Kera Tolan reached out with her senses, past the landspeeder she rode across the barren Xorrnian sands, and felt through the Force the wrapping up of the battle ahead of them. The carnage that she couldn’t yet see, at least physically, was ebbing, replaced with a growing feeling of tension from Imperials and relief from the soldiers of the Rebel Alliance and the denizens of Foundry Four. Reopening her eyes, though, Kera saw that her brother’s expression had hardened. It had been joyous a minute prior as the CR90s and Hammerhead corvettes had burst through the cloud. Anden had been whooping and cheering wholeheartedly for thirty seconds as the Rebel relief force descended over the battlefield and brought the conflict to a halt, but now he was back to a tense, grim expression as he stared out through the windscreen, weaving their landspeeder between rocks and debris as they approached Foundry Four.
Kera reached out again with her senses, trying to feel what was troubling Anden, but his eyes darted over to her accusingly. “Sorry,” she blurted. She played with strand of her red hair that had escaped her headband and attempted to look innocent. “I’m just wondering what’s troubling you is all,” she said, a genuine look of concern on her face. “The Alliance is here, the Imperials on the ground are surrendering, and I haven’t seen a single crashed X-Wing here yet.”
“There’s still bodies,” Anden muttered. “There might be more in orbit. That’s where I’m heading as soon as we find the others,” he added, sighing. His own red hair was flailing back wildly behind his head, but he didn’t seem to notice or mind blowing it out of his eyes the way she did. Outside the speeder, fresh debris took its place in her view alongside the rusted Clone Wars wreckage and scattering of rocks in the orange dust. An AT-AT loomed ahead of the Tolans’ speeder, but stood motionless; Rebel troopers were escorting the Imperial crew away. To their left, a pair of wounded Mandalorians, mercenaries that Kera’s allies had secured, were solemnly chanting in something other than Basic over the body of one of their own, while a staff nurse from Foundry Four waited awkwardly behind them to do his portion of the cleanup. Anden angled the speeder in a lazy curve between the broken walker and the broken soldier toward the chasm that led down to Foundry Four itself.
“I’m staying with you,” Kera concluded. Anden didn’t respond. She didn’t have to probe at his mind to feel the icy tension emanating from him, and decided it warranted further supervision.
Anden’s gloom seemed set in stone by the time they were riding the turbolift from the hangar to the medical bay on the Liberator. His arms were folded, hands clutching at the straps of his flight suit and its life support systems. He burst from the lift the second the doors slid open, and Kera struggled to keep up with him despite his legs being a dozen centimeters shorter than hers. She didn’t know whether it was something with the Force or merely the look on her brother’s face that made the others in the hallway part to either side rather neatly for the pair of them. They turned a corner into a side corridor, and Kera paused, staring at the odd sight before her. Anden stomped ahead, taking the next right. On the left, though, there was an astromech droid in the doorway of a closet.
Though Anden ignored it, Kera watched the droid slowly reverse on its legs, perpendicular to how it would pass through the door, then wheel forward and bump its dome against the door jamb with a loud clunk. It reversed, then did so again. Kera settled in for a moment, perplexed by the droid, but then felt a sudden flare of anger and pain from the next room right before she heard a clatter and crash of something metallic. She left the droid and bolted forward.
Turning the corner, she came across a hectic sight. To her right was a Dug, torso wrapped in white bandages, that seemed to have paused mid-step to look at something. Thankfully, the nurse attending the treadmill he was walking on had possessed the presence of mind to shut the machine down before he tumbled off the back of it. Directly ahead of her was an operating table, something humanoid atop it draped beneath a sheet. Three surgeons, flecked in alien-seeming blood, stood around the body, frozen and staring at something to her left. To her left was her brother, pacing in circles next to a cart that lay on its side, wheels still spinning, and a tray of surgical equipment that had somehow scattered itself across the floor. One of the scalpels on the ground glimmered red, and there was a matching line across Anden’s right cheek beneath his bloodshot eyes. Anden stomped in another circle, then another for good measure, then stopped to face his sister. Watered-down blood ran down his cheek, and he stared at her for a moment, his face at the meeting point between terror and rage. Kera slowly crept forward, reaching for his hand. He didn’t pull his away, and he followed her meekly as she stepped back toward the corridor. After pulling him out of the operating room, she leaned back into the doorway to face the others there, none of which had moved.
“My apologies, everyone, a slight malfunction from some of Ataru Squadron’s assets,” she said, gesturing toward her brother in the hallway as the medical crew stared at her. “As chief mechanic, I apologize and take full responsibility. I assure you that I will handle all necessary action in making sure this unexpected behavior does not repeat,” she added sternly, trying to summon her mother’s scolding face from her memories. She made eye contact with each of the surgeons before darting back out into the corridor.
Anden was slumped against the far wall, adjacent to the door jamb that the droid was still running into repeatedly. The clunking had picked up a slow, predictable rhythm, and Anden’s forehead now knocked against the wall in time with it. “That was Kalei Bespor,” he said quietly. Clunk, went the droid. Thud, went Anden’s head. “Ataru Three. Brilliant, even for a Cerean. Kept her in my group because she was smarter than me, more tactical than me, more reasonable than me.” Clunk. Thud. “She should have been a squadron leader. Probably next in line when the next batch of X-Wings from command opened up. Then an Imp turbolaser salvo comes in, I dodge, she doesn’t. Boom.” Clunk.Thud.
“You can’t blame yourself, Anden,” Kera said softly. She reached up toward where the blood and tears were still working down his cheek, then paused before she reached his face, realizing he probably wanted to wear that badge of anger and grief right now. She lowered her hand.
“Yeah, well, watch me,” he said quietly. Clunk. The droid continued, but Anden had stopped. After this impact, however, he swayed away from the wall, turning and walking away, shedding the extra harnesses and straps from his flight suit onto the corridor floor as he went. The good thing about Anden being squadron commander was that someone else would pick up after his tantrums, Kera thought. The bad thing was that he was the one in the position to get to blame himself for things.
The droid clunked against the door jamb again. “Stop that,” Kera muttered to it, and heard a soft, mournful beep. She turned to look at the droid, and saw its primary optical lens pointed right at her. Some kind of weapons fire had left a carbon-scored slash across the front of its dome, as well as burned off most of the red paint it had previously sported. It was an R2 model, she noted, but then the chief mechanic in her saw more. She noticed the scuff and suction marks from the hangar equipment that would have removed the droid from its starfighter. Further down the chassis, parts of the droid were missing. Some of the plates that covered its interfacing components were simply gone, and its scomp link, the computer interface it would have extended to connect with an X-wing’s onboard computers, had been sheared completely off.
The droid chirped something gentle and inquisitive at Kera. It was a request for a task, but in the meekest Binary possible.
“Did you… did you know her?” Kera asked the droid softly.
The astromech backed slowly away from Kera and the doorway into the closet, swaying gently on its two legs, its third wheel for locomotion not extended – or perhaps not functioning. Kera couldn’t tell. Suddenly it lurched forward, its dome spinning wildly, a cacophony of chirps and beeps in Binary assaulting her ears. The droid halted a few centimeters short of Kera, its inertia carrying the top of it forward, and she caught it, the droid shaking as its two active wheels tried to stabilize it while its dome continued spinning. Kera could only make out snippets of its answer — R2-L6 = ineffective. // life support “Ataru Three” failure // R2-L6 repair efforts: catastrophic error // attempted reconnect, 2448 out of 2448 attempts failed — and after a few more seconds Kera gently shook the droid. “Hey, hey, hey,” she said. “You broke your scomp link when they pulled you out of the X-Wing after you wouldn’t leave on your own, didn’t they?”
The droid kept shaking and chirping. Kera held it for a moment, but eventually stood up, letting the droid find its balance. Its primary visual sensor swiveled up toward her.
“What’s your name?” Kera asked.
Designation = R2-L6.
“No, your name,” Kera specified. “What Kalei called you.”
Designation = R2-L6, the droid repeated. Ataru Three belief = attachment causes undue decision second guessing.
Kera rolled her eyes. “Well, my belief is that everyone should have a name. So you should pick yours,” she said to the droid, smiling.
Designation = R2-L6, the droid repeated in Binary. Property of Ataru Three Kalei Cespor. Ataru Three Kalei Cespor status = killed in action. R2-L6 status = designated “Memory reset program” + reassignment to Liberator logistics.
“Well, I’m the chief of engineering on the Liberator, so I’m pretty sure I’m Liberator logistics, which means I’m un-designating you. No memory wipes for valorous droids that fought so valiantly to save their pilots.”
R2-L6 didn’t move, its primary visual lens still on Kera.
“And as one of those valorous droids, you get to pick your name. So go ahead,” Kera concluded.
R2-L6 didn’t move for a few moments. Eventually, its dome swiveled away from Kera, toward the doorway to the room holding its deceased pilot. Then it swiveled back slowly, seeming to take Kera in once more. She was smiling with the intense but passive stare of an overeager daycare attendant. R2-L6’s locomotors kicked in, and the droid backed away, wobbling again on only two wheels as it began to chirp haltingly, then quickly whizzed back into its door jamb, familiar and safe. It zoomed a few centimeters forward into the jamb once more. Clunk. Clunk.
“Clunk,” Kera said.
The droid paused.
“That works. Come with me, Clunk,” Kera said. “You’re being reassigned by the chief of engineering.”
The droid swiveled out of the door jamb and swung out at top speed toward Kera, who turned to walk away. It followed swiftly at her heels, beeping an acknowledgement of orders received. It was only after a minute or so of progress toward the ship’s engineering bays that it made another sound: an onomatopoeic striking noise in Binary, vaguely reminiscent of the impact of steel on steel, and a victorious titter.
The door to Kera’s quarters opened, and she stepped in, pressing the button on the control panel near the door to activate the lights, which fluttered and pulsed for a moment due to the fact that she’d rigged the room’s circuits to power up the mechanical helper arms on the workbench that took up a quarter of her room. The two arms on the bench slowly came to life, swaying before springing up eagerly, like animals ready to play, but Kera shut them down. She needed time to think.
A questioning beep came from the hallway, and an astromech dome peeked around the corner of the doorway. Kera waved at the droid, gesturing him in, and Clunk wheeled in, letting out a beep of some kind – she couldn’t tell if he was impressed or shocked by the state of her quarters – before settling near the bench, looking up curiously at the arms there. Kera left the droid to his curiosity, stepping past some piles of spare parts and garments, hopping up to her bed, where she sat, cross-legged, and steadied her breathing.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Be aware of your body’s natural cycles, but also beyond them. Your mind must understand them, yet let go of them, reaching out beyond the physical self. It was easier to explain than to do, but most of the time, for Kera, the Force was a wave at her back, and once her mind trusted her body to continue existing without it, the Force ushered her along into its visions. She had no destination in mind today – no specific wish to see the future, or the present, or the past, but she had questions that desperately needed answering.
It was two weeks since the victory at Xorrn, and the crew of the Wayward Spirit was falling apart. No, not falling apart. They were growing apart. It was not a failure, it was a symptom of success. Their commander had succeeded in his mission to contain and direct the passion of the Tolan siblings; bigger and better things may await him than babysitting. IG-99, their longest-time companion, had discovered the honor (though Kera might not call it that) of the Mandalorians, which fit him better than the thankless job of Rebel trooper. Their medic was too noble, too willing to help all – Kera doubted she wanted to follow two siblings around to patch them up after their mistakes when she could be saving dozens or hundreds of lives of Rebel fighters that needed looking after. She and Anden should have been able to look after themselves by now, Kera thought. Their slicer had left, his cryptic role in their events completed, and given how he’d helped protect Kera and Anden’s identities, she hoped he didn’t consider her in his debt.
That just left she and Anden, her brother, her charge. She’d joined the Rebellion to protect him, when the awkward comm message full of obvious metaphors and heavy implication of where he was going had arrived. He’d sent an unencrypted holocom message about the “angels of Yavin” as if an eight-year-old assigned to Imperial Intelligence couldn’t pick up on that. The siblings hadn’t spent a day apart since, and their adventures had taken them across the galaxy a half-dozen times in service to the Rebellion.
Slowly, Kera tried to focus her mind’s eye, and let the echoes of their future adventures reach her. She’d done it before, to point the way, and she knew that chasing her future this way made self-fulfilling prophecies and tore normal causality to shreds, but it also hadn’t steered her wrong yet.
An Imperial holding a lightsaber crystal. A chase through an alleyway, a set of feet echoing behind hers. A red lightsaber blade, the core of the blade flickering as she plunged into darkness. She felt the last vision envelop her, begin to swallow her – and she blinked, pulling back. This was new – she’d seen terror before in these divinations, and she’d handled it. But the way the last image plunged into nothing… Kera took a breath, steadying herself. She leaned into the space outside reality once more, this time with the sensations of her brother on her mind. A Star Destroyer’s hull venting. Pilots and astromechs running down a hallway. A funeral. The flash of a proton torpedo leaving an X-Wing. Kera brought herself back to sanity again. His visions…
Anden was alone. There was no Wayward Spirit, their Corellian freighter, the one Anden had won by basically daring his commanding officer, the ship he’d treated as his child ever since. There was no banter during sabacc games with friends outside Ataru Squadron, his dozen comrades in space-based arms. The only emotion was righteous revenge, Anden’s indignation at the Empire for its crimes. It was more intense than usual – his anger toward the Empire always threaded the needle between justice and punishment, but this felt stronger than it had in the past. More personal. But where was she? Kera grasped onto the last image, the torpedo launch, and tried to sidestep in the frame of the vision – where was her future at this time? The point of view turned, from the torpedo to the starfield around it, and then further, the stars fading and twinkling out, and Kera turned further still and saw it again. The red lightsaber blade, like a gash in the sky, pulsating, flickering, pulling her in, sucking her in toward annihilation–
Kera opened her eyes, panting. She was covered in sweat. Clunk was staring at her from across her bedroom, and beeped a quiet question.
Kera flopped back to lie on her bed, arms spread. That red light still seared in her mind, like a ghost in one’s vision from staring at the sun. The obvious meaning of it wormed its way into her mind, insidiously, a soft whisper that she strained to hear even as she dreaded its message:
Kera had foreseen her death.
The sweat on Kera’s face felt cold. She sat up, leaning, reaching for the holocron sitting on the nightstand at the foot of her bed, but stopped herself. It, too, was an image of someone from beyond the grave, a family heirloom that had been squirreled away by Kera’s grandmother, who’d never stopped believing in the Jedi. It was a memory of her grandfather, not her grandfather himself. The programming in the holocron had not died, it could offer no context. She let her arm drop. She knew who she had to talk to, she just didn’t know how to break the news.
Kera found her brother in the seat of his X-Wing, a box of tools teetering on the edge of the cockpit while he swore heavily at something he was wrangling within. His elbow came back, catching the toolbox, and a heinous Huttese expletive escaped him from the pain, then another, still fouler curse as he watched the toolbox sway and fall from its perch. He popped his head out to survey the mess, but found Kera, arm extended, her will holding the toolbox in midair, the tools swaying gently in the Force’s grip.
“Figured that you got there just in the nick of time with those Inquisitors on Xorrn, so now we’re even,” she said with a grin.
Anden smiled, pointing at the tools and down before hoisting himself up to the lip of his fighter and letting himself drop to the deck below. He dusted his hands off. “Well, now that the chief mechanic is here, she can fix the starboard engine readouts instead of me having to do it.”
Kera snorted. “Unfortunately, I’m not here for that. Have to talk to you about the future.”
Anden planted his hands on his hips. “Is that a ‘the Force’ future or just general stuff about the future?”
Kera smiled, wincing. “…both?” she guessed.
Anden tossed the spanner he was holding at the toolbox and looked back up at his sister. “Well, I have something to tell you first that might affect such things. So can I go first?”
“Um, I have to say that I really doubt yours is more important than mine,” Kera responded, a bit indignant.
Anden waved it off. “Fine, fine. On three, we both say what we have, and see who wins. One, two, three. I’m staying.”
“I’m dying.”
“What?”
“What?”
“What do you mean, ‘you’re staying?’” Kera asked, genuinely confused.
“I meant that I wasn’t leaving Ataru Squadron to go have more adventures, what do you mean that you’re dying?!”
Kera sighed, describing the vision she’d had to him. “I saw you alone, angry at the Empire,” she continued. “I’ve been consumed by an Inquisitor, or Darth Vader, or something,” Kera said. Tears were in her eyes already at the thought. “And I saw the vision, and I don’t know how to prevent it, and I think trying to prevent it will just guarantee it, and, and…”
“Hang on. When did you see this?” Anden asked. His normal cocky demeanor was gone, replaced with the kind of genuine concern she only saw when his family, or maybe his squadron, was threatened.
Kera wiped at her face and sniffled. “An hour ago. I’ve been… I’ve been trying to get the courage up to tell you.”
Anden suddenly reeled, like thirty ounces of whiskey had hit him all at once. He swayed from side to side and then began to laugh. Tears were in his eyes now, too. “Kera, I decided I was staying something like ninety minutes ago. You didn’t see you in the vision because you weren’t there. Physically there.”
Anden started cackling loudly and doubled over. Kera stood, horrified. “How do you know?! The blade pulsed, there was white light within. It was consuming my life.”
“I don’t know!” Anden yelled back, still tittering. “Maybe you get wounded! Maybe the lightsaber blade is the Empire, and you go undercover inside it. Maybe you get sucked inside a lightsaber and collect 120 kyber crystal shards across fifteen expansive 3D environments. Point is, nothing you saw has to mean death. Certainly not enough to panic.”
Kera was sweating and breathing heavily again. Anden finally stopped doubling over in laughter and stood back up. “Hey,” he said. “I know how to make this better.”
The hangar was the same, but Anden had shut the door so they couldn’t see out into the terrifying nothingness of space beyond and cranked the lights to maximum. He’d also procured a bottle of surprisingly good wine for a Rebellion ship, and Kera wasn’t sure she wanted to know how. The two sat now, leaning against each other’s backs, the wine next to the two of them.
“Y’remember when we went back to Corellia, and you talked to Gran-Gran about stuff while I talked to Dad about how I was apparently Force-sensitive?” Anden asked.
Kera nodded in an exaggerated manner. She hadn’t drank since she’d joined the Alliance, and despite her size and mass, she’d become a lightweight in the duration.
“He said that the way his life had gone, the way everything pointed at our ancestors, the way everything with the Jedi and the book had, had gone, and…” Here Anden paused his slurred speech. “Lost my train of thought. Oh. The way everything had gone, he said there’s no such thing as chance, Anden, not with us Tolans. There’s too many coincidences and lucky breaks. This stuff happens for a reason. He said Anden, I don’t know what will happen to you, or me, or Kera, or Mom, or Mom — his mom, Gran-Gran — but there has been too much non-random stuff to think that it’s not on purpose. And, and he didn’t know what the Force was, or how it worked, and he didn’t think there was some big Force-god-wizard-guy-gal that pulled all these strings, but he could tell there were strings.
“So he said Anden, believe in yourself, because you’re real. You’re here. Maybe not here for a purpose, but here on purpose, and therefore, you being you is what you have to do. Maybe you weren’t made to do it, because no one intentionally made you, maybe, maybe not, but you still have to do it, because being you is what you do.” Anden gestured violently with his cup of wine. A bit sloshed out onto the deck, and Anden swore quietly. “S’too expensive to spill. So, so you don’t have to be scared of the future, because you’re going to do exactly what you’re going to do anyway, so what is there to be afraid of?”
Kera nodded. “Makesh shense.”
“And if anything bad happens, it was going to happen, and maybe it wasn’t supposed to happen, but it was happening anyway and if it happened to you, it was going to happen to you, so it’s a good thing you were there for it to happen to, dammit!”
The siblings laughed. Anden nodded. “Sorry for rambling. I think you see where I’m going with this.”
Kera smiled and nodded. “Heard and understood, Ataru Leader.”
Anden turned to peek at her over his shoulder. “What’d Gran-Gran tell you that day?”
Kera shrugged. “The same thing, just not through a Dad or Anden filter. It’s was kinda nice to hear it through an Anden filter, though, y’know? Like, if you and Dad can comprep… conree… get something, I sure as Hells better be able to com-pre-prend it!”
Anden elbowed his sister at that remark, and both of them laughed.
“Why are you staying, though?” Kera asked after a moment. “Like, I’m not gonna try to talk you out of it or whatever. But I just wanna know.”
Anden sighed. “So, on Xorrn, the whole time, I’m thinking ‘why is the Empire sending all these forces against just this little dinky foundry? If they don’t know we’re here, one cruiser and a few walkers would be enough to flatten this place. And then we found the Inquisitors, and we knew why. Those Inquisitors weren’t just there because the planetarium-thing was, they were there because we were, too. The Liberator had to fight all those Imps because we are apparently a big deal, enough to get two Inquisitors after us. And in the battle, I helped in space, but I didn’t really get to help. I wasn’t there flying cover for the ground battle, I wasn’t shooting stormies with IG, which is where I wanna be. You weren’t there throwing droids the size of public transport into bad guys. Instead, we’re off dealing with Inquisitors and the Rebels and Mandos and foundry people are taking all of this wrath. That wrath was because of us, and I feel like I should have been there helping.
“Us being there ups the stakes. And if the Empire’s panicking because the Tolans are on the loose… maybe one of the Tolans needs to stick around to protect the regular fighters from that. And I never wanted to be a big bad Tolan. I just wanted to be a pilot. Paint some kill silhouettes on my fighter, be dashing and bold.”
Kera sighed next. “Yeah, I see what you mean. I’m just… I’m upset because I can’t do it with you. Knowing what we know, I can’t just be another trooper. There are mysteries to solve, relics to find, people to save, the Jedi to rebuild. I can’t turn my back on that. I mean, I see how you can, but I can’t.” She paused. “Crap, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that like that.”
Anden chuckled. “No, I know. Like, I think I know what you mean by that. I promise I’ll only elbow you again if you mean to be mean.”
Kera refilled her disposable cup with more wine. “Just never thought I’d have to say ‘So this is it, you’re breaking up with me?’ to my own brother.”
Anden snorted. “I don’t break up with people, I just blast off to the next planet.”
Kera elbowed him this time. “Swine. But how you gonna do that with that ensign from the bridge? She’s following you from planet to planet.”
Anden’s eyes went wide. “You knew about that?! I figured you’d be meddling more if you knew about that. And crap, I dunno how to ditch her then.”
“Poor little Anden, picking up things he doesn’t want.”
“Ooh, that reminds me,” Anden suddenly said. He pulled his cast-aside toolbox back over, loudly rifling through it. “You’re gonna be doing Jedi stuff, you need this more than me.”
From within the fusion cutters, hydrospanners, and other equipment in the toolbox, Anden pulled a lightsaber. It was cold, unadorned with anything decorative – the one he’d pulled from the collapsing spire on Xorrn as it buried its owner, an Inquisitor.
“You kept that in a toolbox? You’re lucky someone didn’t find it looking for a welding torch and kill themselves,” Kera spat.
“You’re the Jedi, Pop-Pop’s ghost said so,” Anden said. “You get to keep this. Use it to scare the next Inquisitor you find.”
“He’s not a ghost, he’s a projection!” Kera retorted, laughing. “And you’re a Jedi too, you know. You can ask the ‘ghost’ to confirm if you really want to. That’ll really bring the ensigns from the bridge running.” She took the lightsaber, examining it. Something about it seemed familiar, foreboding. The wine helped her put it out of mind for now.
Anden shook his head. “I’ll pass. Maybe I’ll be a Jedi later. Right now I’m happy being Ataru Leader.”
Kera sighed once more, this time happily. She leaned her head back on her brother’s shoulder and shut her eyes. Part of the pounding at her temples was her pulse, but she felt something more supernatural there as well. The image of the proton torpedo, the red blade, the pure white flashing within it came to her once again. She tried to steel what resolve the wine hadn’t stolen, to grab onto the image, to unravel its secrets. She pulled her point of view back, and suddenly realized why she’d had to turn, and turn, all the way around, from the torpedo to see the fiery red blade.
Anden was firing the torpedo at it.
He’d thought the red might symbolize the Empire. Maybe he was right. Something deep inside Kera began to relax.
The pounding at her temples resumed when Kera awoke. She started to sit up in her bed, then immediately thought better of it and let her head hit the pillow once more. She heard a chirp from across the room. Clunk. She opened one eye and saw the droid staring at her.
“Have you been watching me all night?” she asked.
The droid rocked back and forth on its legs, barking excuses as to why.
Kera sighed. She tried sitting up again, much more slowly, and succeeded. She looked over at the droid. “Well, if you’re sticking with me, go find a fellow astromech droid named Tripod. Tell him Kera said to get the launch codes for the Wayward Spirit. Anden stole my old astromech, and turnabout is fair play. Get the ship prepped, we’re going to have work to do.”
Clunk wheeled out of the room, chirping happily. The Inquisitor’s lightsaber stared at Kera from where she’d set it, atop her nightstand with her grandfather’s holocron. She reached for it slowly, eyes on the ignition switch, getting a solid grip on the hilt and carefully thumbing the button. The red blade blazed to life, and Kera gasped. Glowing and pulsing before her was the horrid red blade of death from her vision. Something told her it must be this one, that no other lightsaber would match it so perfectly. She stared at it, now a real presence in the room, and felt the anger, the hate that the weapon had absorbed from its creator. This time, though, she wasn’t afraid of it. It was here because it was here, and it if it was always going to be here with her, it was a good thing she was here for it.
She switched the blade off, and watched it fade, before reaching out through the Force to her grandfather’s holocron. A little push, a little test, and suddenly the image of Avinn Krelz flickered to life. “Good day, Kera,” the projection said. “How may I be of service?”
Kera held up the hilt of the lightsaber. “What do I do with this?” she asked.
The image studied the weapon. “A lightsaber from a servant of darkness has a red blade from where the kyber crystal has been warped and forced to serve their will. However, it can be cleansed,” he added hopefully.
Kera smiled. “That sounds like a plan,” she said.
The image of her grandfather nodded. “Wonderful. As your harmony with the Force reaches into the blade, bleeds it clean, you’ll notice a change, from the core of the blade and working outward: cleansed Sith blades glow white,” the image said.
The programming of the holocron was profoundly confused when Kera began hysterically laughing.
