Tales of an exiled Jedi 1

Anto Tyandas, Jedi master, opened his eyes slowly. For a while the world around him appeared fuzzy, like he was under water, but in seconds his vision sharpened and he could make out his surroundings in detail.
He was onboard his ship, the Nameless. After stealing it and wiping it’s records to avoid, or perhaps just postpone, getting caught he’d been unable to think of a proper name for the craft. It had generated a generic line of letters and numbers, and he couldn’t think of anything.
It had been quite a hectic period. He’d just deserted from his command after seeing a vision of himself being fired upon by the very clone soldiers he’d risked life and limb for on the battlefield. He’d felt the death of hundreds, if not thousands of Jedi that day. All of them reaching out through the Force as life left them. Like being stung by millions of needles a small measure of their pain reached him, not all at once but drawn out over a few hours. The relief once it finally stopped was a shame he’d carry with him for a long time.

He recognized his surroundings. He was in the crew quarters, in the room he’d claimed as his. As he looked around he saw his robe lying on the bed, or rather thrown there, and his lightsaber lying on top of it. He could see the wall panel where he could open the door and control the light. His small table that was all but covered in small pieces of electronic he’d needed to keep his weapon working and his last few remaining chips of credits.
He was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, legs crossed and hands resting in his lap. He didn’t really sleep that much any more, meditation kept him up and running most of the time. Besides, sleep meant dreams, and dreams means seeing the faces of everyone he’d met on the battlefield again, it meant facing his padawan again. Sentencing him to death over and over for getting too caught up in the lifestyle of a warrior. But the dark side had him firmly in its grasp, he felt it then like a cold heat radiating out from his apprentice. All that hate, all the bloodlust, all the fighting and death and pain. War was no place for a Jedi, it only led to the dark side.

He stretched his legs, testing the muscles gently before attempting to get up. He’d learned that lesson after his very first session of meditation. Both of his legs had fallen asleep and he’d tried top stand up and fallen on his face. He’d only been a youngling back then and all the other younglings had laughed, even the teacher had sniggered a bit before commanding the children to be silent. He’d been given a lecture on the importance of patience, but only a halfhearted one. He hadn’t really been hurt and it had been pretty funny after all.

Getting up, he turned toward the bed and made a motion to pick up his saber, but stopped himself. He was alone on the ship, he wouldn’t need it without warning. Instead he turned around, pushed the button that operated the door with a chubby finger and walked through the doorway.

The hiss of the door closing behind him sent a shiver down his spine. It didn’t go wosh as it used to, but sounded suspiciously like a lightsaber being ignited. With battle-honed reflexes he spun around, hand outstretched, already searching through the force to grab his lightsaber on the bed. When he’d turned he found himself not on the ship, but in a forest. He could see the trees as clearly as he saw the walls of his ship a millisecond earlier. He saw the light of a saber in front of him, and its light falling on a small human girl with brown hair. She held it toward him, but not quite as if she was ready to fight him…
With a thud the door closed and Anto was back on his ship. There was no forest, no girl and the only lightsaber was his, grasped by the force and pulled to his hand before the door had closed.

His thoughts were racing. Where was that? Trees could be found on half a million planets, humans on most of them… Lightsabers though…
It wasn’t a memory, that much was certain. It was a glimpse into the future.
His heart filled with joy, he was going to find someone else who could feel the force. The lightsaber proved it, no one would dare pick one of them up in the presence of a Jedi master unless they could feel the force flowing through them. But where? When? … Why?
So many questions, so few answers. He took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. Getting worked up would not help. If it was the will of the force, then it would happen, and all his questions would be answered then.

Anto walked to the cockpit and sat down in the pilot’s chair. After flicking a few switches the ship disengaged from the asteroid he’d landed on a few hours earlier. He didn’t like using the autopilot while he meditated, though he did trust various machines and droids to do their jobs. After all, on a space ship that trust was a life or death decision. The added security of being attached to an asteroid was his true goal, no risk of getting spotted by either imperial or scrapper radars. Being a fugitive did mean taking precautions.

A screen came to life with a bright shine and blinked twice before it started listing planets with sentient life and active societies in the system. Even though he’d spent a fair amount of time in the outer rim he still didn’t know anything about most worlds, and had to stay away from the ones he’d visited before so his trail wouldn’t be too easy to follow. With a deep breath he picked one at random and set the flight computer to calculate the hyperspace route.