Would she have to face Zekk with a lightsaber to protect her own mother?
With a cry, Jaina switched off her weapon and dropped it to the flagstones, backing away from it as if it had turned into a krayt dragon. An instant later all lightsabers were extinguished, and Jaina shuddered with relief.
Tionne’s pearly eyes were grave as she looked at her three young charges. Picking up Jaina’s discarded lightsaber, she seated herself on the cool stone of the raised platform and said, “Please, make yourselves comfortable. I need to tell you a story.”
Jaina, Jacen, and Lowie settled in a tight half-circle around her, crowding close, needing the contact. Tionne sat straighter and held her delicate hands before her, moving them as she wove her tale like an invisible tapestry before their eyes.
“Thousands of years ago, in a time of great evil and great good,” Tionne began in her rich musical voice, “there lived a woman named Nomi Sunrider with her husband Andur, who was training to be a Jedi Knight.
“When Nomi and her husband traveled to take a gift of precious Adegan crystals to Andur’s new Jedi Master, they were stopped by a group of greedy bandits, who killed Nomi’s husband and tried to steal the crystals. But when Nomi saw her husband lying dead, she snatched up his lightsaber and took a deadly revenge on his murderers. Afterward, seeing what she had done, Nomi was so filled with revulsion that she vowed never to touch a lightsaber again.
“To fulfill the dying wish of her husband, Nomi carried the crystals to his Jedi Master, Thon. There she stayed with her baby daughter Vima and began her own training to become a Jedi. She learned and grew in wisdom and the Force, but still she refused to touch a lightsaber, although it was the weapon of the Jedi.
“Eventually, however, there came a day when she discovered that her power with the Force alone could not protect the ones she loved. To save her beloved Jedi Master and to guard her daughter, Nomi once again took up a lightsaber and fought for what she knew was right.
“But by this time Nomi understood the purpose and meaning of the lightsaber—and from that day forward she fought with all the power of the light side of the Force. She was never eager to use her lightsaber, but she knew it was occasionally necessary. By learning to accept this, she became a great Jedi Master and a great warrior.”
As the story ended, Jaina drew a deep refreshing breath, coming out of the near trance she entered whenever listening to Tionne’s tales. Jaina sensed that much of the horror she had felt earlier had already drained away, though her muscles were as sore and weary as if she herself had fought all of Nomi Sunrider’s lightsaber battles.
Jaina felt something heavy and solid slide into her hand. She glanced down to see the handle of her lightsaber. Tionne had slipped it to her.
“No need to turn it on for now,” the Jedi instructor said gently, looking directly into Jaina’s brown eyes. “I think we’ve come far enough for today.”
10
Doctors were born meddlers, Tenel Ka decided with annoyance.
The fifth court physician in as many hours continued explaining in a calm, patronizing voice that, although Tenel Ka was perfectly correct in not desiring a crude droid arm, she could have no objection to a lifelike biomechanical prosthetic replacement. (Apparently they thought they knew her better than she knew herself.) Tenel Ka finally raised the stump of her arm in exasperated surrender and let the doctor have her way. The physician looked satisfied and not at all surprised that Tenel Ka had agreed. After all, it had been the only reasonable choice.
The doctor beckoned to one of her nurses, and the man came forward to begin taking measurements of the stump of Tenel Ka’s left arm. Next, an engineer placed electrodes against her scarred skin and sent intermittent jolts of electricity into the flesh—to measure the nerve conduction, she explained.
Meanwhile, the nurse placed Tenel Ka’s right arm in a holographic imaging chamber. Each time the engineer administered a jolt to Tenel Ka’s stump, the nurse patted her shoulder comfortingly and asked her to hold still. The man took great pride in telling her how the holographic image would be reversed to make a pattern that could be used as the mold for her new biosynthetic left arm.
Like children let loose at a sweets bazaar, physicians buzzed around the room snapping orders, conferring with each other, and making preparations. Allowing the poking and prodding and the chaos of voices to fade into the background, Tenel Ka sank into her own thoughts.
As the daughter of two strong ruling families, one from Hapes and one from Dathomir, Tenel Ka had long known who and what she was. Her philosophy of life had been as clear in her mind as her views on lineage, loyalty, friendships, and even her own physical abilities and limitations.
If one of those components changed, did everything else change as well?
From childhood, Tenel Ka’s parents had taught her to make her own decisions based in equal part on reason, fact, and personal belief. Therefore, she had never been one to sit passively while others made choices for her. Yet, since the loss of her arm, hadn’t she done just that?
She had hardly given it a thought when Ambassador Yfra appeared in the middle of the night to whisk her away from Yavin 4 in secret. In these last few days on Hapes, Tenel Ka had allowed her grandmother to control her movements and communications, tell her when to sleep, bring all her meals, and select appropriate clothing for her. And now Tenel Ka, who had always relied on her own mind and body, was allowing herself to be fitted for a biomechanical arm.
Had she truly changed so much?
The Force was a part of her, flowing through her just as the blood of her parents flowed through her veins. But this artificial arm was no part of her. If she accepted it, then she was allowing the loss of her limb to change her in ways that reached deeper than the eye could see. She didn’t object to changing—but this change was not for the better. If she allowed herself to be transformed, it should be in the direction of becoming stronger or wiser.
Tenel Ka’s reverie was cut short by the sound of whirring servomotors. The doctor and an engineer stood before her holding a grotesque metallic arm. A droid arm. It reminded Tenel Ka of the unwieldly contraption she had heard the former TIE pilot Qorl now wore since going back to serve the Second Imperium. Tenel Ka shook her head in wordless denial.
“Now this is only temporary, of course,” the doctor said with the same infuriating condescension she had used before. “Just accustom yourself to it while we’re synthesizing the biomechanical arm.”
Tenel Ka decided then and there that she had not, in fact, changed that much. If she needed to use the Force from now on to assist her in small ways, then so be it. But she refused to become dependent on a machine that masqueraded as part of herself.
“No,” she managed to croak when the doctor moved to attach the mechanical arm to her severed limb. The engineer backed away uneasily, but the doctor continued as if Tenel Ka had not spoken.
“This is all part of the process of making you whole again,” the doctor said in her maddening voice, “and that is exactly what you want.”
“No,” Tenel Ka repeated, setting her jaw stubbornly. Anger seethed inside her at the doctor’s confident presumption that she knew what was best.
The doctor shook her head and bent down, as if chiding a young child. “Now, you agreed to be fitted for this new arm and—”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Tenel Ka gritted, clamping down on her temper to hold it in check.
The doctor’s lips were still smiling, but grim determination shone in her eyes, indicating she would never take no for an answer—not from any patient of hers. The woman kept up a steady stream of talk and motioned for the engineer to help her position the droid prosthetic against the stump of Tenel Ka’s arm, as if the doctor thought that by forging ahead she could overwhelm her patient’s determination with her own.