Nar Shaddaa
He coughed the obstruction in his throat out. A brown mix of mucus and the effects of the polluted air on his lungs came out, splattering on the ground. He cleared his throat, spitting out what remained.
He wasn’t the only one.
The air quality was degrading fast. Flames, smoke, and fumes from a myriad of sources were choking the moon. He had to come up with an idea to clear the air before the moon’s inhabitants were poisoned to death. He first considered the Book of Vishanti, but he couldn’t bring himself to feel more than pity and hatred at this moment.
He pitied the people and hated what this hellhole symbolized.
Winds of Watoomb weren’t selective. He couldn’t simply separate the pollutants in the air and dump them somewhere. Even if he did, the matter is about the lack of oxygen. He needed a way to replace the polluted air with a breathable one.
Atmospheric scrubbers were imported from the Republic. In their current financial state, they couldn’t buy what Nar Shaddaa needed. He also didn’t have the means to create plants to clean the air. No Mystic Arts nor a dimension to borrow the power to cultivate plants, existed.
But maybe he wasn’t out of options.
If the Force connected all living beings, and if it was a part of all living beings, then maybe he could use it to his advantage. If life could be created with the midichlorians, in theory at least, why not plant life as well?
He needed a sapling.
—
One quick portal to Kalee later, he had several saplings in pots, courtesy of the truly grateful people.
He sat down before one of the saplings, concentrating to feel its signature in the Force. Dimmer than sentient lifeforms, it was still there, a mere ember in the wind. His first attempt was to fan that flame, to coax the midichlorians to replicate the cells.
The sapling’s trunk bloated before it exploded, covering him in sap.
He blinked several times, his hand slowly rising to wipe the liquid on his face off.
—
He cleaned himself up before putting the now-dead sapling aside. This time, he decided to be slower so his previous mistake wouldn’t repeat. He felt its presence in the Force, connected to it, and tried it once more.
The sapling began to grow far faster than its natural lifecycle would allow but slow enough that it wouldn’t die immediately. He thought it was working before the sapling began to grow branches on its branches, repeating in a cycle. What he had now was a mass of bark and leaves.
It tipped over, rolling on the ground.
He sighed.
His technique needed a lot of refining.
—
Four days of absence from the front, a lot of lost sleep, and three hundred fifty-nine dead saplings later, he marveled at what he created. It was around his height, a healthy brown trunk, strong roots and branches, and, of course, vibrant leaves. The more important part was its presence in the Force.
He had modified it to a point where it didn’t need to be coaxed anymore. Simply touching it with the Force prompted it to grow, and there was no ceiling to it.
Billions of deaths in such a short time had created a lingering darkness in the Force across the moon.
Which gave him another idea.
Billions of deaths in such a short time had created a lingering darkness in the Force across the moon. Force sensitives like him could feel the echoes of the dead. The emotions in it, hatred, pain, and hopelessness, fed the dark side of the Force. A howling storm of agony, regret, and hatred covered the moon.
Constrained in such tight quarters, it was a nightmare.
The non-Force-sensitives were safe for the most part. He, on the other hand, had to actively block the shroud from consuming him in grief.
For this instance, he would feed that darkness to the tree. The people who were fighting for a better, brighter future would act as the filter. All of them together would purify the lingering darkness.
He activated his comlink. “Qymaen, is there any sector that is completely abandoned?”
There was grumbling at first. “Sector fourteen is empty. It was a massive spice refinery. We flattened it as deep as we could. The fumes convinced everyone else to leave. Why?” he asked.
“I need a suit to traverse all that fume. It's to clean the atmosphere,” he said.
The Supreme Marshall was silent for a few moments. “Should I assign you guards while you work?”
“No need; the suit will be enough if you can find one.”
“There are some back on Kalee from the times tribes had to forage for materials in wastelands. I’ll have several brought in with the food supplies,” he replied. He took the tree with him, leaving to rest.
Tomorrow was a big day.
—
Mystic Strike
Qymaen regarded his brother.
The engineers were assisting him in wearing the suit. It was bulky, fit for Kaleesh physiology, but modified so he could wear it.
“How exactly will you cleanse the atmosphere?” he asked. The topic was brought up during their discussions. Anakin claimed he didn’t have anything to fix the atmosphere without extreme measures.
Anakin smiled as he put on his mask. “You’ll see. It will be impossible to miss.”
“While the refinery is gone, we don’t know what else could be down there. Reaching the crust is unlikely to be easy.” Thousands of years of neglect meant there were bound to be some forgotten things waiting in the deepest levels.
His idea of assigning guards wouldn’t work until he reached down. He didn’t want him going down there alone if they could help.
“The alternative is billions dying from this polluted air.”
He sighed, shoulders slouching forward. “I simply ask you to be careful. There is no telling what this cesspool hides in its depths.”
“I’ll be careful,” he said, opening a portal outside Sector 14.
—
Nar Shaddaa
Sector 14
A permanent fog of golden orange, blue, and red with purple glitters was rising from sector 14. Pyke Syndicate’s spice refinery was one of the largest in the galaxy. When the workers had rebelled, the ensuing fight had started several fires. It gave them an opportunity to escape.
With such a densely concentrated den of scum, turbo lasers were inevitable. It had killed tens of thousands of Syndicate members, carving a hole in the dense, metal jungle.
The pit went down for so many levels, no one knew the exact count. The amount of burned raw and refined spice created a health hazard, resulting in the entire sector being abandoned. He stood at the edge of it, watching the massive hole, unable to see anything through the deadly mist.
Regardless, he floated down, surrounding himself in a bubble of eldritch energy.
He watched the seconds on his wristwatch. The first ten minutes were tense as he waited for the mandala to hit something, anything. Then he got bored, feeling as if time was not passing at all. There was only the endless mist and his thoughts to keep him occupied.
He couldn’t help but think about the dead.
Logically, he knew it was unavoidable. Leaving Nar Shaddaa behind was not a choice. It was a blight on the people and on the galaxy, and cleansing it was a must. Rallying the people to fight was the only choice.
It didn’t make it easier to know that hundreds of thousands died every hour.
He had nightmares about it some nights. Dark, shadowy figures begged to be saved, but there were so many he couldn’t even act.
Talking with his mother, teacher, and friends had helped.
He was brought out of his musings when the shield bubble hit an obstruction. Twisted, rusty metal parts jutted out all around him. Each one looked like they could kill a man with just the infections alone.
He guided himself between the twisted metal spikes, searching for the floor. Minutes went by, but at least he was occupied now. Eventually, as he reached the end, the mist began to disappear. The light of his shield made the area visible for the most part.
Debris from the upper levels had become stuck in a web of metal, preventing him from moving down. He decided to brute force it. Dropping his shield, he summoned the Flames of Faltine. The flames struck the debris, melting the top layer in an instant, spreading to the rest.
The heat was noticeable through the suit.
Drops of liquid metal turned into small streams, disappearing into the depths. Once a sizable chunk was melted, the rest of the debris fell through, clearing the way.
He created the shield again, searching for the crust.
—
He landed on the end of the pit, right where the cooling metal and debris had stopped. He was so deep down he couldn’t see the mist.
For all he knew, he was nowhere near the crust.
The only way to find out was to break the floor. He sent mandalas around, seeking a secure location. He didn’t want to be near the Seven Suns of Cinnibus when he summoned them to drill through the floor.
Of course, some other beings had a different idea.
He supposed it wasn’t entirely unexpected that there would be creatures deep down in these levels. Abandoned for thousands of years, he was about to be the first surface dweller to see what lay in the darkness.
He felt and heard them at the same time. The screeches and the rumbling steps meant he wasn’t about to have a warm welcome.
A pale, blind lizard the size of a grown man wasn’t what he would categorize as dangerous. A swarm, however, was an inconvenience. Their hides and overlapping scales looked thick at first glance. A hail of blades tore through them like they were paper, but they kept coming.
And coming.
They were relentless, dying in droves but kept pushing forward. Even when the hole was clogged with corpses, the lizards pushed through. His lips twitched.
This didn’t feel like an attack.
He reached through the force, trying to sense what the lizards were feeling. Was it starvation that they would die in droves for a chance to get him? Or something else prompting this mindless charge?
Fear was what he felt.
Something else broke through the hole, swallowing the corpses.
A dark grey worm, half as wide as Strange Tides yet twice as long, with rows of teeth, was following the lizards. Unable to distinguish between him and the swarm, it charged at him.
“Right,” he said, dragging the word out with a roll of his eyes. He created three oversized greatswords, impaling the worm on the wall on the other side of the pit. It thrashed, leaking out green, sizzling blood. He launched one more sword, impaling it through the head. Its struggling ceased immediately.
The lizards were already gone.
He moved through the hole where the lizards and the worm had emerged. Going through the familiar hand motions, he guided each strike as focused on a single point as possible.
He would reach the land beneath the metal hell, no matter how many times he had to use these spells. Fortunately, he didn’t have to repeat it again. Beneath the dark metallic floor and the layer of rust, he saw a thick, clay-like deposit.
He brought the three out, pulling them out of the pot, pushing their roots inside the mud with the Force. He sighed, berating himself for not learning how to farm back at the Sanctum.
He opened a portal to the surface since he couldn’t feel anyone from the surface. One hand through the portal, the other raised towards the three, he drew on the Force. With the billions as the filter, himself in the center as the funnel, and the tree as the target, he just hoped this would work.
—
Coruscant
Jedi Temple Council Chamber
“The Sorcerer’s mother?” Windu asked. For the umpteenth time, the Sorcerer of Tatooine had done something to leave them scrambling. In this case, his mother was seen opening portals for Freedom First.
The holographic image of Quinlan nodded. “Yes. She is not a front-line fighter but assists with logistics. With Sleheyron under their control, Freedom First doesn’t have to worry about supplying their ships. She has been opening portals straight to the refinery, allowing the fleet to refuel without abandoning the blockade.”
Windu took a slow, deep breath. “And the situation on Nar Shaddaa?”
“Twelve billion dead by now, around fifteen percent of the moon’s estimated population. Six billion of them are the gangsters; the rest are the rebels and civilians caught in the fighting. Its effects on the Force are as expected,” Vos reported. He had no intention of approaching Nar Shaddaa. Everything he had learned was through publicly available sources.
Still, he had plenty of proof.
“A dark day for the galaxy, it is,” Yoda said. The enormous loss of life was affecting them all, and it grew each day.
“The growing concern is air pollution. It was already bad before the war. Vegetation on the moon is almost non-existent, and what atmospheric scrubbers they have are not enough. The whole moon might just become poisoned soon,” Quinlan said. Just the dead bodies were enough to make the air almost unbreathable.
It was probably the smallest of the pollutants.
“Perhaps we can donate scrubbers?” Mundi suggested. It was better than nothing, and perhaps they could earn some goodwill with the Sorcerer and Freedom First.
Master Gallia nodded. “I will try to raise the issue with the Senate."
Yoda was about to dismiss the Council when the Force shone with the brilliance of a star. He recoiled, gasping. His fellow Council members were the same. They were all rendered speechless, frozen in their spots as something emerged.
The Force was rejoicing.
A nexus was forming as they sat there. The dark shroud blinding them to the Force, a result of the events at Nar Shaddaa, was disappearing.
“No,” Yoda thought, realizing it was being absorbed. The nexus, clearly of the light side, was feeding on the echoes of pain left behind by the deceased. He opened himself to the pulses, each one stronger than before.
He was at peace.
—
Senate Chamber
Palpatine was laughing internally as the Senators were doing all his work for him. A few blackmails here, a couple billion credits' worth of bribes there, and they were all too ready to sing to his tune.
His serene smile, which had become second nature through hours of practice, fell apart. His head snapped around wildly as the shroud of darkness he created was being consumed at an alarming rate. Pulses of the light side of the Force washed over him, and Palpatine panicked.
For a moment.
He regained his composure, minimizing his presence in the Force. The complacent fossils in the Jedi Temple would be too blinded by the light to realize who he was. He still didn’t want to leave anything to chance.
He had to wait for the end of the session to reach out to his contacts.