Edges of the World

Chapter 11

Luke's shields were progressing rapidly. Far far faster than Leia had thought was even possible. He had a real hunger to learn, absorbing each task with a fierce determination Leia had not anticipated.

She should have, she realized, he'd make it very clear to her how important learning anything he could about the Force and the Jedi Code was to him.

Luke was, far and away a much better student than Leia had ever been.

If anything, his biggest problem as a student was that he took all of this so seriously that he got disproportionately upset whenever he inevitably messed up.

She didn't know to help him with that.

The worst part was that when he got upset like that, it caused him to focus on himself rather than the Force itself, and created more problems as he tried to learn.

Yet even with those hiccups, he was now creating shields equal to those Leia herself could make. It should have been impossible to learn the technique so fast, there was no way to explain him mastering decades of study in just one day, yet there was no denying the strength of what he was able to create.

Hopefully Luke would now be ready to defend himself from Vader's next attempt to contact either of them.

There was a noise from the doorway, and the twins turned to see what it was in unison.

The military officer from that morning was standing there. "Princess, I've been looking for you. I thought perhaps you were still in the sickbay, but apparently you have recovered. We were going to go over our fleet patterns? Should I reschedule or are you ready for our meeting?"

Luke stood and fell into what Leia recognized was an at attention stance beings in the military used. "General Madine, I'm sorry, I am responsible for Leia being distracted."

Luke gave her an expectant look. She wondered what it is he wanted her to do exactly. She'd never actually been in a military unit before.

After the Clone Wars had ended her mother, and others in the Senate had worked long and hard to ensure a conflict of that nature would not take place again. It had taken years for the structure of the Republic to be suitably altered, and unfortunately, there were still remnants of that dark period of history. Remnants such as the continuing existence of the Grand Army of the Republic, even if the military had been significantly decreased in size since the days of the war.

One of the biggest changes that had happened was the full detachment of the Jedi Order from the Republic's military.

Overall Leia had always been taught that this was a major improvement on the way things had been, that the previous structure of the Order in relation to The Grand Army of the Republic had been a mistake that had caused the Order to go astray. It had even caused the entire Order to drift towards the Dark Side.

Leia agreed with that, even if a part of her felt restless confined to the role of peacekeeper when she heard all the amazing stories her father, Uncle Obi and Aunt 'Soka had from their days fighting in the war.

It also meant that Leia was truly clueless when it came to military discipline and how one was supposed to act within that world.

So she stood and tried to best imitate Luke's pose. The Officer gave her a strange look, clearly surprised and confused by her action. Right. So that wasn't the right thing for her to do. Great.

She sighed. She really was not looking forward to any of this, least of all having to debrief with whoever was in charge here.

Council meetings, whenever she had to go to those, went on forever, and she never felt very comfortable just standing there with everyone staring at her. She imagined that this would go similarly.