Chapter 97

  "How can you not know who the Yuuzhan Vong are? They are the scourge of our galaxy. They've killed trillions..." Padme's voice is rising, and hints of anger are laced in it, which tumble out of her increasingly fast-paced words

  I must stop her before her self-righteousness completely takes over and she says something that annoys me.

  "Alone.." That single word shuts Padme's mouth; her ranting was spurred on by fear of the Yuuzhan Vong, and she vented her emotions. Padme is scared, and her fear and anger made her forget that I've been isolated for years. I can see that her surface emotions and thoughts are filled with death she has seen, and the atrocities that the Yuuzhan Vong are gleefully participating in

  Padme sucks on her dried lips and takes small shallow breaths. Even now, her mind has taken hold of itself, and the images she has seen are still on the tip of her mind. Even now, away from the horrors she has experienced, her thoughts can't escape what might be happening right now, as made-up visions cloud her mind about what might happen, what could happen. Padme is worried about the future; she can't see ahead, and she has almost lost all hope.

  I see glimmers of thoughts and emotions that explain her troubles. I sigh to myself and understand why Yoda and the Jedi haven't visited me with supplies or company in a while. They are fighting the Yuuzhan Vong.

  Throughout the years, I've felt certain distress through the force. Lots of death and cutting of the force, potential loss, but on a galaxy-sized event. To a normal force user who is attuned to life, it would be devastating, but things like this happen every single day throughout our galaxy. I've learned to tune it out, as if I were to focus on all of the mass destruction and death, then it would drive me crazy. I've closed off my perception of the galaxy to save my sanity.

  I stop floating and stand up to Padme, my hands rest on her shoulders as I pat the creases out of her silk-like cloth "I'm just going to read your mind, don't fight me on this, it will be quicker, and I can bypass your anger"

  Padme says nothing, possibly because she was so hopeless that she had given up, or she didn't want to kill her last hope in me. She just gave a silent appoveal nod.

  My abilities were already taking effect. They crept into her mind, bypassing her defences like they were nothing. I would once piggyback ride off the emotions of those I wanted to read, but now it was just a suggestion, my abilities didn't need my subject to have strong feelings to intercept thought, it just did. My abilities were subtle and passive, hardly noticeable like a gentle summer's breeze or a sweet smelling pollen in the air.

  Padme's hard features from the worry and panic soften as my abilities help her to relax and dive deeper. Reading a person's mind is like watching a fragmented movie that consistently jumps to random parts, but I'm past that; my abilities bend to unknowing will and adjust my mind-reading abilities so I can make sense of them all.

  The Yuuzhan Vong are a species from a different galaxy. They travelled through the great void between galaxies on an organic world ship. Diplomats were sent to talk to their leaders, but it was quickly found that their whole culture was about war. The Yuuzhan Vong leaders weren't interested in peace. The brief times words were successfully exchanged, removing any doubt about how the Yuuzhan Vong felt. They were almost xenophobic, they hated everything to do with advance technolgy like droids, which meant in a heavy technolgy galaxy the Yuuzhan Vong hated most things, and yet they held a deep hatred that dwarfed everything else for the force, as Leia Organa Solo found out when Warmaster Tsavong Lah proclaimed a short speech about how unclean the galaxy was and their divine right to occupy.

  The Jedi found out just how much the Yuuzhan Vong hated the Force with an all-out war. To the Jedi's great horror, each Yuuzhan Vong was resistant to the Force. Mind tricks didn't work, and even the Jedi's greatest ability to predict their enemies' next move was countered.

  As I was reading Padme's mind, I felt my annoyance creep up due to the ineffective way the New Republic handled the Yuuzhan Vong. They had the resources of the galaxy to combat the Yuuzhan Vong, and they fluffed it over and over again. If Palpatine were in charge, then he would have wiped them off the face of the galaxy. I wondered if Palpatine knew about the Yuuzhan Vong or if the Yuuzhan Vong purposely held back an earlier attack due to the Empire's unity, and only now attacked because they were both gone.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  The vision carries on, and I witness the death she has seen. Many planets fall, and life on them becomes extinct. The pain she feels and the responsibility that comes with it cause sleepless nights and paralysed waking moments. Padme is tormented by what she has seen, but also by what might have been if she had just done something different. I put some mental blocks in place to help her, but until she comes to accept her emotions and what she has seen, she will never be complete. I go deeper, ignoring the silent tears rolling down Padme's face.

  The Yuuzhan Vong spread out with the intent to conquer and kill. That's when the Jedi met them and found out that the Yuuzhan Vong were strangely without the Force and somewhat immune to it. It didn't stop the Jedi from fighting, but the magical way the Jedi could read their opponents and block incoming attacks failed them. The Jedi also found that the Yuuzhan Vong were resistant to lightsabers, and their strange, living snake weapons could block the amazing slicing power of lightsabers as well as blaster firing. Reports went on to point out how much the armour plating Yuuzhon Vong became berserk-like when fighting the Jedi, as if they truly hated force users.

  The Yuuzhan Vong hated anything to do with the Force, but they also hated advanced technology. Droids were a favourite target for them as it would seem that, given a choice between destroying a droid or an organic, they would choose the droid every time.

  The strangeness and brutal nature of the Yuuzhan Vong remained unexplored, but the thought process of the New Republic got a lot of people killed. Padme's memory showed her begging state members and high-level chancellors for an immediate counterattack, but due to red tape and individual greed for power, action wasn't taken. Padme even went to the Jedi as her son was a high-level member, but they didn't have an answer. Some wanted to exterminate the Yuuzhan Vong because they had no connection to the Force and were an invading species from a different galaxy, but others held on to their doctrine and thought that outright extinction was evil. The problem was that the Jedi had learnt never to have a single person who could take control because of what Palpatine did, not even Yoda, and that worked against them. They needed to make a choice and declare the whole of the Jedi for them to win, but they weren't one. This was the first time that my name was used, and a serious consideration was given between the different members of the Jedi and those who knew, debated if it was wise or necessary to involve me in the war.

  The Hutts, who had lost a good chunk of their space to the Yuuzhan Vong and moved into the Grove Collection for protection, wanted revenge and naturally voted that I was freed and allowed to cause havoc on the New Republic's behalf. They had complete faith in my vindictiveness and would handle the problem with the viciousness it deserved. The Hutts were greatly impressed at how the Grove Collection destroyed a world ship when the Yuuzhan Vong crept onto their slice of the galaxy and was bombed non-stop until there was no movement left. The Yuuzhan Vong may have been resistant to many powerful things, but they weren't resistant to the unfathomable fear and cruelty that came from a powerful Grove Collection that wouldn't even chance a meeting with a race of super battle-hungry xenomanic killers. They learnt that lesson from the Empire and would never welcome a killer into their homes. I nodded my head in agreement, They did what I would have done, except they took it a step too far and didn't stop destroying the worldship until it was dust in space. They should have taken the world ship and studied it, but apart from that, I wholeheartedly agreed with them.

  Whole sectors fell. Wookie planets were taken over, and many lives were taken from the act of dropping moons on planets. The Yuuzhan Vong could move moons in the way of planets and hyperspace trade routes. Again, this killed many, but the state of the New Republic only took shallow actions. The people on Coruscant hardly cared, as they felt safe in the capital of the Core Worlds. Until the Yuuzhan Vong attacked Coruscant. Padme wasn't there to see it for herself, but the images that had been captured caused a cold wash to penetrate. Those who escaped were all rich and powerful, as they had the means to do so, but the untold number of lives on the many different levels were left to defend themselves.

  This time, Padme didn't ask for permission, she spoke to those in the know and found the planet i was abounden on and now here she was having her mind read over by me.

  It took a couple of moments for Padme to stop crying and regain her composure. She dabbed her eyes, waiting for an answer to a question she didn't need to ask.

  My back was facing her as i worked out what i wanted to say. The long silence caused Padme's emotions to flare and ask, beg for an aswer but she fought down that feeling and waited.

  "If I join the fight, then I do it my way" Padme was about to agree, but I stopped her from talking "My price might be too high for you to pay, but the consequences for not paying will be higher still"

  Padme was desperate, with the fall of Coursant she was willing to pay the price to stop the war but all of a sudden she felt that there was an invisable weight that threaten to squeeze the air out of her lungs, with unknown repercussion that she couldn't see but knew would come if she didn't pay the price. Slowly, she nodded to agree; each shake of her head took more effort than the last.

  "Good.." I slapped my hands together and rubbed them " Time for a spot of killing", I said, just like if I was taking afternoon tea. Sometimes you need a really big bastard to balance the force and galaxy