Part 11 (1/2)
”I've got a better idea. You can throw things around with the Force, right? Well, that makes you our fire cover. If anything comes down this street while we're breaching the building, cream it. Got that?”
Ahsoka frowned. ”Yes, Rex.”
”Don't look at me like that, littl'un. It's not the soft option. I need you to do it. If those droids kill enough militia, they can just walk over the dead bodies like a carpet and stroll down here.”
Callista nodded. ”Okay.” She wasn't sure if it was the proper thing to call him Rex like Ahsoka did. ”We'll do that.”
”Move forward on my mark, and keep a comm channel clear for instructions.”
Rex checked around him and then darted back to the other side of the street. The office block-three stories, nothing major-was a hundred meters ahead. Rex signaled to move, and Callista bolted.
Three seconds.
Jedi seconds weren't quite the same, but she appreciated the advice. That was how long it took a sniper to get a lock on a moving target. She could hear a distant steady noise, higher-pitched than the artillery fire, metallic and regular like someone hammering a box of rivets, and she watched Ahsoka's reaction.
”They're coming,” she said.
Callista sprinted. By the time she reached the intersection, Altis, Geith, and the clones had found cover in a doorway.
Rex gestured. Callista switched to his comlink channel.
”Ready?”
”Yes. Can you switch the remote feed over to our data-pads?”
”Done. Stand by.”
Callista tuned out of what was happening in the building because Altis and Geith were more than capable of keeping a watch on that. It still felt like turning her back on a responsibility. Ahsoka looked into her face again. Maybe it was a Togruta habit, not tactless at all, but Callista thought it was high time the Padawan realized they were on the same side, especially now that they had a much bigger problem advancing toward them. But Ahsoka seemed to be more preoccupied by Callista than by the battle droids.
She stared at the images being relayed by the remote as it hovered high above a company of droids. Either it was too small to be noticed, or they didn't care that they were being tracked.
”You're not what I expected,” Ahsoka said at last. Her voice was a whisper. She focused on the road again. There were no droids to be seen, just that awful, inexorable sound of their feet hitting the paving in perfect synchronization.
Callista decided to watch what Ahsoka was watching. ”What, a Sith?”
”You're mocking me now.”
”You're looking at me as if I've got two heads. I know I shouldn't let it offend me, but it does.”
”You could stop, you know. You and Geith could just be friends.”
Ahsoka was a kid. She probably thought that life really was that simple. Callista tried to explain. ”Our sect is made up of families. There's no friends about it.”
”It might seem okay now,” Ahsoka said earnestly, ”but the decisions you make won't be the right ones. It'll cloud your judg-ment. It'll take you down a dark path.”
”Are you trying to save me?”
”Yes.” Ahsoka still didn't take her eyes off the road, but she felt afraid. And it had nothing to do with the fart that they were in the middle of an invasion. ”Please. I know you're a sincere person. I feel it.”
”Do you think Ki-Adi-Mundi needs saving? He has wives and children.”
”He's Cerean.” Ahsoka definitely wavered for a second then. ”That's different. They need to increase their population.”
”Why? Did the dark side give him an exemption? Not very dark, then, is it, if it lets you off in special cases?”
”He's not attached to them. So it does no harm.”
Had Ahsoka any idea how callous-and foolish-that sounded? Callista found a retort forming on her lips, but bit it back. She couldn't blame this child simply because she had swallowed what Callista saw as an intolerant doctrine. She'd probably never known any life but the Jedi Order. Callista had become a Jedi as an adult, fully aware of the options open to her, choosing this path as the best for her because Master Altis made her see the world differently; he showed her how her rare gift could be used for so much more.
”I'm not going to argue with you, Ahsoka,” Callista said. ”I'm not going to tell you you're wrong. I'm just saying that Jedi aren't the only Force-users on the light side, and others do things differently without going dark.”
”What others are there?”
”Talk to Master Altis. He'll tell you.”
Ahsoka didn't break her fixed gaze on the road, but Callista felt a little jolt in the Force, as if the Togruta was struggling with something. This was the debate Callista always dreaded: the one where she pointed to the real world around her, the evident benefits of love, and expected an ideologue whose entire life had been consumed by an all-or-nothing dogma to notice the evidence and suddenly agree that she had a point.
Being right didn't matter. I have to be more tolerant. Unless the mainstream Jedi did harm, active harm, then she had no duty or right to argue or oppose them.
Geith, though, felt they were already doing harm.
She glanced down at the remote's output on her datapad. A wall of light brown moving metal, relentless in its pace and uni-formity, marched on.
”Here they come,” Ahsoka said. She ignited her lightsaber, transformed from child to warrior in a second. ”No more than ten minutes.”
Callista opened her comlink. ”Rex?” It just slipped out. ”The battle droids. Ten minutes, maximum. Get a move on.”
”A good explosive Force push can bring down the front two ranks,” Ahsoka said. She was suddenly completely in control of her situation, confident about seeing off a company of battle droids. ”If they pack the street, they tend to block themselves in. And if you get close enough to use your lightsaber, the heads come off ever so easily.”
”Thanks.” Callista realized she knew no more about Ahsoka's world than Ahsoka understood of hers. ”I've never faced them before.”
”We're Jedi,” she said. ”We can take a bunch of tinnies anytime. That's what Rex calls them, you know. Tinnies.”
”Tinnies it is, then,” said Callista.
The steady chunk-chunk-chunk of durasteel feet was getting closer by the second.
ONE BLOCK AWAY FROM HALLENA DEVIS, SOUTH ATHAR.
Djinn altis took the lightsaber from his belt and pressed his thumb on the controls. The blade of amber energy was his personal watershed, the line between who he tried hard to be and what he inevitably became.
And now I'm ready to end a life.
And if I wish there was another way-why don't I make one?
He felt the clone troopers tense as the blade ignited-the new clones, beings so raw and young that he sensed them in the Force as children. Their commander, Rex, had obviously seen lightsabers used in earnest many times. For the youngsters, this had to be the first time.