05: Kyber
Story song: "Shine" by Anna Nalick
Mara sat cross-legged on the floor of their cabin facing the door and Luke, who also sat cross-legged on the floor. She exhaled and closed her eyes. None of her trainers had ever had her just sit and sort through her emotions. She wasn't sure how to succeed at this task.
"Master Yoda said that the Meditation of Emptiness is like finding an eye of calm within the center of one's storm of emotions," Luke said aloud.
"That doesn't explain how to do it." She tried to ignore the wave of uneasiness that could grow into a spike of anxiety that punishment for failing a task was approaching.
"You can't fail at meditation. Even I finally settled into it and found the calm, and Master Yoda thought I was too old and set in my ways to train."
Mara cracked open an eye. His face was serene with that revelation. How did that square with the famed Jedi Master being willing to teach a clone? She didn't bring that up. She closed her eyes and stared at the darkness behind her eyelids. "Do you have any tips on how you managed, or is this a timed thing? Must meditate for so many hours before it happens."
"You need to find an anchor. You can make almost anything an anchor. Concentrate on your breathing. Focus on inhaling and exhaling. Count them if that helps."
Counting she could do.
She had almost reached two hundred when the door slid open, interrupting her count. Her eyelids flew open involuntarily.
Biggs grimaced as he stood in the doorway. "Sorry. I thought you were done."
The alarm Luke had set before they started chimed. "Now we are." Luke blinked and looked at Mara. "How do you feel?"
"Not more connected to the Force, that feels the same." She frowned. "I guess I feel calmer."
"It's a start." Luke rolled to his feet and moved aside so Biggs could get inside and let the door slide closed. "It might go better without a timer."
"I don't see how that's going to work when dealing with other people, Luke." Biggs stepped around the mechanical parts, tools, and open boxes from Kenobi that Luke had set on the floor around where he was sitting. The brown-haired man reached his bunk and sat down on it. "You're the one who meditated through supper the other night."
"Medical already scolded me." Luke crossed his legs and plopped on the floor again, rolling against the floor before reaching for the clay box of gemstones. He didn't sound annoyed by Biggs bringing up his skipping a meal and Medical's reaction.
Biggs continued with his update. "Leia heard from Chewbacca and got a ride to Ord Mantell that leaves the fleet in two days so we can meet up with him and Calrissian. While we're there, we need to pool credits and buy a ship of our own."
"Big spender," Luke said with a grin.
"Well, I don't have one. Mara doesn't have one, and you have an X-wing that only has one seat."
"An X-wing? Doesn't that belong to the Alliance?" Mara asked as she twisted her torso into a stretch.
"It was my reward for rescuing Leia from the Death Star," Luke answered. "But Biggs is right--"
"I'm right a lot, take note of that," Biggs interrupted.
"I have." Luke smirked at him.
They always teased each other, and Mara didn't know what to do about that. There was never any malice when they did it. She was so accustomed to an undercurrent of malice that filled so many Imperial court functions; it felt drifting to not sense it now.
Luke continued, "We can't keep depending on the Falcon, but we need a ship to travel to Master Yoda and to Tatooine."
"You seem sure we are going to Tatooine." Mara stopped twisting to face Luke again. "Has the Force told you that?"
"No," he shook his head. "I don't want to abrade Leia's hope, but Boba Fett is that good. He'll get Han to Jabba." He looked down at the clay box between his legs. "We have time?"
"Two days." Biggs leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, and swept his gaze over the power cell, circuits, spool of wires, insulator, conductor, buttons, and smooth metal casing scattered in an orderly fashion on the floor around Luke. "Is that enough time to turn all that into a lightsaber?"
"I've done all the prep work on the parts. The only thing left is to find the piece of kyber I resonate with."
"You're going to be trancing until supper, aren't you?" Biggs quirked his lips as if he were holding back a laugh.
"Hope not." Luke took a deep breath and lifted the lid of the clay box. The Force vibrated. Luke set the lid on the floor behind him before resting his hands on his thighs and closing his eyes.
The vibration strengthened against Mara's being, almost like six impacts against her of what she couldn't even see. Whistling filled the cabin with six notes in harmony. What was that?
"Is something wrong?" Biggs leaned toward Mara. She blinked at him. "You're frowning."
"Do you hear whistling?" She asked softly so as not to disturb Luke.
Biggs shook his head. "Just normal ship sounds, and you two."
Light expanded out of the box and scattered different flashes of color over Luke's face. Green, blue, yellow, orange, purple, and white tiny rectangles of light danced over his closed eyes and calm expression.
"I see that." Biggs shifted on his bunk to stare better at Luke. "Chirrut[1] says the strongest stars have hearts made of kyber, but I thought it was a metaphor for the Jedi, not because it made a light show."
Why was the kyber doing that? Wasn't it just a power source or a power enhancer? She hadn't paid attention when the Death Star had been the topic of conversation, not that the Imperial court knew how the battle station worked either. The six whistling notes continued without stopping.
The stones in the box rattled against each other and the sides of the box.
"Are they supposed to do that?" Biggs asked.
Mara shrugged with a headshake. She hadn't even read the diary entry on how to build a lightsaber, not wanting to intrude on something meant for Luke personally.
One crystal shard lifted into the air. It gleamed green as it floated up in front of Luke's face. He opened his eyes. "Oh." His hand gently cupped the shard, and the green gleam faded away. "Mara, they're reaching out to you. Reach back to them."
The stones still had a tremor oscillating the contents of the box, but at a calmer level now. But the light they generated hadn't hurt Luke, so she straightened her back before closing her eyes. The Force signature between her and Luke throbbed with the combined power of the kyber. She brushed against it mentally, not using words or emotions, as if she were doing telepathy.
The six notes whistled louder, and she heard the stones tinkle as they jostled against each other. Both men inhaled sharply.
Mara opened her eyes, and six crystal shards hung in the air in front of her. One had a purple gleam, two gleamed in blue, two in green, and the last one had an orange tint. "How? I don't understand. Will six even fit in a lightsaber hilt?"
"Not the design I'm using," Luke said.
"Your sisters!" Biggs jerked more upright in his seat on his bunk. "They have the Force too."
"But they aren't here?" Mara stared at the crystal shards, roughly the same size, but each one had slightly different terminations and facets.
"I'm guessing with the cloning background, you're all close enough to confuse the kyber," Biggs said.
Luke nodded. "That makes sense. After we rescue your sisters, the crystals will separate to each one they belong to."
Maybe that was true, and it felt comforting to hear her sisters spoken of on the same level as Captain Solo, whom she hadn't met: when we rescue him, not if. She cupped both hands around the shards. The whistling and gleaming stopped, and the shards fell into her palms. She blinked at the sudden silence.
Luke chuckled. "Yeah, when kyber wants to be with you, it is pretty loud. Six must have been a lot."
"Yes," Mara agreed faintly. "But what am I going to do with them? I'm not ready to make six lightsabers."
"You're supposed to make your own lightsaber as part of Jedi training," Luke explained. "It wouldn't be right for you to do all the work for your sisters and hand them a finished lightsaber."
Mara tilted her head as she looked at Luke. "I'm doing this so they have a choice. My sisters might not want to be Jedi. I'm not forcing that choice on them by making multiple lightsabers when I'm not ready to make my own yet."
Luke winced, but nodded. "Of course they will have a choice, sorry Angel, if I sounded like they didn't."
She nodded and continued with the problem. "I can't carry six shards of kyber in a pocket." It was so rare since the Imperial mining operations took over the planets rumored to be sources of it to put all they could find into the Death Star.
"You got a problem wearing a necklace?" Biggs asked.
Her forehead creased in confusion. "I've worn jewelry. I didn't pack any, and if I had, it would have gotten left at Bespin."
"Erso wears her kyber crystal around her neck. Toss me that twenty-two gauge wire if you're done with it." Biggs got up from his bunk and moved to the clear floor beside Mara. Luke nodded, and the spool of insulated wire floated over to Biggs with a pair of wire snips. He plucked them from the air when they got close enough. "Too bad you didn't know how to do that when we had those skyhopper repairs and altered how high that gravsled could go to work on the top. Your uncle was so mad."
"For repairing a skyhopper?" Mara asked.
"For standing on top of the gravsled that was out of safety bounds to reach the top of the skyhopper and bickering over who should use the spanner," Luke corrected. "To quote Uncle Owen, 'We are trying to get you two to adulthood; can you please help us with that and not break your necks!'"
"We got to take repairs like that into town and use Fixer's equipment because it was safer after that." Biggs unwound a length of the wire, snipped it free of the spool, and began peeling off the colored insulation. "But to solve this problem, we can wrap the shards and hang them from a chain around your neck. Much safer than keeping them in your pocket."
"That sounds like a good plan, but I have no idea how to do that," she admitted. She refused to bite her tongue over admitting not knowing how to do a task. But she wanted to punish herself for a failure, even though these two men would not assign blame.
In fact, Biggs cheerfully offered knowledge as he passed her the metal and cut off another piece of wire. "I'll show you how while Luke works on his assembly task."
The blond man raised his fingers to his forehead and gave a lazy salute to Biggs. "Glad you're occupied while I'm trancing." He set his hands on his crossed legs and closed his eyes.
Mara set the six kyber crystal shards on the floor between her and Biggs. Wrapping the shard in the metal wire wasn't as difficult as she had worried it might be. It was a matter of getting it tight enough so that friction held the shard securely.
A green light filled the cabin. She felt the power washing over her and glanced at Luke. His kyber crystal floated in front of his chest, glowing as the other parts bobbed around Luke's serene expression. Power pulsed out with brighter flashes of green light, but it was power Mara had never sensed before.
The Emperor could fill a room with a creeping cold that made even non-Force sensitives rub their arms and look for ice crystal condensation. Vader's rage burned and bubbled like the lava at his retreat on Mustafar.
This from Luke was as warm as solar radiation on a cloudless summer day and just as relentless. Luke’s calm felt solid as duracrete, a foundation that you could trust to never stumble upon.
The pieces slotted into the chrome-colored tube with a rectangular activation plate, starting with the components Luke had already put together into one unit: the diatium power cell surrounded by a power field conductor and enclosed in an inert power insulator. The green kyber crystal went in next, dimming the green light slightly. Cycling field energizers and a focusing lens slid into the ridged tube. The blade emitter screwed onto the end of the ridged tube before the two halves screwed together and sealed away the light.
Luke reached up without opening his eyes and wrapped his right hand around the lightsaber hilt. It was long enough to allow both his hands to wield the weapon. He shifted the lightsaber to point the blade emitter up and hit the activation plate with his thumb. It let out a snap-hiss as the green energy blade extended. Now Luke opened his eyes. Blinking at the result, he smiled.
"You are a shooting star, Luke," Biggs said in a quietly awed voice. Mara glanced at him. He had stopped wrapping his kyber shard, and his brown eyes stared at Luke.
Luke turned off his lightsaber, and his cheeks flushed.
Was it romantic love between the two of them that they hadn't admitted to each other or anyone else? Mara wondered to herself, behind mental shields that would keep Vader out of her head. Was that why she felt so safe with these two men, beyond their genuine friendliness and aid? They didn't desire her, not like the lust she had experienced from other men.
"So are you," Luke said abashedly. "We all are. Angel is a flyboy."
"I am not a boy," Mara clarified as she looked down at her paused wrapping in her hands.
"Yeah, we need a better term for a hotshot pilot, but you are."
She looked up again. "So sure of that."
Luke smirked. "You hijacked a cloud car to rescue me from under Cloud City. Nobody is going to do that unless they are confident in their skills."
"Oh, it's like that." Biggs raised his eyebrows. "What's your favorite ship to pilot, Miha?"
"I don't have a favorite." Her voice had a prim tone as she corrected their assumptions.
"Every pilot has a favorite," Luke insisted.
Her prim tone continued. "I haven't flown every ship available, so I honestly cannot claim a favorite." Biggs and Luke both chuckled, and she grinned that her teasing had worked. In a more normal tone, she continued. "I do know I hate flying a Z-95 Headhunter."
"The Clone Wars relic?" Biggs asked.
"Careful now. You'll have all the veterans running to defend their first starfighter." Luke said as he regained his composure.
"They shouldn't defend it," she insisted. "Sluggish speed for their configuration, minimal shields, prone to mechanical failure, and it flies like a nerf in the black. No standard hyperdrive, and if it has a hyperdrive retrofitted in, no navicomp or room for an astromech."
"So an X-wing is an improvement in every measurement," Luke said.
"I haven't flown an X-wing yet," Mara admitted.
"A Headhunter also has the problem of only one seat," Biggs added.
"So we won't buy one." Luke set his lightsaber next to his knee and started packing up the tools and parts remaining on the floor. "We need at least three seats and room for Artoo and Threepio."
"A decent hyperdrive so we can get anywhere in the galaxy we need to go." Biggs tightened the wire around the kyber shard in his hands.
"Armaments and maneuverability." Mara adjusted the wire around her shard one last time before setting it down in line with the finished ones. "I want the ability to fight back if we need to."
"We should be able to find something suitable on Ord Mantell. The place is a giant junkyard and tourist trap," Luke said.
"And bounty hunters," Biggs added.
"The bounty hunter was a Han problem." Luke tilted his head. "And the bounty hunters are probably still a Han problem. I hope Boba Fett is having fun."
Mara's lips lost their fight against a grin from the sarcasm dripping from Luke's last sentence. "Don't you have a bounty on your head?"
"Yes, but the bounty hunter only wanted Han on Ord Mantell. Maybe the Empire doesn't pay as well as the Hutts."
"That's hard to believe," Biggs said. "How many complaints did we overhear about Jabba's non-payments?"
"Lost count. But why pay for help when you can keep slaves?" Luke rolled out of his seat to his feet and stowed the boxes and equipment.
The mood in the room changed. Still friendly, but a current of seriousness circled around, an eddy generating between the two men that could build into a vortex. "Do you want to do something about that now?" Biggs asked, a tone heavy with something Mara couldn't identify.
Luke paused after he had straightened. The lightsaber floated up from the floor into his empty hands. He looked down at the hilt, turning it over. "We are not the Hutts or the Empire, but we are the consequences of their actions."
"So I'm not wrong. We are at a tipping point," Biggs said.
Luke nodded once before turning to face Biggs and Mara. "We have to give Jabba a chance to do the right thing."
Mara frowned, confused by this undercurrent, and the plans as she knew them. "You want to pay off Jabba like the Princess suggested?"
Luke nodded again, more naturally this time. "We have to make the offer. Don't get me wrong; he won't take it. But we have to make it so as not to be the same as him."
"And take steps to take advantage of a power vacuum that will happen when we protect ourselves from Jabba's retribution." Biggs set down his wrapped kyber shard next to the other finished ones. "We owe that to Tatooine."
"Agreed. What's the Imperial presence now?" Luke hung his lightsaber hilt on his belt, and the men began discussing troop movements and countermeasures. Mara didn't interrupt. She didn't know this Rebel-aligned group that they were sure would get involved, these Anoobas of the Dune Sea. She hoped they were correct. Even with the Force, they didn't have the numbers to take out a crime lord. But she would do her part to help.
[1] In this AU, the Rogue One team survived the Battle of Scarif. I don’t know how, but that’s how Biggs and Luke know them. If they are with the Fleet (and not on a mission), they are on another ship and Mara will not get to meet them. [return to text]
