Star Forts and Earthen Ramparts (self-training: Force Shield)

[Ashin Varanin]

Of the ten thousand worlds that Ashin had conquered for the Sith Empire, today only one hooked her memory through the gills. Kestimar, it was called, a world of technological primitivity, ruled by a fascist cult. At the head of a hovertank offensive, Ashin had taken the opportunity to learn a thing or two about defense from Kestimar's masters of total war.

Sloped earthenworks had been designed to divert and disperse solid-shot bombardment better than sheer stone walls. It hadn't fared so well against laser cannons, but better than the stone walls might have. As massed laserfire chewed into the earthenworks, filling the air with dirt, she'd come to understand that an unflinching, unbreakable defense lacked tensile strength -- that flexibility was key, even when trying for an impregnable defense.

Too often she had thrown up Force shields as absolute barriers, suffered breaks in coverage as a result. Later, when she'd mastered Force Weapon to the point where she could extend its coverage to her entire body, she'd been able to merge impermeability with flexibility, but even then she'd had to repel without give -- simply put, the shield against her skin had had nowhere to go.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Now, approaching the re-creation of her Force shield abilities in less piecemeal ways, she began to prioritize distance a little, allow her shield some give, make it ablative of momentum rather than as hard-edged as one of Na'varro's jackhammer shields.

Her training method of choice was, at this point, embarrassingly primitive. She'd selected a ballthrower from some Rattataki sporting event (occasionally repurposed for grenade projection). Hard leather-covered spheres, fast enough to bruise or even fracture, came at her once every fifteen seconds.

Like the slope of the rampart, she began to understand that even a basic hemispherical shield could serve diversionary purposes if she made sure to take heavy impacts farther back on the slope, rather than meet them head-on at the apex of her shield. The edges of her shield would only slow the spheres, sometimes allowing them an impact that could break her concentration. The Murr Earrings could help her focus, but when she trained she trained without her talismans or any crutch.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

She'd set up the pitching machine in the cargo hold of the Peregrine, the vessel that she and Spencer and Ibaris had called home for years. Right this moment, the Peregrine was inside a star.

Because nothing tested your focus like ten thousand degree plasma right outside the window.

The Peregrine's Kerts-Bhrg field generator and many other layers of defense kept them safe enough that she was comfortable bringing her daughter here to see what a stellar corona looked like form the inside. Should the generator bail, the specialized plating would hold and the double-blind cloaking device would kick in for long enough to get to safety, and the ship boasted all kinds of anti-radiation measures and powerful heat sinks. That, and this was a red star, cool by all accounts.

Even so, worry nagged at the back of her mind, which was the point of training here. If she could get past this kind of nervousness to respond to each pitch with good timing and good shield integrity, she might, just might, be able to throw out a useful shield when her family was actually in danger. Which happened more often than she was comfortable with.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Her talismans hung on the wall -- a Sigil of Hope, a Korriban Compass, two Murr Earrings on a chain, and a Heartstone Amulet containing a shard of a Healing Crystal of Fire. Minor things, specialized things, they'd kept her alive and sane more than once, but only because she knew when to use them. She trained without them and their situational benefits as often as possible, preferring instead to train at a disadvantage. Wearable weights were her style, and deliberate distractions, like the star outside her window.

She'd been at this for three hours, sweat stinking up the cargo bay, muscles hot. More often than not, she got it wrong. Leather spheres slammed into the center of her shield, breaking it and her mental balance. Or they slipped through the edges of her shield when she got the angle wrong. Every now and again, she got angle and intensity just right, and a ball glanced off the curve, shedding momentum to keep hypothetical bystanders safe. On a couple of memorable occasions, the ball struck the underside of the hemisphere, ricocheted off the deck, and hit her in the shins.

Incentive, if she needed it, and in those moments apprehensiveness got a grip on her. For a while she even had to train with the window to her back, reorient the pitching machine, and not just because the corona threatened to hypnotize her. Only once she'd gotten the hang of a proper angled deflection, after literally hundreds of quick Force shield pulses, did she rearrange the room so that the window was inside her field of view.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

As the Peregrine breached the stellar corona, phototropic shielding -- long stressed by immersion in a star -- cleared away the light pollution with near-tangible relief, and the stars appeared again. In the throne that served as the ship's control chair, Ashin listened to shockspheres rolling around in the hold.

Missed a couple. Note to self -- clean those up before Spencer finds them. Or trips.

The jump to Korriban was, from here, short and simple. Spencer tended to like taking Ibaris to worlds where monsters were plentiful, and if Ashin remembered correctly, Ibaris loved k'lor slugs for some reason known only to five-year-olds. Teaching Ibaris to empathize with, and manage, Sithspawn was firmly Spencer's department. Ashin's response to Sithspawn was generally more direct.

At reversion, she transmitted her Jedi clearance to Monitor Cresh and sliced down through an incipient dust storm toward the Valley of the Dark Lords, her old stomping grounds. Her comm received little in the way of updates; it seemed that, for once, today held no suspicious pilgrims nor troubles. That would not last.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

After all, it never did. Korriban had a special place in her heart, but she was far from alone in that. This place drew both fools and learned unerringly, the two sets not mutually exclusive. Wayward Padawans, Sith who sought themselves subtle, archaeologists aiming for high ground, monster hunters of all degrees of professionalism, Jedi seeking to test themselves against the darkness -- Korriban got traffic, and Ashin was its ranger.

Not that she could handle everything that landed in a starship or crawled up from the catacombs, but she at least knew when to run, and that was more than most. She knew Korriban and the Valley better than nearly any Jedi, or maybe without qualification. That, and her former status as a Master, let her walk alone on this world.

Down she went into the crypts, the tombs of men -- mostly men -- dead tens of thousands of years. She carried a beautiful little rifle, a Chiru tranq gun from Valicore, loaded with enough SmartTranq to make a terentatek snore.

This was not her first journey to this tomb, nor was she the first Jedi to enter. Half an hour of quiet walking and careful tranquilization -- only a fool fought tomb guardians head to head; there were always more of them -- took her to a choke point littered with bones. A Jedi Master had died here eons ago, his skeleton shattered and eroded since.

The journey had seemed dilatory of time, a blur of habit and absent thoughts, but the moment condensed, crystallized to clarity and sharp points, as she touched the deep grooves in the wall. Terentatek claws, some of them, but other grooves formed a continuous line from ceiling to floor on both walls. This was the place where, if legends were true, a master of unknown name had held a shield for seven days and nights against a Dark Lord and his beasts.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

For a long moment she put up a shield that fit the markings, blocking the entire hall, but she could only maintain it for so long, and a terentatek would brush through it like spiderweb. Her fingertips sank into pitted grooves, and she leaned against the wall, rifle and all. Cold stone met her forehead as she closed her eyes. Psychometry was not within her purview, and she'd only ever learned flow-walking third-hand, but what she attempted now was both and neither. Simpler, too.

Through the Force, many things you will see. The past, the future...

She put her trust in the Force as she stood there, pondering the man who had died here, the effort he'd put into bending reality to his will. Seven days was a suspicious number, but there was no question that a Force shield had blocked the hallway against repeated impacts, for long enough that the marks endured millennia later. Places held memory, items too, in a sense.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The vision, when it came, somehow left her cheeks wet when it was only a matter of glimpses, snatches of words. She never even caught his face. All that remained impressed upon the aether was the face of the child, his padawan, maybe, or some lost bystander. She'd come here expecting to find the echoes of a man who had possessed immense patience and strength of will, but the stones felt like desperation instead. Like a man who had given everything, pushed himself beyond his natural limits, for the sake of the child at his back.

The vision terminated as, in it, the remembered shield broke. Scraps of bone wrote out the Master's fate on the floor of the tomb. The child's remains were nowhere to be seen. Eaten whole, dragged away, turned to the Dark -- who could say? Who could even know how long it had been? Perhaps the child had betrayed the Master, listening to some patient voice.

Ashin had come here wanting a lesson in Force shields, to her shame, but the dead Master's final lesson had been something very different. A reminder that power in the Force was a matter of the heart, that what one could do was fundamentally about whom one had made oneself to be, and whom one could become.

She gathered up the bones, as she hadn't bothered to do years ago. Rifle under her arm, she trod carefully past unconscious guardians as she carried the old Master out of the tomb.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

You came to-

"The hell?" She looked up from the gravesite, wiped sweat from her eyes, cast the shovel aside, and focused on the ephimeral outline that had just appeared. The dark spectre blinked, apparently just as surprised at being interrupted as Ashin was.

You came to find power from his memory, Desmius.

"I did, but that's not my name." This was not her first Sith spirit. She made no move. "What was he to you?"

My Master, when I was young. In youth I was made to be ashamed of him. When I was older, I understood something of how his strength had made me strong, and was grateful, in my way.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"And you left his bones?"

In hope that, perhaps, his bones and the place he died might bring back an echo, a voice I could have used.

"But also because you feared other Sith would look down on you for honoring a Jedi."

Perhaps that is so, Desmius.

"I told you. I'm not that woman anymore. I no longer bind souls, I'm no longer bound down by traditions or by guilt."

The spirit swirled at the edge of the gravesite. Few know that for sure, or to what you might be driven in extremis. This has kept you safe from us while you patrol this world.

"No, I think not. What's kept me safe is that none of you still exist." She tipped the bones into the pit and began shoveling it full again. When she finished and looked up again, the spirit was gone.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Her hands and back ached from the shovel by the time she finished moving gallons of sand. Applying telekinesis to the solution seemed too easy, too disrespectful -- at least for the first few hours. By the time the spirit left, Ashin had resorted to a practical tribute of sorts, using a basic Force shield to shove in the remainder of the sand. The grave vanished into the desert. Better it lie unmarked, on this world.

She slung the Chiru tranq rifle over her shoulder and moved on to the next tomb, a deep vault farther down the Valley, in a side crevasse. Only two magazines remained, strapped to her hips; twelve shots in all. She would have to be careful. But this particular destination was one she couldn't pass up.

The ancient Nespis 8 space city had taken the brunt of a Galaxy Gun projectile eight hundred years back and then some. With the city had perished a Jedi vault cursed by Darksiders -- a curse of denial, like and yet unlike the barrier effect of Watchers. This particular cave boasted a similar curse. She passed the Watchers she'd broken years ago, at the door of the cave, and pressed on into the depths.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The curse, invisible but as firm a denial as any Force shield, walled off half of an immense cave. Many things had bulled their way through and died. Others had taken what they wanted, despite the adverse effects of the curse, and left safely. This tomb, like nearly all, had been looted a hundred times. She was not here for the loot; she was here for the curse, an echo of the long-gone barrier at Nespis 8.

She slung the rifle again, once the cave was verified to be empty, and took a cross-legged meditation posture at the base of the invisible wall. It repelled her on several levels, or tried to, a shield of absolute denial of access. It was said that only a true Jedi could pass through, and she had no real interest in testing that, at least not at first. For science, though, for learning, she rose and walked through with a flinch of expected violence, like running nose-first into a wall. But no impact resulted. Uncertainty still churning in her gut, stewing half-remembered guilt, she focused on understanding the curse from the inside.

Force shields could take a myriad of forms, depending on what they were meant to counter. Some were more telekinetic, some more adiabatic, some more psychic, some based more on tutaminis. Overall, though, they were fundamentally the same thing, and that undifferentiated or ideal Force shield had a great many similarities with this curse of area denial. She sat again and pondered the effect of the curse barrier until she found its oppressive mental effects too much to handle. As that point, rifle in hand, she made for the Valley once more.

Word count: 2487