"Of course I remember successfully apprehending the Commandant and her nine acolytes, after incapacitating most of the misguided Guardians on-duty fondly!"
My explanation probably came out a little more harshly than I intended, but I'd always been sensitive about people thinking ill of my former Master, just because she could be a little, intense.
...
Ahsoka's voice had lost its edge and become rather small, as she hesitantly asked, "Is, are, are those the kind of umm, challenges, you'll expect me to overcome during my training, Master?" The sub was regularly tossing us in one direction or another as the pilots raced from one gap-corridor in the Gungans' sonar-curtain to another, but the Togruta no longer seemed to notice the admittedly uncomfortable jostling.
Brow knitting slightly as I considered the question for only the briefest moment, I replied seriously, "Absolutely!" Drawing another breath, I continued, because I'd been taught precision in communication was extremely important.
"The strength of your connection to the Force places you in the top one percentile of the Order, Snips. After a decade of real training, not that beat-cop-Judicial-with-a-lightsaber, if-you-can-pass-the-Trials-it-must-have-been-good-enough nonsense, you'll be able to do things you can't even imagine right now.
Your potential is nearly limitless, and I will do everything in my power to help you realize it. Just like I'll never ask you to take one step down a path you don't want to walk.
I'll push you, yes, but only when you're allowing fear or self-doubt to hold you back. I'm your Master, it's my honor and obligation to always be there for you. Just like Dark Woman has always, always been there, for me."
Glancing away abruptly, I focused on thickening the outermost layer of my shielding, as a pouncing fear with claws made of "What if she never wakes up?" suddenly tried to rend my insides without the least warning.
Jaw tightening, I consciously forced my breathing to remain even. I didn't release the fear into the Force, because that would make something deeply personal, impersonal.
Instead, I simply breathed and focused on the beating of my heart. It was thumping a bit faster than normal, so I focused on silently counting those beats. My count had reached one hundred and fourteen, by the time the beats were slow and even again.
A voice almost startled me, as I pushed the last wisps of the fear into oblivion, but something pricked me before the first words came from the intercom overhead, "We'll be docking in fifteen, Master Jedi. When you feel the sub come to a jarring halt, you'll have forty-five seconds to get unstrapped and move to the hatch. Once the hatch opens, I expect to see the last of you off my ship before another thirty seconds have passed.
If the Gungan exile-hunters haven't found, beaten senseless, and turned in for credits Panaka's local errand-girl, someone should meet you before you all reach the first T-intersection. Either way, it's not my problem any longer. Docking in three, two, one-" The unnamed Rodian pilot suddenly announced over the intercom, his reedy voice sharp with suppressed nerves.
I was suddenly thrown forward and to the right with painful force, as a loud, hollow sounding tha-buunk noise echoed through the submersible when it shuddered to a sudden stop.
Depressing the quick-release button where the four straps of the harness formed an "X" across my chest, I leaped to my feet the moment the harness straps fell away, then turned to make sure my Padawan was free. IG-1 had crossed to do the same for Padme in a single long stride, so the four of us were indeed waiting at the hatch for it to open outward in the allotted time.
The hiss of the hatch unsealing and swinging away from us was considerably louder in here than it had sounded outside, but I took it as a cue to see my companions off the sub as soon as IG-1 had exited. If anyone unfriendly was lying in wait for us, chances were the last thing they'd be equipped to encounter was a battle-droid capable of tanking military blaster-fire and laughing at ion-grenades.
It wouldn't win me any friends among the Gungans, bringing one of the hated Clankers who'd killed so many of their brave soldiers here, but I wasn't feeling very kindly toward the Gungans at the present moment. If we were wrong, and the amphibians really were colluding with the Separatists of their own free will, we were going to find ourselves glad to have IG-1 with us.
My booted feet hadn't even touched the durasteel of this small docking area, before I began to feel a subtle wrongness.
The traces of it were so faint, I might not have noticed it under different circumstances, but I'd had more than my fair share of encounters with the Dark Side in its many unnatural manifestations recently. Cautiously, I allowed my interest in any hazards that might surround us to act as my request to the Force, for aid in intuiting what was not natural in this place.
It was a limited and roundabout technique of discernment, but it possessed the distinct advantage of being an almost entirely passive means of acquiring information. I wasn't extending my awareness out beyond my shielding, and into potential contact with the contamination. Instead, I opened myself to the impressions carried to me by the Force.
Envy, sour and curdled, as only something that had once been wholesome could become. It was laid like a brittle crust over, hunger, disgust, maybe a disgust that hungered?
Deepest of the impressions, and so faint there was no way to be sure it wasn't unconscious speculation born from the nudges of intuition, I thought there might have been something like a sanctimoniousness which was somehow deceitful. Nothing which provided an explanation as to how the very metal and stone surrounding us had begun to be corrupted by the Dark Side.
It was even more disquieting, when I considered the relative unimportance of this location. If the contamination could be found in a maintenance dock that hadn't seen legitimate use in years, was it already entrenched elsewhere in Otoh Gunga?
Looking about the elliptical chamber, I noted two thirds of what could have been floorspace were taken up by the docking bay's circular wet entry pool. The rest of the space, minus a narrow walkway leading to a closed hatch in the upper end of the room, was taken up by a raised walkway that circled the round pool. The longer walls of the ellipse were each inset with large transparisteel windows that opened onto dark waters outside.
Obviously buttressed by the Gungans odd forcefield technology, the windows, hatch, pool, and the surrounding walk were the dock's only distinct features. The facility was so conspicuously bare of anything that might have once lent itself to the room's function, its emptiness seemed somehow sinister.
Sensing a dull thrum of tightly controlled uneasiness, I heard Padme's light footfalls before her hushed voice, "I think we should be moving on, Knight Skywalker. I can't say why, but this place brings to mind the outermost chambers of that madman Vindi's underground lab. I toured that vile place, when his attorneys made a final appeal to the Crown."
"Feels like a place where bad things happen," Ahsoka echoed simply. She made her feelings clear in the same sort of near whisper that Padme had, yet her eyes never stopped scanning the room while she'd done so.
IG-1 had positioned himself so the inward-opening hatch would swing past and then away from him. That told me what the droid thought of our course, so I demonstrated my agreement by moving to the hatch.
One counterclockwise rotation of the wheel in the center of the hatch caused it to begin swinging inward without any help from me. Soundless in its motion, I quickly sidestepped the opening portal to gain a clear view of the passage beyond.
As I moved, the silence made me wonder if someone had recently lubricated the hatch's workings, but I quickly pushed the distracting thought from my mind.
Running straight as an arrow, the passageway terminated at the T-intersection our Rodian pilot had described after no more than fifteen meters. Utterly featureless, the short corridor had an industrial character about it. One entirely at odds with my notion of Gungan aesthetics. Silent and somehow forlorn, it was tinged with the same contamination as the docking bay.
Thankfully, the taint was so slight, it was only detectable as a continuation of the corruption in the room just behind them. Unwilling to be surprised by someone who could be lying in wait down one branch of the "T" or the other, I sent my awareness coursing out ahead of us, as my steps took me closer to the intersection.
Anxiety and impatience in equal measure. Hints of fear, that had been corralled and cut down to almost nothing, by a focused, needle-sharp concern for, someone.
Taking a left at the intersection, I came face to face with a Gungan female a few inches shorter than me, but nearly twice as wide. The dark green skin of the Ankuran Gungan woman was offset by her vibrant violet robes adorned liberally with golden brocade.
Long golden ribbons crisscrossed her neck to lay down the front of her stocky torso in a manner reminiscent of a stole, but it was the large almost neon-green eyes on the ends of her eyestalks that snared one's attention.
I wasn't absolutely positive, but the female's dress gave me the impression she was part of the influential body of Gungans involved in the city's politics. Many of the Ankurans were, male and female, irregardless of the fact the present Boss of the Rep Council, Lyonie, was notably one of the Otolla.
...
Hey guys if you like the story please throw some power stones to Elevate the ranking.
...
if you want to read ahead of the public release you can go to p@treon :
p@treon.com/Rage_moon