Birth of the Jedi

Chapter 4

Sahria looks down at the screen. "Roo'un?"

"Yeah. It's pretty obscure and there's not much there, but that's why I picked it. It has a small spaceport that handles mainly local traffic. None of the facilities are large enough to handle something with a hyper-drive, so we shouldn't have to worry about Vang refueling at the same spot or chancing on someone who'll recognize my shuttle."

"Why does a planet so remote have a spaceport at all?"

Raun turns, shocked by her naiveté. "Smuggling, of course. It's a great place to keep a low profile when you're on the run—like us."

"And your Republic allows such activity?"

"They can't even decide on a parliamentary procedure to keep a thousand senators from talking out of turn, so I doubt they're quite ready to tackle smuggling in the Outer Rim."

They fall silent again. Sahria picks up a small metal cylinder and begins tinkering with it, shuffling through the ship's toolbox looking for spare parts.

"Do you think you could make a little bit more noise?" KP says, breaking his self-imposed silence. "Why don't you just bang a magnetic gavel against the ships hull for a while."

Raun turns around, studying her inquisitively. "What are you working on, anyhow."

Sahria replies without looking up: "I'm trying to build a new lightsaber. The stonemason's saber I picked up on Rios is bulky and awkward. Fortunately it was equipped with a spare crystal, so I took it out to see if I can build a new one that will handle more gracefully."

Raun smirks. "Weren't you the one who said only a fool would rush into a laser battle armed with a lightsaber?"

She looks up at him. "It's not blasters I'm worried about. Do you have a plan to stop the blades the Sith are using?"

"I may not be able to hit one of their tiny little projectiles with a blaster, but I'm sure I could hit the person throwing it."

She resumes her work as he looks on. "You sure seem to know your way around a toolbox pretty well, and it took quite a bit of know-how to program a critical flaw into those landing craft back on Rios. I thought you abhorred technology?"

"I didn't always live on Rios. I grew up orphaned on an isolated farming colony and dreamed of getting off the planet by any means possible. So I learned everything I could about warp engines, hoping to get a mechanic's job on an outbound freighter. When the Rios expedition started to form, though, I jumped at the first chance to leave. I joined not out of idealism—I was too young for that—but out of desperation. Ironically, rather than technology being my way off the planet, the flight from technology became my escape."

Raun shakes his head. "Did you regret going? It sounds like you went from bad to worse."

"At first. I was young and full of anger, and was just as unhappy on Rios as I was at home. But there I was, stuck and still looking for a way out. As I matured, though, I discovered that the way to resolve anger is not through further agitation but through serenity. We often seek to acquit our restlessness through motion, when the only way to find peace is to slow down and search for it. The Clerics of Rios helped me realize this. Despite their apparent abrasiveness, they were wise in the ways of the Force and of the human soul. Over time I came to understand that I had not made a random choice to go to Rios: The Force had guided me there."

Raun laughs. "Always the philosopher. Do you ever talk like a normal person?" Sahria ignores him and continues to work. "What about Padawan? He's pretty young. Was he born on Rios?