Nehya

The peace I sought to find in meditation was, to say the least, absent.

Dead.

Nehya is dead.

I stared, unseeing, into the flame that marked her passing.

'I'm going to be something,' she'd said when we were young and discussing our ambitions. 'You watch me. I'll be big someday.'

If only she'd been right.

I remembered how we met. It had been in one of Nemo's classes, where we learned the fighting skills that so impress nonJedi. For months, I had been practicing after-hours with my best friend, and so both of us had progressed somewhat more quickly than the rest of our class.

'You've got to stop doing so well,' she'd said during a break, when Nemo stepped out to talk to someone. 'Quit making the rest of us look bad.'

It had begun rather badly. Somehow after exchanging only a few sentences we'd managed to polarize the class; Malak and I and two or three others against Nehya and almost everyone else, though several had refused to get involved. In those days, I had been something of a sparhawk, absurdly eager to show off by fighting. It had seemed so serious at the time... particularly when they'd ganged up on us and she'd bit me with those sharper-than-human teeth. As a reptilian Falleen, she had claw-tipped fingers as well, but she hadn't quite been able to mark me with them.

I realized that I'd started to rub that part of my hand that had been bitten. By that time it was long healed; no mark, no scar remained. Only the memory.

Long, frantic minutes had passed while we tussled before Nemo had returned and broken it up. Instead of parting us, he had forced us to work together on some task. I couldn't quite remember what it was anymore, but it had been typical Nemo - a completely impossible job, fifty tandem abdominal crunches or something similar, under his exacting eye. He had looked and sounded so angry that most of the class was ready to swear that he had stepped over to the Dark Side. By the time the class was ended and he reverted back to his usual kindly self, we were unified in fear of him.

A few days later, Nehya and I were able to count one another as friends. She never was quite as close as some of the others, but I could count on her for company or a scuffle. She was part of my 'circle', the network of people I had regular contact with. We concocted grand escapades and got into trouble together.

When she was chosen early as a Master's Padawan, I lost touch with her, and admittedly I didn't try very hard to reestablish the connection. By the time we met again, as newly-minted Knights, she had metamorphosed from a gangly adolescent into an intimidating adult. Tall enough to easily examine the inside of Malak's nose after he'd hit his full, ridiculous height- not that either of them would have even thought about doing so, but it made an amusing image. Long-limbed and sharp-eyed and more beautiful than a humanoid had any right to be, she had become the very image of the perfect Falleen female. Maybe it was the thought of mood-altering Falleen pheremones, or the deep, throaty purr of her voice, or the strutted confidence in her every motion, but my friends and I had frankly found her to be unnerving. Intimidating. It was as if she was declaring to the galaxy itself that she knew things not meant for Jedi to know, as if she was in a state of complete independence and was confident in it. The old friendship hadn't soured, but faded into simple amity.

Yet when had I called, she came immediately. Some of those who I had considered to be close if not precisely friends, most notably Bolook and Riii and Kreia, hadn't. Nehya had come through when I needed her. The others had not. Some had reasons or excuses, some didn't; some would join me later, others would not. Nehya had followed me at once, come at my first call, and brought others with her. She had grasped the severity of the problem, had trusted my judgement, and acted.

And now she is dead.

It was a preventable death, that was the worst part. Durenbar was the kind of blunder that would go down in the history texts. The blame for it rested on several hundred shoulders, including mine. If I had been more vigilant... if I had personally looked over all the crewmembers who had been exposed to sensitive information... if I had worked harder to keep the damned politicians insulated from all this... if I hadn't been distracted by what had happened to Nemo... Nehya would still have been alive to offend Arin and trade haughty veiled insults with Margoli.

How is it that I keep half-expecting her to strut in and start flashing those cortosis-alloy armbands she bought? I know she's dead. One with the Force. I've already accepted that. She's not coming back. Not ever. They didn't send us her body, just those armbands and her lightsaber, but I know that she's as dead as... well, she's not coming back.

Maybe if I had made an effort to get to know her again she wouldn't be dead. She'd made the decision to face them on her own, after all. I didn't know why.

Perhaps someone, someday, would say that it had been a glorious death. The Mandalorian who killed her did so in one-on-one combat, distracting the others so that we had a larger window for escape.

Glory and honor do nothing for the dead.

I have to remember that even though Ve'vuut and her... relatives are pleasant enough to me, they are all Mandalorians. My enemy. The enemy of my friends. None of the Mandalorians have any compunction about killing my friends, and most wouldn't hesitate to see me dead, either. I agree with the Masters that Jedi aren't an official part of the Republic and shouldn't be at its beck and call, but when it comes to something like this, I am part of the Republic. They should be too. Why can't they see that?

In a way, it's not entirely a bad thing that Nehya died. The Republic casualties were frighteningly high for Durenbar... if no Jedi died, they might have decided that we weren't committed to this war. Hmm. Actually, I can use this. I can use our losses, spin them a bit, and boost morale. Gain sympathy, foster some comradeship... we can bounce back from this.

Even as the thought crossed my mind, I flinched at the sheer callousness of it. Nothing from my training said, explicitly or implicitly, that it is wrong to use the death of a friend to benefit my public image, but I was almost certain that doing so would be... ethically questionable. Just the thought made me feel hollow, caused a lump of some unknown substance to coalesce in my throat, making my eyes tighten, my breath come short.

Startled, I turned around just as Laury said, "Hey. You know, you really should cry a little. Flush out some of those stress hormones." Her voice was dull, and I focused past the unnatural blurring of my eyes to notice that her own eyes are red and overbright. They flicked to the side of my head and blink slowly. "Let me see your ear again. It might be infected."

"It's not infected," I stated automatically, covering a wince as I heard my own voice, wavery and childish. The ear didn't seem important. During the same incident that had resulted in sending Nemo back to Dantooine, my outer ear had been grazed, clipped with a vibroblade. It hurt, sure, and it wasn't particularly attractive, and the thought of one of the Mandalorians being able to claim that he'd cut off a sliver of ear wasn't a good thought, but it wasn't something to fuss over. Not then, after Nemo was... addled... and not now, with Nehya dead. As if being pulled through a morass, a thought came to me. "Why don't you go talk to Margoli? She's not taking it well."

"Margoli?" Laury blinked slowly, twice, as if translating the name. "I thought they hated each other. Weren't they arguing just before - um, well, they traded a lot of insults. I don't feel any distress from her, either."

Suppressing a sigh, I controlled my voice and told the Healer, "That's because she's shielded heavily and locked herself away." I felt unsettled enough that my control slipped, and my next words were, although phrased as a request, definitely an edged order. "Would you go check up on her?"

Laury's eyes widened for a moment. "I'll do that."

And then she was gone. Staying in position with my legs crossed and curled into the 'lotus' shape, I resumed contemplating the flame as it wavered in currents of air. The ship's captain had been uneasy at the thought of an open flame in a sealed environment, but he had been overridden. We had no body to burn in Jedi tradition - although if we had, we would have performed the ceremony on a planet - and I had not been called to attend the formal service, but I needed to make some final gesture to her life.

Particularly if I use its ending to strengthen my cause.

Can I really do that? Another thought dawned on me. Can I afford not to? We outnumber the Mandalorians several times over, but they are better than us. And they know it. Some of our people are starting to learn this. We need any edge, however slight, that we can get.

One of my teachers had told me that "In the endless battle between soldier and warrior, soldier wins. Why? Soldiers work together. At heart, warriors stand alone. Pit a unified nest of tiny stinging myrmins against a scattering of allied rock spiders, and all things being equal, who survives? The myrmins."

But the rock spiders have decided to invade the nest, and their leaders are better than ours, I thought unhappily. Many of the Republic's generals, marshals, admirals, and strategists in charge of the bulk of the fleet had no real large-scale experience; they were familiar with quick conflicts, little rebellions to put down, or defending against guerrilla activity. Their experience in flat-out war was very limited and mostly theoretical, and as a consequence, they made some disastrous decisions. Not many Republic leaders survived for too long after Exar Kun's Sith war. Against this new threat, we were led by their sons and daughters, their cousins, and politicians, most of whom having little imagination and quite unable to organize or execute any better than the most basic tactics. Mandalorians, led by the most seasoned of campaigners, were combat-trained from the time they first started stringing sentences together.

Like Jedi.

I was attached to the army in a flexible way, one that let me have moments as an adviser and also allowed me to disappear on my own when needed. Malak was attached similarly, although there was room in most hangars for his snubfighter. He was able to join and break with established squadrons at need. We were technically under the jurisdiction of people like Saul Karath, but in reality we answered to officers as a courtesy, and they knew it. These are very traditional Jedi roles, and they work with most Jedi in most situations involving the Republic's military.

I needed more. In Exar Kun's war, a young knight named Kavar had wormed his way up from the standard Jedi role to command of a significant fraction of the navy. The Jedi know that Kavar and his skilled tactics and leadership were just as crucial to winning the war as the efforts of more famous, dramatic heroes like Sylvar and Nomi Sunrider and Cay Quel-Droma. Master Kavar, as he is known now, elected, like the rest of the High Council, to stay out of what would be known infamously as the Mandalorian Wars, plural. He remembered how soundly the Mandalorians were thrashed during the Fourth Battle of Onderon - they lost their leader, Mandalore the Indomitable, and their elite ranks of Crusaders were decimated - conveniently forgetting how much the Republic lost in that battle, and expected the Republic to deliver a repeat performance, I supposed.

My tactics and strategy could benefit the Republic effort, and greatly. It is true that I had not yet undergone standard Republic training for such things, and skill at strategy games does not directly translate into skill at the real thing. But Jedi are often called upon to lead, either by example or directly. Jedi training does include how to handle units under our command - not spacecraft and great armies, no, but it was a good basis to start from. A very little string pulling could get me the training I need.

Still, I am a Jedi, not an officer. How did Kavar get assigned units? Jedi aren't supposed to direct troops in battle, not according to tradition. The Republic respects us and listens to our advice, but we don't command. Yet it happens.

As I reviewed what little I knew about Kavar's actions, the answer slowly became clear. I saw it in my mind's eye as clearly as if I had been beside him. The Force was with me, guiding my thoughts along the proper path.

He gave advice that was good. He proved indisputably that no matter how desperate the situation, he thought swiftly and coherently, and act in the most efficient way to form tactics and strategies that killed the enemy while saving the lives of allies. In the heat of battle, he trusted the Force and lead a small group to victory. Day by day and battle by battle he proved himself worthy of a larger and larger force. He was always right.

I must do the same. I must always be right. Always.

Can I do this?

Can I afford not to?

My eyes burned and watered, and I realized that, unthinking, I had dropped into an open-eyed meditation. My eyes had dried a bit, and the flame had seared itself into my retinas. I blinked repeatedly. The scalding tears rolling out from between my eyelids and starting to flow from my nose were too constant to be simply a reaction to staring for too long at a flame. The lump that re-formed in my throat, too, wasn't a symptom of anything but emotion. Throat and eyes were uncomfortably tight, and my breathing was ragged as I held back great chest-shaking sobs. I licked my cracked lips and tasted salt.

Laury thought I would cry for you, Nehya? She thought I would cry... for you?

I knuckled my cheeks, brushing at the hot itching tears tracking across my skin.

She was right. To lose control of my emotions enough to cry is an admission of immaturity, as pointedly obvious as if I had left my lightsaber in my bedroll or my shoes in a closet. Slowly, my face contorted like that of a child, my throat closing on a moan, my lips and chin quivering like the belly of a frightened Hutt. A shameful display of weakness. But I'll allow it this once. I'm not just crying for you, Nehya.

Why did I have that feeling, that horrible, horrible feeling, that the Falleen would not be alone for long? People died in war, that was granted. But... I had liked and been friends with Nehya at one point. I stood to lose people that meant much more to me.

My teachers. Kae, Skirkil, Cigul, Bertrand...

My friends, Jedi and non. Arin, Nareaux, Ranas, Pyn, Domitri...

Laury.

Malak. That last froze the breath in my lungs.

Who would still be with me when this was over? Would the Mandalorians kill me? No... perhaps it was a delusion or false confidence, but I felt strongly that if I worked and exerted my potential to the fullest, if I was good, if I trusted in the Force and it responded to this trust, I would make it through the Mandalorian Wars alive.

But I will leave others behind. They will die despite my best efforts otherwise. I can save some - I will save some - but not all. Not all.

What good were my talents in the Force if I couldn't keep my friends from dying? Nehya is gone. Her spirit didn't even linger. I won't see her again this side of death, if then.

Her lightsaber had been sent back to the Temple. Only Nehya's armbands, or vambraces as she called them, stayed with me. Slowly, I unrolled them from their packaging. The light of her memorial flame danced, glinting from the reddish metal.

I eased them, one and then the other, over my arms, prying at them to get the things to fit. The metal was so cold that my skin flinched from it, but it warmed slowly. Nehya's arms had been long and narrow. Mine were shorter and thicker. On me her armbands were large enough to cover my forearms from wrist to the inside of my elbow. The weight was palpable.

I'll do it, I decided at last, accepting the weight of more than a pair of metal vambraces. I will earn command.

At last I stood to leave. As I did my eyes met those of my companion, who had been lost in a vigil of his own.

"You'll be alright?" Malak asked bluntly. Although I had at last stopped crying, I knew that the evidence that I had done so was writ large on my face.

Instead of speaking, I nodded, not trusting my voice. He nodded back and rested one large, pale hand on my shoulder in comfort, not withdrawing it. I knew how much he disliked prolonged physical contact, and smiled weakly to show that I knew what was meant.

Ah, Malak. First and greatest friend. He's always there for me when I need him most. He will survive. I'll make certain of that.

We had much to accomplish.

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(I'm not really happy with most of this image... But I really like how Nehya's head and neck turned out. Her legs were hopeless... hence the purple fog)