Star Wars: The Ancient Force

C H A P T E R . 9 -- Luke vs. PERC

MUFFLED CHAOS is heard through the walls of the storage room as Luke focuses on sensing Terigo. The other two sit silent for a long moment trying to decipher what the noises were, if she had been shot or...

The chaos suddenly dies down to near-silence and their breathing resumes again.

"I can still feel her," Luke says. "I think she made it outside, and she's still alive—there hasn't been a sudden scattering of her essence." Luke changes from focusing on her to focusing deeply on thinking.

Han says, "I say you use your mind powers to make them leave us alone, then we sneak out when everything dies down."

Luke doesn't seem to like the idea, still working on solutions. He says, "I was going to control one of their minds to say this room is empty, but they travel in pairs. I can't affect two. I also thought about making one shoot the other, then either leave or shoot himself, but that would only last a few minutes at best before they discover the missing troops. Then there's also doing the same to take their armor for a disguise, but that doesn't get Chewie out of here. There's so many options, but none of them would really work, yet we can't just stay here. There's no way she can take on that many men by herself."

"I hate to say this but maybe she can," Han says, "she seemed to think she could survive the jump."

"No... We can't let her die." No one else should suffer for me. With her revealing new clues about herself, Luke's competitive side was overshadowed by his morality. He wanted to save someone noble enough—Jedi enough—to sacrifice herself. He wanted to save someone who has suffered. He wanted to save someone for once. And his morality was also equally followed by his curiosity once more. Her deaths...

The door hisses open. Two stormtroopers come in, cautiously, listening, blasters rigid 'n' ready. It gives Luke time to concentrate. With incredible luck, the stormtroopers split up. They each search one side of the room, and when one gets close to them, Luke sways that one's mind to say, "This side's clear."

The stormtroopers step out, but only just past the door, and they leave it open. "This whole end is clear," one informs troops down the hall. They patrol around aimlessly, awaiting orders, guarding that end of the hall. They start to chat between themselves, still tense from being on alert and no doubt yelled at.

Luke's group can just barely hear them, though it helps that they were raising their voices, trying to control their anger, "Where does he get off blaming us? We tried shooting her body to confirm, but we're too high up to hit. It's their fault for not getting to her soon enough."

So she did jump, the three all think.

The other stormtrooper replies, "Yeah and he still doesn't have a protocol for determining if a Jedi has controlled our mind, or if a Jedi is even controlling his mind, giving us orders."

"Yeah for all we know, all these rooms could have Jedi in them. That's probably how they got in."

The other scoffs, "I wish Cicatrice would come back already, otherwise the whole Offense Jedi BS is nothing but a big red machine."

That's a weird thing to say, Luke thinks.

Then they storm off to patrol further down the hall.

Luke whispers, "I think they were going to anyways, but I had them leave the door open on purpose so I could sense the area better. And so other troops will be less likely to search the room again because they'll know it's already been searched. So now I need silence to focus on the area."