Private Ghosts of the Clone Wars

[Iandre Athlea]

The sound was so out of place that Iandre initially failed to recognize it. She had been halfway through sorting the few belongings she still kept from her first life when a faint electronic chirp came from somewhere beneath a folded set of clothing. Iandre stopped, grey eyes narrowing toward the open case as the sound came again, followed by two short tones and a longer third that sent a strange chill through her before she'd consciously remembered why. Reaching beneath the clothing, she pulled free an old Republic communicator and turned the battered device over in her hands. It was ancient by every modern definition of the word, obsolete even as a curiosity, yet she had never quite convinced herself to throw it away. Now, impossibly, the indicator along its side was blinking.

"That's impossible." Iandre lowered herself onto the edge of the nearby chair and activated the receiver. Static immediately filled the room, but beneath it came fragments of something else, so weak that she had to increase the gain before the communicator could isolate anything meaningful. An identification sequence surfaced first. Republic military. An authentication protocol she hadn't seen since the Clone Wars. For several seconds she simply stared at the device in her hand while a string of numbers and corrupted telemetry crawled across its tiny display. She knew that protocol, and more unsettlingly, the communicator knew it too.

Whatever had reached her wasn't a modern transmission masquerading beneath an old encryption standard. The packet carried an original Republic timestamp buried inside its header. Iandre checked it once, then again, convinced she had misread the numbers, but there was no mistake. The transmission had been sent during the Clone Wars. Somewhere along the old Republic communications network, a signal had failed to complete its journey. Perhaps a relay had been damaged before it could finish routing the packet, or perhaps the transmission had spent centuries trapped within some forgotten piece of infrastructure, endlessly attempting to complete instructions given to it by people who had been dead for nearly a millennium. Whatever had happened, something had changed. An ancient relay had awakened, a surviving system had finally found a viable route, and the communicator Iandre had carried into another age had recognized a message intended for equipment just like it.

Most of the transmission was gone. There were fragments of coordinates, corrupted operational identifiers, and pieces of an automated priority signal, but no voices survived and no desperate plea for rescue emerged from the static. There was only enough information to establish where the transmission had originated.

Boz Pity.

Several days later, Iandre stood beneath its bleak sky with the old communicator secured at her side. The coordinates had taken her well away from anything that might attract ordinary travelers, across broken stone and desolate stretches of terrain interrupted here and there by remnants of a world whose association with death had begun long before the Clone Wars. Somewhere ahead, partially swallowed by centuries of erosion and neglect, rested the source of a signal that had somehow managed to reach her more than nine hundred years after someone had sent it.

She moved carefully across the uneven ground, dressed for travel rather than ceremony, with her lightsaber resting at her hip beneath the edge of her outer layer. Its familiar weight was reassuring without demanding attention. She hadn't come expecting a fight, though she wasn't entirely certain what she expected to find at all. When the communicator suddenly chirped at her side, Iandre stopped and drew it from her belt, watching the indicator pulse before changing direction slightly. The signal was stronger here, growing incrementally clearer as another few hundred meters carried her toward the base of a rocky embankment.

The first unmistakable evidence of the outpost was easy to miss. Weathered duracrete protruded from beneath the surrounding rock, faded almost to the same dull shade as the landscape around it. Beyond stood the remains of what had once been a communications mast, its upper portion long since collapsed against the earth. It was only when Iandre drew closer that her light caught the faint remains of a Republic insignia beside the partially buried entrance, and for several long moments she simply stood there looking at it.

She had seen that symbol countless times since awakening. It existed in museums, archives, historical recordings, and reproductions printed beneath paragraphs describing a government that had become ancient history. This one was different. Someone had painted it there when the Republic was still alive, perhaps never imagining there would come a day when its emblem needed to be identified by historians. Iandre reached out almost without thinking, her fingertips brushing lightly across what remained of the faded insignia.

"You took your time." she murmured, glancing down at the communicator still blinking in her other hand before turning toward the entrance.

Part of the passage beyond had collapsed, but enough remained for Iandre to slip through. Darkness swallowed the daylight within several steps, prompting her to produce a small light before continuing deeper into the outpost. Its beam passed slowly over ancient conduits, fallen ceiling panels, and doors marked with military designations she could still read without translation. Dust and nine centuries of neglect covered everything, yet beneath it all was an architecture painfully familiar to her. The modern galaxy would have called this an archaeological site, another surviving fragment of the Clone Wars carefully cataloged and separated from the present by centuries of history. To Iandre, there was nothing ancient about the shape of those doors or the markings beside them. They belonged to memory.

The communicator chirped again, louder this time, and Iandre's attention shifted toward the darkened passage ahead. Whatever had survived here had not merely sent one final transmission before dying. Something deeper within the forgotten Republic outpost was still transmitting after more than nine hundred years of silence.

With the old communicator held before her and its signal strengthening with every pulse, Iandre followed it farther into the ruins.

Galen Paven

 

[Galen Paven]

Master Yoda and Master Windu had done something that no Jedi Knight, let alone a Jedi Master or High Council Member, had ever done. They had cloned a Jedi using the DNA from Fallen Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn. Darth Maul had cut down the great jedi during the battle of Naboo and Jedi Padawan Obiwan Kenobi had avenged his Master and brought him back to the Jedi Temple of Coruscant. This was a huge blow to the Jedi as a whole. The order had lost one of their most powerful Jedi Knights and here he was, deceased. Master Windu had pulled Master Yoda aside during the funeral persession and had mentioned about needing an expendable ally that could infiltrate the certain areas and certain sects of the Seperatists and not be detected and from there, that is where Galen Paven was born.

~~~~~900 Years Later~~~~~

That signal that had been sent out and was intercepted by Iandre Athlea had picked up from her Republic Communicator, which now was nine decades old, was sent out from a Cryogenic Hibernation Chamber that was under the ground with in the old Command Outpost. The cpmputer which had been attached to the chamber had a timer. Said timer was connected to the chamber and on the date, 900 years later, had starte dto go off. The lights had kicke don within the chamber and the computer had started to send out the signal. This signal was so Galen Paven could be found.


\The Hybernation chamber was always on backup power and running at minimal just enough to keep Galen alive. When the Date had hit, the full power had kicked on and started the process to wake Galen up. The process was long, it was slow and it was strenuous. Usually a team of scientist had to put in the codes and sequences to do it properly but alas, 900 years later, no one knew this old technology. Scientists as well as Master Yoda and placed the proper codes in so that it could run seemlessly with out them.


As Iandre walked through the corridors and was not aware of what she was walking into, Galen Paven was being woken up. The sequences had started and the process was on its way. From the time she had entered the command post, the sequencing started. The signal had sent out and when she had entered, she had past the main entrance, which of course was now crumbled and deteriorated from years of neglect. The walls had crumbled and the entrance had crumbled. The Durasteel and Duracrete was a form of its previous self. The lighting had stopped working and the blast doors either had been stuck open, half open, barely open or shut forever. Nothing was going to open them. That was until Iandre had reached the end of the blackened hallway with her small little light.


"Welcome General" A voice had spoke, mechanical in nature and lights had flickered within the hall way. Light had shattered and popped as they hadnt been turned on in 900 years and then that sound, the whine of gears that hadnt moved in almost a millenia. As the door opened, the lights with in the chamber had flickered on and as Iandre could see, the lights of the chamber had came on as well and had opened. Steam had filled the room and only thing she could see was what looked like an outline of a body kneeling on the ground. Was it a body? No one knew. This room hadnt been entered since 19BBY. Then all of a sudden, with in the steam, a familiar sound was heard and an Orange/Yellow glow was seen. It was a Lightsaber


Iandre Athlea

 

[Iandre Athlea]

The deeper Iandre moved into the outpost, the more difficult it became to maintain the comfortable distance of an explorer examining ruins. There was too much she recognized. The placement of emergency markings along the walls, the remains of Republic equipment tucked into recesses, even the dimensions of the corridors carried a familiarity that modern recreations never quite managed to capture. She found herself wondering who had served here, whether she had ever crossed paths with any of them elsewhere during the war, and what circumstances had caused an entire installation to be abandoned with enough power remaining somewhere beneath it to send a signal centuries later.

Her communicator chirped again as she reached the end of the corridor, only for a mechanical voice to break through the silence before she could examine the reading. Welcome, General. Iandre stopped immediately. For one brief moment, the title reached across nine centuries and found the woman who had once answered to it without hesitation. Her grey eyes lifted as ancient lights began flickering overhead one after another, several failing almost immediately with sharp pops that sent fragments of glass scattering across the floor. "I'm afraid you're somewhat behind schedule." she murmured, though there was little humor behind the words. The timing was too precise to ignore. The signal had strengthened as she'd approached, and now the facility itself was responding to her presence.

Then came the machinery. Iandre turned toward the sound as gears protested against nine centuries of stillness and an ancient door began forcing itself open. Her hand moved instinctively toward her lightsaber, though she left the weapon secured at her side while she stepped carefully through the opening. The light in the chamber beyond flickered uncertainly, illuminating machinery that looked far less dead than anything she'd passed on her way inside. Steam began pouring into the room, obscuring her view almost immediately, and through the shifting haze she could just make out the shape of something on the floor.

The unmistakable snap-hiss of an igniting lightsaber changed everything.

Orange-yellow light spilled through the steam, and Iandre's own lightsaber was in her hand almost immediately, though she did not ignite it. Instead, she shifted her footing and allowed the Force to expand through the chamber, senses reaching beyond what her eyes could make out while she kept the hilt low at her side. Whoever stood within the vapor had awakened in a Republic installation that had been sealed since the final days of the Clone Wars. If they had truly been inside that chamber for all that time, waking to an unfamiliar figure looming over them with an ignited weapon seemed an excellent way to turn confusion into violence.

"Easy." Her voice remained calm, carrying through the hiss of escaping vapor without becoming a command. "I'm not here to hurt you."

Iandre remained where she was rather than approaching, watching the silhouette through the steam while questions multiplied faster than she could answer them. The old communicator was still blinking in her other hand, its signal now so strong there could be little doubt about where the transmission had originated. She glanced briefly toward the chamber and then back to the figure kneeling beyond the veil of vapor. Whatever she had expected to discover when an ancient Republic signal reached her on Veradune, it had not been someone waiting at the other end.

"My name is Iandre Athlea." she continued, giving the stranger the same thing she would have wanted upon waking into an unfamiliar situation: something simple and concrete to hold onto. Her gaze dropped briefly toward the glowing blade before returning to the figure behind it. "Do you know where you are?"

Galen Paven

 

[Galen Paven]

The steam started to disapate and now becoming visible Galen Paven had stood up, Lightsaber still ignited and a glare of, what semeed like pure evil, stared back at Iandre Athlea. Of course evil wasnt in Galens nature but he had woken up in a strange place, strange time with a strange woman in front of him. Galen stood straight up, still staring at her and lightsaber at the ready and still ignited. he stood about six foot three inches. His clothing was covered in the dampness of the Hibernation chamber.


"I am on Dantooine, As far as I know, it is 19BBY, The Clone Wars were ending and Master Yoda as well as Master WIndu had placed me within the Hibernation Chamber to carry on my mission. Chamcelor Palpatine had been found as a Sith Lord and Master Windu was going to confront him, Master Yoda was going to speak with Senator Organa about the Jedi Temple, which had been attacked." Galen had looked over the woman in front of him and noticed a lightsaber hilt in her hand. He had looked over her and deactivated his Lightsaber. He had placed the hilt back onto his belt and looked down at himself. He realized he was damp and looked over to the area where his durasteel footlocker had been placed. "The Jedi Temple, on Coruscant, had been attacked by a Jedi but an unknown Jedi, at the time, and I was told to come here and would be met by the two Masters, whom had placed me within the chamber. Last thing I remember was closing my eyes and seeing them walking away."


Galen had walked over to the durasteel footlocker and opened it. There was another lightsaber hooked to the top of the lid. He bent down and grabbed his change of clothing and looked at Iandre and walked behind a beem. Galen had removed his damp clothing and changed into a black tunic with a white Jedi Robe. He had the hood down as he stepped back out from behind the duracrete beem.


"I am curous what year it is? Also Where are the other masters? I have to report back about my finsdings of what Count Dooku and the Seperatists are up to! They have a secret space station they planned on building. I must report it to the remaining masters. What rank are you?" Galern had looked at her again as he walked a bit closer to her. He knew, somehow, that she wasnt sith. He didnt sense evil, nor did he sense any wrong doing within her demenur. He was taking a chance by trusting her with this information but, if needed, Galen could defend what he needed with out issue.


Things proceeded to run through Galens head though. He looked around as he waited for some answers from Iandre. He noticed as the Command center had looked ran down, dilapidated, grungy and, well, unused for quite a while. Galen had looked over and had seen the comminucator blinking on the side of her belt by her lightsaber.


"That Communicator, where did you get it? How did you come across it?" He noticed a symbol on the communicator, one that had looked familiar to him. A Master he had known. Not well of course, but one he had come across a few times during battles. The master was one of great sense and honor. He had fought with her a time or two. "Master Aisha, that was her battle marking or insignia. How did you know her?" Galen was starting to gather things had not gone well for the Clone Wars or the Galaxy


Iandre Athlea

 

[Iandre Athlea]

For several moments, Iandre simply stared at him.

She had expected confusion. Perhaps memory loss, disorientation, even hostility after whatever process had kept him alive inside the chamber. She had not expected him to begin describing the final days of the Clone Wars as though they had happened yesterday. Dantooine. Yoda. Windu. Palpatine. Organa. Dooku. Each name landed with a familiarity that no history lesson could reproduce, and the hand holding her lightsaber slowly lowered as Galen continued. By the time he deactivated his own weapon, Iandre had already made the same decision. She returned the hilt to her belt.

"You're not on Dantooine." The words came quietly at first. Iandre watched him cross toward the footlocker, still trying to reconcile what she was seeing with what she knew. "You're on Boz Pity." She gave him the privacy to change without comment, turning her attention briefly toward the chamber and its ancient machinery instead. Nine hundred years. The answer was obvious now. The signal hadn't been some forgotten transmission struggling to reach its destination. It had been a summons. Whatever instructions had been left behind had finally awakened the man standing before her and called for someone to find him.

When Galen returned and immediately began asking after the Masters, Dooku, and the Separatists, Iandre's expression softened. There was no gentle way to explain what had happened. She knew that from experience. "Before anything else, you need to know that your information isn't wrong. It's simply very old." She paused, allowing him a moment before continuing. "Palpatine was Darth Sidious. Master Windu confronted him and died. Anakin Skywalker was the Jedi who led the attack on the Temple. He fell to the dark side and became Darth Vader. The clone army was ordered to turn against the Jedi under Order Sixty-Six, and most of the Order was killed."

She hated how easily the history came now. Nine centuries had reduced the destruction of everything she'd known to a sequence of facts that could be recited in a few breaths. "Master Yoda survived the purge, as did Obi-Wan Kenobi and a small number of others. The Republic became the Galactic Empire. Palpatine ruled for decades before the Empire eventually fell, but none of them are waiting for your report." Her grey eyes remained steadily upon him. "Count Dooku has been dead for centuries. So have Yoda, Obi-Wan, Palpatine, and almost everyone else we knew from that war."

There was a pause before she gave him the part she suspected would be hardest to comprehend. "The year is 902 ABY." Even saying it to someone else from her own era felt strange. "You've been asleep for more than nine hundred years." Iandre understood exactly how impossible those words would sound. She had once awakened to her own version of them, surrounded by strangers in a galaxy that had continued without her. For the first time since her awakening, however, she was standing on the opposite side of that conversation.

His question about her rank almost seemed simple by comparison. "During the war, I served the Republic as a Jedi Commander under my Master, Aisha. I was still a Padawan when the Clone Wars ended." Her hand brushed unconsciously near the lightsaber she had returned to her belt. "I'm a Jedi Knight now. I was formally Knighted only recently, though that story is considerably more complicated than the title makes it sound."

Then he noticed the communicator.

Iandre's breath caught when Galen spoke Aisha's name. Of everything he had said since emerging from the chamber, that was what finally broke through her composure. Her eyes dropped toward the ancient device before returning to him, and for an instant she looked every bit as stunned as the man who had just learned he'd slept through nine centuries. "You knew her?" The question escaped before she could stop it. Galen hadn't read Aisha's name from an archive or recognized her from some historical record. He had recognized her mark because he had seen it when she was alive.

Her fingers curled around the communicator with considerably more care now. "Aisha was my Master." Iandre looked at him differently after that, the impossible truth of what she'd found settling fully into place. "She raised me. Trained me. I fought beside her throughout the war." Her voice softened as memories more than nine centuries old suddenly felt far closer than they had that morning. "She died at Order Sixty-Six. Keeping me alive and giving me time to hide."

For years, Iandre had been the woman out of time, explaining a vanished world to people who knew it only as history. Now she was looking at someone who remembered that same world and had awakened expecting it to still be there. The realization left her silent for several seconds before she finally spoke again. "I think you and I have considerably more in common than either of us expected to find here."

Galen Paven

 

[Galen Paven]

When Iandre had mentioned that all Jedi, Masters and the like had been dead now, fort centuries, as well as he was he had been asleep for over 900 years, Galen just stopped dead in his thought process. He had looked her over and then had turned around and just stared at the chamber. When she had told him they werent on Dantooine, he was completely confused. Yoda had brought him to Dantooine, an old Jedi Temple from before the Republic, from before the Clone Wars and before the current, well previous, Jedi Council. He turned back around and looked past her.


"How is that possible? I feel I was just put into hibernation days ago. 900 years? Everyone is dead AND I am not on Dantooine, i am on Boz Pity!? How is that even possible? That ibernation chamber was attached, wired, bolted, into the Command Center at Dantooine. That was the last place where my mission perameters had been given to me. It was the last place I looked into Master Yoda's etes as I went into sleep. Now yooure telling me its 900 years later!?"


Galen Paven was just shocked. He had no idea that his Hibernation chamber was set to that long off. Galen had been thrown for a loop and now he was trying to process all the infformation that Iandre had given him. When her demeanor had changed and became softer mentioning Aisha, Galen had turned back around.


"I knew her very well. Herself, Yoda and Mace had been in charge of a sect of the Jedi order, secret sect, that was in charge of cloning and in charge of infiltrating and gathering information. I had been given many names for my missions. My last one, in which I had been given the name Orron Grandes, was to infiltrate the CIS (Special Operations and Seperaist iIntelligence) Agency. I was a Luetenant with them. I was tasked with finding out about their ,military procedures; Commands, forward commands, Special detachments, Assassin Droids, everything. I had relayed everything back to Master Aisha, whom in turn had relayed everything back to Mace and Yoda. She was a big part of the fall of the Seperatists, or well the inevitable fall. I was palced in the chamber just before the final battle of The Clone Wars."


He knew this was going to knock her upside her head. This sect of the Jedi Temple was just never talked about except between the 3 masters and himself. Galen was, from what he was told, cloned from a Fallen Jedi named Qui-Gon Jinn. A well respected Master Jedi who trained Obi-Wan and had falled by Darth Maul. Yoda did not want Qui-Gon's talent and force powers to go to waste. Some how, they had managed to get the cloning process from the Kamonians and get Galen cloned with all of Qui-Gons knowledge of the force and lightsaber techniques with NONE of his memories or looks. Galen had been a secret project, a 1 of a kind, a trial run. No one expected this to work and when Galen was cloned and stayed stable, Yoda and the other masters knew this was going to work out.


"I actually sent a report to Master Aisha 4 hours prior to being placed into the Chamber. We never fought together, we only knew each other from meetings. She was a very good Jedi Master. She knew what she knew and that was it. For her to pass everything to you, as her Padawan, is something I am happy with. That communicator was set to go off, It was set for Master Aisha to find me. she was in charge of waking me up and giving me my next mission, but 900 years? That is just off putting,"


Galen still couldnt process all the information. When he had been placed in the chamber, Master Yoda had told him he would be removed within the week. He was told that he would be removed after the final battle but that was never the case. Yoda must of known more than he was letting his Infiltrator know. Galen had looked around again to try and process also thre fact that he was not on Dantooine as well. Galen had never been to Boz Pity. Galen looked over the room and that is when the power completely shut down..........


Iandre Athlea

 

[Iandre Athlea]

Iandre allowed Galen the time he needed to process everything without attempting to fill the silence. She remembered all too well what it had been like to hear that the galaxy she knew was gone, although watching him absorb the revelation with little more than disbelief and repeated questions left her almost impressed. "For what it's worth, you're handling this considerably better than I did." A faint, sympathetic smile touched her features. "I screamed when I woke up." There was little embarrassment in admitting it after all these years. "I was also nearly starved. Whatever kept me in stasis preserved my life, but not particularly well. It took months before I recovered enough to feel like myself again. You seem to have been considerably luckier in that regard." Physically, at least. Everything else would take considerably longer.

The revelation concerning Aisha was harder for Iandre to simply absorb. Her expression gradually shifted as Galen described the secret work performed between her Master, Yoda, and Windu, and the reports he had delivered during his infiltration of the Separatists. She had known Aisha for nearly her entire childhood. She had trained beneath her, fought beside her, trusted her without reservation, and thought she understood the responsibilities her Master had carried during the war. Apparently there had been an entire portion of Aisha's service that had remained deliberately hidden even from her own Padawan. "She never told me." Iandre finally admitted, glancing down at the communicator in her hand. There was no accusation in the words. A secret shared with three members of the Jedi leadership and an infiltrator embedded inside Separatist Intelligence was hardly something Aisha could have casually discussed with her apprentice. "Not about you or any of this. I suppose that means she was rather good at keeping the secret."

Her thumb passed slowly across the worn casing of the communicator as another piece settled into place. It hadn't merely survived with her by chance. If the signal had been intended specifically for Aisha, then nine centuries later it had reached the closest person remaining who might still possess something capable of recognizing it. "If she was supposed to wake you within a week, then something clearly went wrong before she had the opportunity." Iandre's expression sobered. "The final days of the war happened very quickly. Most Jedi never had the opportunity to prepare for what came afterward. Aisha and I certainly didn't." How Galen's chamber had traveled from Dantooine to Boz Pity was another mystery entirely, but one they were unlikely to solve by staring at it.

The lights died.

Iandre's head lifted immediately as darkness swallowed the chamber, her hand finding her lightsaber through instinct rather than sight. "Of course." she murmured into the darkness. Nine hundred years of waiting, one miraculous awakening, and apparently the ancient power system had decided that was quite enough effort for one millennium. She was reaching for her small light when something else touched her awareness through the Force. Not machinery. Life. Several presences were moving somewhere beyond the chamber, accompanied a moment later by the distant scrape of metal and voices echoing faintly through the ruined corridors.

"We're not alone."

Iandre stepped nearer to Galen, attention shifting away from the dead chamber and toward the passage through which she'd entered. The voices grew clearer as their owners approached, accompanied by the unmistakable clatter of equipment being dragged through ruins without the slightest concern for subtlety. Someone laughed. Another voice complained loudly about having climbed through half a collapsed Republic outpost only to find the power had already failed again. A third reminded the others that anything old enough to have Republic markings could still fetch an excellent price if they found the right collector.

That answered at least one question.

"Scavengers. Pirates." Iandre whispered, though the blaster she heard being checked somewhere beyond the doorway suggested they were unlikely to be the harmless variety. Her lightsaber remained unignited in her hand as she glanced toward Galen. Despite everything he'd just learned, there was something almost absurdly familiar about the situation. Ancient Republic ruins, armed opportunists, and two Jedi caught somewhere they weren't expected to be.

The corner of her mouth twitched faintly. "The galaxy has changed considerably in nine hundred years." Her attention returned to the approaching voices. "Unfortunately, pirates haven't."

Galen Paven

 

[Galen Paven]

Just as he was about to respond to her is when those lights had gone out. Galen looked towards her and when Iandre mentioned pirates, galen could feel his blood begint o slightly boil. He had dealt with way too many pirates when he was infintrating the CIS and, well, that was another story entirely. He had looked over to Iandre, through the darkness but could se eher clearly, through the foice. He straightened up, cracked his neck and spoke, in an eerie calmness.


"Stay here Iandre, I will handle this."


Galen had starte dto walk off towasrds the entrance of the large room when a blaster bolt had made its way into the room. With out hesitation, in one quick sweep of ignition and blocked, Galen had his lightsabe at the ready. That orange/red hue, lit up the entire room. For now, 1 lightsaber was within his hand. The bolt that had been deflected ended up hitting the top of the duracrete bunker and sparked. Galen stood a tthe ready. His hood down, eyes focused.


"Did you see that!? That blaster bolt was deflected! What is that orangeish glow!?" One of the pirates was heard asking way too many questions. Thet sounds of their foot steps had stopped and Galen stood there, frozen. Was he afraid? No, not in the slightest. This was Galen. He stood there, calm, collected, even though only waking up not 30 minutes ago, feeling of peace. His eyes were closed now. Concetrating on the task at hand. He still felt Iandre behind him but he knew in his own mind she could handle herself if it came down to it.


"I dont know what that was and I dont know what that light is either! You two, go check it out! Now!" A voice had clamored on, giving orders to others to check out the chamber. The sound of metal hitting the ground, as whomever had dropped whatever they were carrying and then foot steps making their was slowly towards the opening.


"BANTHA POODOO! IT'S A JEDI!" One of the pirates had yelled as he poked his head into the blast door opening.


"We dont stand a chance! This is nuts!" The other pirate explained! Galen, again, was sjust standing there. His eyes still closed and his expression, well, nonexistant. The two men, pirates, had walked into the room. They noticed only Galen and not Iandre, which was good. Galen wanted all their focus on him. This is what he needed. he needed to release the pent up frustration after learning that everyone he knew, loved and admired had been gone. Galen just took a deep breathe.


"What are you two waiting for!!!!??? Open fire! Blast that scum!" The one in charge had yelled. The two men in the doorway had lifted their blasters and opened fire. Galen just stood there. Bolts had whizzed past his head, arms, legs, every extremity. Galen just took another deep breathe. He knew this wasnt the jedi way, he knew this would not look good in front of a Knught, but Galen had not seemed to care. He lifted his hand, blaster bolts still whizzing by, and he closed his fist. With his fist closing, one of the Pirates blasters had exploded within his hand and he screamed! The pirates hand had also been disfigured with the explosion! Galen still just stood there. Eyes still closed, pulse not exceding much higher than as if he was walking casually.


"AHHHHH My hand! My forsaken hand! Dont you all just stand there! Open fire! Kill this Jedi Scum! Kill him!!!!" The man with the dysfigured hand yelled as he turned and took off. Without any hesitation, the rest of the pirates had opened fire. Blaster bolts just flyhing by everywhere. Hitting chambers, walls, the floor, everything but himself and Iandre. The pirate sof course were all scared. Have they ever encountered Jedi? Encountered Sith? Encountered literally anhyone with a Lightsaber? Most likely not and with the way Iandre explained to him about all Jedi being dead, well, all Jedi Galen had known, there was little chance that the Jedi of today were as inept with the force and Jedi powers as they jedi or yester-year.


"You all are horrible! Get out of my way!" The leader of the pirate group had yelled. The blasting stopped and he had walked into the room. He had worn various tunics and rags which had become an assembly of light armor and rags. His hair was red, in braids and dredlocks. On his back was a backpack of ammo and with in his arms was a blaster rifle the size of a gundarks wing span. "Youre in for it now JEDI! I am KARR BLIM, ther nastiest Pirate leader on this side of the galaxy! Prepare for your patheitc little life to be ended Jedi Scum!!"


Galen opened his eyes. Great, a Pirate with a complex tha stood no more than five foot, five inches tall with a blaster rifle bigger than him. Galen his just shook his head. Karr Blim had raised that rifle and opened fire. It was a gattling style blaster rifle with ocolating barrels, 6 of them to be precise. The bolts has shot out at about 12 per second. Galen reached down and grabbed his other lightsaber from his belt and ignited that one as well. Now both his lightsabers had been ignited. Galen just began to spin his blades and started to deflect the bolts. Galen looked behind him and nodded to Iandre. Did He need help? No, but Galen felt, already, that Iandre was going to be a solid ally and well, already knew she would be a friend.


"Go ahead and let lose Master Athlea! Use your powers and protect yourself! Be mindful of your surroundings and use them to your advantage!" Galen smiled as he turned his head back to Karr Blim. His lightsabers spun quicker and bolts had just started to go everywhere. Galen now started to slowly take steps towards Blim.


"Jediu Scum! You will perrish here! You will fall! And you will be nothing but a mark in Karr Blims belt! HAHAHAHAAH" Blim laughed in certainty. The bolts still proceeded to be disbanded everywhere but the intended target. Galen took another step. Karr and noticed this and got into a more defensive position and panted his feet a big harder on the ground. He gripped the rifle harder and started to yell "AHHHHHHHHHHHHH JEDI SCUM< DIE!!!!!!!!!" Galen took another step, and another, and another until Galen was within feet of Blim. The blaster bolts seemed to be flying more irradically now. Galen took one more step and then all of a sudden Galen had took a swipe with his right hand, his saber had quickly went up and then back down. Galen had placed both Sabers at his side, deactivating them. Karr Blim stood there, his expression was that of, well for lack of better words, surprise. Galen had placed both Lightsabers back into his belt and raised his left hand. He flung his left hand to the right and Blim's body had, essentially flew away, smashing again the wall but what made it even worse was his head; his head stood in the same place where his body once stood. Galen's arm still outsteetched. That expression still inprinted on Blim's face.


Galen had taken his left hand and now moved it, in a fast paced motion, towards the other pirates, which all stood in shock, blasters raised but nothing happening. Karr Blim's head had now flown towards the one with the crippled hand and blunced his head off the others head, knocking him down. Galen stood, staring at the group of Pirates, waiting..........


Iandre Athlea

 

[Iandre Athlea]

Iandre had remained behind Galen initially, though certainly not because he'd told her to stay there. He had awakened less than half an hour ago to discover that nine centuries had passed, everyone he'd ever known was dead, and even the planet beneath his feet wasn't the one upon which he'd entered stasis. If dealing with a handful of pirates gave him something immediate and comprehensible upon which to focus, she was willing to allow him that. At least until the first blaster bolts began tearing through the chamber. Her lightsaber ignited then, emerald light joining the orange glow already illuminating the darkness as she angled the blade across herself and calmly redirected a stray bolt into the floor.

His methods quickly became considerably harder to ignore. Iandre watched the first pirate's weapon explode in his hand, her expression tightening at the scream that followed. Disarming him had been necessary. Maiming him less so, although she couldn't know whether Galen had intended the extent of the injury. Then Karr Blim entered with enough firepower to make the question temporarily irrelevant. Iandre shifted farther to one side rather than crowd Galen, intercepting the occasional bolt that escaped his rapidly moving blades while allowing him to deal with the pirate leader himself. When Galen glanced back and instructed her to protect herself, one eyebrow rose slightly. "I believe I remember how." she replied dryly.

Then Karr's head separated from his body.

Iandre went still for half a heartbeat. Death itself didn't shock her. She had been raised during the final years of the Republic and had spent much of her adolescence fighting a galactic war. She had killed before, and she wouldn't insult the dead by pretending every life she'd taken had been avoidable. But watching Galen casually hurl the severed head into another pirate after the threat had already ended caused something colder to settle into her expression. There was a difference between killing an armed opponent and making a spectacle of what remained afterward.

"That's enough."

Her voice wasn't loud, but the command carried easily through the sudden absence of blaster fire. Iandre stepped out beside Galen rather than remaining behind him, emerald blade held low as her grey eyes settled upon the remaining pirates. She reached through the Force and pulled the nearest blaster free of its owner's hands, sending it skittering across the floor behind her. A second followed, then another, making the alternative she was offering unmistakably clear without requiring another death.

"Your captain is dead. One of you is badly injured, and neither of us has any interest in whatever you've scavenged from this place." Her gaze passed across the remaining pirates before briefly settling upon the man whose hand Galen had injured. "Take your wounded, leave Boz Pity, and everyone else walks away from this chamber alive."

She waited, lightsaber still ready but making no movement toward them. If they were sensible, the sight of two Jedi and what remained of Karr Blim would overcome whatever courage greed had provided. Only after giving them the opportunity to retreat did Iandre glance toward Galen. There was no fear in her expression, nor condemnation of the man himself, but neither was she going to pretend she hadn't seen what he'd done.

"And when they're gone, you and I should probably discuss what the Jedi became during the war." Her eyes flicked briefly toward the severed head before returning to him. "Because I suspect you and I were taught rather differently."

Galen Paven

 

[Galen Paven]

Galen had stood at the read. The remaining Pirates had looked at each other and looked at both the Jedi, then back to each other, then turned around and high-tailed it out of there. They had dropped all they had and just took off. Cowards. Galen had stood there, staring them down as they ran off. It took Galen a second, but he felt off. He looked at Iandre and tried to speak


"Trainijng? What training............" As Galen spoke his eyes rolled into the back of his head and passed out and hit the ground. Galen was out; Unresponsive, breathing but unresponsive. What had happened? Galen, obviously, couldnt. He just took breaths but just was out. Inside his head was a whole other story. He had things going on. He was hit hard with the fac tthat he had been in stasis for 900 years and everyone he knew was dead. he had been only awake for roughly 30 minutes and then used his force powers, which hasnt been used in 900 years, and now he is on the ground, seeingly lifeless.


With in Galens head things were brewing. Galen walked through the forrest of Dagobah, the swamp, the creatures, the indiginous creatures and then where he was, Master Yoda. Galen stopped dead with in his tracks and stared at the, now, deceased Jedi Master. Galen had kneeled down and bowed to Yoda


"Master, It has been far too long! How has this happened? How has this come to such a blow to the jedi order? Everyone, Every Youngling, every temple guard, gone? How is this possible?" Galen had bee slightly distraught. Yoda had sighed and looked at Galen with tired eyes. HGis force ghost looked as he did when He had passed on; Old, wrinkled, and broken. "I still dont understand!"


"Young Paven, Thing for a rason they happen. Destiny this was for you. Trial. Past you have BUT failed as well!" Yoda walked over to Galen and placed his cane on to his shoulder. Yoda took a deep breath and then spoke again "Understand you must, Walk a thin line you do! Trained in both Light and Dark is dangerous! Keep balance you must. Understand that give to you a gift has been and you will always remain middle grounded. Master Windu always knew how to keep grounded, so do you must. Dont try, Do. Getting balance is key to a Jedi and you will always remain." Yoda looked over Galen and took his cane and placed it under Galen's chin and lifted his head up. "Young you are Padawan. Must learn more! Tossed right into the Clone Wars and not given solid training. Qui-Gon Jinn still trained he did. Until he died. using just his power you cannot. Go to Coruscant, Old Jedi temple. Catacombs you must enter. Easy it will NOT BE but you must. There you will enter Master Windu's crypt and find his lightsaber. Recovered it was when body not found after the end of the Clone Wars. Use it you must to open door within the crypt. Unknown to anyone, but there you will enter a Jedi Council library of text. Saved they were. Get them, read them and understand them. This will keep you balanced." Yoda placed his cane back onto the ground and looked at Galen. Galem stared into Yoda's eyes as Yoda pointed his cane towards an abyss and then faded away. Galen stood up and brushed his hand through his hair and sighed. He took a left face and headed towards the black area.


Galen walked up to the abyss and looked into it. He was worried. He knew that the code he followed was a thin line between Light and Dark. Galen, multiple times, had to retrain his mind to walk that thin line. This was no exception. With how Galen was created, he was infused witht he force abilities of one of the greatest Jedi of all time but was never given any formal training. Galen took a step into the abyss and before you knew it Galen wasin the Jedi temple.


Younglings, Masters, Temple Guards and temple staff had walked the halls. Galen was in shock. He hadnt been here in, well, in 900 years. The temple had its glory and vigor again. He knew it wouldnt be the same now, but this was what he remebered. As Galen looked down, he was now dressed in Jedi Temple Robes. Galen walked and instantly a Youngling ran up to him and hugged him! Galen hugged him back, the youngling giggled and ran off. Galen felt that light flush over his again. He felt, almost, rejuvinated. Galen continued to walk and he heard a familiar voice


"Ah! Young Paven! It is good to see you! Did you fall a bit over that line? Did you cross it? It happens. I have learned to keep that balance but I will tell you, as a Padawan, i crossed that line too much! I am surprised I past my trials!" Master Windu had spoke to him. Galen just looked at him as he spoke casually. So casually, it was like he was still alive. It was like the Temple was still there and functioning. Galen had opened his mouth but couldnt speak. Master Windu had shook his head "Do not speak Padawan. Just listen. What you must do is, as Master Yoda already iterated to you, find my crypt. There you woll find my lightsaber. The Lightsaber will open a secret passage behind my tomb. This passage will lead to a secret text vault. A Library of sorts. These texts will keep you in balance. I used these texts as a Padawan many a times. I tell you though, they are not for the faint of heart. Young Padawan Althea must use them as well. She must channel Master Aisha and learn more! Same as you are cvhanneling myself and Master Yoda. She must have the text infront of her to really understand YOU and what is about to happen!" and with that, Master Windu was gone. Galen blinked and he was now standing in the middle of the temple, a long Jedi, sith, something was walking through the temple halls, Fire, screaming and blaster fire could ne heard. A Jedi ignited his lightsaber and the unknown Jedi liftened his hand, picked up the Jedi and slammed him into the wall, killing him instantly. Galen was dumbfounded. This was something he had never known.


Galen ran towards the fallen Jedi but it seemed as if the path he was running was getting longer and the fallen jedi was getting furhter away. Galen just stopped and blinked again and now, he was back into blackness. He looked around and was just now lost. How was he going to wake up? Galen had just looked around but could hear a female voice...............


Iandre Athlea

 

[Iandre Athlea]

Iandre kept her attention upon the remaining pirates as the last of their courage finally deserted them. One looked toward Galen, another toward her, and whatever silent calculation passed between them evidently arrived at the sensible conclusion. Weapons clattered against the floor as they abandoned anything that might slow their retreat and fled back through the ruined corridors. Iandre didn't pursue them. They were leaving, which was precisely what she'd offered them the opportunity to do, and she had no intention of turning a retreat into a slaughter simply because they had chosen poorly in coming here.

Only once the sound of their footsteps began fading did the emerald glow of her lightsaber disappear. Iandre exhaled slowly and turned back toward Galen, already considering what needed to happen next. They had an injured pirate somewhere in the ruins, an ancient chamber whose power had just failed, and the considerably larger question of how Galen was going to adjust to a galaxy nine centuries removed from the one he remembered. His confused response to her comment about training caused her brow to furrow.

"What do you mean, what train..." Galen's eyes rolled back.

Iandre moved before he struck the ground, but there was too much distance between them to catch him completely. The Force reached him first, arresting enough of the fall to keep his head from striking the duracrete with its full weight before she hurried the remaining steps and dropped beside him. "Galen?" Her earlier concerns about his behavior vanished beneath something far more immediate as she turned him carefully onto his back and checked his breathing. He was alive. Breathing steadily enough, but entirely unresponsive.

"Galen." Iandre tried again, firmer this time, fingers finding his pulse while her other hand moved carefully along the back of his head to make certain the fall hadn't injured him. Nothing about this surprised her as much as perhaps it should have. He had awakened from nine centuries of hibernation less than an hour ago, been confronted with the destruction of everything he'd known, and then immediately thrown himself into combat with enough exertion to manipulate weapons, defend against sustained blaster fire, and hurl a grown man across the chamber. Whatever technology had preserved him had left Galen looking considerably healthier than Iandre had been upon her own awakening, but appearances clearly hadn't told the entire story.

She slipped her small light onto the floor beside them, angling its beam upward enough to illuminate the chamber before placing both hands more deliberately upon Galen. Iandre closed her eyes and allowed the Force to flow through her awareness, turning her attention toward the rhythms of his body rather than attempting to reach into his thoughts. "Come on. You don't get to survive nine hundred years only to collapse thirty minutes after waking." The words carried a trace of dry encouragement, but concern had firmly taken hold beneath it.

Nothing.

Iandre's expression tightened. She didn't know what a normal recovery from Galen's particular form of hibernation looked like, nor did she have access to the medical equipment she would have preferred. For the moment, she could only stabilize him, watch for anything immediately dangerous, and try to coax him back toward consciousness. Her hand settled lightly against the side of his face as she leaned nearer.

"Galen, listen to my voice." she said steadily. "You're on Boz Pity. You're safe. The pirates are gone."

She had no way of knowing where his consciousness had gone, or that somewhere within it he walked halls and forests populated by people Iandre herself had lost centuries ago. She only knew that he wasn't responding, and so she continued speaking, giving him something outside himself to follow.

"Come back to me, Galen."

Her voice echoed softly through the dead command center, strangely familiar in its cadence after a lifetime spent learning beneath the woman whose communicator had brought Iandre here in the first place.

Galen Paven

 

[Galen Paven]

"Galen Paven, Go back to Padawan Althea, Iandre needs you. She needs your guidance. She is MORE than capable but she needs your wisdom and kindness. Padawan Paven, Go back to her. Do not let her be without you Galen. She needs you!" Master Aisha was speaking to Galen. he heard that voice. He knew the voice and Without warning Galen awaoke. He gasp for air as if he haded taken a breathe in hours! He looked at Iandre and batted his eyes. Trying to remember who she was, why she was there and what brought him to her. Then it all came crashing back. He looked at Iandre again and spoke


"Master Aisha!?" Galen blinked again and then realized who it was. Iandre Althea. The woman who had found him and was there for his awakening. The Jedi who was now, in a sense, connected to him. Galen just blinked and blinked again and then took a deep breathe. He tried to stand but essentially he couldnt at this very moment. He was weak. He got finally hit with the hibernation sickness. Well, not exactly the same as if you were in carbonite, but some sort of sickness. Galen shook his head and looked at Iandre again


"We need to go to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. We need to head down into the depts of the temple to the Catacombs. We need to go to Master Windus final resting place. Master Yoda and himself had told me to. I need to reallign myself with the middle ground. Not light but not dark. Grey. it is inperative for my time here within this time. It is also for you. Master Aisha had informed me I must keep you protected. Why I dont know. she said you were extremely capable but I must keep you safe." Galen just sa tthere on the duracrete and looked at her. He knew she would either not believe him and think he was completely nuts or she would believe him and, well, become more attached to Galen than already is because of the force leading her to him. Hell, she was already connected to Galen indirectly because of Master Aisha. Galen shook his head again and tried again to stand up. he fell again.


Galen was not sure what to do now. He needed to get to the temple but was on Box Pity. he wasnt on Dantooine like he was initally. Galen had so many thoughts and so much going through his head. He had just gone over the edge and destroyed and maimed people. This was not the Jedi way, this was a sith practive but Galen never would ever reach sith. Did he know sith text? Yes. Did he study it? Yes, but "There was no Light nor Dark, there was only THE FORCE" This was the primary code that Galen had lived by. He stared straight ahead and spoke again


"I WILL DO WHAT I MUST TO KEEP THE BALANCE" Galen had recited the next line in the Grey Jedi Code. "THERE IS NO GOOD WITHOUT EVIL;BUT EVIL IS NOT ALLOWED TO FLOURISH" Galen had recited the next line. he looked back to Iandre Althea and with defeated eyes Galen had spoken the rest of the code. "THERE IS PASSION, YET PEACE. THERE IS SERENITY YET EMOTION. THERE IS CHAOS, YET ORDER" Galen again tried to get up and again, couldnt. Now he was getting frustrated. Galen knew Yoda and Mace would not want him frustrated. He closed his eyes and took another deep breath and slowly began to get up. Now was the time to accept his new mission.


"Iandrea, come with me. Fulfill this mission with me. Master Aisha spoke to me....." Galen started to speak to Iandre. he looked at her as he kneeled there. He kneeled as if he was set before the Masters and continued "Be my partner. She wants you to suceed and wants you to continue your training. She knows you have reached Master, but she says, for some reason, You need me. I feel as if I might need yoiu more than you need me, but she says you need me. All three Masters proceeded to call both of us Padawans. So they think we need more training. More so me, as I realize I have lost myself here, again, but apparently we walk the exact same path."


Galen finally stood up and looked towards the door. Onlhy lights within the area were now the emergency lights. Power had died, whether the pirates cut the power or the old systems finally crashed, but either way, faint light illuminated the hall ways and chamber. Galen knew this could very well be his FINAL MISSION and wanted to succeed.


Iandre Athlea

 

[Iandre Athlea]

The sudden gasp drew Iandre forward immediately, relief loosening some of the tension that had gathered through her shoulders as Galen's eyes finally opened. For several seconds she said nothing, watching recognition struggle its way back into his expression. Then he called her by Aisha's name, and whatever reassurance she'd felt at seeing him conscious disappeared beneath a very different kind of shock. Her grey eyes widened, and for one impossible heartbeat she wondered whether he'd somehow heard the same resemblance in her voice that others occasionally found in mannerisms inherited from a lifetime spent beside her Master.

Then Galen explained.

Iandre listened without interruption as he spoke of Coruscant, the old Temple, Master Windu's resting place, and instructions apparently delivered by Yoda and Windu themselves. But when he said Aisha had spoken to him, something in her expression changed. Of everything Galen described, that was the part that reached through nine centuries and caught somewhere painfully personal. Aisha had been teacher, guardian, family, and eventually fellow soldier. Iandre had spent centuries believing the last words they would ever exchange had already been spoken. To hear a man she'd known for less than an hour casually say that Aisha had spoken about her left her without an immediate response.

She remained quiet through his recitation of the code, though her expression grew increasingly thoughtful. The philosophy wasn't hers. Balance, as Galen described it, sounded very different from what Aisha had taught her, and his actions against the pirates only made Iandre more reluctant to accept that walking between light and darkness was inherently desirable. When he finally managed to stand, she rose with him and remained close enough to catch him if his legs betrayed him again. "First, I'm not a Master." There was a faint touch of humor beneath the correction, perhaps intentionally placed there to take some of the gravity out of everything he'd just dropped upon her. "I was only recently knighted, actually. So if they insist upon calling me Padawan, perhaps they're simply having difficulty keeping up with nine hundred years of administrative changes."

The humor faded, though not the gentleness behind it. "And I believe that you experienced something, Galen. I won't dismiss it simply because I didn't experience it with you." Her gaze searched his for a moment. "But Aisha taught me to question what I saw and heard through the Force rather than blindly obey it. Visions can be symbolic. They can be misunderstood. Sometimes what we want or fear becomes tangled into them. So hearing that my Master supposedly told someone she never introduced me to that I need his protection..." A small breath escaped her. "You can understand why I might need some time with that."

Especially when she didn't feel particularly in need of protection. Iandre had survived the Clone Wars, the loss of her entire civilization, nine centuries of displacement, modern battlefields, marriage, widowhood, and rebuilding a life that had repeatedly been torn apart. She wasn't offended by Galen's desire to protect her, but neither would she allow a vision to redefine their relationship before they'd even had the opportunity to know one another. "If Aisha truly spoke to you, then I want to know everything she said. Every word you remember." Emotion briefly threatened the composure in her voice before she mastered it. "But you don't have to become my guardian because you believe she ordered you to. If we're meant to help one another, we'll discover what that means ourselves."

Her attention dropped meaningfully toward his legs before returning to his face. "And we're certainly not leaving for Coruscant this second." This time there was no room for negotiation beneath the warmth. "You have collapsed once and failed to stand three times in the last few minutes. I spent months recovering after my own awakening. Whatever preserved you for nine centuries has apparently collected its debt." She moved beside him, offering an arm without forcing the assistance upon him. "We'll get out of these ruins, find somewhere you can be properly examined, and then we can discuss Coruscant."

Iandre glanced toward the dim corridor before looking back at the impossible remnant of her own century standing beside her. There were a thousand questions between them now, and Aisha's name had added a thousand more. Yet beneath all of that uncertainty was one thing she could offer without needing a vision to tell her she should.

"As for coming with you..." A small smile touched her features. "You found perhaps the only other person alive who remembers the Temple as you do. I think I'd like to see what's left of it too."

Galen Paven

 

[Galen Paven]

Galen had looked at Iandre and spoke exactly what master Aisha had said to him. "Galen Paven, Go back to Padawan Althea, Iandre needs you. She needs your guidance. She is MORE than capable but she needs your wisdom and kindness. Padawan Paven, Go back to her. Do not let her be without you Galen. She needs you!" Galen had smiled and looked at her again "This is exactly what she said to me. word for word. She appeared to me in her robes. She wanted you to know too, that she was, also, OK and very proud of you"


Galen had listened to what Iandre listened ro what she was speaking about Aisha teaching her. Not believing eevrything the force had to throw at you and visions could be symbolic. Galen agreed. He actually whole heartedly agreed but something about all this just felt like it needed to be done. Galen actually never had anything like this happen to him. Also, in a nutshell, Galen had never been asleep for 900 years. He was only around for the clone wars and the last few battles. Then he was stuck in the hibernation chamber and, well, here he was. Galen had looked at the exit and then back to Iandre


"As far as her ordering me to protect you, I dont feel it to be an order, more like a friendly request. Especially since she trained you and wants you to be all you can be from her teachings. This is, maybe, another missions from her. Something that needs to be done for the BOTH of us. I plan on making sure you fulfill this to the letter as well as me. This is something, i think, we also, both need. Closure so to speak" Galen had looked back out towards the hall and then heard what Iandre had said about getting fixed up. Galem had looked back at her with a crooked eyebrow.


"I am pretty sure I can handle a little force overflow. Or over use from being in Hubernation. This is part of the hibernation sickness. It should heal itself shortly. As far as getting out of here and heading to my proverbial home and our actualy training grounds, do we have a ship? or should I say do YOU have a ship? We are going to need quarters. Obviously we are going to need respected space and we may need to stop and find ourselves some Jawas and get ourselves a astromech or protocal droid. Usually they do help out substantially." Galen had smiled smightly as he took a step towards the exit. "Oh, and to make you feel better, a Bacta tank" Galen chuckled.


He knew that she would not nessesarily found his, piss poor attempt at, humor funny but he knew, well he felt, that she actually did kind of care. Galen had looked down at this lightsabers and then at his reflection in the durasteel. "Quick question though, Do we need to travel as refugees or are Jedi back to being OK in this time period?" Galen had just shook his head.. He wasnt sure how this mission was going to suceed but He had suceeded by just winging it and that is how most of his missions had been a win.

 

[Iandre Athlea]

Iandre had thought herself prepared to hear Aisha's words repeated. She wasn't. Galen recited them exactly as he remembered them, and for a few moments she simply stared at him. She was all right. She was proud of her. Nine centuries separated Iandre from the last time she had seen her Master, yet grief possessed a peculiar ability to ignore time entirely. Her composure held, but only barely, and she looked away long enough to gather herself before answering. "Thank you." The words were quiet and entirely sincere. "I didn't realize how much I still needed to hear that." Whether Galen had truly spoken with Aisha or experienced some manifestation created through the Force remained a question for another time. For the moment, Iandre was willing to accept the comfort without demanding certainty from it.

His interpretation of Aisha's request sat somewhat easier with her than the idea of being assigned a guardian. Guidance and companionship were things she could accept, particularly from someone who understood the world from which she had come in a way almost no one alive could. Closure was another matter. Iandre wasn't certain she needed closure anymore, at least not in the same way she once had, but she understood why Galen might. "Then perhaps we approach it as something we're doing together rather than something either of us is required to do for the other." A faint smile returned. "Aisha was my Master. Yoda and Windu were part of both our lives. If something remains beneath the Temple that they intended us to find, that's reason enough for me to go with you."

The moment Galen dismissed his collapse as something that would simply heal itself, however, Iandre's expression became considerably less accommodating. "You can call it hibernation sickness if you like. You still lost consciousness and couldn't stand afterward." His concession of a bacta tank earned him a small look that suggested she had noticed precisely what he was doing. "How generous of you." At least the question of transportation was easier. "We have a ship. The Conquests Agenda brought me here. She's a Lilaste corvette, so quarters won't be a problem, and neither will finding somewhere for you to recover on the way. I think we can survive the journey without purchasing Jawas."

His final question stopped her humor before it could go any farther. "Jedi are not hunted across the galaxy anymore. There are Orders, enclaves, temples, and Jedi operating openly in many places. I've never needed to hide what I am in this era." She paused, because Coruscant was the rather significant exception to the reassurance she'd just given him. "Unfortunately, the world you're asking us to visit is currently controlled by Sith."

Iandre moved toward the ruined corridor with him, keeping her pace measured partly because she wasn't convinced Galen's legs wouldn't betray him again. "So no, we won't need to travel as refugees, but neither of us should walk through Coruscant advertising that we're Jedi. Two lightsabers on your belt will attract exactly the sort of attention we don't want, and getting beneath the old Temple will require more care than simply landing and walking through the front doors." Her grey eyes shifted toward him, a hint of amusement returning despite the seriousness of the warning. "Which means your first mission in the modern galaxy is going to involve something you should already be familiar with."

A small smile appeared.

"Infiltration."

Galen Paven

 

[Galen Paven]

Good, Iandre had a ship, quarters and a means. She also was happy with the words that came directly from Master Aisha. When Iandre had mentioned that jedi were no longer hunted, that gave hope to Galen. He knew that, from what master Yoda had said to him prior to being put in hibernation, that Jedi had been under scrutiny and possible were going to be hunted, Galen had a feeling that things had gotten overly bad. When Iandre had stated that no one was hunted, there were sects and enclaves and temples, Galen Paven had almost a renewed faith in his religion/order. Galen had thought about reconnecting himself with the jedi order this as they walked. He knew that reassimilating himself in the Jedi order would be rough. He knew he was a clone. he knew he was powerful but, the line he walked, made him unpredictable. Iandre had witnessed it. He needed to, essentially, reconnect his brain with the Grey Jedi way. As they proceeded down the hallway, Galen had stopped dead in his tracks and just kind of looked at Iandre and his demeanor had slightly changed. Its almost as if he got softer. He smiled slightly and spoke


"Thank you. For everything this far" Galen was never good at any kind of emotions as of this. He would usually just nod and smirk slightly. Galen was not much of a emotions type of guy. he was usually straight to the point and got what he needed done. When his missions and working within the CIS building and entering that state of mind, Galen knew that things needed to work. Especially 900 years later. When they had gotten to the ship Iandre had mentioned Infiltration.


"Infiltration today is going to be difficult. it was my area of expertise BUT...."Galen had scratched his facial stubble"....with how everything is, with Jedi and Sith being in full force again and a war NOT being the focus of the galaxy, masking my force powers will be difficult. The only thing I can do, which is dangerous, being that the original Jedi Temple is under Sith control is become exactly what I was brought to the galaxy to fight and conquer; a Sith. It would not be hard as i tetter already on that line, but I would have to maintain that sense of empowerment for a long while. it could mold my brain into a Sith permanently." This was something that Galen was not all about. he knew it was a dangerous task and he knew that with his mind being fragile from being in hibernation. "I am telling you now though, Iandre, it is going to have to take a lot of reworking and retraining, well, maybe training in general, since I was tossed right into working when I was, born, created, developed, whatever the case, it is going to be a long road!"


Galen had looked up after speaking and had smiled. Yes, this ship was perfect! Quarters, and enough quiet to retrain his mind. He had looked back at her and then around the area. He knew the path that had to be taken was a difficult one but it had to be done nonetheless. He pointed to the ship entrance and smiled slightly and bowed, jokingly


"After you M'lady!"


Galen did have somewhat of a interesting dopey side when needed but mostly, why he wasnt sure, he was all business!

 

[Iandre Athlea]

The quiet thanks caught Iandre somewhat by surprise. She stopped when Galen did, studying him for a moment before her expression softened in return. There was something almost strange about accepting gratitude from him when she could so easily imagine their positions reversed. Someone had been there when she awakened into a galaxy that had forgotten almost everything she'd known, and she remembered how desperately she'd needed even the simplest reassurance that she wasn't entirely alone. Galen had at least been fortunate enough to awaken beside someone who understood exactly how disorienting that could be.

"You're welcome." Her smile remained. "Someone helped me when it was my turn. I suppose returning the favor is only fair."

His proposed solution to Coruscant, however, wiped much of that smile away. Iandre listened until he finished, then shook her head. "No. We're not doing that." The refusal wasn't harsh, merely immediate. "You've been awake for less than an hour, already admitted your mind isn't properly settled, and you're talking about deliberately immersing yourself in the Dark Side strongly enough to convince Sith you're one of them. You just explained why that could permanently change you." She gave him a pointed look. "That isn't infiltration, Galen. That's gambling with yourself as the wager."

They continued toward the Conquests Agenda while Iandre considered the problem more practically. "Besides, you're assuming we need to fool them through the Force at all. We don't yet know what Coruscant looks like on the ground, what access to the old Temple is like, or even whether the catacombs can still be reached through the routes you remember. We gather information first and build our approach around what we actually find." That was considerably closer to the kind of infiltration she understood. "And if concealing our presence in the Force becomes necessary, there are techniques for that which don't require either of us pretending to be Sith. We have time to prepare before we reach Coruscant."

His admission about training concerned her considerably more than his humor did. Galen possessed extraordinary ability, but ability and discipline were not interchangeable. She had seen that demonstrated rather vividly with the pirate captain. "Then perhaps Coruscant shouldn't be our first priority after all." Iandre glanced toward him as they approached the corvette. "If Yoda and Windu truly sent you toward those texts because they believed you needed balance, charging directly into Sith territory before you've even recovered seems contrary to the purpose." There was no judgment in her voice. If anything, she understood the difficulty of admitting that one's training had gaps. "You have knowledge, Galen. You clearly have power. What you seem to have been denied was the time to learn how to live with either before someone decided to make use of them. We can work on that."

The exaggerated bow at the entrance finally brought her smile back. Iandre inclined her head with equal solemnity and stepped ahead of him. "Such impeccable manners." She made it several steps up the boarding ramp before looking back. "Come along, then. We'll find you quarters, get you something to eat, and have you examined before deciding how quickly we're going to invade the Sith capital." The faint amusement in her eyes made it clear that quickly was going to be determined considerably more by Iandre than Galen.

For the first time since receiving that impossible signal, she found herself considering something beyond the mystery that had brought her to Boz Pity. There was another person from her century walking aboard the ship behind her. Someone who remembered the same Jedi Order, some of the same people, and a galaxy that had existed before everything changed.

That was going to take some getting used to.

Galen Paven

 

[Galen Paven]

After getting situated and Iandre getting Galen his quarters, she had left him. Galen had sat with in the quarters and refelcted. He now was awake, he ha dalready fought a group of pirates, passed out and was awaken by Master Aisha and the others with a message. Now he had Iandre Athlea by his side but was it fate? Was this supposed ot happen? Wa sshe destined by the will of the force to come to the signal? Who knows but they were together. Now he was in her ship, she was getting the ship off Boz Pity and getting ready to figure out if they were heading right to Coruscant or if they were going to head elsewhere to have Galen looked at. In Galen's mind, he was in tip-top shape but what she had witnessed he clearly was not. Galen knew it in his eyes mind that he was not right. A clone was never to last more than 10 to 15 years, according to the Kamoians but yet here was Galen 900 some odd years later. Did the Hibernation chamber slow the process? Possibly. Maybe Galen was in tip-top shape but the force was signalling him like that signal had lured Iandre to him on , well, Boz Pity, which he thought he was on Dantooine.


Galen had got up off the bed and stood in front of the mirror and shook and his head. He still looked 40. He still looked as if he was Qui-Gon's age but clearly, now, he was over 900 years old. Hell, Iandre was too, apparently, and she looked pretty well. So mayube the hibernation chamber did some good. maybe it slowed down the aging process. Who knew really. The only ones that knew or would know, are the doctors or medical droids. Galen looked over himself and had shook his head. 900 years old. Bantha Poo-doo! Galen had slowly started to remove his clothing and made his way to the shower area of the wuarters. He turned the water on and stepped in. The steam had taken over the room and galen had just stood under the water and took a deep breath.


"900 years, All Jedi that I ever knew are gone. The Jedi temple is taken over by the sith but Jedi and Enclaves are back? " Galen still couldnt fathom the whole thing. He just knew that getting to the temple, getting those text and whatever else he and Iandre had found they would take. They would study it and they would learn from it. This was something that needed to be done. He knew, Iandre had known it and well the rest of the organization was going to know it. This was something that was needed. Galen had then turned around and let his back get hit by the water. He took another deep breath and then ran his hair under the water. He had no facial stubble and his hair was still short. The Hibernation must of slowed it all down, which would explain the slowing of the aging process. After another few minutes, Galen had turned off the water and just took another deep breathe.


Galen had stepped out of the shower area and grabbed himself a towel. He wrapped it around himself. he stood threre again and just kind of stared at himself. Galen had walked over to his clothing and placed on the tunic pants and then the shirt. He left the robe off and hung it up. He looked at himself and then proceeded to rip the sleeves off his shirt. Galen now had a short sleeved shirt. Galen needed his own look. He looked through and removed his white Jedi tunic pants and foind a pair of black tunic pants. He took his utility belt and adjusted it so it was hanging just right. Galen had grabbed a blaster holster he had found and attached it to his belt. Galen had opened the quarters door and had entered the main hall of the ship. He looked up a bit and had noticed the lighting leading to the cockpit. Galem had slowly started to make his way that way.


Iandre Athlea

 

[Iandre Athlea]

Iandre left Galen to his quarters without trying to guess what he intended to do with the solitude. Sleep would probably have been the sensible choice after everything his body had endured, though meditation might have been equally valuable after everything his mind had been asked to absorb. A shower, food, or simply sitting somewhere quiet without another person explaining how thoroughly the galaxy had changed around him might have been preferable to either. Whatever he chose, she suspected he needed a little time in which nobody expected anything from him.

She understood that much better than most.

The cockpit settled around her as Iandre lowered herself into the pilot's seat and began bringing the ship through its departure sequence. Boz Pity gradually fell away beneath them, the bleak landscape receding as she guided the vessel toward open space. Only once they were safely away from the world did she begin considering where they ought to go next.

Coruscant was the obvious destination because it was the destination Galen had been given. It was also perhaps the worst place she could take a man who had been awake for barely an hour after nine centuries of hibernation. The world itself would be overwhelming enough before accounting for the fact that the Jedi Temple he remembered was now in the hands of the Sith.

Her fingers hovered over the navigation controls before another destination occurred to her.

Aurora Station.

For several seconds, Iandre seriously considered it. There was a certain symmetry to the idea. Aurora Station was where she had recovered after her own nine-century absence from the galaxy, where other people had been forced to deal with the physical consequences of her awakening when she had been in no condition to do so herself. Galen had already collapsed once after using the Force, and his insistence that he was fine hadn't been particularly convincing. A proper medical examination would be sensible. More than sensible, really.

Yet Iandre hesitated.

Her own awakening had been different. She had emerged nearly starved, weak enough that recovery had taken months before she began to resemble the woman she'd been before entering stasis. Galen had walked out of his chamber, fought pirates, and then proceeded to argue that his collapse was little more than an inconvenience. Whatever nine centuries had done to him, it wasn't immediately comparable to what they had done to her.

More importantly, Aurora Station meant people.

Doctors. Personnel. Questions. New faces belonging to a galaxy Galen didn't understand yet, all examining a man who had only just learned everyone he'd known was dead. He had gone from waking beneath Boz Pity to discovering nine centuries had passed, encountering another survivor from his era, fighting pirates, receiving what he believed had been a vision from three long-dead Jedi Masters, and boarding a strange ship bound for a Coruscant ruled by Sith.

Perhaps introducing him to half a dozen more strangers wasn't the kindness it appeared to be.

Iandre leaned back slightly, watching the stars beyond the viewport while the engines carried them farther from Boz Pity. She could take him to Aurora Station later if his condition demanded it. For now, she thought Galen needed something considerably less clinical.

Time.

Time to learn what the galaxy had become. Time to understand that Jedi still existed even if the Order he remembered did not. Time to discover what had happened to the Republic, the Clone Wars, Coruscant, and everything else he had left behind. Perhaps even time to understand that he didn't need to determine what his place in this century was before he'd survived his first day in it.

Iandre knew painfully well how tempting it could be to reach for something familiar after waking in an unfamiliar age. Galen had immediately seized upon Coruscant, the Temple, Yoda, Windu, and Aisha because those were things he understood. She wasn't going to take them away from him, but neither was she eager to let him rush directly toward danger simply because the past was easier to understand than the present.

So she left Aurora Station out of the navigation computer for now.

Iandre instead began assembling information on the console beside her. A basic galactic map. A summary of the current political landscape. What remained relevant about Coruscant and its present rulers. The Jedi enclaves and traditions that existed throughout the galaxy. Nothing exhaustive. Nine hundred years couldn't be reduced to a collection of files, and burying Galen beneath information would accomplish little more than burying him beneath people.

She was halfway through deciding what he actually needed to know before Coruscant when she sensed movement farther back in the ship.

A short while later, footsteps approached the cockpit.

Iandre glanced over her shoulder as Galen appeared, noticing immediately that he'd changed his clothing. The missing sleeves earned a brief second look, although she decided whatever disagreement he'd apparently had with his shirt was none of her concern.

"Feeling any better?"

Her attention returned to the controls as she gestured toward the other seat. "I considered taking you somewhere I know for a medical examination. It's where I recovered after I woke up." There wasn't much point concealing that she'd considered it. "Then I decided introducing you to doctors and another collection of strangers when you've barely had time to understand what century you're in might be a little much."

Iandre looked back at him, her expression carrying the understanding of someone who had once faced a version of the same impossible adjustment.

"So Coruscant can wait a little while too. Not forever. Just long enough for me to explain what you're walking into before we put ourselves in the middle of Sith-controlled territory."

She indicated the information waiting on the nearby display.

"You've had nine hundred years happen without you, Galen. We don't have to catch you up on all of them tonight."

Galen Paven

 

[Galen Paven]

Galen had looked at her and he stood in the entrance to the cockpit. He watched the ship in hyper-speed and he instantly went back. He instantly remembered how it felt when he would kick his small little, untracable, ship. The ship that was given to him from Master Windu. The ship was small enough that it was undetectable. How, he wasnt sure, but he knew it worked. He kind of got lost in the way the stars flew by until Iandre asked him how he was feeling.


"Not terrible. I really think that hot shower, i rook, was the key thing i needed. I just relaxed. I felt things wash away, so to speak, and i instantly felt lighter. Its hard to explain. Warm water is a relaxation tactic than anything else honestly." Galen had took a breathe and then once again got lost in the stars zipping by. It always mesmerized him. Galen just had ways of, so called, healing himself after every mission he had when he was, well, younger. Shower, a long trip in hyper-space or, well, a good old fashion dish of Tiingilar. That Mandalorian dish was something that Galen enjoyed. Galen had snapped back out of his trance and looked back at Iandre.


"If you feel the need to get me checked out, Hoinestly Iandre, I sould be ok with as many medical staff to clear me and make you feel better that I wont just keel over and die on you. I mean, we are in this together and if we are going to work together and fully trust each other, well, I want you to be one-hundred percent with me. I want this mission to be a success and I want you to find answers too. I am sure, in this tomb, there is more than just Master Windu. Yoda might have a memorial as well as the other masters. Master Aisha might even be there and maybe, just maybe, there is somethijng there for you to discover. So by going and seeing the medical personnel, we can get this mission sitauted. I know rishing is something neither of us want to do, but this, well, might be somethijng we need to proceed with."


Galen knew that this mission was of the utmost importance. Not only for him but for her. She wanted answers. She wanted to know exactly how Aisha felt about her the moment she protected her and the moment she had died to protect her. Iandre and Galen knew things were imperative to this mission. Galen had sat next to Iandre in the co-pilot seat.


"We will need a droid! Anakin Skywalker had R2D2 and C3PO. Good pairings awlays had a droid! =" Galen was half joking but to be honest, he did want a droid. He was going to purchase one, years prior but, well, everyone now knows how that ended, Hypers-sleep and a beautiful woman walking him up 900 years later. Things just ended poorly. Now, Galen sat here, in a co-pilot seat, with Iandre Athlea, Jedi Knight, awake 900 years later, on a mission that was given to him from Figures who died 900 years prior. You couldnt make this stuff up, even in a Younglings nursery Rhymn book.


Iandre Athlea