Karen Kenobi
Conflicted Interests
"I need to see them." Karen said, but the long-limbed non-human had apparently already closed up shop.
"Sorry," it said, waving a tentacled finger at her, "no more tonight. Come back when moons full."
"That's too long to wait!" Karen said, abruptly slamming a Force-backed fist into the doorway and making her way into the strange little shop. She looked around, pushing back the dark cloak to reveal her angered face. "I don't want to threaten you," she said, "but I need those charts. It's not a matter of moons or mood - it's a personal quest."
"Ah - and that makes breaking in and pushing me around acceptable. I see." It said, several eyes pulling in on long stalks.
"I can pay you, and I'll pay for your overtime. And a lock, if you need it," she glanced at the door which seemed a little less sturdy for her pushing through it. "I just need to leave, now."
The thrumming of power through the shop was the only audible sound, the generators for the block were being shut down for the cycle.
"You cross the wrong people," the shop keeper said, trundling into the back area of the business, "you run like coward."
"No," Karen said, "I'm not running away from anything."
That might have been a lie according to some of her Alliance friends, but to her, it was not.
"That is what you all say... Give me this," it said as it rummaged through old star charts and navigational network cards. "Give me that. Not running away, always running toward something. Big this, treasure. Big that, fame. Never see them again, not I..."
Karen wanted to dismiss the creature's prattle, but she knew that her journey would lead her past dangers that only the bravest Jedi or explorer could face.
And she was no Jedi. Not yet.
Luke had gone on some quest as well, the year before. Shortly after that, everything fell to pieces. The Empire had strengthened itself, built a bigger version of the Death Star.
Every time Karen thought about it, it made her sad and ill. But she couldn't fight with the Alliance this time. She would be of no help. The contacts she had among the entertainers and elite had all but dried up over the years - been killed off or sent away, imprisoned or worse.
Her skills as a pilot were acceptable for transport duty, but her heart wasn't in that. Karen flew dutifully back and forth between diplomatic meeting places, sometimes pitching in trying to convince new leaders to join the Alliance. Sometimes they were successful. Sometimes they were chased away violently.
Karen didn't want to admit that those were the best times. The narrow escapes, the sudden shock of realizing that she'd been stabbed in the arm, even the time she was dragged to the ground and almost raped - the scars those men left were ones that no one ever saw. But it made her heart race, made her blood quicken. Especially when she recalled how many pieces she'd left them in, when she was done fighting and they were done screaming.
She fought in two large battles with the other ground forces, reveling in her ability to weild the ancient Jedi weapon that her father had used. She blocked most laser bolts, but was still unused to the lightness of the blade - missing some shots and taking several hits to her body and one along her leg which mirrored the cut that her prior assailants had made. Karen wound up in a medical center for months recuperating, and by that time most of the battles had turned to starfights again, leaving her to tend the new wounded.
Her heart was not in that, either. She belonged on a battlefield, didn't she? Her senses cried out for it, she could taste the salty sweat, smell the blood and ozone of laser blasts... She could feel the humming of the light sabre in her hands, the sound it made as it passed into the air. That was her life.
She knew that her goals had been long interrupted by this three year break. Even studying under the Dark Lord was progression. She knew that she could still apply her knowledge to whichever direction her soul would carry her.
"Here. Just take it. I must sleep now. Block is empty. Dark." The alien shopkeeper said, dimly glowing. "You should leave."
Karen left a sizable amount of local currency near the creature's 'in' box, and tried to shut the door of the strange little shop behind her - but it wouldn't much matter. Their race was undergoing its monthly moult and wouldn't be active again for several days.
The chart that it had given her contained the last known locales of several Jedi establishments - but what she wanted was the hidden codes it showed. Only once she'd heard of this technique of open deception in lettering. She followed the logic of things, and looked over the charts in private, on her small ship.
The Alliance would not miss her. Not right now. Besides, she kept telling herself, if she returned a Jedi - like Skywalker insisted he would - they would be so much stronger than before!
Karen could not decipher anything by looking at the text, so she examined the print out of the star chart itself. It was ancient, perhaps older than the Republic. She breathed in the scent of it - the mask of time shrouded it, the smell of the odd shop pervaded it, but there deeply in the plastic-paper was a scent that she only imagined she'd find.
It was a treasure map. But how to read it? She sighed and fell back, looking at it holding it up above her. She was about to give up and try later, when she saw something. As Karen held the plas to the light, there was a faint shimmering. At first she thought it was merely marring in the paper, but this sort of mixture of plastic and fibers could hardly be dented even after several hundred years.
With both hands clutching the paper, she held it up to a light. And there, between the letters of certain stars, were secondary markings. Three worlds - three Sith practitioners.
Sure, they would be long dead by now, but ... If anything survived that was also an out. That was also a way to learn. And if there was one thing Karen was sure of, she knew that she could go either way. Controlling her anger or her conscience, either way would work just fine for her.
***
The first world was a total waste of time. Karen looked at it from above, circling in orbit, and detected a wasteland of surface radiation and toxicity too high for her to even dream of landing. It was also the closest to the Republic's old border. The newest settlement. The more recently tamed, galactically speaking.
Absently she wondered if it had been the native population that blew themselves to hell, or if the Jedi of the old Republic did it for them?
She had been reading up on some of their less well-known exploits. Sure, the Jedi had always been spoken of with reverence and awe.
That was because of their fighting prowess. Not, she soon learned, because of their good reputation among peoples on odd little planets.
Especially not among ones which were Force-sensitive. Even though they claimed to be quite fair and reasonable, calm and never angry, the Jedi were also unhelpful, arrogant, and almost entirely charmless.
When they came to a world which had something they needed, they would be swooning with joy. When they encountered resistance, these worlds would refuse them anything, the Jedi refused to lift a finger to help shift their social injustices or crime problems.
In the weeks and months that Karen traveled the stars looking for these last outposts, getting farther and farther away from the Empire - and therefore the old Republic - she began to wonder if the Jedi ever had done anything to further anyone but themselves?
"He was right," Karen grunted while fixing her ship up, "they were worthless and simple. No goals, nothing." She twisted the wrench around and was satisfied with the results.
When she straightened again there were two native farmer-types standing watching her. Human, but barely. It looked as though they had some variety of bat in their genetic heritage.
"Little lady has a nice machine," said one.
"Don't start with me, boys," Karen warned. "I'm not in the mood to -"
"We don't wanna fight, little lady," said the other, showing off decayed teeth, "we just wanna have a little fun..."
"That's what I thought you were about to say," she said, and with one sharp motion she snapped her light sabre out. It came to life before their eyes, which went wide.
"Now that's no way to greet your friends!" Said the first. He tried to saunter around to get a hand on her, but Karen merely moved a tiny bit to the right, and lopped his arm off at the elbow. The scent of cauterized flesh filled her nose.
And it made her want more.
The screaming of the first music to her ears. He staggered about, trying to pick up his severed limb but he was so shocked that he barely could control the limbs he had left.
Karen swooped over the front of her ship, as the other man tried to run away. She was still quite young, only around twenty five, and she was far from useless in a fight. They didn't know that. All this pair knew was that a fairly attractive young woman had her ship break down on their back yard plot and obviously she needed some kind of 'help'.
Karen deftly dropped onto the second man, he snarled and tried to throw a stone at her - which she caught with the aid of an almost-unconscious Force power.
Her hand would have stung with the stone's weight and surface - had it impacted her flesh at all. Instead, it hovered over her hand with her fingers gently coaxing it to spin.
The smile that crossed her face wasn't purely evil. There was a good bit of 'revenge for the abused' in it too. However she chose to throw the stone with far more Force behind it than her attackers really deserved. Striking him, it nearly took his leg off at the knee, causing him to fall to the ground.
Karen moved over him, as he clutched his broken leg. She flicked the light sabre to life again.
And paused. Something back in the corner of her mind reminded her that this was not a murder weapon - this would not be a murder scene in the morning. Her father - her real father - would never approve of this behavior.
"I have places to be. Don't go assuming any wandering girl is weak enough to fall prey to you." She said, and put away her weapon.
Taking off, the pair of scared men bolted as well as they could - supporting themselves on each other - and would speak of a robed Jedi attacking them from time to time.
Karen ran into a dilemma at the same time that she discovered her taste for battle had not waned. She drifted from her path to fight here and there, skirmishes without a big galactic meaning - fights which were only to prove herself worthy of winning.
Another two years passed in this manner. She had long since lost all contact with her Alliance friends, and they had most likely stopped asking about her. Their main worry would probably be that she'd defected back to the Empire. Of course she'd never have done any such thing.
***
"That's quite a scar," the woman said, packing her healing salves back into their box. "Don'tcha want it looked at?"
"It's old," Karen grunted. She glanced down at her right leg. The scar from the rapists' knife was faded beside the slightly brighter wound from the battlefield. "I'm keeping it to remind myself of where I've been."
The old woman pursed her lips, greying eyebrows flickering up, but she said nothing. After all, she only had one ear, and she didn't need it to hear the screaming wounded.
This time, Karen realized that the battles she'd been fighting were not really her own. They were hollow. Perhaps her taste for blood had at long last been saited?
She paid the woman in the local currency at almost double the price on her clinic's door, "thank you," Karen said as she left.
"No, thank you dearie," the woman cackled. As she watched Karen leave with a slight limp, the healer whistled to herself. "That pup's got quite the busy aura. I'd even say she's a bit of a Jedi like m'paw."
"Your paw warn't no Jedi," the woman's equally ancient looking assistant grumbled.
"He was. How d'ye think I came across this bit o' power here?" She waved her bent fingers, levitating a pen off the table nearby, into her hand. She was well known for being a Force using healer, at least known among their local folk. Karen had no idea, but she was compelled to go there when her still-bleeding wound from the last battle kept her from sleeping.
The pair watched as Karen - healed in body if not yet in spirit - boarded her small weary looking ship and left their world in search of something new.
***
When Karen reached the third world, farthest out from the center of the Galaxy and certainly oldest among the civilized planets, she knew that this was her best chance.
There were no people there, she realized, at least not human ones, and not ones which were acutally Sith in origin.
But this was a Sith world. Through and through. The huge temple-like buildings which dominated the landscape bore similarities to ones she'd seen before. On Yavin four? Certainly. In books or vids, almost every planet had one or two.
These Sith monuments weren't just for show. They were not celebrating some individual or vainly praying to some unknown god.
They were libraries. Schools. Art galleries.
Karen walked among the ghosts of the Sith dead, millennia old buildings whispered secrets to her.
She began to learn at last.