Aboard the
Surrey, Starlin Rand sat watching the conference on a screen precariously mounted on the wall. In his lap he clutched a bucket of fried chicken, on which he periodically munched as he took in the opposing views. He wasn’t particularly interested in politics, but he had enough sense to realize that this was a big deal—and more importantly, his master
Syd Celsius
was there.
Beside him
Tom Kovack sat perfectly still, his eyes glued to the screen. The color had drained from his face the moment he heard the news that the SJC had allied with TSE and hadn’t come back since. Starlin was still having a hard time accepting that it wasn’t a joke or a hoax.
“Hey.” He glanced at his friend. “You know about the history of the Sith and the Jedi, right? Has anything like this ever happened before?”
“Many times,” Tom said, his voice coming out in a strained whisper. He cleared his throat before continuing, “The most obvious comparison would be to the Yuuzhan Vong War. The Jedi and the Sith had no choice but to fight together then. The Vong wanted to enslave the galaxy and kill all Force Users…”
“The Bryn want to kill all life, period,” Starlin muttered darkly. His own experience on Nar Kreeta was still fresh in his mind, and while his wounds were mostly healed, both his legs bore large scars.
“Yes, but I’m not going to quibble about whether or not it’s better to live as a slave or die as a free being now. The Sith and the Jedi temporarily allied against the Vong, and as soon as they were, ah, ‘defeated’ if you could call it that, the Sith turned on the Jedi once more. It was a brief interlude in the fighting, nothing more. A cute little experiment…”
Starlin raised his hand, his attention back on the screen. “Syd’s talking.” He listened in silence, his lips slowly parting as she made her decision known. “... Oh.”
“I’m sorry,” Tom said.
“Well… what for?” Starlin turned back to his friend. “If I’m being honest, I lean more towards agreeing with her. The Bryn are more dangerous than the Sith
right now. After we deal with the Bryn, then we can worry about the Dark Lords and the EE and all the other schutta we should’ve taken care of a long time ago.”
“Are you suggesting we do the same thing the Sith are bound to do? Turn on them as soon as the Bryn are no longer a threat?”
“I’m saying we go in with our eyes open, fully expecting them to betray us.” Starlin smiled, trying to lighten the somber, oppressive mood. “If they’re willing to fight alongside us, wouldn’t the outcome be that much more awesome? We could certainly get this war over with sooner.”
“I understand what you mean. But you also need to understand that the Sith will want to show no mercy to the Bryn—”
“The Jedi haven’t shown them much mercy so far. And why should we? They’re worse than the Sith. The Sith at least keep people alive to rule over them. The Bryn just want to kill everybody and leave nothing left alive. They don’t need mercy, they need to be stopped.”
Tom swallowed. “Starlin, I… I never told you about this, but I did fight the Bryn, once… They did the same thing to me that they did to you. Shot those hollow spike bullets filled with corrosive plasma at me. The only reason I survived is because I evacuated right then and there. I was in a healing trance for almost three days afterwards.”
“Okay,” Starlin replied, a little stunned by the news. Tom, a Padawan who could barely wield a lightsaber, had fought the Bryn? When? Where? Under what circumstances? “What does that have to do with what we’re talking about?”
“I understand how you feel. But the Bryn, just like the Vong, they… we have to accept the fact that they can be changed for the better.” Tom shook his head. “We don’t know enough about them now, but if I can see proof that they’re… until I can justify to myself eradicating their entire species, I can’t bring myself to fight alongside the Sith. Because that’s exactly what they’ll try to do when we win.”
“Chit, you’re right.” Starlin ran a hand through his hair, then grimaced when he remembered his hands were covered in grease from the chicken. “Well, I mean… my argument still stands, doesn’t it? We fight together, we win, and then we smack their hand away like
Aunt May did to Norman Osbourne at Thanksgiving if they start to go too far.”
“You trust the Jedi to catch them in time?”
“Hell yeah I do. We have the Force, we’ll sense it.”
“We didn’t sense their treachery the last few times.”
“We’re still around, aren’t we?” Starlin grabbed a napkin. “I don’t really get that. You’d think we’d have been burnt enough times by the Sith over the past few thousand years that we’d come to fully expect their bullchit.”
“I mean,
Taeli Raaf
…”
“...Pretended to be a Jedi back in the day when nobody knew who she was, yeah yeah.” Starlin wiped his hands, then got another napkin for his hair, wishing he hadn't accidentally used chicken grease as a styling gel. “And then she betrayed them and blew everything up. I know all about it. I grew up on Coruscant, remember?”
“The Jedi and the Sith seem to be as eternal as the Force itself,” Tom remarked, leaning back in his chair thoughtfully. “Everything is a cycle with them. Light and Dark, Dark and Light.”
“A never-ending game of peek-a-boo with a baby too stupid to understand that nothing is actually changing.”
Tom laughed. “You don’t have much experience with babies. They aren’t necessarily stupid, they just find it amusing. It’s a game.”
“Is it all just a game?”
Both boys turned to stare at the Camera™.
On the screen, Syd left the conference with
Laertia Io
. Starlin sighed. “Politics are boring,” he said, getting up. “I’m gonna go take a shower. You can have the rest of the chicken.”
Tom waited until after Starlin had left the room before grabbing the bucket and taking a massive bite out of a fried chicken leg, chewing thoughtfully as he continued to watch the bickering unfold.
Coren Starchaser
