The New Jedi Order: A Vision of Confluence

XIX: The Monsters in Charge

The night sky of Obroa Skai has not been calm. In other days, traces of light came and went in orderly patterns, weaving grids of commerce and community above the archival world, hinting at comers and goers and students and teachers. Satellites winked and blinked in their prescribed orbits, gentle ghostly shapes of liners made scuttle-bug silhouettes beyond the atmosphere. A thousand years Obroa Skai has been a library, open to the Galaxy, a collector and a sorter, a preserver and a remembrancer.

Now the sky falls at all hours and the ordered traffic is gone, done away with and swept aside and what lines crease the blue above are straight and unerring, strobing sometimes, shattering into sprays other times, falling and falling and falling until the horizon sweeps them away. Sometimes they end before the horizon and the ground-thump is near enough to tremble knees. Obroa Skai has fallen weeks ago, but the sky has not yet heard this news. The sky is falling, and will remain falling, for months to come.

Vomar rests in a squat, thighs to his heels, peering up through gritty eyes. His robe, which used to mark him as an archivist, hangs in rags from his shoulders. His weight, which he used to wear about his gut like an old tire, is dropping away. His fur is matted, unkempt and unclean, and still he smells blood on his arms. Not his blood.

Vomar rests and looks at the sky and imagines being anywhere but here. At night the invaders have little care about the doings of their slaves - a knob of coral poking from Vomar’s temple is care enough. He imagines he can feel it, weaving and prying through his brain and his spine, sinking kai-nettle thorns into synapses and nerve bundles. Another slave, a Twi’lek, whose name escaped Vomar, tried to remove his two nights ago. He took a shard of duracrete and smashed the nodule on his head, turning the coral into dust.

Then he went into a grand mal seizure, biting off his tongue before his exhausted and shocked friends could help him. The Twi’lek died drooling blood and twitching, brain matter leaking out of his nose. No one here was dumb. One single data point was enough. No one else tried.

So they worked. The invaders put them to task clearing debris, reopening access to underground repositories and clearing towering libraries and promenades of choking ruins. The Yuuzhan Vong, for all the violence and shock of their invasion, want the only real treasure Obroa Skai possessed. They want the world’s knowledge and they will suck its ephemeral brain dry to swell fat on the collected wisdom and learnings of a hundred generations.

All Vomar can do is help. He is just a small Bimm, on in his years, a nobody, a clerk and archivist, a man who dedicated his life to preserving knowledge. Named after a great-uncle who’d once been an astronomer, who’d gone missing on some adventure, he’d always been happy here. Taking lunches in sunny cafes, rubbing shoulders with uncountable beings from across the breadth of the Galaxy, getting to see eyes light up in wonder as he taught on his off-days. The simple pleasure of the hunt, coordinating with a doctoral student who needed a complex cross-section of reference material, dating across several centuries and three different cultures.

He scrubs his hands over his face, wincing as he irritates partially healed cuts and scrapes.

He should be asleep. Tomorrow the coral will wake them all up painfully early and then another day awaits, full of drudge and toil and biting his tongue every time a halt is called and one of the hulking, bestial vong ccomes over, snarling and hissing. Understanding their master’s words is a privilege not given to slaves, so deriving meaning from gesture and tone is the game, the reward being more labour or hating himself as he surrendered recovered datacubes or even carefully preserved tomes of flimsy. The punishment is pain from the coral, pain from the lash, pain from backhanded slaps.

The Yuuzhan Vong speak in pain, Vomar is learning, and it is a language that doesn't need words.

A flicker of light catches his eye and he pauses, rising, to watch as a new line creases the velvet dark above, this one larger than most, much higher and slower. Some remnant of a vessel, this time, not the satellites that usually came down at all hours. Maybe even part of one of the New Republic’s defending fleet. Some aft of an MC series cruiser, or the snapped off prow of a Nebulon series. Wanting to sleep but dragging out leaving the clearer air of the outside, dreading returning to the animal-reek of the damuteks where the slaves were dumped each evening, he keeps an eye on the trail of fire above as he picks around rubble and shattered columns.

It holds together longer than most, crossing half the sky before the single line splits and becomes many, a sudden spread of fingers and new trajectories. Some are chasing the original interloper, thinner and dimmer lines keeping pace above and below. Others appear shorter, slower, but Vomar knows those are ones falling at steeper angles, more directly downward, blasted free by atmospheric heating, uneven, that started releasing shocks of vaporizing energy.

He watches as the main cluster of debris continues on and on, sinking down toward the horizon even as it leaves at least a dozen, maybe two dozen, trails behind it. To his surprise, a handful of other comets arc up towards it on mobile and shifting parabolas to intercept. Coralskippers, rocketing up from the surface, themselves going so fast that they heat and glow.

It must have been a large part of a ship indeed, maybe even a whole wreck, and the vong don’t want it to cause any more damage to the wounded archives.

Vomar wishes the hulk luck, hoping it will land flat on the head of whatever monster is in charge down here.

Rhonabeq lost communication to them just after Penitent Queen struck the edge of Obroa Skai’s atmosphere. Each of the six drop pods were attached through physical clamps to the slim frigate’s hull, but the hardline connection between Imperial vox and Galactic comms was always tenuous.

“It’s to be expected,” Solidian opined in the dark. Only red lights, dull, are lit inside the pod. For the Astartes, they can see well enough. For their human companions, everything is reduced to outlines and shades of darkness overlaid. “The pilot has her task and we have ours. There’s no need to distract each other. Sergeant Ascratus has all he needs to handle the drop himself.”

Luke can sense the mind of the young neophyte, buckled on the opposite side away from Luke. Each harness was made for the size and scale of the Astartes in their armor, so it had taken some modification to scale down strapping for the variable size of the Jedi and Wraiths. Testing again the webbing across his chest, legs and arms, he had to admit the nameless Imperial Magos assisting had done an admirable job on short notice. He could barely move at all, even his head was kept in place by gel cushioning wrapping partly around his neck.

Solidian continued speaking, clearly boasting, relaying his knowledge about how these machines worked and the talents of Sergeant Ascratus and Luke smiled at the excitement of the youth. Both of the neophytes were nearly brimming with eager anticipation in the Force, a contrast to their carefully neutral expressions and stoic words before entering into the pod. They had been taking cues from their Sergeant, putting on an Astartes Face in front of the ‘locals’, but here in the dark, the combination of their youth and the promise of their ‘proving’ had both Solidian and Zalthis losing their facade.

It showed how young both of them truly were, even if Luke didn’t know their equivalent ages. The only other in the pod with the same flavor of emotion was his own nephew, who shouldn’t have needed to be here. Anakin should be on Yavin, with Tahiri and Sannah and his friends, safe and training and growing up, not dropping feet-first into occupied territory at barely sixteen.

It was a familiar wish, one that never really left him, one that he brought up to Mara not infrequently, a regret for his niece and both his nephews that the Galaxy he’d help bring about had never been one of real peace. That they’d all three had to step up long before they ever should have had to.

Another failing, among many.

The other, older occupants were focused. He felt Face’s severity lying just underneath his levity. He had two of his own with him. His life didn’t really matter to him at this moment, in his focus, theirs did. Because they were his, his responsibility and his soldiers. He felt Bhindi Drayson’s anxious energy - not anxiety or fear, but an energy to get going, to get things done, to get her boots on the ground and do. Zev Veers and his subtle fear of the dark, kept so powerfully in check the man likely didn’t even notice the way it tinted his emotions. Mei, who was always an open book, because she spent every hour trying to be one, whose only concern as the pod rumbled and shook was a fear of letting down Master Skywalker.

As if any of the Jedi could truly let him down. Even Rhonabeq, despite the incredible enormity of her blunder and just how much she almost cost the New Republic - what she almost cost Luke - was still deserving of his regard and his faith. When they’d spoken, when she really, truly realized what had almost come to pass on Eboracum, the Muugari had been speechless and paled even more pallid than her grey complexion normally was.

“Master Skywalker, I am so, so sorry-”

Some thought his request for her to fly the Penitent Queen on this mission was too harsh. If the Yuuzhan Vong were wise to the deception, she was alone on a frigate meant to be operated by a half-dozen at minimum.

There was always a price for failure. He’d learned it, hard and bitter, and as much as he loved his - as much as he loved the Order and the Jedi that he taught, they had to learn it too. To be a Jedi wasn’t just to listen to the Force and Do What You Think Is Right.

To be a Jedi is to be a servant of the Force, not yourself. To serve is to be wise, to listen to others, to put away your own desires when the time came. He couldn’t claim to be a perfect Jedi and so many times Luke had failed on these premises alone. Everyone would, and everyone does. The trick is to never stop trying.

At Eboracum, the New Republic could have lost an extremely popular junior Senator for one of the key shipyards of the Galaxy. The loss of Malaghi Shesh would’ve shamed and alienated the Shesh family. Tens of thousands would have died. The Jedi would have lost one of their most vocal allies - Luke’s own reservations of the woman aside - and the war would have lost a strident supporter of beating back the Yuuzhan Vong. The Order would have lost a Master, a Knight and -

And Luke would have lost his nephew.

All because one Jedi thought they knew what was right and did not listen to others, did not question themselves.

A hundred meters away, Luke could feel Rhonabeq’s acid self-recrimination.

“Would you have allowed it?” Luke asked, finally, during a lull in their conversation. Roboute considered for a quiet moment, part of the theatre of the man that Luke had picked up on. The Primarch always had an answer ready, always had something to say, but he inserted false pauses and moments of contemplation to seem more human. To seem more thoughtful.

“No,” Roboute said gently, and a worry Luke hadn’t quite realized he bore relaxed. “Your envoy was never a threat to my fleet, nor were the unexpected arrivals. Perhaps absolute prudence would have demanded it, but I am not a machine. No, they were never in danger, save for if my orders were ignored.” If there was anything to trust of the Imperium, Luke knew, it was to trust in their devotion to the Primarch, making the last caveat unnecessary.

Shaking aside the memory, Luke focused last on Ascratus, who, like his Primarch ‘father’, was impenetrable. Not because of the uniquely singular presence of the Primarch, but instead because Ascratus simply was uncomplicated. His mind was not barred or walled off with defenses like some strong in the Force could muster, Ascratus was just of one mind.

Right now, he was watching on his wrist-mounted sensors - Auspex, the word was, Luke thought - the path of the Penitent Queen and their planned insertion site. And that’s all he was doing. The Astartes was so utterly absorbed in one singular task that nothing else even crossed his mind, troubled his emotions. He held the entirety of the task in his mind, picturing the frigate, the positioning of their pod and the five decoys, picturing the world below, picturing even wind currents and jetstreams as he watched timers tick down and wireframe paths refresh. It was like peering into the mind of a droid.

It seemed that every Astartes Luke met would be an entirely different experience from the next.

As it turned out, though Aeonid Thiel called himself an advisor to his Primarch, Luke may have overestimated his true influence. True to his word, the man had vanished for a time while the Wraiths and the Imperials compared notes and set up a proper plan of attack. When he’d come back, beckoning to Luke, they’d left behind the three Astartes, the Wraiths, and the two Jedi working over a large, printed map of Obroa Skai’s capital city and the Institute contained within.

Then it was through a maze of halls, corridors and rumbling trams before the first obstacle.

That being a grizzled, elderly Astartes who introduced himself as Marius Gage, offering a salute formed by interlocking his fingers over his chest. Luke felt Thiel slip away without a word, felt the turmoil and storm in his mind, felt the draw toward a distant and private arming chamber that held the Astartes’ attention. He wished Thiel luck, and asked the Force to guide his troubled soul.

Marius Gage, as it turned out, was the ‘Master Primus’ of the 4911th, also known as the Equerry to the Primarch, also known as the Chapter Master of the First, also known as…

And he interrogated Luke for his interest in meeting said Primarch. They walked, slower this time, along a long gallery in the spine of the Imperial warship, Samothrace. Between the arching eaves above was space, visible through transparisteel windows. Starlight is what lit the hall, which was filled with statues. Cold light drew hard shadows. Each one an Astartes, each one larger than life, each one in white marble. Marius Gage was pleasant and conversational, far more personable than Thiel, Ascratus or the two young ones.

Still, there was the same sense of pure danger around him, the same that permeated the air around every Astartes Luke had met. Not threat, just danger. The Force vibrated at some strange frequency that prickled the hairs on his neck, not unlike standing near a predator. It reminded him, minus the Force-sense, of vornskrs. A constant, permanent attention that couldn’t be escaped from. Deeper in, his sense of Gage was that of hurt. Not an physical injury, despite the man’s clicking, robotic hand or the slight limp that was nearly invisible.

There was a hurt in Marius Gage that cut to his very core, a hurt that bled into the Force that Luke could feel. As they walked and spoke, which was an unsubtle way to ‘test’ Luke, he was more interested in the metaphysical injury that lingered around the Astartes. Paying half attention to the conversation, Luke reached out, gentle as he could, poking and teasing at the sensation.

Luke wasn’t old, but he wasn’t young either. From the jungles of Dathomir, to the sands of Korriban, the rains of Vjun and the dark underbelly of Coruscant, he had been across the Galaxy again and again. Holocrons of Jedi, Sith, teachings from Force-sects long lost to the world for thousands of years, relics left from forgotten times, cutting-edge alchemies invented by only one mind ever deranged enough to imagine them - Luke had seen them all. Learned from them. He knew the feel of a vornskr at hunt, the cold touch of a ysalamiri, the malevolent glee of Exar Kun bleeding from a relic. He had stood in the Valley of the Jedi and felt the echoes of the horrors there. He had reached into the Dark that Cronal worshiped and brought Light. He knew the peace of ancient trees and elemental fury of storms, the honest rawness of nature and the perversion of malice that could be placed on it.

What he felt, probing the wound in Marius Gage, was nothing like any of it yet curiously similar. He sensed intention, but not what. He felt emotion, but couldn’t name it.

Gently he withdrew, leaving Gage none the wiser, but feeling like he knew less than when he began.

As for Gage, he seemed pleased with what he found in Luke and left him at doubled doors, which were drawn open under their own power.

Inside was another Astartes - no, three. Two were wearing a form of armor like Thiel had, but much more ornate with golden-winged helmets, gold-clad pauldrons, gold on their chests and knees and everywhere. So much gold the Ultramarine’s ubiquitous blue was almost invisible.

The third Astartes, though, towered over both. Unlike the others he didn’t wear a helmet and his exposed face glared down at Luke. His fists alone were enormous and his legs were like pillars.

Luke smiled up at the Ultramarine and offered a shallow bow.

“Luke Skywalker,” he said, trying to hide his amusement. “Jedi Master.”

The massive Ultramarine scowled down at him, but from the pounding waves of derision, incredulity, anger and raw, naked distrust that rippled off the man like mirages on desert sand, Luke felt the expression was one that never left his face.

“I am Drakus Gorod.” The Ultramarine didn’t speak, he rumbled, voice growling out of his chest and reverberating off the walls of the chamber.

“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Drakus Gorod.”

The two flanking Astartes made no motion, but Luke felt mild amusement from the leftward one.

“I am not pleased to make yours, ‘Jedi Master’. I am sworn to the life of my Primarch. Why should I grant you passage, when your threat is clear?”

Mistrust, anger, fear - everything Senator Shesh had noted in her report. He had asked the question of Thiel, at the start of their spar - why was he so dismissive? They had told Viqi about the circumstances of their arrival in the Galaxy, that it had been fleeing some manner of attack and betrayal. Thiel’s answer was clear enough: their focus wasn’t here. They were only speaking with the New Republic because they had run out of options on their own.

They only wanted to leave.

That was the gist of the feeling that Luke had from everyone. From the Astartes, from the humans they saw but weren’t allowed to speak to, even if they could find a translator. Even from the cyborg ‘magi’. He felt it from all of them, a quiet undertone of longing, a desire for home. To leave.

They didn’t want to be here, and this Galaxy wasn’t theirs.

He couldn’t blame them for that, but he could, as time went on, start to question their sense if they couldn’t face reality.

“You will because you were ordered to. You have my respect for your loyalty and my word that I would only raise my lightsaber in defense. You will let me pass because this is the world you are in now, and things change.”

Drakus Gorod, looming, clenched and unclenched his jaw, muscles jumping. His armor thrummed. His armored fingers twitched and ground against each other. He raised one arm with a slowness of intent that put Luke into the mind of an elevating turret.

“Through there. Remember: we are just outside.”

It was not the door that the three stood before, but rather a smaller one to the left, like an afterthought.

Misdirection. Mistrust.

“Thank you, Drakus Gorod.” He used the Ultramarine’s name and watched the complex interplay of expression and emotion as he did so.

Then Luke strode to the door, took the handle, and pulled it open.

Roboute Guilliman waited inside.

The Primarch, for he could have been no one else, stood in front of an enormous painting that had to be at least ten meters in length. Unlike the other Ultramarines, he was unarmored. His hands were clasped behind his back as he peered at the painting intently, shoulders up, back straight. A laurel sat on short blond hair and a deep blue velvet toga wound around his enormous form.

Luke paused in the doorframe.

He had listened to Anakin and Mei and Kyp’s account. He spoke with Tresk. He read the especially classified retelling from one Chief of Staff Victor Pomt and a Senator Viqi Shesh.

He paused in the doorframe and slowly cocked his head this way, then that.

Gently he let the door swing closed, lock clicking, which drew Roboute’s attention.

“Master Jedi,” the giant man said.

“Lord Primarch,” Luke replied, having asked Thiel for what the proper form of address was, flattered that the Imperium had gone out of their way to do the same for Jedi.

“Call me Roboute,” the Primarch said, turning his head and raising a hand to gesture Luke closer.

“Then call me Luke,” the Jedi said, carefully walking over to join the Primarch. The painting he had been studying was a masterpiece, for all that Luke knew of art. He couldn’t imagine how long it had taken to do, or how many might have worked on it, for the size of it alone would’ve made it a lifetime for an artist. It was a martial piece, in bold colors and tones, filled with light and shadow and rich oils and it depicted exactly what the Imperium claimed to be. A tide of human beings in pristine uniforms, supplemented here and there by the unmistakable shapes of Ultramarines, like adults among children. And opposite, some kind of horrible swarm of beasts that appeared to be made entirely of teeth and claws and empty eyes.

There was blood, there was smoke and fires and death and the piece was very obvious with how it translated from darkness on the left, over the alien horde, to shining sun breaking through the clouds over the human army.

“This is a piece completed ninety-five years ago,” Roboute said, as if instructing a class, “by a very talented artist named Vann Eckryd. My Father created the Order of Remembrancers in the waning years of the Great Crusade, but from Ultramar, we had always carried chroniclers with us.”

“It’s beautiful,” Luke said, truthfully enough. The subject was obvious and the meaning was unsubtle, but closer he could pick out individual expressions on every face. Whoever this Vann Eckryd was, ‘very talented’ was an understatement.

“It’s simplistic.” The Primarch shifted, looking down as Luke looked up.

Roboute Guilliman looked…young. Surprisingly so. Not youthful, like a child, not like he was immature, but Luke was surprised by how unmarked his face was, without wrinkles, without scars.

“You’re having a far better reaction than your compatriots. I’m sorry I affected them so.”

“I accept your apology, but you didn’t need to apologize. No one should have to apologize for what they are.”

Roboute turned back to the painting.

“And what am I, Luke Skywalker?”