“And… now.”
Beyond the bow of the ship, space itself seemed to quiver and bend. The effect was almost subtle; a small white wave, like surf from a pounding ocean against the sand, rippled from the hole, not visible such as it were, but notable by the spiral that which formed around it.
A black hole.
Perhaps, more accurately, a wormhole. Black holes were slightly different, but in reality, both were, to the eye, similar. A hole in space through which space itself seemed to bleed.
And then, as quickly as it appeared, it was gone. The spiral of space stopped and a second, larger wave rippled out from the center of the dissipating hole as the conduit closed and space was returned to its normal state.
“Sihoyguwa; analyze the data,” Ahnk said, hand on his chin. He had a pretty good idea of what he’d just watched, but he might as well have it officially confirmed.
“Analysis indicates an artificially generated tear in realspace, through which energy was directed to a conduit behind. Aperture artificially collapsed through manipulation of gravity and removal of negative matter. All readings consistent with known scans from the Arbiter you tested.”
Ahnk nodded, remembering back. When Zeratul had arrived on Yavin, Ahnk had welcomed him. The lust for the power he promised had made him blind, and easily manipulated. No time for self loathing now, though. “Sihoyguwa; speculate as to the purpose of such a tear, given available evidence.”
“Data retrieval from localized relay station or sensor array,” the ship concluded. “Given the lack of a sensor array within the area, perhaps a cloaked relay.”
“Can you locate it?” Ahnk asked, knowing that the ship’s sensor package could cut through many antiquated cloaking devices.
“I suppose your next question is whether I can generate an artificial tear in space so that we can follow whoever retrieved that data burst,” the ship answered back, sarcastically.
“I figured given the money I spent upgrading your sensors you might be able to cut through whatever it was keeping the device cloaked, that’s all,” Ahnk said, calmly.
“Right, but without any idea of how their cloaking systems operate, it could conceivably take hours of analyzing different sensor sweeps looking for inconsistencies,” the ship replied, “and there would be no guarantee of ever finding anything conclusive.”
“Very well,” Ahnk said, with a sigh. “I don’t really have time for that. That declaration makes it seem like things are in motion. I can’t sit here waiting for the sensors to process one batch task after the other. Sihoyguwa, take us to Capricia.”
Getting punched in the face is always somewhat jarring. Moreso when one does not expect it.
He fell back, backpeddling instinctively from his attacker. His arm shot up to block the next punch, but the one following that landed in his abdomen, doubling him over. Ahnk realized he was fighting a force user; no normal human could move that fast.
He took a deep breath.
The man attacking him seemed to slow down. Ahnk took a moment to look at him. Human, or close to it. Likely Caprician. Male. Indeterminate age, but still in physical condition that represented a considerable threat to most in unarmed combat.
Ahnk was not most men.
He threw up his forearm to block the next punch and then stepped to the side, shooting out his foot at the man who was attacking him. The foot landed hard in the ribs, causing reverberating impact. Many would have been felled, but the man had anticipated the blow and pushed himself back; not enough to avoid entirely, but he definitely deadened the strike considerably. He wasn’t moving as fast as Ahnk, but he was definitely moving faster than normal men could muster.
Ahnk’s eyes surveyed his body again and he saw the lightsaber dangling from his hip. Well, that answered that.
The man launched himself from his position, attacking again with a fist. Ahnk didn’t block it this time, instead raising a hand and setting it on the man’s sternum, taking a deep, long breath.
When he let it out, he reached out to the man and pulled the lightsaber from his belt. “This,” he said, “this is a Jedi’s weapon. Constructed by a warrior when he advances beyond the apprentice level. You’re fast, and in tune with the flow of the force, but this isn’t yours.”
The man tried to move, but found himself stuck; frozen, as Ahnk used the force to keep him exactly where he was, mid punch, in mid air. “I should be the one asking questions of you, intruder.”
Ahnk nodded. “True enough,” he admitted. “Then I have a question for you, before I answer any of yours. If I let you go, and let you settle to the floor, do you promise not to attack me again?”
“That depends,” the man said, expression on his face the dictionary definition of serious. “Are you a Sith, here to threaten my children?”
Ah. That explained a lot. “No,” Ahnk said, his face matching the serious of the man before him. “If your children were my target, would I not be in their room at present?”
“Maybe you don’t know the layout of the house,” the man said.
“I don’t, but it’s fairly easy to tell from the doorway of each room what is inside,” Ahnk countered. He relaxed his hand, and the man slowly fell to the ground. “In any event, I mean you no harm.”
The man rubbed his ribs softly. “Then why break in?”
“I lacked a formal invitation,” Ahnk said, matter of factly. “I would hardly call it breaking in either; the lock on your door only has 256 bit encryption. I could break that tapping on it with a rock.”
“Other than demonstrating the lapse in our security,” the man shot back, frustrated, “what are your intentions here?”
That was a good question. “To be honest, I don’t really have any intentions,” Ahnk confessed. “I sort of do things by the seat of my pants. Often, violence is involved. Take this situation. I break into a house without any real idea of what to do once inside, and you punch me several times as a result. I’m sure eventually I’ll figure out why I’m here, but for now…”
Ahnk trailed off.
Standing in the doorway was a face he had not seen in a long, long time. There were more lines around the nose, mouth, and eyes, then previously had appeared. Battle marks could be spotted from errant blows, either in training, or in war. Her eyes, though covered by rippling lines drawn into her skin by age, were no more dull then when last he’d seen her, what must have been decades previous.
She was why he was here.
He offered her a deep bow. “Amalia,” he said, hands folded behind his back.
She snorted. She threw him a small cloth. “Wipe the blood off your face and meet me outside,” she said, shortly. “Tyscio, you can put the lightsaber away. I will handle him.”
“Who is he?” Tyscio asked. He took a cloth Amalia offered and wiped his hand clean of Ahnk’s blood.
“His name is Ahnk Rashanagok,” she said, glaring at the man in question, “and if you ever see him again, don’t punch him; kill him immediately.”
The two were sitting just outside of the Caprician house that Leia and Tyscio cohabitated when she was on the planet. She wasn’t on the planet… when Ahnk arrived near Minos he would have already been able to tell, but he hadn’t felt but the remnant of her presence; she had been here, and her… essence… remained, but her physical form was somewhere else.
Amalia he hadn’t been expecting.
He should have; they had always been close, if not emotionally, than at least physically. The two most prominent Jedi Masters who had outlived Gash Jiren, and the two who had stood by and watched The Jedi Order lose its strength and eventually it’s very life in the face of the galaxy around.
Not a pleasant legacy when worded as such.
But realistically, Amalia was one of few people Ahnk was positive could kill him. She had mastered the force before Ahnk had learned to channel his emotions and by the time he felt confident enough to declare himself a Sith Master, she had promoted several Jedi to the same rank. They’d fought before and Ahnk had won. He never knew how.
He had a theory, of course.
Amalia let him win. She wanted Ahnk to take Kahn away. She wanted to test the boy.
Her foresight had likely told her that Ahnk was not strong enough and far too arrogant to truly convert the apprentice Jedi. She likely saw an opportunity to allow Kahn to glimpse into the abyss, knowing that, when the time came, he would emerge and wander back to the light.
A hellacious journey to put someone through. But the Jedi Code did not permit for love. It was tough love or abandonment. That was the way of things.
Of course, that was only a theory.
“If you’re here to steal any of my apprentices,” Amalia shot out, breaking the silence as simply as she had broken into his mind, “you should know that most of the more promising students are currently offworld. The remainder are either very young, very inexperienced, very limited, or a combination of the three.”
Ahnk smiled, tapping on his head. “I’m not used to people who can read my mind.”
“You’re not used to people being stronger than you,” Amalia said, face still deadly serious. “It’s good to know that you are still as arrogant as ever.”
Ahnk scoffed. “Probably moreso,” he said, leaning back. “Having died and come back now several times has removed one more fear from an already short list.”
“What are you doing here, Ahnk?” she shot back, not softening whatsoever.
Ahnk leaned back again, feigning surprise at the question. “What, I can’t just drop by, to visit, and chat with an old friend?”
Amalia narrowed her eyes, making her glare even more intense. “We’re not old friends, Ahnk,” she said. “You hit me and threw a table on me, then stole one of my pupils.”
Ahnk sighed. “Stealing isn’t exactly the word I’d use…” he said, trailing off.
Her glare stayed constant. “And what word would you use?”
He put a finger on his chin. “Well, I put him in a situation where if he didn’t do what I said, I would kill the person he cared about most,” Ahnk said, remembering back. When he said it aloud, though, his face twisted in revolt. “That doesn’t really make it sound any better, does it?”
She crossed her arms, making her entire posture now entirely unfriendly. “I’ll ask you again, since you dodged the question the first time. What are you doing here, Ahnk Rashanagok?”
“You know, I’m not a Sith anymore,” he said. He wasn’t sure if she’d heard. “My name is Andrew, if you want to address me as a person instead of as a monster.”
She curled her lips at the corners; it seemed a restrained snarl of sorts, as if she was incredulous at his assertion. “Changing your name doesn’t change who you are, or what you did, Ahnk. I’m not suddenly going to forget who you were just because…"
“Stop,” Ahnk said, forcedly. “Now, I know there’s no forgiving what I did. That’s not why I’m here. I can never put the past behind me; not with you, not with the people I’ve hurt, but most importantly, not with myself. Do you think I can ever forget? Do you think that I sleep peacefully? Do you think that there’s a single solitary second where I can close my eyes without the faces of the dead being reflected in my eyelids? I can’t ever bring those people back from the dead, and nothing, no matter how much I might want to do, can ever bring me even on the karmic wheel of life. And if you want to continue to look at me as the monster I was, then I can’t blame you. But it’s not who I am and it is not why I’m here. And if all of my interactions here are going to be hostile, then I might as well let that Caprician in there use me as a heavy bag for another half hour before I leave the planet.”
Amalia blew out a sigh. Her posture softened a little, but her expression still remained hard. “You have to understand, the last time I saw you, you were trying to do considerable harm to me, my students, and everyone I cared about. Now, I have Gash Jiren’s word that you’re a changed man, but you are an enigma; more of a rumor now than a real person. No one has seen or heard from you in decades, and suddenly, you’re here,” she said, summing it up quite well. “I want to know why.”
Ahnk nodded. “It’s a fair question,” he said. He sat forward. “There are two reasons I came here. The first is the recent declaration by this… Artanis fellow. I don’t know him, but I know his ilk. There was a Sith, Zeratul, who was one of his kind. I’m trying to do what I can to follow leads in terms of where they might be and, if possible, how we can defend ourselves, proactively. One of those leads led me to Minos, a planet under Caprician control.”
Amalia was confused. “But the Capricians have nothing to do with the… Cree’Ar, they were called. I don’t think they’ve ever even met.”
“Do you know that?” Ahnk said. He saw a flicker of hesitation in her. “I don’t know anything about these people. I don’t know what motivates them, what drives them, anything about their moral code or ethics or intentions.”
“I do,” Amalia countered, firmly. “They’ve been entirely welcoming of The Jedi, and of myself. They’ve protected us. They fought against the invasion of the Yuuzhan Vong and repelled it by pure strength of will and character. These are the people we want as our allies. I do trust them.”
“Well, I still have reservations,” Ahnk said, shaking his head. “I don’t have as much experience with them as you do, so nothing is a certainty. All I know is that the Cree’Ar, or someone using very similar technology, has taken a great interest in the Caprician people. What that interest amounts to, or whether it is reciprocal, I do not know. I felt it worthwhile to investigate.”
Amalia seemed more curious than hostile now. “What have you found?”
“Nothing,” Ahnk admitted. “I don’t have the contacts here necessary to do any under the radar information gathering and my… above the radar methods tend to be somewhat messy. I try and avoid that with friendly governments unless the situation is dire.”
Amalia turned somewhat bitter again. “The ends justify the means, then?”
“Sometimes,” Ahnk said, seriously. He leaned forward a little more. “You can decry my methodology though you may, but there are times when lives have been lost because good people stood by on the sidelines waiting for something to happen. Sometimes, something happening is somebody dying who didn’t need to die. I’d rather be a step ahead of the curve then a step behind the bloodshed.”
“You would rather initiate the bloodshed?” Amalia countered.
Ahnk leaned back again, blowing out a frustrated sigh. “It’s very clear to me, now, that you and I have a massive psychological and philosophical rift between our approach to doing what we feel is morally right. I don’t see the benefit of you raking me over the coals for everything I say.”
“I’m still waiting,” she replied back, and Ahnk’s face told her what to say next. “You still haven’t told me the reason you’re here.”
Ahnk nodded. He clasped his hands, folding them in front of him. “I came here looking for Organa Solo.”
Amalia nodded. “I was afraid of that.”
Ahnk allowed himself a slight smile. “So that’s why you’re so on guard,” he said. “That means she saw it too.”
Amalia did not let any surprise register on her face. “She has been disturbed by many things lately. She felt it prudent to travel to Ossus to look for clarity in the face of the arising situation.”
Ahnk nodded again, understanding. “Yes. Clarity. It’s an important…”
Amalia raised a finger. “You should know, that if your intent is to harm her…”
“Tyscio will kill me?” Ahnk said, face cocked slightly. He could see the serious face of Amalia almost crack, but she held in the urge to laugh. “I know. She is well protected, here, in the garden of the force she has sewn about. Were my intentions hostile, I would not stand much of a chance.”
“Just so you know,” Amalia said, sternly. “But…”
Ahnk perked up slightly at that. “But, you were about to say?”
Amalia, now, did smile. Only a little, and only with her lips. Her eyes remained serious and focused. But those soft lips of hers curled just enough for him to detect before she told him, “if what they say is true, and you are indeed a knight of the light at present, then I take great pity on anyone who declares war on force users.”
Then it was Ahnk’s turn to smile. He made no attempt to hide it.
Ahnk declined offers to stay inside a house. Amalia had offered a room at hers, presumably so that she could keep an eye on the former Sith, but he would have felt an intrusion there. Tyscio, perhaps in an attempt to apologize for the cut he had left under Ahnk’s eye, had offered a room in his, which Ahnk would have also felt inappropriate given the tension and mistrust between the two.
Ahnk had a ship. The ship was parked on a rock.
He looked down on the city below. It was different from most; more muted, almost, when compared to other cities within the Commonwealth, and nowhere near the violent vibrancy that assaulted your eyes when one looked over Coruscant. It made sense, why Leia stayed here of all places. Overlooking the hill, Ahnk almost felt… home.
This was not Naboo, of course. The air was slightly drier here; not as many lakes and oceans on the horizon. But it was still crisp, and fresh. Different from other worlds, surrendered over in the name of progress. This was still a planet, living and breathing, not in spite of the people on it, but together with the people on it. Society here was different. Simpler was not the word. One struggled to find one; Ahnk softly sighed and settled on better.
He didn’t belong here.
He would stay; by the time he made it to Ossus, Leia likely would have found the means by which to track Ahnk down, and likely would return here anyway. It made no sense for them to zig zag across known space in an effort to track one another down. If she had had the dream of him as he had dreamt of her, it meant that the force was pushing them together. For what reason, he did not know. But he would wait here long enough to see it out.
The long term, though, held no home for him here. This world was peaceful. Calm and serene, enjoying the silence after the crushing weight of enduring a war against the Yuuzhan Vong. They had earned their peace. And Ahnk was not a beacon of peace. He would not come here and have peace follow. That was not the way things worked.
Ahnk would stay long enough to absorb the peace he needed, and then move on. He would set his mind at ease with the beckoning the force had sent him, and then he would go.
The truth was, Ahnk wouldn’t know what to do in a world full of peace.
It was why he’d left Naboo. Why he’d moved from place to place, never settling. Always seeking out more adventure. One more dangerous future. One more excuse not to settle down. Settling down and being one with himself would make Ahnk face himself. That was something he would rather not do. So peace, for the moment, was not an option.
The only remaining option was the war.
It seemed, given the proclamation he had heard, that war was coming to the galaxy. He’d sparred with Zeratul… knew from experience the Cree’Ar, as they called themselves, would bring force users to their war on force users. How many of them and how skilled they each were was a question Ahnk did not know. He was afraid of the answer. The other question was based on the Reavers. If they were connected to the Cree’Ar, what happened when the Cree’Ar found places with Jedi already in them? Like Ossus? Or Capricia?
The answers would only come with time, and blood. There was no easy way to end a war. No clean way. No fast way. War was a very messy, bloody business.
That, Ahnk understood.
He may have felt out of place in a serene scene overlooking a peaceful city but, throw some rampaging bloodthirsty cyborgs onto that hillside, and Ahnk Rashanagok would gleefully cleave them in half.
War was his way.
And if there was a war coming, Ahnk Rashanagok would face it head on. Amalia was right about him; he did prefer to initiate the bloodshed. He would enjoy the peace while it lasted, because soon, he was going to abandon it again. Ahnk was a warrior. He could change his name, and he could change his allegiance, but he could never change, deep down, what he truly was.
There was no duality in Ahnk Rashanagok.
He was a killer.
OS: In a world of bon-bons, you are a twinkie.
Ahnk: God damn you, I am Count Chocula and you know it.
I'm not spending my anniversary night thumping my head against the wall. - Damalis, on Moderating TRF
Then tell him you want it harder, damnit! - Ahnk, on Damalis
