Chapter Two
Jedi Sentinel: Cult of Fear
Xen needed help, so he called one of his rich friends.
“Genti, you old vagabond! How’s the good life?” The flickering face that greeted him in holographic miniature was soft and easy, just like the man’s life. He was old money from Naboo, and that was next level old.
“You tell me,” his kindly eyes narrowed. “I haven’t heard from you in a week! Figured you were passed out in that hammock of yours, above an ever-growing pile of empty bottles.”
“This is the good natured ribbing, right?” Xen asked.
“Always!” Genti’s generous smile returned like an attentive servant. “Just giving you the business on account of how I’ve missed two races since my speeder hit the skids. Vacations don’t last forever, even for old vagabonds like myself.”
Man, this fish hooked itself! Xen pretended to think it over. “Well, I’m free right now. Why don’t I round up a few of my not-yet-empty bottles and swing on over? I’m sure we can have you in wager-winning shape before the racing hour.”
“I’ll have my driving gloves ironed,” Genti beamed.
Xen threw his tools and a few beers in the back of his speeder and climbed into the cab. It was a custom number, designed specifically for the island terrain: water, sand, and jungle. A massive, cylindrical repulsor engine stretched across the front, its inner workings artfully exposed in several places. The patchwork chassis tapered up to a two-seat, open air cab with a shallow cargo bed directly behind, under the spoiler.
It had a throaty rumble, even while idling; Xen had put a lot of work into that. The barest pressure on the throttle sent it leaping from the garage like a fathier during mating season. Twin fans of white sand traced his path across the beach, a familiar sight to townies and tourists alike.
They all knew to get out of the Jedi’s way.
Not that it was necessary. Xen was an excellent pilot and wouldn’t harm a fly… unless the fly had it coming. People just had an exaggerated sense of their personal peril, ya know? A group of children waved excitedly and he honked his horn for them.
There was no life like island life. The sun and the wind ran their fingers through his non-existent hair. A whalebird breached in the distance, flapping its vestigial wings out of half-remembered instinct. Its waterproof feathers gleamed blue and green in the morning light.
In no time, Xen was bearing down on a ring of thatched beach houses. Each had its own pool, which had always seemed ridiculous to the Jedi. The ocean was right there, people! They radiated out from the terminus of a paved road that lead inland toward Serenity’s compound.
Health and Wellness Retreat. Whatever.
He pulled up to a gate of black durasteel where his two favorite security guards waited. In his head, he called them Comedy and Tragedy. Their armored uniforms made them indistinguishable, but a Jedi could sense the subtle differences in movement and mannerisms. Also, one of them clearly hated him.
“Back already,” groused Tragedy as Xen waved from his sweet ride.
“It’s been a week!” Xen defended himself with a sly wink to Comedy. “And every hour was a knife through my heart. But I’m here now and that’s what really matters.”
“Are you — “
“On the list?” Xen completed for him. “Of course I am. I’m very popular around here. We should hang out some time, the three of us. I’ll take you out past Devil’s Reach and we’ll fish for mantabirds. It’ll be fun!”
Xen could’ve been saying anything — confessing his sins, planning a murder, insulting the Chief Enlightened Officer — such was Tragedy’s focus on his tyrannical little datapad.
“Yeah, he’s on the list.”
“Of course he is,” Comedy chuckled, already opening the gate.
“Hey, don’t be glum,” Xen commiserated with Tragedy as he revved his engine aggressively. They all felt it in their chest cavities. “I’ll be trying to sneak in one of these times, and that’ll be your moment. Never stop believing.” He gave Comedy a fist bump before proceeding into the compound.
The main hub was a monument to consumption. Restaurants and cafes mingled with galleries and boutiques, while nightclubs and gambling dens lurked around the margins. Further in, day spas and hot springs lured visitors toward therapy centers and questionable medical services of every description. But before he got to the good stuff, Xen hung a left and headed into the jungle.
More like the exurbs. Private villas peppered the basalt hills and palm groves away from the main drag. Genti’s was an elegant edifice of black glass, long and rectangular and wedge-shaped. It leaned out over the yard on one side. Xen could hear Genti’s horde of children playing behind the hedge as he drifted down the driveway.
He pulled around to the far side of the house, near the garage. A bug-eyed protocol droid was already shambling toward him when his sandaled feet hit the pavement. “Welcome back, sir. Master Vang is waiting for you poolside.”
“Of course he is,” Xen agreed, procuring his beers from the back seat.
“Oh my,” the droid whispered, apparently scandalized by the vintage.
Genti was, in fact, lounging in his chair by the pool, but Xen didn’t get the sense he was waiting for anyone. The middle-aged captain of industry and father of six looked like he was right where he wanted to be: draped in a bathrobe and watching his kids splash about like sealbirds.
They cracked open Xen’s beers and shot the shoot for a while before Genti gently intimated that his mechanic should get to work. That’s always how it was with Xen’s rich friends: transactional even when it was cordial. Fair is fair; the Jedi was only using him as cover for some breaking and entering.
The repair was child’s play, but Xen made it look much worse than it was and insisted that Genti give him a few hours of quiet concentration. He had the sleek little number purring in no time, then left his second self to pantomime mechanic stuff while he violated corporate policy.
People didn’t pay enough attention to droids, particularly bad people. Serenity’s compound was threaded through with droid-holes and service corridors with far less security than the streets above. There was just one catch: You had to be pretty small to squeeze through them. Xen had once tunneled his way out of a Huttese prison on Nar Shaddaa, so small spaces were not a problem.
He only had to crawl a few meters before the droid-hole in Genti’s garage connected to a conveyor belt highway. He grabbed some seat next to a disaffected gonk droid and tried to blend in. The gonk didn’t seem to notice.
Serenity Corp was much more than the touristy stuff along the main drag and the resort accommodations scattered across the island. They had corporate offices up the crater, executive estates deep in the jungle, and secret bunkers all over the place. That would’ve been a lot of ground to cover, but fortunately for Xen, the company treated its initiates the same way it treated its drones. Even stored them in the same sector.
Everyone who joined the cult, beyond just attending seminars or hanging out at the spa, was required to pay their dues through “voluntary service.” Mostly, that meant enduring whatever petty humiliations their superiors felt like heaping upon them, all in the name of “overcoming your ego.” They turned over all their worldly wealth to a trust fund — managed by the company, of course — and got busy shining the shoes of their betters.
Xen was contemplating the sad state of his own footwear when a security droid leapt onto his conveyor, knocking the poor gonk onto the belt behind them. It gonk’d in alarm as it sped the other way, no doubt fearing for its job.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” the security droid intoned. Its speaker was garbled and its oblong head left no room for expressions, but it was clearly peeved.
“Are any of us supposed to be anywhere?” the Jedi mused in response.
“I have detailed schedules for every droid assigned to this sector,” the chrome killjoy assured him. “You will have to be detained until this can be sorted out. Please come with me, sir.”
“Ya know what?” Xen suddenly thought better of it. “I do have someplace I’m supposed to be.” He raised his hand and The Force expanded between himself and the droid, pushing it backwards. That should have ended it, but the droid’s feet were less humanoid than the rest of him. They clamped down hard on the belt and held him fast.
“You are being detained for interfering in the operation of Serenity Corp property,” it declared at top volume, eyes and other lights flaring red. “For your own safety, please do not resist.”
“Dosh,” the Sullustan swore beneath his breath. Desperately, he cast about the cavernous space for a viable retreat. He could jump up to a belt crossing above them, or down to one passing beneath, but the droid would just follow. Maybe he could hold its head onto the neighboring belt until its face was completely sanded off —
But then his bacon was saved by a pit droid with a welding torch. It dropped down on the larger droid’s generous head and burned a hole right through its processor. The newly minted scrap pile toppled over and clattered to the bottom of the chamber.
Xen gave the pit droid a high five as it hopped onto the belt beside him. “OB-1!” He greeted his tiny savior. “I see that fake restraining bolt is still working for you.” About a year ago, Xen had accidentally removed the pit droid from its designated sector and the bolt had sent convulsions through its bitty body. For pity’s sake, he’d sabotaged the blasted thing, but rigged it to appear operable if inspected.
OB-1 chortled his agreement and asked his friend what he was doing down there. “Looking for one of the initiates. No, I don’t know their name. Think you can get me to the dormitories, at least?”
He was just a hop and a skip away, as it turned out. They exited into a storeroom packed with cleaning supplies. The smell of bleach clawed its way into his sinuses and died. OB-1 had other places to be, so he bid the Jedi good luck and vanished back through the droid-hole.
Xen didn’t believe in luck. “May The Force be with you, little friend.”
The hallway outside was a riot of block letters and signage. Big, bold slogans like “I AM FEARLESS” and “SERENITY = STRENGTH” were emblazoned on the walls. Lists of rules and notices and warnings with dreadfully imperiled stick figures were bolted onto every surface. Not even the ceiling was spared.
Color-coded lines on the floor directed traffic to various destinations, including the dormitories. Xen followed that one. The place was eerily empty, though it was the middle of the day. Night shift folks were probably asleep and everyone else was either licking boots or having their chakras realigned.
The rooms were little more than cells, as bare as a monastery. More bare than the dorms at the Jedi Temple, that’s for sure. Nothing but a bed for furniture, nothing but a holoprojector for entertainment, and nothing but propaganda on the holoprojector.
Xen didn’t really know what he was looking for, so he let The Force be his guide. The entire island vibrated with an ancient echo, like the cries of a hundred thousand souls. He’d always assumed it was the shadow cast by whatever left the crater, untold centuries ago.
Within and around that ever-present noise, The Force still spoke to him. It whistled like the wind through a forest and he followed it down one corridor after another. At length, he came upon one door that was not like the others, in so far as it was locked.
Fortunately, Xen had spliced his way into places far more secure than a dormitory. (But also into a few dormitories, in his day.) A couple of crossed wires got him inside.
This wasn’t the right place. First of all, nobody was in it. Second, it was full of girl stuff. Xen was no expert on human gender, but he was pretty sure the person he’d helped that morning wore their hair too short for those headpieces and wouldn’t have fit into that skirt by any stretch.
But something told him to take a closer look, specifically at the heating vent in the floor, across from the bed. He pried the cover loose and found a string attached to it with a magnet. Pulling the string, he was rewarded with the sound of a datapad sliding up the vent and into his sticky fingers. It was encrypted, but he didn’t need to see what was on it to know that the company had a mole in their midst!
Xen was inclined to count this a win, not least of all because he was dangerously close to being late for his dinner with Taos. He toyed with being tardy, just to show them how predictable he wasn’t… but that would throw off his whole evening. Still, he didn’t want to sabotage this saboteur, so he put the datapad back where he found it and did his best to repair the lock on the door.
Silently, he thanked The Force for taking him where he needed to go, even if it wasn’t the place he’d wanted to be.
Back in the garage, Genti Vang already had his driving gloves on. Over dinner, one of the boys had been jawing on and on about his new BAX and words had been exchanged, followed by wagers. Anyway, they were set to race in less than an hour.
“I hope you’re wrapping up,” he called from the door, reluctant to cause any further delays, “or this is gonna cost me more than your very reasonable fee.” Genti peeked inside like a child on Life Day. He could just barely see the Sullustan’s legs sticking out from under his speeder, still up to his elbows in the left side repulsorlift. Had he made any progress?!
“I don’t want to be a bother,” Genti lied, “but it’s been several hours and you assured me this was a quick fix. If you were going to need more time, you should have told me before dinner.” A bit incensed by the mechanic’s silence, he opened the door and stormed inside. “I’m talking to you, Xen. I expected better manners from — “
“A Jedi?” Xen finished for him from the far corner of the room. “Can’t imagine why. We’re notoriously impolite.”
Genti’s head swiveled like an astromech on the fritz. “Oh, Xen,” he sputtered. “Who’s under the…” he looked back down, but all he found was a repaired and polished repulsorlift. “I thought — “
“Just finished up,” Xen reported, theatrically wiping his hands on a rag with a higher thread count than his bedsheets. “I think you’ll be quite pleased with the performance. Just don’t try to jump it over Cutthroat Gulch again.”
“I promise nothing,” Genti laughed, happy to forgive anything if it meant he could get to the starting line on time.
The sun was just setting — a brilliant blaze of coruscating red and orange — when Xen’s hotrod cruised up Debtor’s Run to his favorite pub. Some people might not want to eat dinner at the same place they’d eaten brunch, but some people were fools. Among the many benefits: when you’re within flirting distance of standing up your date, the barkeep knows exactly what you’re going to order and puts it in ahead of time.
The Wishing Tree was an odd venue. Its namesake occupied the very center of the space, stretching its branches beneath a circular hole in the ceiling. According to legend, a wish written on a ribbon, and then left on the tree, was guaranteed to come true… as long as it was never removed. Its aged boughs sagged under the weight of uncounted wishes.
The bar wrapped around the circumference, which confounded most visitors, but it did maximize floor space. Chairs colonized the rest of the pub, huddled together on top of scattered tables, most of them covered in white sheets. Skeeves had kindly set one of them for his best customers. Candles and everything.
“He knows we’re not dating anymore, right?” Taos whispered to Xen around a mouthful of seafood. She was still in her flight suit, minus all the tubes and kit, but she’d unrolled her legs and let her hair down. A spot of sauce decorated the tip of her tiny nose.
“The guy’s old fashioned,” her not-a-date shrugged. “Cut him some slack.” Xen dove right into his surf and turf. No need to stand on ceremony among friends.
“At least the food is good.” She lowered her head for another bite and gave him one of her sly, slant-eyed looks. “What kept you? I was beginning to worry.”
He waved it away, like the spontaneous guy he was. “Just had to run an errand up on the hill. Took longer than expected, but I’d never leave my best girl waiting.”
“Good news for me,” growled Gatts from the doorway, “because we need to have a word.” She looked as stern as ever in her industrial-sized gunbelt and wide-brimmed hat. Woman wore a duster in every kind of weather… and even wore her boots to bed.
“I’m kinda in the middle of something,” Xen objected.
“You can make time for this.”
After exchanging alarmed glances with Taos, Xen excused himself and took… whatever this was outside.
“Did you think they wouldn’t see you coming?” she asked rhetorically once they were away from the door. The night life was already out of hiding, so there was little chance they’d be overheard. “Genti Vang has deep pockets, so they didn’t try to stop you, but rest assured that Penge knew the moment you passed through their gate. Probably had eyes on you the whole time.” She leaned into his personal space and pinned him with those big, brown eyes. “I don’t know what you were up to, but everybody knows you were up to something. Don’t be so sloppy! I can’t keep protecting you, Princess.”
“You don’t need to, Gatts,” the full-grown adult Jedi repeated for what felt like the billionth time.
“Somebody sure as sassafras has to! You’ve no idea how to do it yourself!” For the briefest moment, he thought she was going to draw on him. “These people are dangerous, Xen. They’re not spice runners or Hutt gangsters. They’ll rip your life open and a lightsaber’s not gonna save you… or the people you care about.” She glanced meaningfully back inside the pub, though Xen sensed she was also talking about herself.
She turned to leave. Then, over her shoulder, “Just let this one go, Princess. You’re not gonna get another warning.”
Written by Daniel Bayn
Cover image by Midjourney
