Sextping

Sextping
by
Bobby Derie

“My son wouldn’t do that.”

The voice was the cold end of shrill, all haughtiness and outrage, keeping up appearances. Principal Scissors kept her spine straight and her poker face on in the face of parental indignation. Two decades of such fires had let her stare into the full blast-furnace of maternal scorn and disbelief without flinching.

“It is not a question of if he did it Ms. Holler.” Scissors said, keeping her tone level. “We have timestamped recordings of the sexually graphic transmissions your son Jzon was sending.” As indeed, does quite a bit of his homeroom class she didn’t add. Psionic abilities tended to develop around puberty, which was really quite unfair to young people already going through hormonal surges and growth spurts. Horniness plus undeveloped decision-making ability plus psionics made for a hell of a combination. Psychosexual experimentation was nothing new or even irregular among young adults, but control took time to master—control that tended to slip during mutual telepathic sex fantasies, and so young Mr. Holler had inadvertently sent the image of himself spraying cum on images of a few of his fellow students. A few of whom were in the football team and decided to express their displeasure immediately; it had taken the teacher calling the security guards to rescue the boy from the objects of his amour.

Ms. Holler, for her part, said nothing. She also hadn’t so much as looked at the boy since she had come in. The nurse had put some bandaids on his cuts and an ice pack on the shiner under his eye, but he still looked like he’d been through a washing machine.

“The reason I called you in to this conference is to discuss corrective measures for your son’s behavior.” Scissors added.

“How much trouble is he in?” Ms. Holler asked.

Scissors flicked to Officer Weng, standing in the corner. Despite being of Chinese descent, Weng was actually a third-generation American born and raised in Georgia, with a Southern accent that could have given the rebel yell during the War of Northern Aggression. His scowl would have made Stonewall Jackson and Chairman Mao both proud.

“Yer son is in a heap of trouble. Broadcasting graphic sexual material to unwilling victims counts as sexual assault, and because the images involved were of underaged individuals that’s production and distribution of child pornography. As a juvenile, he could face up to 12 months of hardcore probation. If tried as an adult, a judge could give him fifteen years. An have ‘im register on the sex offender registry for another ten, of course.”

Jzon, until now numb, started to tear up, face scrunching. Even Ms. Holler suddenly looked a few years older.

“Fifteen years? That’s ridiculous…”

“Which is why we’re here to discuss alternatives to the juvenile court system.” Scissors chimed in. “We do understand that young men and women of your son’s age have urges, and do not always make the best decisions with regards to satisfying them. So we’re here to discuss an alternative form of correction—a course which, if complete, will mean that his case will not be petitioned to the juvenile court, and there will be no mention of it in his permanent record.”

For Jzon, it was the light at the end of a very dark tunnel. For his mother—Scissors could almost hear her teeth grind—it was the start of negotiations. “What does he have to do?”

“For starters, Jzon will need to complete an extracurricular course in sex education, which is offered after the regular school day,” and, based on the captured recording, Scissors knew he desperately needed a remedial reminder on basic male and female anatomy. One of the teenage girls was being fucked in the belly button. “as well as an eight-hour course on sex and the law, such as the night class offered at the community college, to be completed within one year and at your own expense, and 100 hours of community service, again to be completed within a year.” Which, Scissors figured, would kill whatever social life the boy might once have had, but would at least help keep him out of trouble. “If you agree to these terms, in writing, there will be no detention, suspension from school, or petition to the juvenile court.”

The principal slid a piece of paper forward.

This was the moment of truth. Athletes usually started bitching at this point, knowing how the extra classes would impact into their schedule and be cut from the team. Rich mommies and daddies would already be on the phone to their lawyers, trying to work a better deal. Ms. Holler just reached over and burned her psignature into the bottom of the page, then passed it to her son to do likewise. Scissors and Weng psigned it too.

As the Hollers walked out the door, Scissors filed the document and let out some of the tension she’d been holding since the whole debacle had started this morning.

“Went well enough.” Weng offered.

She just smiled. It wasn’t over. There were a dozen teenagers already telling their parents. Half a dozen students who had jumped the boy were in detention right now, with Jzon Holler about to walk past them apparently free as a bird, and she’d hear about that too. There were memory-copies of the broadcast to collect and erase—probably a full open-skull search first thing tomorrow—and the school therapist would probably need to swallow half the Ritalin she confiscated just to keep up with the sob stories of teenagers upset at being virtually defiled in the mind’s eye of their fellow students, at least a few of them just angling for a refill on their meds. And there was Jzon Holler, with more telepathy than sense, and all the things he had to do in a year—and if he screwed up and didn’t follow everything to the letter, Scissors knew she would have to come down hard on him, just to make an example.

Weng nodded and left just as the first irate parents started to ring.

###

Playing With Lightsabers

Playing With Lightsabers
by
Bobby Derie

The pincerbug scrabbled for purchase on Eiven Task’s pale, naked flesh, but his attention was drawn to the venomous stinger that the Sith insect had stabbed into his left breast. Inside the meditation chamber was darkness, lit only by the light of the seven holocrons he had arranged in a circle around him. The darkness seemed to reflect his anger and fear, so that though he sat cross-legged and in the pose of calm meditation, rage boiled within him. Only the pain of the insect’s sting gave him the focus for his task, and the presence of mind to heed the words from the holoprojection of Darth Modas as he guided Task through the ritual.

“…the sigil Sithasis, rune of transmogrification. Now draw…”

Lit by the multicolored lights of the holocrons, Eiven examined himself. A human of average height, his body lean and wiry as a marathoner’s. New scars healed on his right hand and ribs, and on the left side of his body was a line of destruction, a single old scar from collar to hip, and beyond that a tangle of plastics and alloy prostheses, including his bare, skeletal prosthetic left arm. Only his hair, an intermix of brown and gold, and the slight silver edge to his brown eyes spoke to any alienage in his ancestry.

The pincerbug, gathered from outside the Valley of the Dark Lords here on Korriban, moved as an extension of his will. Its stinger raked through his flesh, forming ancient Sith runes, its venom staining his flesh as he let the Force flow through him, then twisted and directed it through the mind-shapes as the holographic shade of Modas directed him. The process left him physically and mentally exhausted after each session, with days of healing and meditation between each session.

Blood, sweat, and venom dribbled off plastic ribs as the pincerbug formed the last of the line of characters. The pain and anger in Eiven Task peaked in a sudden flare of power, and the runes glowed red hot and smoked as the ritual completed, the pincerbug leaping off the flesh and moving to hide in the darkness. Task felt emptied as the runes ceased to glow, though a few wisps of smoke still rose from the edges. All his rage and fear emptied out of him, and he felt sick, tired, and nearly paralyzed from pain. Even his mind felt numb, his Force senses diluted and weak. In the back of his head, he could feel part of himself diverting the Force through those channels woven in his flesh.

“The feeling will pass, eventually.” The gatekeeper of the holocron said. “Though a considerable part of your power will be diverted into maintaining the ward.”

“It worked?” Eiven said, suddenly feeling his lips parched and tongue thick in his mouth.

“Indeed. The Sith ward will hide your presence in the Force from others, at least from a distance. Up close, and when you are using the Force, the protection will weaken.”

*

Dreshdae. Task stepped on a small lizard and enjoyed the squelch under his boot. On a dead world like Korriban, it had a spaceport and a cantina, so they called it the capital. The only settlement of sentients left on the whole damn planet, evenly split between religious fanatics and treasure hunters. A few old-timers knew the history, and Eiven had shared his firewater and heard their stories, most of them the same. Every new Sith empire seemed to re-establish themselves on Korriban, when they remembered it was here, then self-destructed when their grand galactic plans collapsed. It was a town with a lot of booms and busts, and the long-timers were thieves and opportunists, ship-wreckers waiting to kowtow to the next group of dark lords and pick their bones clean when they eventually fell.

His purpose on Korriban was over, and Task didn’t care to pick through the corpses of dead empires. After a couple months of tattooing himself in the dark and living off the eggs and meat of the local reptile population, he wanted off this rock. The lack of fruits and veggies was turning his piss a bad color, and he hadn’t had an honest bath in months. He needed creds, fuel, food, air, and water. He needed a job. So with a dry throat he entered the cantina.

The Drunk Side had seen better centuries. Broken tables, columns scrawled over with endless graffiti, a couple carnivorous tumbleweeds that nobody had bothered to clear up yet. A wrinkled, grey-skinned Rodian in a dark hood and robe propped up one end of the bar, drinking fermented lizard squeezings and playing with a lightsaber older than he was. Nobody paid much attention; it was that kind of place. Eiven had dressed more conservatively: a simple white poncho stained pink with Korriban dirt over desert-camouflage trousers and a sleeveless t-shirt that showed off his artificial arm and a few scars, but not his fresh tattoos or the hold-out blaster concealed in the middle of his back. The two-meter metal staff he carried might have drawn a stare or two, but that was it. Task strode toward the bar and held up two fingers, and the old Sith pureblood behind the counter started pouring two small glasses of something clear from a bottle with a writhing worm in the bottom of it. He laid his last credchip on the counter and swallowed the first without looking or tasting. It burned pleasantly on the way down and left a pool of fire in his belly.

The job board was blank, so he had a word with the bartender and found a table. He didn’t have long to wait. A figure in a dun hood and cloak came in as he finished his shot. Even with his diminished Force sense, Eiven caught a flicker of presence, and impression that grew stronger the more he concentrated. Without moving, he followed her trajectory from the entrance to the cantina bar, and then from there to his table. A fine, feminine near-human hand laid a bottle on the table; the skin was almost translucent and slightly green, letting the darker green veins show through. A whiff caught him as she sat down, like the wet heart of an ancient forest.

Task looked up and stared into a face veined like the petals of a flower and in a colored vivid black-and-white pattern centered around the middle of her face, lightening toward the edges. The black-and-yellow eyes stared into his with an unearthly evenness. The wisps of fine pale cornsilk that escaped her hood reminded him more of a dandelion than hair. Eiven couldn’t place her species; Zelosian, Sylphe, one of those things partway between plant and mammal.

“I am Illanova Skywalker.”

As the last syllable escaped her mouth, Eiven was already somersaulting backwards in his chair, tucking into a roll and twisting on the floor to come up in a sprinter’s pose—and then he was off like a shot. Behind him, he heard and felt the commotion as furniture toppled and she started to move.

Fething mothernerfing son of a nerf feth feth feth… Task swore in his head, focusing on his breathing and pouring everything he had into speed, running in the general direction of away. His ship was parked a couple kilometers away, but there were no alleys or sidestreets along the way. He tried not to think about why there was a Skywalker on Korriban. It didn’t matter why they were in the cantina or looking for him. Nothing good had come from the Skywalkers since the Battle of Yavin. The whole family seemed tagged by destiny, and drew whole planets into their family squabbles. Eiven would rather try to catch a lightsaber with his bare hand than be in the same system with them.

Then a carnivorous tumbleweed hit him, the dry tendrils clinging to his flesh-and-blood arm. Task ripped it off, but two more had already jumped on him, and as he reached to pull those off he saw an entire ride of the strange migrating plantlife descending on him. Eiven cursed as he realized that the plants were being manipulated—an old Jedi trick he’d heard of from one of his holocrons, though not a common one. Desperate, he mentally thumbed the switch of the short-bladed lightsaber installed in his prosthetic forearm, the crimson blade setting one of the plants on fire as it ignited. With desperation Task laid about him, trying to burn the things as they clustered about him without chopping off any of his own bits.

Eiven was so busy fending them off, he didn’t even notice Illanova had caught up to him until something thumped hard against the back of his skull. He managed to stagger backwards and saw her wielding a pair of wooden clubs in either hand. His vision was already fading to black around the edges when she stepped forward and hit him again, and Eiven Task surrendered to the darkness.

*

Task awoke to the smell of wet wood and the singing of crystals. He was aware of lying against a wall, his arms bound behind him, and took his time opening his eyes, trying to get a sense of the place. It looked like a room grown out of dark, knobby wood and moss, threaded through with lighter tendrils from which crystals grew like fruit or tubers. Bright sunlight stung his half-lidded eyes, and he was aware of the slight, rhythmic thump of feet on floor not far from him. Somewhere in his backbrain there was also the hum of constant chatter, like a dozen people talking at once.

Eiven risked opening his eyes more and saw his captor bare-breasted as she worked through a series of exercises with her pair of cudgels. At the moment her hair was bright green and trying to stand on end and soak up the sunlight, but she had it tied back in a bushy tail behind her as she moved. Task recognized the general outlines of the style—Sholân Kha, the war dance/martial art of the Sylphe people, though several of the moves spoke of lightsaber training as well. The clubs were about right for the painful bump he felt at the back of his head. She finished the sequence and turned to him, green blood visibly rushing through her veins beneath the nearly translucent green skin.

“You’re awake.” She said, panting and smiling. He opened his eyes. “You have a head hard as durasteel. My ironwithe club barely left a mark!”

“You’re a Skywalker?” He said. The smile died.

“Adopted. My mother…” she shook her head.

“Where are we?” Task said.

“My ship, the Green Kilometer. An Ergesh Starjumper, grown in the Industrial Swampfields of Ergeshui. I had her refitted with Revwien biotechnology after she took a couple hits when the Sith hit the Temple…” she smiled again, then grew serious.  “Anyway, the reason you’re here. I need your help.”

“Lady Skywalker, I don’t want anything to do with you, or your clan, or the Jedi.”

“Then you shouldn’t have killed one of us.”

She crossed over to one of the wooden walls and pressed one of the knots. The crystals’ song changed, and lights shot out from hidden sconces, forming a hologram. Eiven Task watched the opening sequence of a tournament, himself pitted against a hulking wookiee in Jedi robes with a massive two-handed lightsaber. The fight didn’t end well for the wookiee. Task ground his teeth.

“He knew the risks going in.” he said.

“Maybe.” she said. “But the holocron he put up was not his. It was stolen from the Jedi.”

“And now you want it back and to bring me to justice?” Task said, letting a bit of acid into his voice.

“Oh no. My master says you can keep the holocron. We just need your help to do what you’re best at.”

“And what’s that?” He said, with a sinking feeling in his gut.

“Killing another Jedi.”

*

“He calls himself the Jedi Wizard.” Illanova said, and Eiven winced.

After he’d tentatively agreed to help, she’d finally untied him. The cockpit of her ship was little more than a thick window that let her look out into space; apparently it was controlled by some telepathic Baforr crystal-ferns or some such crap she’d picked up Ithor or some other forest world. Task tended to zone out on the details whenever she got into the technical specifications of her adventures in exotic agriculture. Whatever the case, they had a holographic projection of the planet, and their flight path to his not-so-secret hideout, and even an image of the guy—who was dressed like a Jedi but with lots of stars and moons stitched into his robes.

Eiven tried to think of something relevant to add to that, but gave up.

“That’s a really stupid name.” he said.

“Yeah. Apparently he left the temple, claiming the Jedi had lost the path blah blah blah and went off to study all the different types of Force-magic in the galaxy, vowing to return and prove us wrong. Typical teenage Jedi angsty wampashit, but apparently he learned something.”

Her hair was mostly back to cornsilk now, with rose highlights; Task had the uncomfortable thought that its color probably reflected her current mood.

“When he popped up on our screens again he was…experimenting on Force-sensitive kids. When the Jedi moved in en masse, he fled. I’ve tracked him here. The Council don’t want me to move in alone, though. That’s why I was in the cantina, looking for help. And here you are, Mr. Big Jedi Killer.”

Eiven thought about everything that was wrong with what he’d seen and what she said. He couldn’t tell her physical age, but mentally she had one of those bubbly cheerful attitudes that made him want to go torture a small fluffy animal just to balance out the Force. Based on her moves down at the cantina and exercising—she still hadn’t put a shirt on, something about being partially photosynthetic—she wasn’t an incompetent fighter, but obviously the Jedi Council didn’t trust her to take on this guy alone.

“Do you do this a lot? Hunt down rogue Jedi?” he asked.

“Oh no. When I was a padawan I was really kind of a pacifist—I studied the teachings of the Agricultural Corps from the Old Jedi Order, and even did some cross-training with the Tyia and the Ithorian Oracles. The Council usually sends me out on diplomatic and support missions and stuff, but I’m a good tracker, and I’m sneaky. I bet you hardly registered me before I stepped into the bar, right?”

“True.” He grudgingly admitted. Eiven briefly considered taking her out, but he had no idea how to fly this bioship. He looked again at the so-called “wizard” with his fancy-pants robes, and his right palm itched. Task wanted to kick this guy’s ass on general principles. “Okay, so let’s come up with a plan…”

*

“This was not the plan!” Task shouted as he swung his lightsaber pike at knee level, the silver-white blade bisecting three of the abominations coming towards him. They looked like six-year old human children, but flat artificial eyes stared out of their too-large skulls, and other cybernetic implants were visible sticking out of their skin, most notably the burning red lightsaber blades that replaced their right hands.

Eiven had heard of things like these—Sith Knights, they were called; cybernetic Force-users programmed for unswerving loyalty. Based on their ages and eerie uniformity of appearance, Task figured that instead of kidnapping a bunch of Force-sensitives the Jedi Wizard had just resorted to trying to clone a Force-adept over and over. A process which hardly ever worked, as these shambling, mostly mindless abominations were proving ridiculously easy to kill.

“Stop shouting at me!” Illanova screamed, swirling about and bringing her ironwithe staves down to crush wrists and skulls. They were already surrounded, fighting back to back, and were quickly being overwhelmed as more of the incomplete Force-clone-cyborg-things crawled out of their tanks. The Jedi Wizard, for his part, was laughing maniacally from a catwalk, holding a remote control in one hand.

“You see now my genius!” the star-and-moon spangled Force user yelled, specs of spittle getting caught in his beard. “Soon my new generation of Jedi knights will be ready to topple your stolid New Order! Jedi mass-produced to order, the Force harnessed to my will alone!”

Indulging in maniacal laughter, the wizard raised his right hand and let loose a burst of blue-white lightning right between the two embattled Force-users; as one, Illanova and Task jumped aside and let the burst scar the floor where they had been standing.

“What genius?” Eiven shouted as he thrust with his lightsaber blade to behead a clone that was sneaking up on Illanova. “You just found it and started it up again!” With a scream of rage, Task threw himself into a whirling attack, slinging the lightsaber pike about by the end of its handle, cutting indiscriminately through clone-cyborgs and equipment. The rage of the assault counted for a dozen of the dangerous things, clearing a space around them. Panting and high on adrenaline, Eiven spun around and pulled his holdout blaster from the small of his back with his left hand, aimed, and fired off a shot toward the madman.

The wizard only raised his right hand and smiled, the blaster bolt halting and seeming to dissipate inches from his skin.

“Ha! You see my power!” the rogue Jedi shouted.

Beside Task, Illanova tossed one of her ironwithe cudgels at the wizard, but he gestured and smiled as he telekinetically deflected that missile too. He was in mid-gloat when Skywalker tossed her other cudgel, and Eiven carefully timed his shot at the same time. Faced with their simultaneous attack, the wizard tried—and failed—to deflect both. The heavy wooden club caught him across the forehead, and the blaster bolt reduced the control unit in his hand to a burnt-out box.

Around them, the clone-cyborgs stumbled to a halt. Illanova beamed, still breathing heavy from the fight. “All right! We captured him alive and stopped his crazy plan! Now we just…”

Skywalker’s victory ruminations were brought up forth by the sizzle-pop of Eiven’s final blaster bolt into the Jedi Wizard’s body. He holstered the weapon and brought the business end of his lightsaber pike around.

“What are you doing?” She said.

“I’m going to cut him up into about four pieces. Maybe more.” Task said as he carefully separated the wizard’s head from his body. The smell of burning hair quickly filled the room. “And don’t give me any Jedi-don’t-kill nonsense. You wanted a Jedi killer, you got one.”

After the wizard was hacked in a sufficient number of pieces, Eiven started in on the clone-cyborgs, but that particular bit of butchery was more a mercy than anything else. The Jedi Wizard had pulled them out of these cloning chambers too soon, and many of them were already exhibiting biological distress as their unfinished bodies started to fail them, and the cybernetic implants essentially lobotomized them without the wizard directing them. Illanova spent most of the time very quiet as he moved from one to another, putting them out of their misery. Her hair was the brown and red of autumn silk.

“Is it always like this?” she said as he finished.

“You play with lightsabers,” Task said “you’re going to get burned.”

###

A Hold of His Own

A Hold of His Own
by
Bobby Derie

On his eight-and-a-half birthday, his parents took Aleister MacErwin of Clan Erwin out on a picnic to the old quarry, where there were some very interesting limestone strata. He had brought his pick (he would hardly leave the hold without it) so that he could chip himself a trilobite or graptolite out of the exposed rock.

Aleister was a dwarf of the lowland MacErwins, who had a small claim on a lignite mine and a barley farm. He stood four feet tall, which was big for his age, but his bright red beard was hardly a mass of fuzz, and he had a habit of pressing his chin to his chest to make it look longer.

Like most women at the time, Aleister’s mother stayed home and did the forging and knit the chainmail and managed the finances in the hold while the fathers and uncles delved into the mysteries of sheep and barley and prop shafts and firedamp (although even Aleister’s father admitted that when she was younger she had been a deft hand at a pick), and like most boys his age he wore the helm that she had forged him, which was so big (“You’ll grow into it”) he had to wear a woolen cap underneath, and a set of chainmail so long he had to roll up the extra and tuck it into belt and boots.

So it was that Aleister fell a little behind as they walked through the forest on the way to the cliff, since he constantly had to stop and pull up his chainmail to keep from treading on it and tripping, and then he stopped to examine some quite lovely glacial deposits, and before he knew it his parents had passed entirely out of sight, and the young MacErwin was all alone in the woods.

Now Aleister MacErwin was a doughty young dwarf, and not given to undo emotion. So he had himself a little weep, dried his eyes on his beard, then set out to build himself a hold of his own.

He followed the forest trail down to the old quarry, all the while dreaming of his little hold. He’d want a well, of course, and that meant driving a shaft down to the local water table, and maybe a small curtain wall to keep the goats in (when he found some goats to keep) and to help with the sieges. There would be an icebox-room, and in the winter Aleister would carry buckets of water up from his well to the courtyard and let them freeze overnight, then carry them back down and lay them between sawdust to keep there until summer; and a drying-room for hanging meat and laying in salt for the winter, and a root cellar. Of course, he thought, with any luck there might even be a little ore-vein and he could do some proper mining and smelting. Aleister’s palms grew sweaty and he gripped his pick harder at the thought of that.

All these thoughts and more came to Aleister as he finally arrived at the quarry face. The old laird who had owned it had lost it to a city-dwarf in a rat-race, and it had almost been played out then so the site was abandoned for a while, so the young dwarf figured he could make a good claim on it under mining law if he made any improvements to the property and stayed for ten years or more. He examined the whole site with care, climbing over mounds of gravel and picking out a few grapolites that had been shaken out for his collection. Then the young dwarf critically examined the expanse of wall, and picked out a nice flat stretch.

With the point of his pick, he carefully chipped out a rectangle, as high as he could reasonably swing and half-again as wide as he was himself. Aleister stepped back and examined the rough outline of a doorway with a critical eye, then tugged at his beard, raised his pick, and started carving out his hold.

The sun was near to setting when Amelia and Peter MacErwin found their son. Mrs. MacErwin liked the ornamental engravings along the outside, piles of dead goblins mounding up on either side of the doorway, and Peter commented on how straight and well the runes had been carved, announcing to all that this was Aleister’s Hold, the founding date, and a brief legal claim. Aleister himself was curled up to sleep around his pick in the alcove he’d carved out at the bottom of the doorway, the rubble arranged into a loose pile wall, with his grapolites on top.

Not unkindly, Peter MacErwin picked up his sleeping son in his arms to carry him home, leaving his wife with the pick and picnic basket.

“Someday m’boy,” he said to the dreaming dwarf. “Someday.”

###

Form Zero

Form Zero
by
Bobby Derie

Korriban. Seat of dark empires, birthplace and resting place of the Sith. The sun was setting on the ruins of the Valley of the Dark Lords, the toppled and broken statues that were a testament to generations of hate, fear, and narcissism. Eiven Task rested on a pillar of broken stone in one of the nearby quarries, dressed for the desert in a loose, light-colored garb. Below his feet, armored insects fought over the bloody bones of a fresh kill, and the human watched them with preoccupation. At the edges of his senses he felt the pull of the broken tombs, and the echoes of those presences trapped beneath the dirt and rock, tied by malice to their old bones.

“Five credits on the big black one.”

Task spared a glance up at the familiar voice. A tall, chocolate-skinned image of a muun stood in the shadow of the quarry-face, limned and half-lost in the darkness, his blue-grey eyes covered by the brim of his floppy desert hat. The last time Eiven had seen Milos Sothas was in the arena on Tatooine, when the muun’s dismembered corpse was being carried away in a gravcart.

“Nice trick.” Task said, when he could find his voice. The shade smiled.

“You like it?” The muun’s smile was a flicker of light in the darkness.

“Thought that was a Jedi thing.”

“Eh. Jedi,” the shade help up its left hand, “Sith” he said as he held up his right, and a flash of lightning crossed between them. “It’s all a spectrum. None of them own all the tricks. Anyway, I thought we were overdue for a little talk. Hope I’m not interrupting.”

Below his feet, the armored insects began the ancient dance, snapping their pincers, slowly circling one another.

“Not yet,” said Task. “So why now?”

“The tombs. Easier to manifest here.” The human nodded. “Any other questions?”

“I can think of a couple,” Eiven acknowledged. “But what do you want to talk about?”

“Something near and dear to both of us. Lightsaber combat. Ever heard of Form Zero?”

“At the academy.” Task said, unconsciously clenching his prosthetic left hand. He had lost the arm and a good part of his torso in an arrogant and, in hindsight, idiotic training accident. Prosthetics had saved his life and diminished his ability, and that had marked the end of his formal instruction.

The shade of Milos Sothas walked a couple steps closer, and the shadows seemed to stretch and cling to him—or maybe it was just the lengthening shadow as the sun continued to set. He didn’t quite look real to Eiven’s eyes, but there was a certain solidness to the darkness, and there was something at that spot that drew his higher senses, like an eddy in the Force.

“Figured as much. Master Yoda, they say, liked to go on about it. The fine art of not drawing your lightsaber. A very Jedi approach.” The shade leaned against the rock Eiven sat on, watching the bugs fight it out with interest.

“Were you a Jedi, Sothas?”

“No. I had the gift, you might say, but they found me out a bit too late. Ended up spending most of my life with the Antarian Rangers. Very practical people, have to be to keep up with Jedi. I spent my youth following Jedi knights around and slitting throats after they’d gone at them with lightsabers—dirty work, but it was a mercy. If you don’t die fast from a lightsaber hit there’s still plenty of ways to die slow. Ended up playing both sides during the rebellion; I think you’ve caught wind that the Emperor had more than his share of adepts under his command, and the Rebels knew all the Jedi weren’t dead and gone by a long shot, but not all of them joined up either. Enough players in the middle that those in the know needed people like me to take care of them.”

The shade looked to be engrossed in the insects. The big black one was winning, but there were five others left.

“Anyway, after the Battle of Yavin I disappeared for a long while. Watched things fall apart and build up again, time after time. Learned a few things about the Force along the way. I kept out of all the big noises as best as I could—always preferred the shadows. Kept my eyes and ears opened for what opportunities would come my way, which is how I ended up playing Dark Lord for this wampashit cult…”

“I was wondering if you’d get to that.” Eiven said.

“Anyway,” the muun’s shade seemed to be staring at his feet. “Point being, you’ve learned about the Jedi Form Zero, but have you heard of Sith Form Zero?”

Task shook his head.

“A lot of concepts get juggled between the Jedi and the Sith and everybody else. Lightsaber combat is one of those things with currency in both groups. Form Zero as Yoda had it, was a Jedi philosophy, very passive-aggressive. The lightsaber is a potential threat, more intimate and mystical than a blaster, but very real; the very presence can encourage peaceful interaction and resolution. Sith Form Zero is the complement. Using the deadly potential of the lightsaber to incite fear and anger, to demoralize and intimidate. Sith Form Zero is used to win fights before they’re fought. Do it right, and you don’t even need to ignite your lightsaber.”

Sothas talked more about the specifics, how to gauge and enrage, from the subtle reveal to the swaggering boisterousness where projecting confidence, competence, and menace can keep even the most hardened spacers and bounty hunters from making a move toward their weapons. Eiven was drawn in to the conversation almost despite himself, and the evening gave way to night as the black insect stood upon its carrion prize, forcing morsels of meat into its tiny jaws.

Task stopped talking, then crawled off the rock. He lowered himself onto all fours, eyes almost level with the thing. The human had never tried this, but he knew how it should work...he opened himself up to the Force around him. The echoes of the trapped Sith spirits were far away, but their moaning fear and anger gnawed more deeply. The shade of Sothas was a patch of night wrapped up in itself, need and fear tied together around a dark, still thread that just sat there, unchanging. Elsewhere in the desert were the tiny pings of pain and fright and instinctive flailing anger from the tiny living animals of this desolate place...and one of them was right in front of him, hungry, wary, aware now of his presence, the Sith-bred insect now somehow aware of the human Force-adept as more than a great, lumbering presence. It stopped eating, assumed a defensive posture...and Task narrowed the senses of his mind until that little pincerbug was his whole world, with even Sothas and the echoes of dead kings mere distractions. Part of him stretched itself out and took root in the small, instinct-driven mind; and when Eiven task reached out with his prosthetic hand the bug obediently crawled onto the proffered chariot, it's tiny will subsumed in his own.

"Nicely done. But what are you going to do with that?" The muun shade asked. In the dark it was almost formless, simply an outline against the deeper shadows as Korriban's moons began to rise.

"Something I've been meaning to try," the human said, stroking the shell of the creature with a flesh-and-blood finger. "Sothas...why show up here? Why the talk?"

"Because you'll need it," the shade said, it's voice a throaty whisper. "I like you, Task. You remind me of myself, when I was a century younger. You're focused, and make the most of your opportunities. You're not a chosen one; there is no grand galactic destiny for you, but you work hard. If you're lucky, that might be enough for what's coming. If you draw your lightsaber without thinking..." the shade let that trail off. "Well, I'm not your master and you're not my apprentice. You killed the knight that killed me, but you didn't do it for vengeance or justice. So maybe we owe each other nothing. I wanted to give you that, because you wouldn't hear it anywhere else. Not everything gets recorded in the holocrons."

Eiven Task nodded and stood up, still holding his prize gently in his left hand, and nodded his thanks.

"We were never master and apprentice, but for what it's worth, you always had my respect."

Task turned and walked away from the quarry, carrying his prize, and leaving behind him a valley of broken monuments and the angry echoes of dark lords...plus one other.

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