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The Mantis was loud.
Not as loud as Bracca. Cal doubted that anything could be that loud. The whole planet roared with sounds of ships crashing into the surface, maglev trains whizzing between settlements, the blaring buzz of ship cutters and the occasional explosion courtesy of some long abandoned ordnance. He could still remember when he finished a shift with blood dripping from his ears after an unplanned detonation had ruptured his eardrums. He had spent the next few weeks with muffled hearing—relying on Guild Sign Language to communicate with his fellow workers both on and off shift.
The Mantis was loud. Loud for a S-161 XL.
There was the steady rumble of the ion engines—a trio of LSW-115 Sublights—and the constant hum of the heavily modified Stinger Model Class One Hyperdrive. Cal could tell it was modified thanks to the slight anomaly in the drives humming pattern. A regular Stinger Class hyperdrive had a pattern similar to a beating heart, this one sounded like the steady rev of a 74-Z speederbike. There were the creaks and groans of the ship as it traveled through hyperspace and the standard beeps and boops of the ship’s system.
These things didn’t bother Cal. In fact, they were almost comforting. All starships had a familiar resonance he could attune his mind to in order to tune everything else. On Bracca, there had been a new constant hum of ships. Cal had gotten good at recognising the types based on sound alone. His skill had earned him a few extra credits as his fellow guild members would place bets on if he could guess the incoming starship without seeing it.
He knew the low rumble of a Lucrehulk-class LH-3210 cargo freighter as it exited the atmosphere and began its descent to the planet surface. Starfighters of all makes and models made a whistling frequency as they were unceremoniously dropped from freighters and into the scrap yards. He knew the keening wail of a Munificent-class C3 Frigate as its ion engines began to fail.
Cal knew what a Venator sounded like.
The Mantis was loud. Too many echoes.
Saving Prauf had reignited his connection to the Force. A connection he had purposefully severed in order to prevent hearing an overwhelming amount echoes from the remnants of his past life. His connection had been damaged after the Purge, with anger and resentment bubbling up inside him every time he tried to meditate. After he had worked to scrap the remnants of the Albedo Brave, he had no other choice but to leave the Force behind.
Sometimes, he still felt them. Echoes. The Force. Particularly strong echoes would slip through his defences and invade his mind. They were dulled by his shattered connection but they would still leave him shaking—and on occasion, seizing—as he tried desperately to hang onto the side of a decommissioned and echo-laden warship.
The echoes on the Mantis weren’t as nauseating as those he had experienced on Bracca and nowhere near the nightmarish echoes he had seen during the Clone Wars. During the war he had seen–and felt–echoes of battle, torture, death and any other reality of war that had come his way. He had gotten used to the sound of suffering echoing through his mind day and night.
Master Tapal had done his best to teach him to control it but there was only so much he could do with limited resources and a limited understanding of psychometry. It wasn’t his fault. There were only a few Jedi who had the ability; fewer who were alive to teach Cal. Master Vos had tutored him on occasion but it was a few brief lessons instead of a full education. Master Tapal had followed the guidance of the Council and used the war to teach Cal how to control his abilities, how to use his abilities in service of the Jedi and the Republic.
Maybe, Cal sometimes thought, If the war hadn’t broken out, I would have learned to control it better. I wouldn’t be a failure.
Maybe.
The echoes weren't unpleasant but there was an overwhelming amount of them. Nearly every object on the yacht was laden with memories. Most belonged to Greez. Echoes of fortunes won and lost, of high stakes adventures across the galaxy and an ill-fated expedition to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.
Some of them belonged to Cere. Cal tried his best to avoid those ones. Echoes belonging to other Jedi carried a resonance he wasn't yet ready to remember.
Even if he wasn’t interacting with the echoes, he could still feel them—still hear them. They were like a chorus invading his mind as he tried to keep his emotions in check. He couldn’t use the Force to push them away, he would just lose control like he did on Bracca all those years ago.
Meditation was off the table. He wasn’t about to tear a hole in the side of Greez’s ship mid hyperspace jump and scatter pieces of his new found…companions…across multiple systems all in the name of clarity. But he needed to do something in order to scratch the nagging itch of the Force that was crawling all over his skin.
Cal pulled his—no, Tapal’s—lightsaber from its hiding place beneath his work harness and let the weight rest in his hands. Its weight still felt the same as it did when his Master pressed it into his hands all those years ago. Heavy. Burdened. Crushing. No amount of lifting and climbing on Bracca would have made a difference to the weight.
The Mantis was loud.
He tuned into the hum of the Mantis’ engines and let their hypnotic resonance wash over him as he settled in a crosslegged position on his makeshift bunk. The steady rumble provided the perfect background noise for his unorthodox form of meditation.
Cal turned the saber over in his hands. He had memorised every minute detail of the weapon to the point where he could rebuild a complete replica without needing to refer to the original. Every scratch, twisted wire, dent and jagged broken edge was burned into his mind. Even broken, it was slightly too big for him to comfortably wield. Yet another reminder that this blade didn’t belong to him and it never would.
With a shaking breath, Cal shut his eyes and turned into the faint song of the weapon. He had done this exercise time and time again. At first it had been part of his training to master his psychometry. An exercise in self discipline and control. After the order fell it had shifted into something much more self-serving.
Now, he practiced it in order to ground himself and out of a pathetic need for comfort. His attachment to the blade would have been frowned upon by the Jedi Council. That he knew. He had always struggled with attachment. He knew it and his Master had known it. It was hard not to become attached when every object he touched begged for him to care about it.
The echoes embedded into the fractured steel of his master’s saber were familiar to him. He had replayed them plenty of times when he needed comfort or guidance. He would sit in the dark of his dingy apartment with the curtains drawn and listen to the voice of a ghost.
As the saber sang its mournful song, Cal let the echoes wash over him. The pain in his side from his broken ribs softened ever so slightly as the echoes began to dull his other senses.
“Stay by my side, Cal.” Jaro gestured for the young boy to follow him as the pair made their way through the crowded halls of the Jedi Temple.
Since the Battle of Geonosis and subsequent start to the Clone Wars, the energy in the temple had changed. Lively discussion of the Jedi principals had been replaced by somber discussion of war. Matters of war was the reason for his visit to the temple. He had returned to Coruscant in order to debrief the council on Iron Battalion's success in the outer rim. Other matters had kept him on the planet for longer than he expected.
Master Yoda had informed him late last evening that he was to take young Cal as his Padawan. As part of the newly established Jedi Integration Act, the council had begun to assign Padawans to Knights and Masters alike. They were to serve alongside their Jedi Generals as Jedi Commanders.
Child soldiers, Jaro thought bitterly.
He looked down at the red-headed boy as they made their way through the crowded corridors and to the ceremony hall. His shoulder length hair bounced with each childish and skip-like step he took through the corridor. In Jaro’s mind, the boy was far too young to be a Padawan. Nine years was below the average age of a Padawan but the council insisted that he was ready. Something about the boy's psychometric abilities.
He hadn’t told the boy the news. He wanted it to be a surprise. Becoming a Padawan was a momentous occasion in a Jedi’s life. Cal deserved to feel the joy and excitement of being promoted to the new rank, even if it was bound to cause more harm than good.
Despite the circumstances of his promotion, Jaro was proud of Cal. He was good with a lightsaber and skilled in ways of the force. He would make a good Padawan and one day, a great Knight.
The Mantis was loud.
Jaro was out of his depth.
Quinlan’s teaching had helped but Cal was still struggling with his psychometry. Jaro had no idea how to handle his Padawan’s rapidly developing abilities.
The battlefield was no place for a child, let alone one like him. There was too much grief on the battlefield, too many echoes that were waiting to latch onto the poor boy. Just as one had.
Jaro pushed the damp and scruffy hair from the young boy’s forehead. He was running a fever and so some of the hairs stuck to his pale, clammy skin. Jaro had watched him collapse on the battlefield, watched as he seized and convulsed on the ground after accidentally touching a recently deceased Separatist fighter.
That had been hours ago and Cal still hadn’t stirred.
He silently cursed the Council for assigning him Cal. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Cal as his Padawan. If he had been given the choice he would’ve selected the young boy to train. He had told Cal that when he had gotten in his own head about things and had fretted about being a burden. He was proud to have the young boy as his Padawan. Cal held promise with a lightsaber and his connection with the Force was strong for his age. That was where Jaro’s problems lay. Cal was far too young to be in active combat
Jaro had sent a transmission to the Temple requesting both advice and for a message to be passed along to Quinlan. He would take any and all guidance he could get his hands on in order to help Cal.
Cal had had seizures before. Most of them tied to his psychometry and the graphic and painful memories he had been exposed to in the short time he had been on duty with the Iron Battalion. They had knocked the poor boy out for a few minutes to an hour, but never this long.
With no word from the Council, all he could do was wait and hope that the Force would assist Cal in overcoming whatever obstacles the young boy was facing.
Datapad in hand, Jaro began to read out one of the many tales of the Old Republic. These were stories that all Jedi grew up with and found comfort in. Jaro hoped that Cal would be able to hear the comforting words and sense that his Master was by his side.
The Mantis was loud.
Cal shifted his posture slightly. These were not the echoes he wanted to see. He wanted comfort, not reminders of what he had lost. He took a breath and refocused his intentions on the lightsaber. Master Vos’ training might have been brief but Cal could still remember the (at the time boring) lecture that he had given about how to draw out different echoes associated with different emotions from an object.
It felt good to be on a planet with clean air and no blaster fire.
The past few months hadn’t been easy on the Iron Battalion and Tapal was thankful when new orders came through after their successful campaign in the Outer Rim. They were to be stationed on Aldhani for a few months in order to get the air base at Alkenzi operational and to secure the supply lines that ran through the system.
The crisp and cold air of the Aldhani highlands were a welcome change in comparison to the humid and swampy environment of Rodia where they had last been stationed.
Cal’s mood had improved substantially since they had set up base on the planet. The campaign in the Outer Rim had worn his young Padawan down. Jaro could see it in his eyes and the way he wielded his lightsaber. Early morning training had done wonders to soothe the anger behind Cal’s strikes.
It pained Jaro that much of Cal’s training had come from active combat. He had refined his lightsaber techniques whilst facing down countless battle droids and his psychometry had developed thanks to objects of war. He was only eleven years old and yet he carried himself like he was a seasoned soldier instead of a kid out of his depth.
Jaro watched as Cal played with a group of Dhani children around the rocky river temple they were helping to clean. He looked right at home among the young Dhanis, with his nomadic poncho and singular braid. The only thing that set him apart from the others was the way Cal used the Force to lift some small rocks from the river to the amazement of the Dhani children in front of him.
Deep down Jaro knew that he should scold his apprentice for using the Force in a frivolous way but the smiles from the Dhani children as well as the one on Cal’s freckled face dissuaded him from doing so.
Jaro watched as Cal skillfully and gracefully manoeuvred the rocks and water around him before he stacked the rocks into a small cairn. The Dhani children whooped and clapped at the show of the young Jedi’s abilities. Jaro joined them in their encouragement, much to the delight of his apprentice.
He watched as Cal exchanged words with the young Dhanis. A rare positive trait of his psychometry was he had a knack for language. All it took was a few echoes and he could hold a basic conversation with native speakers. It didn’t last long, the echoes would fade and he would lose the vocabulary he had learned. Still, it was intriguing to hear him speak the language of the locals with such ease.
The Mantis was loud.
Cal let a gentle smile find its way onto his lips. The echoes of their time on Aldhani were some of his favourites. The echoes were full of pride from his master and wonder at the landscape. He pushed forward through the malleable fabric of time and space as he searched for a specific echo. An echo of a memory the two of them shared. It didn’t have a pleasant beginning but it had a pleasant end.
Jaro turned on his heel the moment he felt a disturbance in his Force bond with Cal. He caught his gaze just as the young boy’s eyes rolled back to reveal nothing but white. His hand was outstretched with his fingers knotted into the pelt the Dhani elder was holding.
“Ad'ika!” Aug called out and rushed to Cal’s side. As Cal’s squad medic, the trooper had seen a fair share of Cal’s echo induced episodes.
Jaro rushed to Cal alongside Aug who eased him down onto the rocky ground as the boy spasmed and twitched.
“Cal, focus on me Cal. Like we’ve practiced.” Jaro spoke softly as Aug counted the passing seconds. The Dhani gathered around, ceremonial garb ringing and chiming as they expressed their worry for the young boy.
Two other troopers, Rez and Auto, urged them to stay back so that their General could offer assistance. It took a few moments but eventually Cal came around, eyes unfocused but aware of his surroundings.
“I’m okay Master, I’m okay…” Cal croaked out and curled up slightly, “It wasn’t a bad one…just a lot of history.”
“Can you sit up?” Jaro spoke softly. Cal hadn’t had a seizure since they had arrived on Aldhani—their training had made sure of that. His Padawan nodded and with his and Aug’s assistance, Cal managed to sit up and then stand.
Cal looked at the Dhani elder and gave a small bow before he spoke something in Dhani. From the small bow the elder returned, Jaro assumed that Cal was either apologising for or explaining his sudden collapse. It amazed Jaro how considerate and kind hearted Cal could be despite his own struggles. At times it seemed like Cal cared more for the feelings and wellbeing of others than he did his own. That would be something to focus on. The Order didn’t need another Jedi with a lack of self preservation.
Cheers erupted from the gathered Dhani as a ball of blue light charted its way across the night sky. Jaro couldn’t help but look up as another two bright objects swooped overhead as the Dhanis began their celebratory chant. It was a sight to be seen as the valley was filled with the sound of thousands of Dhani singing and dancing as the meteors continued to fly overhead.
In the chaos, Jaro lost sight of Cal. He used his height to his advantage and managed to spot the young boy sitting off to the side of the rocky temple with his eyes fixed on the sky. The poncho he wore swamped him and made him look even smaller than usual. Jaro made his way through the joyous crowd and sat next to Cal.
“Sorry Master, I needed to sit down…” Cal said, “That pelt held more than I expected, I hope I didn’t offend anyone…”
“I think they understand just fine. You mentioned that one of their own has a similar ability to you.” Jaro looked down at his Padawan with a kind smile, “You did well to focus on the here and now instead of being lost to the echo. Your training is progressing well.”
“Thank you, Master.” Cal looked up at him with a small, tired smile on his face.
As the frequency of meteors increased, so did the sound of singing and dancing from the people in the valley. One of the privileges of being a Jedi was the ability to see the many cultures that made up the galaxy. Jaro had found memories of visiting distant planets with Master Yaddle and experiencing and learning about the cultures the Jedi were sworn to protect. Jaro was glad that Cal got to experience the galaxy, he just wished it would have been as a peacekeeper rather than a soldier.
The jubilation of the crowd began to dissipate and was quickly replaced with a low rumble as the dark sky changed from a deep navy to a luminous green with specks of blues and yellows as The Eye began to form over the horizon.
Jaro looked down at Cal as the sky became a tapestry of colours. The look on the young boy's face was pure wonderment. A look that he had seen on the faces of countless younglings when they first were able to channel the force.
For so long, Cal had worn the face of a soldier. Stern and steady with an occasional grin or raised brow. He had been worn down by the fighting, by the pain, by the cruelty of the galaxy. Thanks to The Eye, Cal could wear the joyful expression of a child experiencing the world through young unjaded eyes.
The Mantis was loud.
Something was wrong. Cal could feel himself being pulled into an echo that lurked within the lightsaber. His guard was down and he could feel his control on the force slipping away as he was drawn into a sharp and painful echo held within the cold metal. He felt like he was a youngling again, when every object would draw him in and trap him in its chamber of echoes. The echo swallowed him whole.
He wasn’t going to survive this, the Force told him so.
But Cal would. He had to.
Jaro pushed his lightsaber into the small, shaking hands of his Padawan. His Padawan who looked down at him with tears in his fear-filled eyes and a blaster burn across his cheek and jaw.
“This… war is not over, my Padawan. Hold the line. Wait for the Jedi Council's signal. Remember… Trust only… In the Force." Jaro stammered out as pain flared across his body.
“Yes Master.” Cal spoke, his voice distorted as if he were underwater.
As the Force began to wash over his body in a way he had never felt before, Jaro kept his eyes on Cal for as long as he could before the face of his Padawan began to melt away into distorted darkness.
The Mantis was loud.
Cal choked on a sob as the echo clung to him. He had relieved that moment over and over countless times before in both his sleeping moments and his waking ones. But he had never experienced it.
His body felt cold. Cold like he would never feel warm again. Cold like a corpse. Cold like his Master’s corpse. His Master would never feel warm again. Because of him.
The sobs continued even as he tried to force them back. He felt the hot tears spill from his eyes—a gift of warmth born from the coldness of grief. He never cried on Bracca, that was a one way invitation to a backhand to the face. Cal had learned that lesson early on. Jedi didn’t cry. They kept their emotions in check and regulated. Cal had learnt early on that he couldn’t cry, even when the most painful echoes invaded his mind.
But he was no Jedi.
Cere had put her faith into him that he would be the Jedi who could restore the Order. The woman who stood only a short walk away was counting on him and here he was, crying over a piece of cold metal and kyber as he pathetically and selfishly relived echoes of a better time.
Another sob washed over Cal as he curled in on himself and gripped his Master’s lightsaber tightly. It resonated with pain, a pain he deserved as punishment for failing to save his Master. The pain in his side from his broken ribs returned, no longer dulled by the Force.
The Mantis was loud.
He hoped that the engines would hide his sobs within their metallic symphony. The last thing he needed was Cere hearing his whimpering.
The Mantis was loud.
The Mantis was loud.
The Mantis was loud.