The Rebel Faction

Atelia Reth had been right: Luxum could have Orax fix itself. As a Jedi, it was his duty to do so. Before he left his homeworld behind and forsook his life's work, he would ensure its fate was secured.

Orax, where an Iron Order all but ruled over the multitude of disharmonious flesh. Orax, where the promises of the past were buried under the stink and rot of a less-distant corruption.

Orax, where the cries of anguish echo despite the shouts of joy. Luxum would not save Orax; Luxum could not save Orax. All he could do was Light the way.

“I can't believe you're leaving.”

The sun was getting low, the line where the multi-storied city stopped and wilderness began marked by long shadows cast on sandy earth. Beyond them sat the awaiting shuttle, engines humming and its ramp extended.

Luxum nodded at Atelia Reth, staring at her for a long moment, his environment a nonfactor. “I'll be back.”

“But not for long,” She added, sadness evident in her eyes. A moment of silence passed, and then she exclaimed: “But look at you!,” smiling and making a show of eying Luxum's droid body up and down. “An Iron Knight! I'm glad,” She added, calm yet sincere.

“When I leave Orax again, it will be because I am no longer required by it.” His tone was matter-of-fact, and he showed no interest in speaking on the Iron Knights or the Juggernaut war droid he had appropriated from his dead Master.

But Atelia shook her head, taking a mechanical hand in both of hers. “I'll never forget what you've done for Orax.”

“I just hope someone can fix it before I'm gone for good.” With that, Luxum pulled away from Atelia and ascended the access ramp, the transport taking off almost immediately.

The weight of his past failures and successes were fully upon Luxum, and once more he prayed the Force that some good might come from any of it. The small shuttle ascended from Orax with singular purpose, disappearing into hyperspace as soon as the gravity of the world below permitted.

Varn was an interesting planet, filled with a whole lot of newness. Everywhere he looked, there seemed to be one or two structures in view that could barely be more than one year old. As little more than an assortment of minerals encased in a metal mannequin, Luxum had an eye for that sort of thing. But he wasn't here for the sightseeing; he had a job to do. He had a machine to contact.

Luxum pondered briefly his knowledge of the Jedi; wondering if they, too, would find it acceptable to break the letter of the law in order to preserve its intent. Then he pried the protective covering off of the communications substation and leaned forward, his protective armor plating opening to reveal his crystalline body, and touched the edge of his body to the exposed circuitry.

It took him a moment to adjust to the flood of input, blocking out the irrelevant data and searching for the proper access. Though he hadn't done this sort of thing in over twenty years, he found what he was looking for with relative ease, and began initializing the connections that would bridge his mind with that of the droid consciousness known as Smarts . . .

Who are you? What are you doing in my head?

The intrusion startled Luxum, whose focus broke momentarily at the unexpectedly quick response of the artificial mind. But he centered himself quickly, putting aside his questions for the time being and concentrating on the task at hand.

”I am Luxum, Iron Knight and defender of the Jedi Code.” He paused for a moment, considering if the answer was sufficient, recalling a similar declaration made by his master, Durindfire, over thirty years ago: ”I am Shard.”

But what are you doing in my head?

He considered the question for a moment, vaguely aware that even seconds of delay might be of some discomfort to the machine while communicating in this fashion. Finally, he answered: ”I know what you do, and I need your help.

"I need you to save Orax.”

“Hey! What are you doing over there?”

Luxum jerked back suddenly, the Juggernaut's droid brain―which he had taken to calling “Boo”―closing the protective armor automatically. It's been too long; I've gotten soft. He turned slowly, trying to decide if he should hide his lightsaber within the folds of his brown robe, or leave it exposed in an attempt to reinforce his claim.

The security guard brought a blaster to bear, training it firmly on Luxum's chest. “That's enough! Turn around!”

“Sir, if you would just give me a moment to―”

“Now!” He shouted, shifting into an odd stance.

“I am Luxum, Iron Knight and Jedi―”

“I'm Emperor Palpatine! And I said turn around!” The man's commlink beeped, and his moment of confusion was all Luxum required . . . if he had chosen to go that path. Instead he turned slowly around, complying with the guard and giving the man a sufficient sense of control to answer the commlink. “Unit B-3, go ahead.”

“This is the Overseer,” The commlink spoke.

“Oh? Palpatine, speaking!” He shouted, disbelieving. But the commlink beeped again, and when the guard flipped a switch and his supervisor confirmed the identity of the man on the first channel, he turned decidedly less confrontational.

“Give that droid your commlink and let him go,” The voice of the Overseer ordered, and the security guard―somewhat dazed―holstered his weapon and handed the commlink over.

“Luxum, was it? Next time try calling.”

Luxum nodded to the dumbfounded guard, passing by and taking to the street, the commlink firmly in hand. “You seemed busy, and I had to ensure I got your attention. You're not like other droids, you know?”

“I'm a space ship,” The voice answered sarcastically.

Luxum stopped at the side of the street, surveying the bustle of the city around him. “Where to?”

“Until you start making sense, I couldn't care less.”

Luxum nodded, sure that the strange being was watching him in some form or fashion, and then picked a direction to start walking in. “You brought peace to this world. And to Ord Cestus. You welcomed the Onyxians, and then found some way to make something more, something better than the outcast refugees of a nation that had gotten itself destroyed. You brought peace to the Squibs and Ugor . . . brought the Drackmarians out of hiding.

“And you made it all stick. You made it all work.

"My homeworld needs you, just like they did; and they need it to stick, too. Do whatever it is that you do . . . please.”

Hyperspace

The shuttle flew through hyperspace in solitude, a “pure” droid piloting the craft. Luxum the Shard and Mologg the Drackmarian were alone. And he had to prepare her for Orax.

“Following the Battle of Orax, none of us really knew what to do,” Luxum began, starting with the day Orax was freed and all of its real troubles began. “The Empire used slave labor to mine the world's mineral deposits. We found ourselves with millions of slaves with no real ties to the world and no way to get off of it. All that remained of the government were local elements of the human cities, but it had been the Shards of the Orax Exiles who were responsible for the planet's liberation.

“Obviously the organics all stuck together, the humans taking in the vast slave population, but the Shards had other plans. They had dreams of an Iron Order, of forming an impervious barrier by which Orax would never again fall prey to outside forces. They ignored the needs of the organics in favor of the first step in the creation of that Iron Order; they built a massive communications network―mostly of physical hardwires―that stretched the world and linked all of the surviving Shard colonies into one communications hive. It wasn't . . . pure, not like being in an actual colony, but that's what the Iron Order wanted.

“You see, in a colony, a single decision could take centuries to reach consensus. There's no real sense of time, there's no input beyond the thoughts of others. There is no sense-experience for an undisturbed Shard. The network allowed an imperfect merging of consciousnesses, forcing even those Shards who had never left a colony to adapt, to accelerate their decision-making, to learn of limited time and to receive sensory input.

"And as soon as the masses of untainted Shard colonies learned of the concept of weapons and the name of the people who had brought so much death, they wanted to build armies . . . vast armies to defend their home and ensure it never happened again. Vast armies to serve the Iron Order and defend the colonies that remained.

“And so then they turned to the organics whom had been all but ignored, falling back on an old tradition of selling mining rights to colonists in exchange for technology. The humans accepted, because they didn't have any other choice. They were on the verge of starvation, barely able to keep the slave population alive.

“So while the humans were trying to find a way to turn unmined rocks and metal into food to keep themselves alive, the Iron Order began working on their great army. It started with a droid foundry, a means for the Shards to produce bodies for themselves. But it didn't stop there; driven by the collective will of the Shard colonies―almost all of which had never really experienced individualized life―the Iron Order began producing “pure” droids, those governed by traditional AIs and unable to accommodate Shards, to serve as extra muscle.

“The humans sold their mining rights to offworld concerns for food, medicine . . . basic necessities of life. And still the Order soldiered on, building starship factories and weapon manufacturing plants. Speeders and skiffs, hovertanks and plasma artillery.

“But the organics were still barely hanging on, so they returned to past agreements, using mining rights traded for long before the Clone Wars began, rights that had been superseded by the Empire's operations, and then disregarded when the Iron Order arrived.

“The Shards didn't agree with their interpretation of rights. Orax belonged to the Order now, these humans and slaves were just . . . tag-alongs. The Order didn't give them permission to reopen those mines, and so they had no right to. It grew worse over time; the offworld mining concerns wanted to expand their business, so the natives―who had organized themselves into the Freeman's Alliance―backed the offworlders in exchange for what amounted to lease payments, which the Alliance used to import those commodities necessary for some measure of civilized life.

“But the Iron Order wasn't going to sit by and allow this to happen; if the Freemen couldn't mine Orax, then Offworlders definitely couldn't. So the Order drove the miners off-world, took over their mines, and continued their industrialization, their militarization. The Alliance tried to get back the mines that had been ceded to them in the first days of the Iron Order, but the Order said they could 'no longer be trusted'. The Order keeps the 'Freemen' supplied with enough food to keep them alive . . . and that's about it.

“The Shards control ground-based shipyards capable of producing full-scale capital ships at this point; the Freemen's Alliance has three dozen cities that are no longer allowed to expand―as they would intrude upon the rightful territory of the Shards―and a mineral spring. I've spent my life since the Battle of Orax trying to fix this; the Iron Knights helped to some small degree, but they had more pressing matters in the form of a Dark Jedi. There is just enough trade between the Iron Order and the organic population to keep the Alliance from falling into total poverty . . . all of that trade is handled by a handful of independent Shards that still have an intact conscience.

“I have to fix this. Orax does not just belong to the Shard, and what the Empire did to it is not the fault of those who still live there.”

Mologg had sat in silence through Luxum's entire overview, totally impassive. “What do you intend us to do, Jedi?”

“In some crazed quest to ensure that history never repeats itself, the Iron Order has repeated it, only this time they're the bad guys, and they don't know because they're not the ones on the brink of death. Their quest to obtain power has blinded them to the wisdom required to wield it. We have to show them the error of their ways.”

“And that is supposed to fix it?” Mologg asked, doubtful.

Luxum considered the amassed resources of the Iron Order, collected over twenty years, assembled specifically for the purpose of maintaining control of their world. His response came at length, quiet and low: “By the Force, it must.”

Luxum waved his hand, and the room came alight as a theatrical-scale holoprojector powered up, bathing the room in a rainbow of colors as it aligned in preparation. Finally the room exploded in warfare, and Luxum stood silently as Mologg watched the unfolding Battle of Orax.

The fate of this world had not been decided in the skies above, or on some empty plain stretching across the world; Orax had been liberated in the streets of cities, on the rooftops of homes, along the shores of city-side rivers. It was not some clean, military engagement; rather it was a brawl between an army of leaderless yet loyal clones, and passionate yet untrained citizen-soldiers.

This was not war; this was not battle. This was death on an unholy scale, perpetrated not by some weapons of mass destruction, but rather the conflicting wills of two opposing forces. So many had died, and in the aftermath all that remained was blood and ruin.

“These people are not warriors, Mologg,” Luxum interjected, the holo dimming slightly and the audio subsiding to a whisper as he spoke. “They will not fight again. They will not kill, they will not maim, they will not brand themselves with the mark of death. They are not cowards, Mologg, but they will not fight the Iron Order; they will not defy a people whose only crime is found in the desire to defend themselves and protect their world. They are committed to another path, and I cannot fault them for their diligence in keeping it. Please, will you help us? Will you look beyond this conflict to its source, and find a path of peace and freedom for my world? We can heal Orax, Mologg; we can find a way.”

Luxum stopped immediately, and a few paces later Mologg followed suit, turning an inquisitive eye on the Shard and trying to discern what had brought about Luxum's sudden stop. The lines from the Code of the Sith had been burned into him since that fateful encounter with his predecessor, and Luxum recognized the first line well. “We must act, Mologg,” He finally responded, resuming his pace once more. “We must act now.”

“I have no answers for you, Jedi.”

Luxum shook his head, moving through the Shard city with single minded purpose. “I will not run from this threat, Mologg. The highest ranks of the Iron Order are against us, their members either ignorant or complicit in what grows within them. But now I see, Mologg; now I understand. I have to act. Darkness has seized the fate of the Iron Order, and there is only one way to purge it.”

Mologg stopped, some terrible conflict arising within her. “I am here in the name of the Cooperative, Jedi. My mission is of peace; I do not believe I can follow you in this quest.”

Luxum stepped just in front of the Drackmarian, staring into her conflicted eyes. “I am asking you to do what is right, Mologg. I am asking you to help me save my world from an evil I do not fully understand, an evil I have until only moments ago been blind to. Help me. Help me. As a servant of the Cooperative; as a daughter of Drackmar; as a flying bantha, I don't care! Just help me save Orax! Help me challenge the Darkness!”