Jedi: Battle Scars (Star Wars)

by Sam Maggs

Regardless, it all came back to: There was a very hot stormtrooper in Merrin’s kitchen, and the rest of the Mantis’s crew was all standing around to interrogate her. This is just what happened on the Mantis. Things that made Merrin feel somewhat outside of reality.

Not that Merrin exactly had the best taste in crushes, generally. She’d never fixated on beings of a single gender as some of her friends did; Merrin fell freely and with few limitations for people of all genders, especially those with exceptional personalities, and with whom she felt a strong connection. In her years on the Mantis, there had been a few brief flings in the moments where they stayed in one spot long enough for them to happen; one who was more in love with her power than anything else, one who ran so hot-then-cold that Merrin could never quite find her footing with him.

“Sure there are,” said Greez. “Right now, there definitely is. Drop the stormtrooper on Batuu and send her off with a fruitcake. Bing bang boom.”

There was no reality in which Greez wanted to be on Hosnian Prime, and yet here he was, landing his ship on a Core planet like that wasn’t the last place a bunch of wanted damn fugitives should be landing their ostentatious, eye-catchingly beautiful space yacht. Oh, yeah, and they were there on the ask of a stormtrooper they’d decided to adopt in a fit of, whatever, niceness or something equally getting-you-killed-worthy. An airtight plan.

And that was what mattered to the Fifth Brother. Whatever other assignments he was given, that was his true purpose. The day he killed his first Jedi was the day the Fifth Brother truly knew he had made the right decision. The Grand Inquisitor had trusted him then with a mission of the utmost importance, killing a Jedi, and he had, of course, executed it flawlessly and without complaint. The Inquisitorius had already showed him so many things about the Jedi that he’d never considered; had branded the Jedi’s misdeeds into his skin and pulled them out of his nail beds over and over again until he couldn’t look away from them anymore. The Jedi had taken him from his family on Artemesium with promises of a better life. Of a grand spirituality. A meaningful life in service to the greatest power in the known universe. The great equalizer. The Force.

Merrin believed in no gods. There were some on Dathomir who had treated their magick like a religion, creating a kind of shamanistic tradition out of it, but by and large she was not part of a religious order. Merrin hadn’t been cloistered; she dedicated herself to no higher power. She was the higher power. And the galaxy bowed in service to her and her sisters.

“A real tourist attraction, black beaches, huge oceans, real amazing coral reefs; I saw holos of what it looked like before the Republic bombed the life out of it from orbit during the Clone Wars. Burned the Separatists out of their hiding places, and took everything else with them.”

The Inquisitor didn’t so much as crack a smile. Tough crowd. “I am the Fifth Brother.” Cal lined himself up with one of the doors, hoping it was the right choice. “You got a name?” “Not anymore.”

“All right. Our mission is…to guarantee that the wisdom of the Jedi lives on. To establish a…” Cal watched her struggle for the right word for a second. “A legacy,” she landed on with a firm nod. “There has to be meaning to what the Jedi believed and taught, even if there aren’t Jedi to pass that wisdom on to. It’s valuable knowledge about life and the nature of the galaxy, and it shouldn’t disappear just because its stewards are no more. And it might help the people who take up this fight after us, and there has to be a safe haven out there, not just for our rest stops, but for people like us all the time. For people like Irei.”

“Merrin.” He sighed. He didn’t want to make her a promise he wasn’t entirely certain he could, or would, keep. “You don’t have to prove anything to me,” he landed on instead. “I know you. I know who you are, and I see you. And we are in this together. Okay?”

I am about to become one of the wealthiest men in the galaxy. Who knows,” he said wistfully, “maybe the Imperials will appoint me to take over Alderaan from that fool queen and her even more foolish husband.”

“If you don’t let me help—all of us, help—we are all going to die. Us, and eventually every Force-sensitive in the galaxy, and everyone who would ever stand up against the Imperials from now until the end of time.”