman didn't kriffing care that Padme Amidala was a powerful political ally of the Jedi Order, because the Jedi Master didn't even agree with the Order being nearly so invested in or integrated a part of the Republic. She cared because Padme was a very good person, doing the right thing, at extraordinary risk to life and limb.
Had Dark Woman been Grandmaster, a Jedi would be descending rapidly to ground via drop-pod anywhere that virtue resisted evil.
The bigger the evil, the more drop-pods, and the more extensive the starfighter cover sent along. Hers was a simple, easy to come to grips with philosophy of serving good by defeating evil whenever and wherever one could.
It was just one of the reasons I'd eventually come to love her. After I'd got over hating her guts for humiliating me, making me puke, bleed, cramp, shake, and outright collapse thousands of times, of course.
...
My heart was still hammering away inside my chest as I marched through the door to my room as it hissed open. While I began loading grenades into their carry-bag with the belt I wore them on, I waited for the door to hiss shut behind my teacher, then called out loudly "It's time to get going. We've got a mission, IG-D1!"
For five hundred and twenty pounds of phrik-cortosis alloy, IG-D1 was incredibly light on his feet. He's nearly seven feet tall and moves like exactly what he was designed to be, however. The Magna-Guard prototype was built as part of a tactical-tradeoff unit concept. Expend him along with two to four more of his experimental brethren, and get one dead Jedi Master.
It took several trips to my Mirialan slicer friend to ensure both of IG's processors were squeaky clean, then began the week-long process of getting him reprogrammed, and returning his knowledge of the Forms.
I took over from there with all the hardware, and essentially cannibalized his defunct compatriot in the process of carrying out a refit which ended his expendable nature due to heat-death of his components.
IG-D1 was only capable of a two hundred forty minute window of maximum performance before needing time for his heat-sinks and the venting system I'd created to bleed off excess heat, but it was a source of continuing pride I'd basically outdone the Secessionists despite their comparably infinite manpower and resource advantage. There were days even I thought being Anakin Skywalker was farking ridiculous.
None of which did anything to cool the simmering righteous anger I was experiencing. I was as angry at myself as I was at Yoda, if you wanted to get to the heart of things.
"I should have remembered Yoda was the same Jedi Master who tells people to sacrifice everyone they care for to achieve the greater good. This is all just mathematics to the eight hundred and fifty year old Grandmaster. Just need the balanced number of midge-flies in all the appropriate places, and everything will be perfect!" I muttered dangerously as Dark Woman looked on.
"I don't agree with Master Yoda's decision in this case, but your characterization of him isn't fair either. You're taking this entire situation extremely personally given we're talking about someone you actually resorted to using the Force to avoid meeting on one occasion.
Would you like to tell me why you're behaving as if Padme Amidala is your paramour rather than a near-total stranger who might be in danger?" The Jedi Master asked in her quiet yet exceedingly blunt manner.
She was so blunt, in point of fact, her question drew me up short. The confusion as I floundered a bit in search of an answer stole some of my anger as the silence stretched out, but it didn't last long.
"I trusted Master Yoda to be not just a figure of temporal authority, but as a source of moral authority. Choosing to seriously endanger the life of one person unqualified to meet the peril they're being asked to confront alone, because you don't want to chance a potential risk to many more lives?
That's an evil which hides behind the same four words to justify things some Sith Lords would shy away from The Greater Good! It's exactly the sort of thing I would expect Palpatine to peddle, and I'm disappointed in myself for knowing better but believing in our Grandmaster anyways!" My answer wasn't heated, not really.
I was beginning to get a handle on my anger and upset, but it was still hard.
IG-D1 had already run his electro-staff through a power-up/power-down test cycle, so now the droid was standing at the doorway as I picked the latest refits of my recon and slicing droids into a second bag.
My third bag full of bacta-patches, bact-aid, stims, and general first-aid gear was already ready to go, so I slung the droid-pack onto my back, and was shouldering the other two bags when Dark Woman finally responded.
"The galaxy is spiraling out of control, Anakin. Tens of trillions of sentient beings are about to die, at a bare minimum! Cities, entire worlds, the work of centuries of striving is going to burn everywhere sentient beings have built.
Can you truly find it in your heart to call evil his inability to toss a lit tinder-stick onto the galaxy's pyre? If I thought what he was doing was right, I wouldn't be helping you defy him, but judging him for this as if you could never flinch back from such? It demeans you as a man, and as a Jedi.
Yoda has been tirelessly fighting the good fight for more than forty-two generations! In a galaxy which contained any justice whatsoever, he would have been allowed to spend his final years teaching the younglings as he loves to do. Instead, he's going to feel hundreds if not thousands of his Jedi die hopeless and in terrible pain.
No punishment your outraged ethics could demand be levied against him will exceed what he's going to suffer." Her voice was quiet, direct, and to the point. She wasn't trying to persuade me as to the things she'd just said. It was simply the truth as she saw it.
It did bring me to a halt long enough to really consider what she'd said. Ultimately, I did what I always did when really pressed. I told the truth, and let the credits settle wherever they might. "Yoda disappointed me in a way I don't believe I'll ever completely get over.
This hesitance to act in what he considers a precipitous manner? It helped kill 99.9% of you, and made my incarnation necessary.
Maybe I can understand, and even sympathize to a degree, but if the only thing holding off war is the blood-sacrifice of truly great individuals?"
I paused, drew in a deep breath, then declared "Let there be war rather than the death of everything worth fighting over. Padme Amidala is worth protecting.
Every innocent life is worth protecting, and I understand that truth is what's become a trap for Yoda and so many other Jedi. Yet you not only can't buy peace with the death of the great, you shouldn't be able to, even if you could figure out a way to manage it."
Before my mentor could respond, I told her "We, the Jedi, shouldn't even be in this position! Set against our predecessors desperate wish to believe Ruusan was the end of the Sith stands all of recorded history! Always, the Sith either collapse due to infighting, or we bring the vast majority of them down at ruinous expense. Only for either a handful of survivors, or a Dark Jedi convert to reconstitute them.
I'll leave the Force Wars alone as an ambiguity. Still, The First Great Schism, fighting the Order of the Terrible Glare during the Pius Dea Crusades, the Second Great Schism becoming the Hundred-Year Darkness. Most of these began with our failures, but still serve to emphasize my point.
From the time of the Great Hyperspace War, to the New Sith Wars, the Jedi Order saw the Dark Side rise again and again and again.
Only people so desperate for the nightmare to be over they were willing to ignore what tens of thousands of years worth of history was telling them could have believed Ruusan was the end of it.
About every one thousand to sixteen hundred years this happens, so how could the fact we find ourselves here on the bring of galaxy-torching war once more due to Sith imperialism shock anyone!"
"Come on IG-D1. Let's go save the heroine from the jaws of moral compromise" I ordered just because I was still feeling testy and more out of sorts than I'd been at any time since the Crystal Caves. Rather than argue with me, Dark Woman glided along in mine and the droid's wake on the way to the hangar.
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