Star Wars: A New Era.Part 1: Memory Games

Chapter 6: A Second Purge

Ben and Dan arrived back at the temple on Tatooine. Dan went to the council chamber to break the news that Ilum's kyber caverns no longer exist and Ben returned to his room. The room was dark but not pitch black. The sunlight coming in from the one window in the room gave just enough light for Ben to see that the room was different. There were two more beds in the room but everything else was the same. He found a holorecorder and pressed play. The images of Corr and Gido appeared.

"When you get this message, Ben, we will probably have gone off on our next mission." Gido said. "We wanted to tell you in person that we were moved into your room to give our rooms to the next group of younglings. We hope to see you soon."

The message ended and the blue, see-through holograms of Corr and Gido went away. Ben stayed in his room for several hours, and for some reason he didn't feel like eating. He felt like something bad was about to happen and no matter what he did, it was inevitable. He finally forced himself to eat and it made him feel better but there was still that instinct.

He confronted Dan about it but Dan couldn't sense anything. After several hours he decided to go to Mos Eisley to see when the next pod race was. It took several additional hours to make it to the trade port on foot, but he eventually made it. Once there he had to wander around for several minutes before he found a poster for the pod race in three weeks. He turned to head back to the temple and saw a column of smoke.

He raced back to the temple and made his way inside. There was no longer a proper door. There was a hole big enough for a teen human to fit through and it had been made with a lightsaber. Once inside he saw that everything was either on fire or in ashes. He checked all the bodies he could find. Lightsaber cuts and holes were the cause of their death, not the fire. The fire was a cover for the evil deed.

The temple was void of life both literally and in the force. Ben was able to put out the rest of the fire and take the bodies of the Jedi he could find. He was only able to identify three of them. Dan, the grandmaster and Jamison. He then noticed that Jamison had no lightsaber wounds, but he was still unmoving.

He set all of the bodies into a pyramid shape for a proper Jedi funeral and just as he was about to light the skeletons and the burnt bodies, one of them started to move and cough. Jamison. He was towards the top and was easier to remove from the pile. Ben wrenched him out and brought him back down to the sand. Jamison was found towards the safe rooms which was one of the last places the fire reached before Ben put it out.

"What happened?" Ben asked, concerned about everything but had a hint of relief that someone survived the attack.

"I heard the sirens go off and headed immediately to the safe rooms. I was the first one there and I left the doors open as long as I could, but no one came before I started hearing people yell in pain." Jamison replied. "I closed the door and could hear a lightsaber trying to cut through the door. I crawled into the air duct and made my way to the council chamber. None of them were in there and the room was trashed. All of our major artifacts are gone."

"Did you ever see who attacked the temple?" Ben asked. "And what about the fire?"

"I didn't." Jamison continued to respond but coughed during each pause. "The attacker started the fire at the door and it continued to spread. I blocked the door to the council to protect all of our remaining artifacts and equipment. The fire made it to the safe room hall when I got there but the safe room I was in which was the closest was locked from the inside. Luckily the attacker had left the hole in the door which didn't make it all the way through. I climbed in the hole and the molten metal was still cooling but it was better than the fire."

"Who all was here when the attack happened?"

"All the masters had just returned to give mission reports when the attack happened. All the masters and all the younglings, except for me, were in the temple. You were the only Padawan on world during the attack. All of the other padawans are still on their missions."