3.11

The sharp zaps of blaster discharges rose from distinct bursts to a near-constant torrent as more and more drones entered the fight. Unfortunately, most of them weren't the combat models with a weapon on each of their six limbs but worker droids optimized for excavation. They only had a single long-range rifle attachment, but with hundreds of them here the outcome should be the same. What flashes I could see flying overhead were not the narrow, bright spears of lethal bolts, but the wide pulses of the stun setting, a result of the first rule of combat against Jedi programmed into all our droids. When engaging a lightsaber-wielding enemy, switch to stun; stun pulses are wider and thus harder to dodge, aren't impeded by uninsulated armor, can be dispersed but not deflected by a lightsaber, and in the rare case they're reflected by the Force they only have minimal impact on droids. Plus they only need power, not ammunition, so droids with their own power cores can fire practically indefinitely.

'Units lost... units lost... units lost...'

C.A.B.A.L.'s deep mechanical voice broke my hopes for a quick resolution as it dispassionately signaled the steady destruction of individual droids. I pushed against the invisible field holding me immobile to no avail. With the command amulet lacking a visual feed and no way to access it even if it did, I was effectively cut off from the battle. And while relative safety was all nice and good, I was beginning to think I hadn't brought enough guns to the sword fight. Closing my eyes I let my limbs relax, my breath evening out as momentary distractions fell away. The hurricane of stun shots gave way to silence. The crushing pressure holding me against immovable permafrost gave way to the sensation of weightless floating. The biting cold of Arkania was replaced by a soothing breeze that was neither cold nor hot. The worry about the fight and its future ramifications was swallowed by a sea of serenity. Even time itself slowed down to the infinitesimal pause between one moment and the next. I was alone in the void, and the void shone with the spark of souls beyond count.

Delving into the Force directly and deeply enough that there was no point where the self ended and infinity began was not a state that could truly be described by words. We are all so small in the end, experiencing the world through crude senses that give birth to even cruder words. I didn't even try to grasp the bit of this vision that represented the present, let alone the countless branching paths of possible futures, or the equally infinite paths of history leading to this point in time. I waited for a moment and an eternity for this awareness to narrow to something less than all possible pasts and futures of the cosmos, lest my head explode like a melon being hit by a turbolaser. When it extended no further than my immediate surroundings in the present plus or minus a few seconds, I opened my eyes and looked as the ebb and flow of the Force coursed through the area.

The trance must have cost some time, for there were pieces of droids strewn all around my location and the sounds of blasterfire had tellingly diminished. Committing to practice entering this awareness more in the future, I stared at the solid layer of light wrapped snugly around my body like a straitjacket. No matter how much effort I put, limbs pulsing with the Force enhancing my strength, it refused to move and showed no signs of fading. It wasn't so much telekinesis as the idea of immobility spun in a sheet and thrown on what the Jedi wanted to remain still. Motion, kinetic force, was the exact wrong way to go about breaking it. Within the calmness of the Force, I felt a spark of annoyance at my predicament. Instead of letting it go I took hold of it with both metaphorical hands and drew it closer. I fanned the spark into a raging bonfire and added the emotion to my will. Then, instead of trying to smash the light apart, I took it in. It was no longer a binding preventing me to move, but fuel empowering my own actions.

Moving took no effort at all, as if gravity and inertia had been turned off; one moment I was sprawled on gleaming ice crystals, the next I was standing up and looking at C.A.B.A.L.'s attempts against Alturen. The droid brain built out of organic electronics with the best architecture the Galaxy's premier cybernetics experts coul produce, further augmented by the computing ability of all the droids it had taken over, was directing the swarm of attackers with near-perfect synchronization, their frames mere extensions and tools of a single mind. Shots of great accuracy, staggered to sweep through large areas in repeating barrages, from perpendicular angles to maximize blocking difficulty. The droids should have won already... and yet they were quickly losing. The reason for it was rather obvious too; for all their coordination they shot blindly, their swarming tactics tailored to cover as much area as possible instead of concentrating on a single enemy. Their movement was erratic too, staying far above the ground and spread out instead of surrounding their target.

Alturen was dancing through the much diminished weight of fire with wide sweeps of her light-glaive, disrupting the few shots that would have hit and occasionally sending her weapon into lightning-fast throws. It would cut several droids at once before circling back to her hands, obviously guided by telekinesis. A strong defensive and attrition tactic that had already reduced the droid swarm by half... except it didn't explain why the droids were behaving in the worst way possible when engaging such an enemy. Frowning, I focused on the older Arkanian woman and the Force around her. She shone like a miniature sun in my eyes, the strongest 'light' in the Force I had ever seen by far, a pulsing halo of radiance flashing out from her like a faint nova in regular intervals. It wasn't as strong as the currents she employed to throw her light-glaive around or enhance her strength and speed but...

Remembering the legend of Arca Jeth - which was far more historical than most people thought considering we'd looted his old Praxeum only the month before - I took out the compact macrobinoculars from my wilderness survival kit and looked through them at the Jedi. The image was crap, flickering like a channel with poor reception on those old black-and-white televisions from my grandparents' time. And every time Alturen 'pulsed' in the Force, the whole thing briefly dissolved into static and white noise.

"Jedi are bullshit," I muttered under my breath. One of Arca Jeth's greatest triumphs had been his victory over the Great Droid Rebellion on Coruscant. Every member of the Order had to learn how to affect machines with the Force to some extent, the practice of Mechu-Deru or 'machine enhancement' as it was called used to construct their lightsabers. Jeth, a prodigiously strong Force-sensitive to begin with, had inverted the technique and paired it with his talent for Battle Meditation to disable an entire army of droids at once. This new application was named Mechu-Macture, or 'machine curse'. Now, Alturen might not be even close to Jeth's level but she was still using it through pulses of Force Light just strong enough to disable the most vulnerable part of my droids; their sensors. As I said, bullshit. Which left only one thing to do.

The icy surface of Arkania blurred as I briefly outpaced the sound of my own footsteps, most of the energy I'd absorbed spent in that brief moment to simply hold my body together. A crackle-hiss of lightning dancing over my stun rod seeming slow and deep like thunder under dilated perception, the sweeping blow that would end in the jedi's back simultaneously too fast too see and feeling like a relaxed, languid motion. Of course, once doesn't become a Jedi Watchman by collecting bottle caps; Alturen dodged in the same too-fast/too-slow way, only a couple arcs of electricity kissing her back.

"Hi there! Did you miss me?" I asked as she danced away and turned around, catching the returning light-glaive with her off-hand. "Putting me on time-out wasn't very fair, so I invited myself back in."

"Foolish child! Are you so prideful to think you'll accomplish anything but endanger yourself in this fight?" She countered with a double jab meant to skewer both my arms without doing permanent damage. Even though she was distracted, even though she'd fought a ridiculously fast paced battle already, even though she held back, parrying still took every bit of skill and effort I could bring to bear. "Or are you so mired in the Dark Side you could not tell the confinement was for your own protection?"

"Ooh, imprisoning people for their own good," I mocked, swallowing a yelp as she cut into my boots. The synthetic melted with a hiss and a puff of acrid smoke, but the plasma blade stopped thanks to the Cortosis filaments woven into it. My counterattack merely forced the older woman to retreat with a pensive frown. "What's next, leading secret armies and attempting to execute the Supreme Chancellor?"

"You are obviously delusional. This fight will only be as brief as it'll be pointless." Executing another jab followed by a pirouette, she forced me to block, intercepted several stun pulses coming our way, then buried the blunt end of her staff in my gut. It hurt like hell, and maybe cracked a rib or two. "Surrender. You cannot win."

"Hey," I gasped as I stumbled and fell to my knees, drained by the insane effort I'd put in the past few seconds. "Who said anything about winning?"

The pre-programmed voice command set off every single stun charge on my belt and backpack.